I have all these thoughts in my head that I can't quite put into words about Carpenter and Faulkner in TSV, how they're both driven by loneliness in a way but Carpenter's came from grief whereas Faulkner's came from abandonment and that's why they deal with it so differently. Or about how Carpenter was born into the faith while Faulkner was "called" and so for Carpenter it's about survival while Faulkner is more about outward signs of zeal.
See, I think that's...close, but not quite it. I definitely agree that Carpenter’s loneliness comes from grief, but I think grief is also at the root headwater of her faith. To believe in the Trawler-Man is the way she keeps herself in touch with her grief---Em and Nana Glass died for The River, and so in worshipping the River, she is with them again. Her faith is not about survival so much as it is a decision she's made because of, and in the absence of, those she’s lost; it is a way of connecting with herself.
(Particularly since Carpenter seems so scornful of human people trying to know or understand her, I imagine worshipping a terrible god who moves in mysterious ways suits her fine.)
But I’d argue that Faulkner’s loneliness comes from alienation rather than abandonment, and faith is the way he copes with that sense of...being apart. He is, after all, someone marked by a lifetime of trailing after "taller, grander, more confident versions" of himself; a father who never bothered to see him before leaving him behind; a stinging and profound sense of being underestimated and overlooked. So for Faulkner, the Trawler-Man is salvation: it means that Faulkner is not a weirdo from the sticks who watched his brother drown, who heard music no other rational person could, who killed a motel manager and is contemplating killing his mission partner. For Faulkner, the Trawler-Man means he is a prophet.
It's a reoccurring bit---every time Faulkner starts to doubt himself or falter, he switches over to thinking of himself as "the young prophet." He imagines how future Katabasians will tell the story of his actions, his suffering, his belief. (In fact, Faulkner often thinks in stories: he dismisses Carpenter as already having had her glory, that their mission together is a “postscript” for her.) For Faulkner, the great comfort of faith is that he is not a younger brother, unnoticed by even those who theoretically loved him---he is an adherent, a holy soldier, he is important.
I even think this conflict bears out in the ways they express their faith. After all, grief is internal and endures---every time Carpenter reaches for Nana Glass, Em and the River, they will be there, inscribed on her insides. Whereas Faulkner’s hunger is for someone (anyone) to recognize that he is someone significant and sacred, and that requires external validation.
Really my point is that at the end of the day, faith---even the nonfictional kind---is about filling in the cracks of the world, giving you what the immediate and material can’t. (”If something is missing from our lives,” Mason drawls...) For Carpenter, that missing piece is those she’s lost and her enduring grief; for Faulkner, it’s a sense of belonging to something greater and grander than himself, a “purpose so powerful and single-minded" that he can finally do the rejecting.
Either way, The Silt Verses can serve as a complicated love story to religion, and I think most of us writing our own fraught odes to faith can find something to latch onto.
