what is rye in catcher in the rye
The Catcher in the Rye Holden gets drunk at a bar, first calling an icy Sally, then walking to Central Park to investigate the ducks, breaking Phoebe's record on the way. Nostalgically recalling the unchanging dioramas in the Museum of Natural History that he enjoyed visiting as a child, Holden heads home to see Phoebe, exhausted and out of money. He sneaks into his parents' apartment while they are out, and wakes up Phoebe â€“ the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate his true feelings. 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.