Tim Hark

Jr. Theology

8-22-07

Faithless Caulfield

     From what we know about Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye, I would say that he is a very faithless person. Holden is not happy in his life at all. He can almost always count on someone in his life messing up. Nothing in is his life was good. He disliked his school, and most of his schoolmates. He disliked the teachers at his school. He had no faith at all in his entire schools system. Holden constantly refers to his schoolmates as phonies. When ever he is presented with something that he likes something goes wrong and it is ruined for him. When he is on the date in the city, he says the wrong thing and the girl leaves. When he goes to Mr. Antolini’s house he is forced to leave due to a very uncomfortable event. He imagines many things at places such as the museum, but he is brought down again when reality comes back. When he sees graffiti written on the walls of the school and museum he is disgusted with society. Many of these events just seem to bring Holden down more and more. Holden places no faith

in the world when he decides that he wants to hitch hike off to the west and build his own cabin. When his sister asks to come with him, he puts no more faith into this plan. Holden has such little faith in the world that he is worried that the children of the world will not grow up properly so he tries to interfere with them. We see more of his faithlessness when he returns to see his sister Phoebe. He does not think that his parents will raise her properly, so he tries to interfere with her. Even on the last line of the book, we see that Holden still does not have in the people in the world. "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody".