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
It is summer, and Rodrigues lives in Nagasaki under house arrest, forbidden to leave except when the magistrate gives permission. He spends long hours sitting at the window, and the street children often call him Apostate Paul. The priest knows that news of his apostasy has likely reached his brethren in Portugal, and that he has thus been expelled from the Church and stripped of his rights as a priest. Often he wakes in the night, haunted by his betrayal. One part of him believes that it was ultimately done in love—though how could his superiors at the mission ever understand this? Another part of him wonders if that isn’t just a justification for shameful weakness. Rodrigues can still clearly see the image of the fumie in his mind. This image of Christ’s face was not beautiful, strong, or clear, but “utterly exhausted” and worn down by being trampled constantly.
Rodrigues’s new nickname “Apostate Paul” is a vicious play on the biblical figure of Paul, one of the heroes of the Christian faith and authors of the New Testament. Rodrigues’s expulsion from the Church and the loss of his rights as a priest signal not only a loss of his vocation, but of his entire identity as a priest and Christian missionary. Rather than seeing Christ as beautiful as he once did, Rodrigues’s memory of Christ’s face on the fumie looking “utterly exhausted” suggests that Rodrigues no longer perceives Christ as the most beautiful person imaginable, but as one who suffers long and painful ordeals.
Themes
In spite of his shame, Rodrigues is treated well. Almost daily he is given work to do, most often examining foreign goods making their way into the country to determine if they are secretly Christian or not. He sees Ferreira rarely, only monthly, and they are not allowed to meet on their own. This is just as well, because the two men have come to hate each other, filled by contempt by the mere sight of each other. Rodrigues does not hate his former mentor for orchestrating his downfall, but rather because when he looks at Ferreira he sees his own shame and defeat staring back at him: a sad, defeated former missionary, dressed in Japanese clothing and bowing to the power of the state.
The nickname Apostate Paul proves particularly ironic. In the Bible, Paul persecuted Christians until a life-changing event made him a Christian leader. Rodrigues, by contrast, begins as a Christian leader until his own pivotal moment turns him into an agent of the Japanese government, complicit in the persecution of Christianity. The shame and contempt for Ferreira that Rodrigues feels suggest that, although his apostasy may have seemed the only path available, his conscience has certainly not been able to justify it.
Themes
