<P> Holden decides to meet his old classmate , a Columbia student named Carl Luce , for drinks at the Wicker Bar in the Seton Hotel . During the meeting , Holden annoys Carl with his fixation on sex . After Luce leaves , Holden gets drunk , awkwardly flirts with several adults , and calls an icy Sally . Exhausted and out of money , Holden wanders over to Central Park to investigate the ducks , breaking Phoebe 's record on the way . Nostalgically recalling his experience in elementary school and the unchanging dioramas in the Museum of Natural History that he enjoyed visiting as a child , Holden heads home to see Phoebe . He sneaks into his parents ' apartment while they are out , and wakes up Phoebe -- the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate his true feelings . Although Phoebe is happy to see Holden , she quickly deduces that he has been expelled , and chastises him for his aimlessness and his apparent dislikes towards everything . When asked if he cares about anything , Holden shares a selfless fantasy he has been thinking about ( based on a mishearing of Robert Burns 's Comin ' Through the Rye ) : he pictures himself as the sole guardian of thousands of children playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff . His job is to catch the children if , in their abandon , they come close to falling off the brink ; to be , in effect , the `` catcher in the rye '' . Because of this misinterpretation , Holden believes that to be the `` catcher in the rye '' means to save children from losing their innocence . </P>
<P> Holden decides to meet his old classmate , a Columbia student named Carl Luce , for drinks at the Wicker Bar in the Seton Hotel . During the meeting , Holden annoys Carl with his fixation on sex . After Luce leaves , Holden gets drunk , awkwardly flirts with several adults , and calls an icy Sally . Exhausted and out of money , Holden wanders over to Central Park to investigate the ducks , breaking Phoebe 's record on the way . Nostalgically recalling his experience in elementary school and the unchanging dioramas in the Museum of Natural History that he enjoyed visiting as a child , Holden heads home to see Phoebe . He sneaks into his parents ' apartment while they are out , and wakes up Phoebe -- the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate his true feelings . Although Phoebe is happy to see Holden , she quickly deduces that he has been expelled , and chastises him for his aimlessness and his apparent dislikes towards everything . When asked if he cares about anything , Holden shares a selfless fantasy he has been thinking about ( based on a mishearing of Robert Burns 's Comin ' Through the Rye ) : he pictures himself as the sole guardian of thousands of children playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff . His job is to catch the children if , in their abandon , they come close to falling off the brink ; to be , in effect , the `` catcher in the rye '' . Because of this misinterpretation , Holden believes that to be the `` catcher in the rye '' means to save children from losing their innocence . </P>
where does the title the catcher in the rye come from
where does the title the catcher in the rye come from
a selfless fantasy he has been thinking about ( based on a mishearing of Robert Burns 's Comin ' Through the Rye )
a selfless fantasy he has been thinking about ( based on a mishearing of Robert Burns 's Comin ' Through the Rye )