The Catcher in the Rye Trivia
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109 free The Catcher in the Rye trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Catcher in the Rye trivia quiz follows Holden Caulfield through his lost weekend, from the last afternoon at Pencey Prep to the carousel in the rain. The plot questions cover the roommate, the composition about a baseball glove, the hotel with the Lavender Room, Sunny and Maurice, the date with Sally Hayes, the visit to Mr. Antolini and the night in Grand Central. There is a run on the misremembered Robert Burns poem that gives the book its title. The second half is about the book in the world: which publisher turned it down and which one bought it, the Book-of-the-Month Club date, the 1978 'communist plot' ban in Washington state, the fired Tulsa teacher, and the killers who carried a copy. There are questions on the film that never got made, from Jerry Lewis to Disney's dog version, and on the Swedish sequel Salinger sued to stop. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the novel, its author and its narrator, and against Encyclopaedia Britannica's entry, with each explanation adding one detail worth passing on. It suits book clubs, English classes and anyone who once carried the paperback around like a manifesto.
30 of 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did J. D. Salinger become after The Catcher in the Rye?
A recluse
A recluse: Salinger moved to the small town of Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1953, published his last story in 1965 and guarded his privacy there until his death in 2010.
Q 02Which publisher first brought out The Catcher in the Rye?
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company: once the first deal collapsed, Salinger's agent, Dorothy Olding, sent the manuscript to the Boston house, which took it at once.
Q 03What is the name of the boarding school Holden has just been expelled from?
Pencey Prep
Pencey Prep: on his last Saturday there, the whole school is down at the big football game against Saxon Hall while Holden watches alone from a hilltop.
Q 04Holden, manager of his school's fencing team, ruins a New York match by doing what?
Leaving the foils on the subway
Leaving the foils on the subway: Holden kept jumping up to check the map for their stop, so the match never happened and the team refused to speak to him all the way back.
Q 05Holden's prep school is widely seen as modelled on which school J. D. Salinger attended?
Valley Forge Military Academy
Valley Forge Military Academy: unlike Holden, Salinger lasted. His parents sent him there in 1934, and he graduated in 1936 as literary editor of the class yearbook.
Q 06Which is the only subject Holden passes at the school that expels him?
English
English: Holden says he hardly had to work at it, having already covered Beowulf at an earlier school. He fails everything else, history included.
Q 07Why does Holden say he left Elkton Hills, one of his earlier schools?
All the phonies
All the phonies: Holden says he was surrounded by them, above all the headmaster, who charmed most parents and gave the funny-looking ones only a quick handshake. The school now expelling him is about his fourth.
Q 08What is the name of Holden's roommate, who goes on a date with Holden's childhood friend?
Ward Stradlater
Ward Stradlater: Holden calls him a 'secret slob', always immaculate to look at but shaving with a razor that is rusty and clogged with old lather and hair.
Q 09Which girl, whom Holden remembers keeping her kings in the back row at checkers, does his roommate date?
Jane Gallagher
Jane Gallagher is waiting only minutes away, yet Holden just keeps saying he ought to go down and say hello, and never does.
Q 10Holden writes his roommate's composition about what object?
His dead brother's baseball glove
His dead brother's baseball glove: Allie had covered it with poems in green ink to read out in the field. The roommate complains it isn't about a room or a house, so Holden tears the essay up.
Q 11What illness killed Holden's younger brother Allie?
Leukemia
Leukemia: Allie died when Holden was thirteen. Years later a frightened Holden still begs him aloud, at the end of every block, not to let him disappear.
Q 12What does Holden say he did the night his brother Allie died?
Smashed windows
Smashed windows: he slept in the garage that night and broke every pane with his bare fist. He says the hand still hurts when it rains, and he can no longer make a proper fist.
Q 13What is the name of Holden's younger sister, whom he sneaks home to see?
Phoebe
Phoebe: she writes unfinished stories about a girl detective whose name she spells 'Hazle' Weatherfield, and she has landed the part of Benedict Arnold in her school's play.
Q 21What is the name of the young prostitute Holden hires and then only wants to talk to?
Sunny
Sunny: Holden loses his nerve, claims he is recovering from an operation on his 'clavichord' and pays her the agreed five dollars just to talk. She insists the price is ten.
Q 22Which question does Holden keep asking New York cab drivers in The Catcher in the Rye?
Where the ducks go in winter
Where the ducks go in winter: he means the ducks on the Central Park lagoon once it freezes. One cabbie thinks Holden is kidding him, and another snaps that the fish have it tougher.
Q 23What is the name of the elevator operator and pimp who beats and robs Holden?
Maurice
Q 14What does Holden's sister hand him before he leaves?
Christmas money
Christmas money: his ten-year-old sister hands over all eight dollars and sixty-five cents she has left for presents. Holden doesn't want to take it, and when she insists he suddenly starts to cry.
Q 15Which Dickens novel does Holden brush aside in the first sentence of The Catcher in the Rye?
David Copperfield
David Copperfield: Holden refuses to begin with where he was born and 'all that David Copperfield kind of crap'. Dickens's novel opens with a chapter called 'I Am Born'.
Q 16The Catcher in the Rye's title comes from Holden misremembering a poem by which poet?
Robert Burns
Robert Burns: his song is about Jenny, who gets her petticoat soaked coming through the rye. The cliff and the falling children are Holden's own addition.
Q 17Holden quotes a song as 'if a body catch a body comin' through the rye'; which word did 'catch' replace?
Meet
Meet: his little sister corrects him on the spot. Holden admits she is right, then goes on describing his daydream of catching children all the same.
Q 18Where does Holden hear the song behind his 'catcher in the rye' fantasy?
From a boy in the street
From a boy in the street: a small child is walking beside the kerb, singing to himself while cars brake around him and his parents pay no attention. The sight lifts Holden's gloom.
Q 19At which hotel does Holden take a room when he reaches New York?
The Edmont
The Edmont: from his window Holden watches the other guests, among them a couple squirting their drinks into each other's faces, and decides the hotel is 'lousy with perverts'.
Q 20What is the name of the nightclub inside Holden's hotel where he dances with three women?
The Lavender Room
The Lavender Room: the three are tourists from Seattle, so Holden teases one by claiming Gary Cooper has just walked out. They leave him to pay the whole thirteen-dollar bill.
Maurice: he comes back demanding five dollars more than the price he quoted and punches Holden for arguing. Holden then staggers about pretending he has a bullet in his gut.
Q 24Which girl does Holden take on a date and then invite to run away with him?
Sally Hayes
Sally Hayes: after they go ice skating, Holden asks her to run off with him to a cabin in New England. When she says no, he insults her and the date ends with her in tears.
Q 25Which older former schoolmate joins Holden for drinks, only to be pestered with questions about sex?
Carl Luce
Carl Luce: three years older and now at Columbia, he refuses to have 'a typical Caulfield conversation'. He tells Holden to see a psychoanalyst, pays his bill and leaves.
Q 26Which teacher does Holden visit to say goodbye at the start of The Catcher in the Rye?
Mr. Spencer
Mr. Spencer: the elderly history teacher, laid up with the grippe, makes the visit excruciating by reading Holden's feeble exam essay on the Egyptians back to him aloud.
Q 27Which former teacher offers Holden a couch for the night, then unsettles him by stroking his head?
Mr. Antolini
Mr. Antolini was the one teacher who went to James Castle, the boy who jumped to his death, and carried him to the infirmary under his own coat. The book never settles what the head-stroking meant.
Q 28After fleeing his teacher's apartment, where does Holden spend the rest of the night?
Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal: his suitcases are already stored there, so he beds down on a waiting-room bench until the morning crowds arrive, more depressed, he says, than he has ever been.
Q 29Where does Holden ask his sister to come and say goodbye before he runs away?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: while he waits, Holden leads two small boys to the mummies. His sister then turns up dragging a suitcase, determined to run away with him.
Q 30What is Holden watching his sister ride when the rain starts and he suddenly feels happy?
A carousel
A carousel: as she reaches for the gold ring, Holden decides you have to let children grab for it even if they fall off. He stays on his bench in the downpour, soaked and happy.