Holden's Ambivalence In The Catcher In The Rye

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

parents.Holden’s ambivalence means that he doesn’t know what to do or what it right. However, his parents don’t tell him the answer of his questions at all. On the surface, Holden lives in an enviable family. His material life is quite abundant, according to his living expenses and the luxury goods he uses. However, his parents never give Holden spiritual and mental care. They neglect the importance of family education and just rely everything on school education. As a result, Holden would rather spend several day on wandering on the street than facing his parents and going back home, which is commonly thought as a a gulf or safety shelter for all children. Holden’s father is an authoritarian parent who have high expectation on Holden and try to let him enter the best school in their mind but never ask for Holden’s opinion, nor thinking about whether the school is suitable for Holden or not. He is so strict that even Holden’s sister knows that if he knows Holden is expelled again, “‘Daddy’ll kill you’” (90). Holden cannot have effective communication with his strict dad. Holden’s mom, also, is an unqualified mom. When Holden asks her to buy racing skates, which is one of his favorite sports, her mom “bought the wrong hockey skating and made him sad” (29). For adults, it might just a small detail, but for children, it means a lot. He doesn’t get enough sense of security from his family, not to mention feel safety in the society. Even his parents don’t guide him and help him to overcome those ambivalence and protect the merit in his heart. What they only do is aggravating the loneliness in Holden’s inner heart.
Besides family reason, school’s education, is a much more important reason.

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

inflexible standard to measure everyone, which may decrease students’ active involvement. Moreover, they do not emphasize students’ diversified development and do not explore students’ sparkle and potential. Therefore, students who have unique spirit won’t obtain approval and improve their advantages. As a result, they may either lose their characteristic and follow the general trend, or become conflict and just like Holden. The school, having teachers without teacher’s ethics, only teaches intellectual knowledge but doesn’t teach and cultivate student that how to be real men. Without respect and recognition, it is understandable that Holden have contradiction between his inner heart and his external expression.
Moreover, we cannot ignore the influence of his peers. As a high school student who live at school, Holden spends most of his time with his peers. However, in the warped school environment, the friendship between them are phony, not sincere. Most of his peers decide to compromise to the school environment to “self-prevention, but therefore lose the hope for life” (chen 27). Ackley, for example, does nothing and just drifts along. Groaning and sighing all the time, ”he always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired” (11). Living with peers that loses juvenile innocence and lives with decadence, Holden’s contradiction becomes scrutable. On one hand, to communicate with his peers, he has to say rude words and talks about girl and sex, which are their most interesting topic. On the other hand, as the one who wants to become the catcher in the rye, he never yields to the school and still insists on his dream quietly.
In conclusion, people around Holden cannot help him mediate his contradiction. Parents ignore his spiritual development, schools advocates egoism and peers are all decadent. Holden, however, wants to become the catcher in the rye, which is incompatible with the phony environment he lives in. Due to these reason, his ambivalence is unavoidable and inevitable.