Silence

by

Shūsaku Endō

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Silence: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
The next day, the interpreter sternly tries one last time to reason with Rodrigues, but the priest tells him he’d rather be tortured than apostatize. The priest is not so much brave as numb; physical pain seems distant and obsolete. As the priest expects, the guards no longer feed him or treat him well, and the following day a guard tightly binds his hands. The mistreatment, long expected, causes the priest to feel a sense of “elation.” He is put on a donkey’s back and paraded through the streets of Nagasaki to be jeered and mocked.
Rodrigues’s sense of elation at being painfully bound and mistreated shows that the brief amount of physical pain finally meets his expectations of what it means to suffer for Christ. As he formerly theorized, physical pain seems to increase his willpower to resist rather than decrease it, suggesting that Inoue’s tactic of defeating him through gentleness is well-conceived.
Themes
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
Rodrigues thinks of Christ riding a donkey through Jerusalem and decides that he will wear a smile the entire time, no matter what abuse he endures. When Kichijiro emerges from the crowd, the priest realizes that in spite of his several treacheries, the coward is also his most faithful friend. The priest nods to Kichijiro, trying to signal his forgiveness and consolation, but Kichijiro, ashamed, disappears into the crowd. After traveling and being jeered at for many miles, the priest’s smile hardens into scorn and he closes his eyes to block out the mockery, wondering as he does what expression Christ wore when the crowd at Pilate’s house called for His death.
Rodrigues’s determination to smile as he imagines Christ did and his inability to maintain that smile demonstrates both his arrogance and the weakness of his willpower at this point. It seems possible that his newfound forgiveness for Kichijiro rises from the priest’s growing awareness that they are not so different, and that he himself is only hours away from betraying his faith, just as Kichijiro has done so many times.
Themes
Apostasy Theme Icon
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Faith Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
The interpreter walks beside Rodrigues’s horse and leads him to Inoue’s house, telling him that Inoue has determined that the priest will apostatize this very evening. The priest believes this means he will finally be tortured, and he takes solace in the fact that when he dies, he will be united with Mokichi, Ichizo, Garrpe, Christ, and all the other Christian martyrs. The interpreter again asks the priest to apostatize, reassuring him that they are only words, they do not have to mean anything. When the priest refuses, the interpreter looks saddened.
The interpreter’s sadness at Rodrigues’s refusal to willingly apostatize suggests that, in spite of his previously seen animosity towards Christianity, even he does not wish Rodrigues to experience the pain and shame of being broken as Ferreira was. For Rodrigues, however, the thought of finally experiencing the physical pain he expected seems almost a relief; the end is in sight.
Themes
Apostasy Theme Icon
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
Rodrigues is locked in a small cell at the magistrate’s house without windows or light. The floor is covered with urine. Although he cannot see, the priest, feeling with his hands across the walls, discovers that a former occupant of the room (most likely another priest) has carved the Christian phrase Laudate Eum into the wall. As Rodrigues waits for hours in the utter darkness, he thinks again of Christ’s face, which this time seems nearer, and the face gazes at him sorrowfully and speaks, “When you suffer, I suffer with you. To the end I am close with you.”
Laudate Eum is Latin for “Praise Him,” a common refrain in Catholic liturgy. It is is significant that when Christ finally speaks, breaking his silence, his face is sorrowful, not beautiful, suggesting that though Rodrigues’s faith remains, it is no longer as romanticized as it once was. Rather, Rodrigues recognizes that Christ exists to suffer as His followers suffer, and understands the pain that he himself will experience.
Themes
Apostasy Theme Icon
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Faith Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
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Somewhere, on the other side of the prison walls, Rodrigues can hear what seems to be snoring; and it strikes him as ironic that one man sleeps while he waits for his death. Terror intermittently takes hold of him and then releases him. Through the wall, the priest can hear multiple voices and an argument, and the voice of Kichijiro shouting, “Father, forgive me! I have come to make my confession and receive absolution. Forgive me!” Kichijiro keeps shouting, and the priest puts his fingers in his ears to block out the voice, but even as he does so he mouths the words of absolution for the treacherous man, reflecting bitterly once again on the quandary of Judas and how Christ could love a man—if he loved him at all—whom he knew would betray him.
Kichijiro’s arrival, and Rodrigues’s almost unwitting prayer of absolution for the man, again suggest that the priest senses how close his own apostasy truly is. By pondering about whether Christ loves Judas, the priest not only reflects on his relationship to Kichijiro, but also wonders whether Christ loves him in spite of his inevitable failure, and if so, why that should be. This suggests a massive shift in the priest’s self-perception: although Rodrigues primarily viewed himself as a Christ-figure, he is on the verge of seeing himself as Judas instead.
Themes
Apostasy Theme Icon
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Faith Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
Quotes
The snoring sound continues, growing so present in Rodrigues’s mind that he sits on the floor and begins to laugh at the strange quality of it, both human and animal-sounding. The disturbance it causes the priest on what he presumes is the night of his death builds in his mind until he is in a rage and beats his fists on the wall of his cell. The interpreter and Ferreira open the door of the cell and ask what the matter is. When the priest tells him he is only bothered by the snoring, Ferreira tells him it is not snoring, but “the moaning of Christians hanging in the pit.”
There is a horrific irony to Rodrigues’s laughter and anger at the sound of Christians moaning in the pit. Although the people making those sounds are in utter agony, the priest yet again exhibits his own vanity and self-importance by being enraged at the disturbance they cause upon his mind, emphasizing the priest’s arrogance yet again, in spite of his aspirations to imitate Christ.
Themes
Apostasy Theme Icon
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
Ferreira enters the cell alone and speaks with Rodrigues. It was Ferreira who carved the letters on the wall during his own imprisonment. Rodrigues still considers Ferreira a traitor, until Ferreira reveals that he himself hung in the pit for three days and did not apostatize, nor utter a word against God. But when Ferreira was left in the cell, listening to other people suffer on his behalf, when he found he could not praise God in the midst of the suffering he heard, when he prayed for God to end it and God did nothing, he broke. Rodrigues tries to resist his arguments, but his mind thinks back to all the Christians he watched die in the midst of God’s silence.
Ferreira’s own crisis of faith in the midst of God’s silence directly parallels Rodrigues’s own struggle to remain faithful. Although Rodrigues imagined that Ferreira was a traitor to the faith, he finds himself following the exact same path, suggesting both to him and the reader that any person would likely do the same if they were in such a situation, regardless of whether their faith was strong like Garrpe’s or weak like Kichijiro’s. Remaining faithful in the face of so much unanswered suffering seems an impossible task.
Themes
Apostasy Theme Icon
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Faith Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
Ferreira argues that by making others suffer on his behalf, Rodrigues regards himself as “more important than them.” He is concerned with saving himself rather than others, afraid to become the “dregs of the Church.” If Christ were in their position, he argues, Christ would certainly apostatize to save the sufferers. Rodrigues tries to deny him, but his resolve is crumbling. Understanding this from personal experience, Ferreira lays his hand on Rodrigues’s shoulder and tells him, “You are now going to perform the most painful act of love that has ever been performed.”
Ferreira reveals the inherent arrogance of Rodrigues, and even of Garrpe’s refusal to apostatize. By pointing at that such refusal to apostatize may be seen as arrogance and vanity rather than faithfulness to God, the narrative raises the possibility that inflicting suffering upon other human beings is a graver sin than symbolically rejecting Christ. However, the author refrains from settling too heavily on either side of the argument, allowing the moral ambiguity to remain.
Themes
Apostasy Theme Icon
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Faith Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
Quotes
Ferreira leads Rodrigues slowly, painfully out of the cell and to the interpreter, who is waiting for them with a fumie. Looking down at the metal image, the priest sees “the ugly face of Christ,” and prays to God, expressing his pain at trampling on this face, the most beautiful and hallowed thing in the priest’s life. As his foot hovers above the fumie, dawn begins to break, the light touching upon the priest’s frail neck and shoulders. His foot seems filled with pain. The metal face of Christ speaks, “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.” The priest steps onto the fumie. “Dawn broke. And far in the distance the cock crew.”
Now that Rodrigues’s spirit and faith are defeated, Christ’s face seems ugly, not because the priest hate his Lord, but because Christ truly becomes a symbol of terrible suffering rather than a beautiful beacon of hope. Although Rodrigues hears Christ speak to him and affirm his betrayal, the author leaves even this moment ambiguous since it is possible that Rodrigues only imagines the voice. The cock crowing in the distance is a reference to the Apostle Peter’s betrayal of Christ, though significantly, Peter too was able to find absolution for his betrayal and spend the rest of his life serving Christ.
Themes
Apostasy Theme Icon
Religious Arrogance Theme Icon
Faith Theme Icon
Persecution Theme Icon
Quotes