The Essay About the Mitt — The Catcher in the Rye

After Stradlater leaves with Jane, Holden sits down to describe a room and cannot. He writes about Allie's left-handed baseball mitt instead, the one covered in poems in green ink so Allie would have something to read in the outfield. The page stops being homework.

Allie died of leukemia when Holden was thirteen. The night of the funeral Holden slept in the garage and broke the car windows with his fist. His parents talked about a hospital and did not follow through. He still talks to Allie when he is low. In the middle of the mitt he also remembers Jane on a porch in Maine, checkers every day, a stepfather who drank and stayed off that porch. He liked her and felt he should stand between her and harm. Stradlater on a date is the thought that keeps breaking the sentence.

Stradlater comes back smug and vague about Jane. Holden hands over the essay. Stradlater is annoyed that it is a mitt, not a room. The insult lands on Allie. They are already in a standoff, and the fight has not started. Everything he cares about is in that dormitory, and none of it is being treated as if it matters.