Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free The Catcher in the Rye trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 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 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what year was The Catcher in the Rye published as a novel?
1951
Parts of it had already appeared in magazine form in 1945-46; the finished novel came out in July 1951 and was reprinted eight times within two months.
Q 02Who published the novel in July 1951?
Little, Brown and Company
The publication date slipped from spring to July 16 so a book club could make it a midsummer selection.
Q 03What is the name of the boarding school Holden has just been expelled from?
Pencey Prep
Holden failed nearly every class there; the school sits in the invented town of Agerstown.
Q 04Holden's boarding school is set in a fictional town in which US state?
Pennsylvania
Salinger himself was sent to a military academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, which is widely taken as the model for the school.
Q 05Which real school is Holden's prep school thought to be based on?
Valley Forge Military Academy
Salinger's own file from the academy called him a mediocre student with an IQ recorded between 111 and 115; he graduated in 1936.
Q 06Which was the only class Holden did NOT fail before his expulsion?
English
Writing is the Caulfield family talent: Holden's older brother writes for Hollywood and his sister keeps a diary.
Q 07Per Salinger's own summary, how many schools has 16-year-old Holden been thrown out of when the novel opens?
Four
The novel only shows the last of them, but Holden mentions earlier schools such as Elkton Hills along the way.
Q 08What is the name of Holden's roommate, who goes on a date with Holden's childhood friend?
Ward Stradlater
An unpublished Salinger story called 'The Boy in the People Shooting Hat' already featured a fight between a boy named Bobby and Stradlater over a girl.
Q 09Which girl, whom Holden remembers keeping her kings in the back row at checkers, does his roommate date?
Jane Gallagher
The critic Carl Strauch read those back-row kings as a symbol of defence against sexual attack, which is why the date upsets Holden so much.
Q 10Holden writes his roommate's composition about what object?
His dead brother's baseball glove
The glove was covered in poems written in green ink; an earlier Salinger story, 'The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls', already gave the dead brother a poetry-inscribed left-handed mitt.
Q 11What illness killed Holden's younger brother Allie?
Leukemia
In the earlier story 'The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls' the same brother, then named Kenneth, dies of an unspecified heart condition after being knocked out by a wave.
Q 12On what date does Holden say his brother Allie died?
July 18, 1946
Holden says Allie was two years younger than him but 'about fifty times as intelligent', and his grief for him runs under the whole book.
Q 13What is the name of Holden's younger sister, whom he sneaks home to see?
Phoebe
In the 1945 story 'I'm Crazy' Holden also has a sister named Viola, who never appears again in the Caulfield saga.
Q 21What is the name of the young prostitute Holden hires and then only wants to talk to?
Sunny
The critic Peter Beidler worked out which 1937 movie she is talking about from her remark that a boy who looked like Holden fell off a boat.
Q 22Which 1937 film did the critic Peter Beidler identify as the movie the prostitute mentions to Holden?
Captains Courageous
Beidler deduced it from her detail that a boy who looked like Holden fell off a boat; the boy was played by child star Freddie Bartholomew.
Q 23What is the name of the elevator operator and pimp who beats and robs Holden?
Maurice
Holden ends up punched in the stomach over five dollars, then lies on the floor imagining he has been shot in the gut like a movie gangster.
Q 14How old is Holden's younger sister in the novel?
10
She keeps a diary, and her favourite movie in the novel was also one of Salinger's own favourites according to his daughter.
Q 15Which film is named as Holden's sister's favourite movie in the novel?
The 39 Steps
Salinger's daughter Margaret listed the 1935 Hitchcock thriller among her father's own favourite films, alongside The Lady Vanishes and Gigi.
Q 16The novel's title comes from Holden misremembering a poem by which poet?
Robert Burns
The poem's tune is a variant of the melody usually used for 'Auld Lang Syne', another Burns lyric.
Q 17Holden hears the line as 'if a body catch a body'; what is the actual verb in the poem?
Meet
The poem's original words cannot be traced with certainty; a version was already known in Scotland long before Burns wrote his in 1784.
Q 18Where does Holden hear the misquoted line that gives him his 'catcher' fantasy?
From a little boy singing on the street
The image he builds from it, of catching children before they run off a cliff, becomes the novel's central metaphor for protecting innocence.
Q 19At which hotel does Holden take a room when he arrives in the city?
The Edmont
From his room he watches sexually charged scenes through the windows of other guests before heading down to the hotel's nightclub.
Q 20What is the name of the nightclub inside Holden's hotel where he dances with three women?
The Lavender Room
Loneliness drives him there; later that night he leaves another club after spotting his older brother's ex-girlfriend.
Q 24Which girl does Holden take on a date and then invite to run away with him?
Sally Hayes
A character in Salinger's earliest story 'The Young Folks' has been described as a 'thinly penciled prototype' of her.
Q 25Which former schoolmate does Holden meet for drinks and pester with questions about sex?
Carl Luce
The scene existed in a shorter form in the 1946 magazine story 'Slight Rebellion off Madison' before Salinger expanded it for the novel.
Q 26Which teacher does Holden visit at the start of the novel to say goodbye?
Mr. Spencer
The 1945 story 'I'm Crazy' opens the same way, with Holden watching a football game from a hill and then visiting Mr. Spencer.
Q 27Which former teacher offers Holden a couch for the night, then unsettles him by stroking his head?
Mr. Antolini
Holden admires him for having been the one to pick up the body of James Castle, the classmate who jumped from a window; critics still argue over what the head-stroking meant.
Q 28After fleeing his teacher's apartment, where does Holden spend the rest of the night?
Grand Central Terminal
The next morning he leaves a note at his sister's school saying he plans to run away out west.
Q 29Where does Holden arrange to meet his sister to say goodbye before running away?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
She turns up with a packed suitcase and insists on coming along, which Holden refuses.
Q 30What is Holden watching his sister ride when the rain starts and he suddenly feels happy?
A carousel
He is 'damn near bawling' watching her reach for the gold ring; many critics read the scene as the moment he accepts he cannot catch every child who falls.