The Perks of Being the Catcher in the Jar Quiz

Answer: coming-of-age

A coming-of-age novel deals with the protagonist growing up. It isn't just about growing older, but also the psychological and sociological changes that accompany becoming an adult and entering the world of adulthood. The characters need to find themselves and discover their true identities.

Answer: Charlie, Holden, Esther

Charlie was fifteen-years-old and a freshman in high school. Holden Caulfield was sixteen-years-old during the course of the book, though he was telling the story as a seventeen-year-old. He was a junior in high school. Esther Greenwood was nineteen-years-old and had just finished her junior year at Smith College. She was also telling the story from some time in the future.

Answer: younger brother

Holden's younger brother, Allie, died of leukemia when he was eleven and Holden was thirteen. Holden also had an older brother named D.B. and a younger sister named Phoebe. Esther's father died when she was nine-years-old. She lived with her mother and was an only child. Charlie's Aunt Helen, who he had described as his favorite person, died in a car crash on his seventh birthday.

He lived with his parents and had an older sister and brother. The deaths all greatly affected Holden, Esther, and Charlie.

Answer: New York City

"The Bell Jar" opened in New York City, where Esther was interning for "Ladies' Day" magazine. She later went back to her Boston home.

At the beginning of "The Catcher in the Rye", Holden left his boarding school in Pennsylvania, where he had been expelled, and returned to New York City where his parents lived.

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Answer: He used a fake name for the entire novel since "Charlie" is not his real name.

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" was told in letters that Charlie wrote to an anonymous person. At the beginning, he told the person that all the names had been changed to protect the identities of everyone in his story.

Near the beginning of "The Catcher in the Rye", Holden told a woman on a train that his name was Rudolf Schmidt, which was actually the name of the janitor at Pencey Prep.

Multiple times in "The Bell Jar", Esther told people her name was Elly Higginbottom and that she was from Chicago. This later became a false persona and at one point she even considered becoming Elly permanently.

Answer: drinking underage

All three characters drank alcohol underage at some point during their novels, either alone or with others. This was not the only illegal thing the characters did, though. Holden also hired a prostitute and Charlie used marijuana and LSD.

Answer: Esther

Charlie's best friend, Michael, shot himself less than a year before the beginning of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower". James Castle, a boy Holden knew at Elkton Hills School, jumped from a window. He was wearing a turtleneck borrowed from Holden at the time. Joan Giling, a friend of Esther's, hanged herself while at the same psychiatric hospital as Esther. Like the deaths of their relatives, these suicides took their toll on the lives of the protagonists.

Answer: English was the only class he passed.

At Pencey Prep, Holden failed all of his classes except for English. Due to this, he was expelled at the beginning of Christmas vacation. Holden's older brother, D. B., wrote screenplays in Hollywood.

Esther considered becoming a poet or novelist at different points during "The Bell Jar".

Charlie did well in his English class and had a close relationship with his teacher, Bill. Charlie also wrote many extracurricular essays for Bill about books. For Christmas, his friend Sam gave him a typewriter.

Answer: Yes

All three characters had some sort of breakdown and were sent to a psychiatric hospital.

Holden mentioned briefly at the end of "The Catcher in the Rye" that he got sick and was staying at a mental hospital.

Esther spent time in two different psychiatric hospitals after trying to kill herself by overdosing on sleeping pills. The readers were shown more of her time at the hospitals and recovery compared to "The Catcher in the Rye" and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower".

Towards the end of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", Charlie had a breakdown and was sent back to the psychiatric hospital he had spent time in the year before when his friend Michael had killed himself. During his stay there, it came to light that he had been sexually abused by his Aunt Helen, and he had been repressing the memories.

Answer: True

Throughout "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", Charlie was given books by his English teacher to read and write essays on. Some of the other books included "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, and "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand. Charlie said that his favorite book was always the last one he had read.