I’ve been a fan of this book for a long time and it still inspires me in understanding my own faith.

I’m not sure who said it first but I believe that Sunday doesnt represent God, but the backside of God… through Jesus we see the mercy of God and humanity of God, the face of God. Sunday is not that .. but the soveriegn side.. the powerful side… the backside of God. When Moses wanted to see God … he was told he can only see the backside of God and that if he was hid in a cave of a mountain it would protect him from the power of God.

the terrible side of God.. that allows suffering but ultimately rules over it.

…when Gabe first saw him , he saw him from behind and i thought he was a monster but when he saw his face he knew there could be no evil in him.

Concerning the issue of faith, I wonder what Miller thought about religion and faith. On the one hand it seems that the monastery served much the same purpose as monasteries did in the dark ages – as repositories for knowledge. In this way, they are to be commended for the work they did/do, even in Canticle. On the other hand, it is amazing how the “church” in Canticle seems to abandon some of the traditional elements of the faith and make a saint out of someone who was probably a non-observant Jew. Is this an intentional slap at the Church and/or faith? Is it a comment about the “superstitious” nature of religion. I can’t help but believe it is.

I believe that Miller is a firm believer in the cyclical nature of human existence, particularly our tendency to repeat our more destructive behaviors. This is part of what it means to be human, and no amount of learning from the past can prevent our repeating its mistakes. In this vein, the buzzards in the story not only serve as symbols of death, but also as a symbol of the “circle of life”- birth, life, death, rebirth, life, etc…. I believe it was their use at the end of the first and second parts of Canticle that led me to think this.

Concerning Lazarus, it was intriguing for me to think of this character as actually being the Lazarus of scripture. That after his being raised from the dead, Lazarus never again died. I would imagine that his tired worn-out old carcass is still around even after the second nuclear holocaust at the end of Canticle. He also serves as a bit of comic relief in the novel, interjecting at times some measure of humor and sarcasm is a community (the monastery) that takes its mission a little too seriously.

As for the pursuit of knowledge, I think that Miller is stating something I (and many others) have long believed: that human knowledge far outstrips our ability to deal with it in moral or ethical ways. This is true especially of technical and medical advances in knowledge. The current debate about stem-cell research is one area that we see this, and I often think that our ability to provide child-less couples with opportunities for birth children (something that most religions, and even some evangelical Christian communities, accept)shows us that we do not fully consider the moral/ethical dilemmas that such an advance inevitably brings with it (for instance, what do we do with all those frozen embryos).

Finally, Canticle reminded me of the biblical book Ecclesiastes. “Vanity, all is vanity.”

I just happened onto your blog while searching about something for GKC’s fine novel. I’m re-reading the story now for the first time in several years. It’s as good as I remembered. I have my own theory about it, but I don’t think GKC was being totally honest when he spoke about the book in his autobiography. I think Sunday did indeed represent God, but in an uncertain world where God may not be what we think he is. “What if this is the way God really is?”, was the nightmarish aspect of it. What if, when all is said and done, and the world finished, we find a God and an afterlife that’s nothing like what anyone expects? Is anything really real? Does everything exist in the mind of a God who is more mischevous than anything else?

I posted my thoughts/answers to a few of the above questions over on one of my blogs. It got a little long and I didn’t want to leave such a huge comment here.

Second, no one hated it. Some even loved it. Most found some of it going over our heads, but there were also a lot of great things to discuss.

For example, we had a long talk about who we thought Rachel was (the head on Mrs. Grales shoulder). I just thought she represented innocence, but my Catholic friends pointed out that the only woman to be without original sin (and thus not needing baptism) was Mary. They think Rachel was Mary.

We also talked about the buzzards. I felt they represented death. Everyone else thought they represented pure evil. When someone is overcome by life and its struggles, evil comes in to completely overwhelm them or they can fight it off. (Catholic reference again?)

I also loved a couple quotes from the book…
p. 216 “It (the world) never was any better, it never will be any better. It will only be richer or poorer, sadder but not wiser until the very last day.”

And p. 217 “Why do you wish to discredit the past, even to dehumanizing the last civilization? So that you need not learn from their mistakes? Or can it be that you can’t bear being only a ‘rediscoverer,’ and must feel that you are a ‘creator’ as well?”

We also discussed “Lazarus” the beggar and most thought it was Leibowitz recurring in the book. We didn’t think he was a foil, but essential to the plot direction. i.e. discovering the fallout shelter.

I’d love to hear more comments from everyone.

I loved this book. It had so many “truths” to it. And even more amazing was that it was written in 1959, yet so relevant to so many situations in our world today.

You have to admit that it is funny how after the world is destroyed by nuclear war, the only things to survive are illiteracy and the Catholic church. (Well, as a church worker, I find that funny…maybe I have an odd sense of humor, though.)

I will post again next week. We are discussing this book in our “live” book club and I’ll write about some of the comments.

Sarah Raymond