Shusaku Endo's Silence - A Thematic Review
Can the End of Religious Devotion be a New Beginning for Faith?
Jul 15, 2009
Written in 1966, Silence is the culmination of Shusaku Endo's endeavor to reconcile his Catholic faith with his Japanese ethnicity. The story follows its protagonist, the priest Father Rodrigues, as he journeys to Japan in 1638 to investigate the alleged apostasy of his old mentor, Father Ferreira.
Upon his arrival in Japan however, Father Rodrigues is captured by agents of the shogunate who coerce him to step on a fumie (an image of Christ), and symbolically apostatize from his Christian faith - which has been outlawed - or watch the torture and death of Japanese peasants who had converted to Catholicism.
Can a Priest's Apostasy be Feigned?
For his own part, Rodrigues could conceivably step on the fumie only as an act of placation, while preserving his personal faith. So why doesn't he?
As a spiritual leader, Rodrigues knows his devotion to Christianity is not something that could remain authentic in a state of concealment, if he is to persevere in his mission to trasmit that devotion to others. The flipside to this - that his Japanese captors are doing their best to exploit - is that Rodrigues' apostasy is not merely his own, but will in all likelihood send ripple apostaties in all directions. He would basically be doing the job of his torturers for them, or at least greatly facilitating it.
Faced with the decision of apostatizing or allowing innocents to suffer and die, Rodrigues does not resist idly. However, in his mind, the conflict before him, while agonizing, remains the very simple matter of good vs. evil.
Physical Rescue vs. Spiritual Salvation
The question to ask is where the benefit for the peasants truly lies, and what action should be taken to achieve it? Clearly, they would be better off not slowly bleeding to death hanging over a pit of excrement, but Rodrigues' concern for them extends beyond the temporal plane.
As a priest, his entire purpose is to see to the salvation of the soul. Could their present situation be viewed as an unfortunate predicament, yet allowable in the larger spiritual context? Could not Rodrigues be cruel to be kind, so to speak, permitting their temporary suffering so that they might experience eternal happiness?
This decision might have in the end been simple, if not for the Japanese' claim that the peasants in question had already apostatized themselves. The situation is now complicated; Rodrigues has no reason to believe that his refusal to renunciate will accomplish anything more than the preservation of his own faith.
Could he trade his soul simply for the lives of the peasants'? Does this signify the ultimate relinquishment through love of what Rodrigues holds most dear, or does constitute it forfeiture of his salvation? The question he must answer - and the book's ultimate crux - is whether the essence of one's personal faith can survive the abandonment of formal religion as its guide.
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