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
The Roman Catholic Church receives word that Father Christovao Ferreira was tortured in “the pit” and made to apostatize (renounce his faith) in Nagasaki, Japan. Ferreira was a highly-regarded Portuguese missionary, having led the Christian movement in Japan for over 20 years, so his betrayal to the faith shocks the Church. Christians and missionaries have been fiercely persecuted in Japan for several decades, however, since 1587 when it was outlawed. At this time, the government initiated a campaign of capture, torture, and death against the missionaries. In 1614, the reigning shogun (governor) ordered that all foreign missionaries must leave Japan. Seventy did, packed into boats and shipped to China or the Philippines, but 37 priests (including Ferreira) stayed in hiding to continue their work in Japan.
The prologue immediately establishes the dark tone of the novel and introduces nearly of the story’s major themes: apostasy, faith, persecution, and the clash between a Western religion and an Eastern culture. The noted strength and commitment of Ferreira’s faith—20 years of service in Japan, plus decades of service prior—lays to rest the overly-simplified notion that only those with weak faith could ever apostatize, while the strong remain faithful until death. This provides an early indication that the story will deal with the dilemma of faith and loyalty in a complex manner.
Themes
The Church possesses a letter Ferreira wrote in 1632 from Nagasaki, describing the courage of the Japanese Christians and the torture they endured. The Japanese government, intent on making Christians apostatize, tortured men and women alike pouring boiling water on them for hours at a time, though none apostatized. The Japanese agents were careful not to let any of them die, not wanting to make martyrs and heroes of them, and even sent a doctor to tend to their wounds. Even so, Ferreira writes that the courageous suffering of the Christians only spread the Christian message, “contrary to the intentions of the tyrant.”
The Japanese government’s brutality is immediately apparent, establishing the high stakes and suffering involved in such a religious conflict. However, even in this early moment, their brutality is mixed with a strange level of care for those they torture, since they also provide doctors to tend to the wounds they have just inflicted. This again indicates the complexity of the religious and political conflict the novel will tackle.
Themes
The Church struggles to understand how such a great leader as Ferreira could have been defeated. In 1637, three Portuguese young men, Ferreira’s former students, begin preparing a trip into Japan. They plan to carry on the underground missionary work, as well as to investigate Ferreira’s apostasy and “atone” for the humiliation it had brought not only Portugal, but all of Europe. They prepare themselves for the sea voyage, which will take them from Lisbon to India, and then on to Japan over a period of months. They learn anything they can about Japan itself, which to them seems a country on the edge of the world. In their reading on Japan, the three young men learn that under the current shogun, the government tortures as many as 70 people a day, and they must be ready to face suffering and even death.
The notion that the three young priests will risk suffering in death to atone for Ferreira’s failure (and hopefully restore and defend the honor of the Catholic Church) suggests that the Church’s reputation is just as important to it as the work that it undertakes. This implies a religious arrogance at an institutional level, which would thus logically filter down to the individual priests who make up that institution. Although the Church’s goal to convert Japan is altruistic on its surface, and likely comprised at least partially of good intentions, there is also a notably self-serving element.
Themes
The three young priests are Sebastian Rodrigues, Juan de Santa Marta, and Francisco Garrpe, men in their late 20s who had entered the religious life together at 17 and studied theology under Ferreira. News of Ferreira’s apostasy confuses them, since they’d always known him to be a “radiant” Christian, and they are intent on discovering the truth of what happened. The three set sail from Lisbon in 1938, but their voyage is plagued by disease, storms, and near-shipwreck, so they do not arrive in Goa, India for five months.
Although still only in the prologue, the young priests already suffer substantially, facing illness, danger, and even threat of death. Although only briefly mentioned, this early suffering and danger establishes the priests as bold and strong-willed, intent on carrying out their mission regardless of the risks.
Themes
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In Goa, the three priests are able to find more recent news of Japan, including an “insurrection” of 35,000 Christians in the Shimabara region, which was violently put down by the government. Every Christian involved was slaughtered, and the region was decimated, with hardly any survivors in its midst. Suspecting that Portugal had some involvement in the insurrection, the Japanese government forbids all Portuguese ships and citizens from entering Japan. Feeling desperate, the priests travel on to Macao, China, where the Portuguese Christian Mission has its base of operations, and where they hope they might smuggle themselves into Japan somehow.
Once again, the slaughter of 35,000 of its own citizens casts the feudal Japanese government in a harsh, if not damning light. The fact that the Christians put forth a massive insurrection against their government suggests that although they are religiously-bonded, there is also a social and societal element to their resistance. This further indicates that the conflict of Christianity in Japan, though essentially religious, also reaches into the political and social spheres as well.
Themes
In Macao, the three priests meet Valignano, overseer of the Mission, who tells them that any missionary work in Japan is strictly forbidden, not the least because of a newly-appointed magistrate named Inoue, the Lord of Chikugo, the same magistrate who cross-examined Ferreira as a Christian and hung him in the pit. The story is picked up in Sebastien Rodrigues’s letters, starting around the time they meet Valignano.
Inoue is immediately established as a villainous figure, since all that Rodrigues and the reader initially know of him is that he tortured a major character in the story, though this will later be seen as a shallow mischaracterization. This is important in exploring the nuance of persecution throughout the novel, and eventually demonstrating that religious persecutors may not always be so devilish as one may imagine.
Themes
