Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Silence, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Apostasy
Religious Arrogance
Faith
Western Religion vs. Eastern Culture
Persecution
Summary
Analysis
Japan is in its rainy season, and the priests’ nerves are stretched to their limit by the fearful hiding each day. Even so, Rodrigues feels that his vocation as a priest has never seemed so critically important. Tomogi itself is situated between sharp mountains and the sea, where they scratch out a meager existence growing potatoes. They are taxed so heavily that they barely survive, and Rodrigues imagines that Christianity flourished in Japan because it offered such suffering people “human warmth” that they’d never received before.
The Japanese peasants undeniably suffer under their current conditions, and the fact that they have sustained Christianity for so long in the face of such persecution suggests (as Rodrigues notes) that the religion does offer a critical utility and value to them. This value is important to remember as the idea that Christianity may be incompatible with Japan is explored, since it negates the argument that there is absolutely no benefit to the religion.
Themes
Although the priests struggle to distinguish between the villagers and have not met many of them, significant members along with Mokichi are Ichizo, a man in his 50s, and Omatsu, his elder sister who carries fried potatoes and water up the mountain on her back to feed to the priests. Although there has been no Mass without the priests, the villagers have set up a holy picture in one of their huts that they pray before, designed to be quickly concealed in case government officials descend upon them. Rodrigues wants to send someone to Nagasaki to ask of Father Ferreira, but Garrpe insists it is too dangerous both for them and the villagers, since their fates are bound together. If Kichijiro could be convinced, since he has no ties or dependents, that may work, but the man is an untrustworthy coward.
The priests’ inability to distinguish between Japanese individuals does carry a somewhat racist connotation, suggesting that the priests see the villagers as a monolith rather than individuals. More strongly, however, it emphasizes the foreignness of Japan to the priests: they are in a land and a culture that is entirely alien and unknown to them. The fact that the villagers have set up their religious elements to be quickly concealed indicates that they are accustomed to swift and unexpected raids from Japanese officials; their persecution is a fact of life.
Themes
One afternoon, in a break from the rain, Rodrigues and Garrpe venture out of the hut to ease their nerves and shake the lice off themselves. As they are enjoying the sun, Garrpe realizes that two men are watching them from the forest, though the men do not approach them and leave before long. The priests are disturbed, as is Ichizo when they tell him that evening, and the old man and his companion immediately tear up the floorboards of the hut and dig a hole for the priests to hide in if the charcoal hut should ever be approached.
The tension of the priests’ daily lives, being endangered even by stepping outdoors, emphasizes the danger that surrounds them and the extreme level of persecution both they and the villagers face. That the priests and the villagers take on such danger willingly once again suggests an undeniable strength and intensity in their religious convictions.
Themes
Five days later, in the middle of the night, Rodrigues hears someone pushing at their door and whispering “padre.” The priest is stricken with fear, but the visitors announce themselves as villagers from an island community called Gotō, a two-days’ journey away. They have heard there are new priests, and they want to give their first confession in many years. Both men are “faint with exhaustion” and one of them has a bloody, lacerated foot from his climb up the mountain. They have not eaten in days. It was they who spotted the priests in the mid-afternoon light, five days prior.
Once again, the visiting villagers’ religious conviction and hunger for the priests’ leadership is evident in the amount of suffering they willingly endure just to see the priests themselves. Although on the one hand, such conviction is admirable, on the other it begs the question of whether there is not a dangerous level of emphasis placed upon the priests themselves, as opposed to their underlying message.
Themes
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The villagers tell the priests that Kichijiro told them priests had returned to Japan. Rodrigues and Garrpe learn that Kichijiro is in fact a Christian, though he apostatized by stepping on an image of Christ eight years before, while the rest of his family voluntarily accepted their torture and death. The villagers want the priests to come to Gotō to minister, and the priests decide—to the consternation of the villagers in Tomogi—that Rodrigues will take a boat to the island while Garrpe will stay and tend to Tomogi. As Rodrigues travels by night, wondering if he will be betrayed, he meets Kichijiro once again.
Kichijiro is further confirmed both as a Christian and a coward. Kichijiro’s apostasy while the rest of his family voluntarily died for their faith makes him seem both more pitiable and more wretched. Here is a man who watched his whole family die and is haunted by that act, and yet did not have the strength to die with them, even though the people who presumably mattered most to him would no longer live in the world.
Themes
Rodrigues uses a broken farmhouse in Gotō as a chapel, and the villagers cram themselves into it, pleading constantly for his listening ear. Rodrigues recognizes their “thirst” for a priest and appreciates it, though he is disgusted by their smell and squalor. The villagers regard Kichijiro as a hero for bringing the priest, and though he struts around, he also is repentant for his past apostasy and makes long confessions before the priest. Villagers come from the surrounding mountains and islands as well; in one day, Rodrigues baptizes over 30 people. Such large gatherings are dangerous, likely to draw the government’s attention, but Rodrigues is swept by the sight of Christians gathering before him just as the crowds gathered before Jesus Christ while he preached his Sermon on the Mount. There is little word of Ferreira, though two men saw him near Nagasaki before the persecution began.
Rodrigues’s desire to serve conflicts with his disgust at the squalor and stench of those same people he hopes to help. This conflict of self-superiority—since Rodrigues is not similarly disgusted with himself, though he lives just as the Japanese do—and altruistic impulse demonstrates the complexity of religious arrogance. One may be possessed by both a self-sacrificing impulse and a self-aggrandizing impulse at the same time. The presence of such egoism certainly taints the nobleness of Rodrigues’s mission, even though his voluntary suffering is still a noteworthy act.
Themes
Rodrigues teaches the Christians to maintain their faith like those in Tomogi did, and the peasants clamor for any crucifix, relic, or religious item the priest can give them, which makes him uneasy. Nevertheless, he returns to Tomogi after some days, reflecting on the journey about how well their expedition in Japan has gone so far. However, when he lands on the shore in the dark of night, Mokichi meets him and tells him he must flee. Guards are in the village; they don’t know about the priests yet, but they know there are practicing Christians.
Once again, the Japanese Christians’ desire for physical items reflects their cultural leaning toward the tangible world and inability to conceive of a transcendent reality (according to Ferreira). Although the crucifix is meant to be only a symbol of the God they are meant to revere, the villagers seem to worship the items themselves, giving some weight to Ferreira’s future argument that Western Christianity is incompatible with Japan’s Eastern culture.
Themes
