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 …show more content…
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 …show more content…
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