Mr Antolini

Mr Antolini is a fictional character from the J.D. Salinger novel "The Catcher in the Rye".

He appears in the second half of the novel after Holden visits him looking for a place to stay. Mr Antolini offers Holden Caulfield a bed and then they begin to enter a deep conversation where Holden exposes many of his insecurities. In the conversation Mr Antolini promotes education as the only method to complete a person's character.

After using Mr. Antolini's shower, Holden looks for pajamas to change into. Unfortunately for him, Mr. Antolini did not leave him any clothes, so Holden opts to sleep in his underwear. Soon after falling asleep, Holden awakes to find Mr Antolini stroking his head and staring at him. Holden "jumps about a thousand feet" in the air, freaks out, gets sweaty and embarrassed, and asks Mr. Antolini "what the hellya doing?" Mr. Antolini replies by saying that he was "just admiring" Holden. Upon hearing this Holden makes an excuse to leave, fearing that Mr Antolini was making sexual advances. Holden has a hard time leaving however, because Mr. Antolini tells him "Don't be ridiculous Holden. Get back into bed." Holden eventually leaves Mr. Antolini's apartment, still in deep panic and says to the reader that "perverty" stuff like that "happened to [him] about twenty times" since he was a kid. When Holden thinks back to the event later in the story, he wonders if he made the wrong assumption.

The chapter involving Mr. Antolini is one of the most ambiguous in the entire novel, because throughout the novel Holden has conflicting thoughts about sexuality, and is very much scared of homosexuality. Many people have had a hard time determining whether Mr. Antolini was more of a role model or a "pervert".