Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses suicide and anti-gay prejudice, and it uses stigmatizing terms about mental illness which are reproduced only in quotations.

The novel begins with Holden Caulfield telling the reader that he’ll be narrating the events of the previous Christmas season that led to him ending up in a mental institution, which he refers to as “this madman stuff that happened to me” (3). He makes mention of his brother D. B., a writer who recently moved to Hollywood, and his parents before moving on to the subject of the day he left Pencey Prep, a school in Hagerstown, Pennsylvania.

Holden begins his retelling with the moment he is standing on Thomsen Hill looking down toward the stadium, where the last football game of the season is taking place. He’s just arrived back from an aborted fencing team match—Holden is the team manager, and he left all the equipment on the subway in New York—and instead of going to the game, he’s decided to go and visit his history teacher, Mr. Spencer. Holden reveals he’s going to see Spencer to say goodbye; he’s been kicked out of school.

Holden has paused on the hill to feel something about Pencey Prep; he has a dim opinion of the place and thinks the students are crooks and phonies.