The Bridge of San Luis Rey

by Thornton Wilder

The Bridge of San Luis Rey: Situational Irony 1 key example

Part 5: Perhaps an Intention
Explanation and Analysis—Brother Juniper's Quest:

Brother Juniper is a Catholic missionary whose greatest desire is to scientifically prove the existence of God. After the bridge collapse, he investigates the lives of the five victims in order to uncover some divine logic in their deaths. In doing so, Brother Juniper is attempting to support Catholic doctrine through logos. In fact, he says explicitly that he's trying to appeal to people's sense of logic or rationality, remarking that "it was high time for theology to take its place among the exact sciences." However, in one of the The Bridge of San Luis Rey's central ironies, all of Brother Juniper's experiments fail completely.