Examples Of Catcher In The Rye Phone Booths

In the book, “The Catcher in the Rye” one of many symbols is the phone booth. The phone booth represents all the choices that Holden has to make and his struggle he has while making the choice. The phone booth can help the reader comprehend how hard it is for Holden to make a choice. For example, Holden always debates on who he should call when he is in the phone booth. The person Holden usually wants to call is busy, therefore, he usually calls any random person he remembers from his old schools. Throughout the whole story, Holden puts himself in difficult situations that even cause him to question his choices. An example of difficult decision making happens on page 206 when Holden explains to Phoebe that he is running away. Phoebe begs to go with him and he says, …show more content…
I changed my mind. So stop crying and shut up.” Before this happened, Holden had a mindset for running away and leaving New York forever. Holden had to make the decision to remain at home instead of running away and being on his own immediately. Another tough decision happens on page 101 when Maurice and Sunny come back for their five dollars Holden didn’t give them. Holden said, “I’ve told you about ten times, I don’t owe you a cent.” Maurice told Holden that he was going to beat him up if Holden was not going to give him the money, but Holden stuck with what he said and would not give up his money. If Holden would have acted differently in the situation he could have been hurt. In addition to these choices, calling Sally Hayes and making a date with her was a debatable situation to Holden. After Holden had made the date over the phone he regretted it. Holden wanted to move away with Sally. On page 132 he said to her, “No kidding, we’ll stay in these cabin camps and stuff like that till the dough runs out. Then I could get a job somewhere.” Holden saying this to Sally leads into them talking about college. Holden decided that he did not want to go to college because