Craig's Conflict With Religion

I was born and baptized a Christian, and have gone to Christian schools my whole life, but have never truly believed in God and what the Church preaches. I have not been devout in my faith because of so many other things that go on in my life that I think to affect me more and would be a better use of my time. The Church community seems to want to force me into believing in God, and what God wants me to do with my life. Craig is grown up with his faith being forced into his daily life and people expecting him to embrace it and expand on it, but he does not and cannot because of many factors in his life that he finds more important and more enjoyable. Craig conflicts with his religious faith because of his drawing and his responsibilities as
a young adult, which leads to him conflicting with the Church community who treat him negatively for pursuing these things and not god.
Craig is no longer a Christian because of many factors in his personal life and in the Church that conflict with his faith such as his incompatibility with his drawings and faith, his responsibilities as a young adult, and his personal conflict with the Church community.
Thompson's art and his religion are not compatible because he feels that he can only have one or the other be his focus in life, and society is telling him that drawing is disrespecting God. For example, Craig feels the need to burn all of his drawings and artwork that he made in his childhood and adolescence. After this Craig Thompson figuratively illustrates himself being exorcised through this burning. This figurative image shows that his drawings represent demons inside of him. This is true because his eyes are enlarged and white, and he has monsters being expelled from his mouth, which is very similar to an exorcism. Because of this, the drawings are depicted as demons or the antichrist, and the antichrist cannot exist with him as long as he is practicing his religion. Later in the text Thompson shows himself drawing again, and drawings
come to life and start talking to him. These drawings represent Craig and what he is doing to his religion because these caricatures are making jokes of Jesus on the cross and not treating Jesus with respect. This shows again that drawing cannot exist while he is still a devout Christian, and drawing is disrespectful to his faith. Another example of why Craig’s religion and art are incompatible is because of the symbolic images on page 235 when Craig watches a children’s tv show as it turns to static and then as it zooms into his face as he shaves it away. This symbolic text represents his childhood and all his childhood memories and habits. This includes his drawings. This symbol represents this idea because on the tv show, the fictional characters represents his childhood, and in his childhood contains all his memories of his drawings and passion for drawing. We can learn that he is finally growing up here and wiping away all of his thoughts and desires to draw. This symbol shows that he has finally grown up. Craig Thompson's drawings are incompatible with his art because everyone tells him that drawings would be just as bad as the antichrist.

The most impressive lesson that Thompson learns by the end of the comic is that life comes with many responsibilities and that life is not what it seems to be when you are a child.
This is shown figuratively on page 501 when Raina can’t keep her relationship with Craig, and he imagines himself in hell with his friend. Thompson relates his situation to people in hell walking away in disbelief of their reality after being chained to a wooden post. This symbol represents Craig being released from an entrapment in hell to be exposed to the real truth of life, and this truth that he discovers is blinding and shocking. This truth is that life isn’t as easy as he expected and comes with tough realities that were invisible in his youth. In this symbol, Craig is the person who has been locked up for his entire life and just now sees reality. In this dream, he sees the people carrying figures, and one of them is his friend at lunch who asks him about college testing, a huge responsibility and part of life. Then, when Raina breaks up with him he feels that he has been in a dream the entire time, and has just woken up. This shows that Craig is not ready for adulthood, and will most likely not make smart decisions because of all of this responsibility that he is afraid of. A different symbolic image that relates to the dream that he has is when he and his brother are walking together and they remember the cave that they found when they were little, and they go back every day until the
third day it is gone. When he talks about it with his brother he feels that is wasn’t real and just a dream while remembering Raina. This symbolizes how he is subconsciously ashamed of his relationship with Raina because he feels that if something good or exciting happens to him then it must be a dream or it didn’t happen, and even though his brother was there with him on that day he still doesn’t believe it. This symbol represents this idea because the text shows him thinking of the salamander, but at the same time, thinking of Raina, and how similar his memory of their relationship was to the cave. This symbolism shows that he doesn’t want his relationship with Raina to be true and wishes that it was a dream and not a part of his past so that he doesn’t have the painful memories with him. Likewise, Anne Bradstreet talks about her poems like Craig thinks about Raina. Bradstreet talks about her poems with a comparison to an ill-formed child, “Thy visage was so irksome in my sight; yet being mine own at length affection would Thy blemishes amend if so I could” (Bradstreet). Like Raina’s effect on Craig, Anne Bradstreet’s poems are bad and ugly in her memories and want to get rid of the memories completely. Contrast to Craig she wants to try and clean up these memories and works that she has made by trying to wash the face of the symbolic child. Craig, on the other hand, feels blinded by the light of reality and adulthood, and cannot bear the relationship, and destroys the memories similar to how dreams are destroyed after waking up to reality.

An acceptable religion for Craig would be one that encourages little possessions and poverty because they think that idolatry and materialistic things corrupt someone, but one that doesn’t have a figure to worship, and instead encourage their followers to live by laws that help people be better in life. In Anne Bradstreet’s poem versus upon the burning of our house, she talks about her pelf being destroyed in her house, “Farewell, my pelf, farewell my store” (Bradstreet). In this quotation, her pelf is figurative text that tries to show that she has some kind of ill-gotten gains in her house. Because pelf is a word for materials that were acquired illegally, but she uses this word to describe materials that she doesn’t need in her life that she could give away to please God. That is why she thanks him for burning her house. We learn that she needed something to get rid of her corrupting possessions in order for her to please God. Similarly, in the book of Deuteronomy, a passage called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, the author describes the actions that Anne Bradstreet feels, “But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow” (Deuteronomy). In this quotation, the author talks symbolically with a shadow. This shadow represents the false beliefs of man, and the idolatries that men create because a shadow is just an absence of light, nothing exists within it, similarly to the false beliefs of man. They are consisting of absolutely nothing, but an absence of light and clear thinking. We learn that we man should not put his faith in a false idol or figure for they are foolish. Similarly, to this belief in a shadow Thompson describes the Allegory of the cave by Socrates on pages 496-500. This is figurative because Craig wasn’t there with them at the time, and the cave is a metaphor for Craig’s situation. The prisoners in the cave represent the devoted followers of Christianity that have been watching these shadows their entire lives because Craig now thinks that god isn’t real because god doesn’t exist and isn’t among him like the shadow in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. This is when we understand that Craig believes his religion is a waste of time. On page 497 Craig puts his drawings into the flame that is causing the shadows. This represents Craig’s hypothetical future drawing comics of Christianity because he is fueling the flame, or this belief in Christianity with his comics and drawings, of which he doesn’t believe in. We can learn about his inner feelings about continuing his drawings for his religion, we learn that they are completely incompatible because he will be a prisoner in this cave, and be fueling the continuation of his imprisonment.