Chapter 22

he goes back and gets her to listen and tells her why he fails and why he hates school. she tells him that he hates everything. he denies it and she makes him name one thing he likes and he is too busy thinking about the nuns and then he thinks about some boy James castle who jumped out of a window to his death because of teasing of other boys.
He finally tells her that he likes Allie, and she reminds him angrily that Allie is dead. She asks what he wants to do with his life, and his only answer is to mention the lyric, “If a body catch a body comin' through the rye.” Holden says that he imagines a gigantic field of rye on a cliff full of children playing. He wants to stand at the edge of the cliff and catch the children when they come too close to falling off—to be “the catcher in the rye.” Phoebe points out that Holden has misheard the words—the actual lyric, from the Robert Burns poem, “Coming Thro' the Rye,” is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.”

Response- Holden i think will eventually get his life together. phoebe is right he hates many many things, and allie is dead and he will never get him back, he really needs to move on but he obviously can't do it alone.