I don’t remember where I first heard about
A Canticle for
Leibowitz. It’s one of those books that had been bouncing around on my
radar for years, but I had never taken the time to read it. My interest was
piqued again last year when Professor Eric Rabkin highly recommended it in a
lecture series on imaginative literature that I listened to. My sister also
told me that I needed to read it, and then just bought me a copy for Christmas,
assuming, I suppose, that I would never get to it on my own.
First of all, let me say that A Canticle for Leibowitz
is a great post-apocalyptic novel. It avoids many of the easy clichés inherent
in post-apocalyptic fiction, and it presents a story that doesn’t simply offer
escapism but truly comments on the human condition and offers good food for
thought. Some consider A Canticle for Leibowitz to be among the classics
of 20th century literature, and having now read it myself I tend to
agree.
On a slightly off topic note, I was thrilled to find that
this book is the source of a spurious C.S. Lewis quotation that is ubiquitous
on the internet. The quote, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul; you have a
body,” circulates on the internet with Lewis’s name attached, and I’ve known
for years that it is a misattribution. I suppose at some point I had also read
that the quote really came from Walter Miller, but I didn’t know it was from
this book. It was an exciting nerd moment for me.
Plot
Anyway, the book opens on an acolyte named Francis who is
fulfilling a Lenten fast in the desert in order to hopefully find his vocation
and be confirmed as a full-fledged monk in the Order of Saint Leibowitz. It
doesn’t take long for us to piece together that the story is taking place in
the far future and that the world as we know it has been destroyed by a global
nuclear war. The Church has survived however, and is the only force in a
barbaric world attempting to preserve and further the learning from the
previous fallen civilization. In other words, what we have is a parallel to the
position of the Church in the early Middle Ages. I don’t want to give away too
much of the plot. The story of Francis and what happens to him makes up the
first third of the book. The story then shifts hundreds of years farther into
the future where we see that civilization has progressed to a time of a new
Renaissance and the knowledge the Church has preserved for years is now desired
by a first generation of new scientists. The final third of the book takes
place in a civilization that is just ahead of us today. Many things seem
familiar, but interstellar travel has also become a reality. Once again,
nuclear weapons are a reality and we see the same monastery dealing with very
modern political problems.
Themes
There are a few major themes that run through the book and
tie all three stories together. Most of the themes are introduced in a basic
form in the first part and culminate in the third part.
The first major theme is the idea that Christianity is the
conscience of the world. The scientists in the book run toward new inventions
and ideas, discovering many wonderful and amazing things. However, the
scientists find themselves the political pawns of those in power who would use
the new knowledge for destruction. And the scientists tend to make moral
decisions in a utilitarian way. In this way, the book shows an interesting take
on the old science vs. religion trope. The monks are not opposed to scientific
knowledge and participate in scientific discovery themselves. This is,
incidentally an accurate picture of the role of the Church in scientific
discovery through the Middle Ages; the idea that the Church held back science
is one of those popular modern myths with little grounding in reality. The main
difference presented with the interest of the monks in scientific knowledge and
the interest of the scientists in scientific knowledge is that the monks’
interest in science is never absolute; they always consider that there is a
higher Law they must obey. Science is always considered a means rather than an
end by the monks. The scientists see science as the main end of life, and the
only true evil is physical pain. One of the abbots expresses it this way, “To
minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of
society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only
basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found
only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”
This leads to another major theme that runs through the
book: that of the relationship between faith and suffering. The image of Job is
invoked at various points in the book to discuss the perseverance of faith in
the fact of suffering in a world that seems to offer only absurdity. At one
point, the story inverts the Job narrative, showing how, for many people,
suffering and fear lead only to the loss of faith.
A third theme is that of man’s fallenness. It was the
fallenness of man that led to the first Flame Deluge (the nuclear war that
wiped out civilization). The main goal of the monks in the story for the
centuries afterward is to preserve knowledge, but to get it right this time.
This time around a return to civilization and knowledge will not involve a
drifting away from faith and a progressive secularism. And of course, it won’t
involve nations threatening one another with nuclear annihilation again. But
alas, man is not only fallen, but is also falling at all times. Man is ever
reaching out for the forbidden fruit, and the best efforts of men still fall
far short of perfection.
Conclusion
I realize that the way I’ve described this book may make it
sound like a heavy-handed religious allegory. Nothing could be farther from the
truth. What I’m presenting is largely my perspective on the themes of the book.
However, the questions raised in the book, questions about suffering,
euthanasia, progress, politics, and the like, are never treated as simple
questions with pat answers. There are no outright heroes or villains in the
book, and as a reader you’re going to have to experience the story for yourself
to see if you come to the same conclusions that I did when reading it. As for me,
this is the sort of book that I think will warrant a re-read in the future to
see how it strikes me again in a few years.
A Canticle for Leibowitz certainly deserves its
reputation as a classic of 20th century fiction. This is no fluffy,
pop sci-fi. This is a deeply resonant, well-written story with richly- crafted,
realistic characters that should be read and appreciated by all lovers of great
literature.
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