Holden visits his history teacher Mr. Spencer to say goodbye before his expulsion from Pencey Prep takes effect.

Stradlater reveals that his mysterious date is Jane Gallagher, an old friend Holden once cared for deeply.

Holden writes Stradlater's composition assignment about his dead brother Allie's baseball mitt, which was covered in poems.

Holden attacks Stradlater after he refuses to say what happened with Jane; Stradlater beats him and bloodies his face.

Holden decides to leave Pencey days early and spend his remaining money on a hotel room in New York City.

Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel in New York City after arriving late at night by train.

The Edmont's elevator operator Maurice offers to send a sex worker to Holden's room for five dollars.

The sex worker Sunny arrives at Holden's room; he loses his nerve and pays her just to leave.

Maurice and Sunny return to Holden's room; Maurice beats Holden and takes the disputed extra five dollars.

Holden goes on a date with Sally Hayes and they kiss passionately in the cab on the way to the theater.

Holden urges Sally to run away with him; she refuses, and he calls her a pain in the ass before she leaves crying.

Holden sneaks past a new elevator operator and into his family's apartment to visit his sister Phoebe late at night.

Phoebe gives Holden all her Christmas money; Holden gives her his red hunting hat before sneaking back out.

Holden wakes at Mr. Antolini's apartment to find the teacher stroking his hair while he sleeps; he panics and flees.

Holden watches Phoebe riding the carousel as it pours rain, feeling a sudden, overwhelming sense of happiness.

After failing out of Pencey Prep, Holden Caulfield picks a fight with his roommate Stradlater and impulsively flees to New York City with little money and no plan. His nights at the Edmont Hotel spiral from loneliness into a squalid encounter with a pimp who beats him, deepening his depression. A disastrous date with old flame Sally Hayes, where he proposes running away together, leaves him more isolated than ever. Desperate for genuine connection, he sneaks home in the middle of the night to visit his younger sister Phoebe. After fleeing a disturbing encounter at a teacher's apartment, Holden reaches a moment of unexpected peace watching Phoebe ride a carousel in the rain. The pool traces the novel's central arc: a troubled teenager's reckless flight from the world and his slow, uncertain turn back toward the people who love him.

Holden's expulsion, escape to New York, and journey back to what matters.

Mr. Spencer reads Holden's failed Egyptian history essay aloud to shame him during their goodbye visit.

Robert Ackley barges into Holden's dorm room and spots his new red hunting hat, saying it is made for shooting deer.

Holden goes out on a Saturday night with Mal Broussard and Ackley to eat hamburgers and play pinball in town.

Stradlater criticizes Holden's composition for being about the wrong subject; Holden rips it up in anger.

Holden puts on his red hunting hat, cries without knowing why, and yells 'Sleep tight, ya morons!' before leaving Pencey.

On the train to New York, Holden meets a classmate's mother and invents elaborate flattering lies about her son Ernest.

Holden calls a woman named Faith Cavendish late at night hoping for a drink; she refuses to meet him.

Holden dances with three tourist women from Seattle at the Lavender Room nightclub inside the Edmont Hotel.

Holden is forced to leave Ernie's nightclub after his brother's old girlfriend Lillian Simmons spots him and blocks the aisle.

Holden donates ten dollars to two nuns at a sandwich counter near Grand Central Station and discusses Romeo and Juliet.

Holden hears a young boy singing 'if a body catch a body coming through the rye' on a New York sidewalk.

Holden and Sally Hayes go ice skating at Radio City Music Hall's rink; both skate terribly and soon retreat to a bar.

Holden stays at the Wicker Bar drinking alone after Carl Luce leaves, getting very drunk by himself.

Holden accidentally drops and shatters the record he bought for Phoebe while wandering through Central Park at night.

Phoebe covers for Holden when their mother enters the bedroom and smells cigarette smoke, claiming she lit one herself.

Beneath the novel's major plot beats lies a series of encounters that reveal the texture of Holden's depression and isolation. At Pencey, a humiliating meeting with his teacher and a forgettable night out with Ackley and Broussard show the dull, phony world he is desperate to escape. Once in New York, Holden's failed attempts at connection — a late-night phone call to a stranger, a dance with tourists, a hasty exit from a nightclub — underscore how thoroughly he fails to find what he is looking for. Brief moments of warmth, like a conversation with two nuns and hearing a child singing on the street, give him fleeting comfort before a drunken night alone at a bar and a shattered record mark his lowest point. His sister Phoebe, though, quietly protects him by covering for him when their mother enters the bedroom, revealing the one relationship in the novel that offers him genuine shelter.

The smaller moments that shape Holden's spiraling journey through school and the city.

Holden pauses on Thomsen Hill trying to feel something about leaving Pencey before heading down to say goodbye to Mr. Spencer.

Stradlater borrows Holden's jacket for a date and asks Holden to write a composition assignment for him.

Holden sells his typewriter to a fellow student for twenty dollars to fund his escape to New York.

Holden asks a cab driver where the Central Park ducks go when the lagoon freezes over in winter.

Holden peers through the Edmont Hotel window and watches strangers engage in strange and sexual behavior across the courtyard.

Holden sits in the Edmont lobby thinking about Jane Gallagher and the afternoon she cried quietly on the porch.

Holden asks cab driver Horwitz about the Central Park ducks; Horwitz insists the fish frozen under the ice have a far worse situation.

Holden buys a record for Phoebe at a record store, then tries to call Jane from a drugstore but her mother answers.

Holden walks toward the Museum of Natural History reflecting on how everything there stays the same, but cannot bring himself to go inside.

Holden tells Carl Luce he is desperately lonely; Carl tells him to see a psychoanalyst and walks out of the bar.

Phoebe realizes Holden has been expelled from Pencey again and hides her head under a pillow, refusing to listen.

Holden tells Phoebe he wants to be a catcher in the rye, saving children from falling off an imaginary cliff.

Mr. Antolini warns Holden he is heading for a terrible fall and writes down a Wilhelm Stekel quote for him to keep.

Holden suffers a panic attack on Fifth Avenue, imagining he will vanish each time he crosses the street, and begins speaking to Allie.

Phoebe arrives at the museum carrying a packed suitcase to run away with Holden, wearing his red hunting hat.

Pool 3 focuses on the moments of revelation and internal shift that drive the novel's emotional core. From Holden's inability to feel anything while leaving Pencey to his obsession with where the Central Park ducks go in winter, the events reveal a young man consumed by questions about loss, displacement, and where anyone belongs. His encounters with the city — peering through hotel windows, sitting with Jane's memory in a lobby, walking away from the museum — show him circling around emotions he cannot name. The confrontation with Carl Luce, who tells Holden to grow up and see a psychoanalyst, is a pivotal moment of self-recognition that Holden deflects but cannot entirely ignore. His confession to Phoebe about wanting to be a catcher in the rye crystallizes his desire to protect innocence, while his panic attack on Fifth Avenue and Phoebe's surprise appearance with a packed suitcase force him to finally reckon with what he cannot escape.

The decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define Holden's inner crisis.