Cole Aston
August 27, 2008
TH300-7

Holden Caulfield: A Man of Faith?

According to author Thomas Zanzig, faith involves a combination of two important things: trust and belief, two aspects that Holden Caulfield does not have (or much of for that matter). He does not really give himself an opportunity for faith because he does not put himself in the right situations and doesn’t surround himself with the right people. Caulfield is not a man of faith and he shows it when he talks with Stradlater, is judgmental of everybody, and in his outlook on sex.

Caulfield does not trust or believe Stradlater, his roommate at Pency Prep, and this is seen after Stradlater arrives back from his date with Jane Gallagher, Caulfield’s old girlfriend whom he still cares about. During this date, Caulfield was waiting nervously in the dorm, knowing that Stradlater was good with the ladies and might convince Jane to have sex with him. By the time Stradlater returns, Caulfield has grown increasingly angry and immediately questions Stradlater if he had sex with her. This scene is one of many that shows his lack of trust in his fellow classmates at Pency Prep.

Holden Caulfield is judgmental and criticizes just about everybody he sees. He criticizes insecure people, boring people, and people he calls phonies. His definition of a phony is somebody who is too typical, such as someone who dresses and acts like other people they hang out with or in their social class. He uses it to imply that people are shallow when really his use of the term indicates that he himself is shallow. An example of his lack of trust is brought up when he speculates that people are so “crass” that someone will probably write “f*** you” on his tombstone. Someone that thinks something like that is not considered a man of faith.

His outlook on sex is another example of why he is not a man of faith. Throughout the book, he consistently tries to lose his virginity. He becomes very angry when he thinks of Jane Gallagher having sex with a boy she just met. But he actually becomes sexually “turned-on” when he dances with a blonde girl whom he doesn’t know in a bar, is aroused by a couple spitting drinks in each other’s faces as a form of sexual behavior, and accepts the elevator operator’s offer of a prostitute to come to his hotel room. A man of faith is considerate and trusts the people around him, and lives a chaste and morally straight life, all things which Holden Caulfield does not carry out.