Holden's Ambivalence In The Catcher In The Rye

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In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden’s ambivalence is the most impressive thing. He has ambivalence between his external expression and his wish in inner heart. For example, he says countless rude words himself, but when he finds the rude words on the wall of his sister’s school, he is angry because he thinks it is a bad thing. In fact, as a teenager who is superficially irresponsible, rebellious and hates everything, he still longs for love, being understood and tries to help others. Various of contradictions interweave together and finally causes Holden’s ambivalence. This essay is trying to analyze several reasons that directly and indirectly influence and cause Holden’s ambivalence. The first reason is the influence of his irresponsible …show more content…

Pencey Preparatory, a prestigious private school, only emphasizes intellectual education and ignores anything else, including personal characteristic development. For one thing, teachers’ do not regard themselves as good moral standards. Instead, their words are not matched by deeds, which bring in Holden’s query for the world. Those prestigious private schools expel students who break the rules to maintain the schools’ good social reputation. However, to expel Holden, his latest headmaster lies when he writes to Holden’s father. He exaggerates and imposes many things like “cutting classes and coming unprepared to all classes” that Holden haven’t done on him to make the expelling more reasonable (101). The headmaster’s behavior breaks the basic rules and moral codes of a teacher, but he doesn’t think he himself has any problem. The double standard make it understandable that Holden feels ambivalence. For another, the educational system in Pencey Preparatory is conflicted with students’ personality development. Students who show their own characteristic and do not meet teachers’ requirement won’t be regard as good students even they really do well. Richard Kinsella, who speak “better than anybody else’s”, is not confident and always shows nervous because no one praise him. (100) Instead, “ they were always yelling ‘Digression!’ at him, which was terrible” (100). Teachers don’t allow mistake, using

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