![]() ![]() In Silence he pleads for more understanding of the weak, cowardly Christian with whom he wishes to identify. ![]() Both Rodrigues and Kichijiro “betray” Christ yet in spite of their treachery, they somehow cling to him in their hearts.Įndo feels there have been enough romantic biographies of the hero saint. ![]() Endo puts his intellectual misgivings about Christianity into the mouth of the foreign priest, while the sniveling Japanese informer, Kichijiro, gives expression to Endo’s basic emotions. But it is probably more accurate, as well as more interesting, to take the work as the spiritual autobiography of the author, Shusaku Endo, himself a Japanese Catholic. Silence is, on the surface, a historical novel dealing with 17th-century persecution of Christians in Japan. He seems to hear (or is it only his imagination?) Christ calling to him: “Trample on Me to save them.” And trample he does, though his foot “pains.” He has doubts about his faith, about the usefulness of his work. ![]() A stalwart Christian saint would choose martyrdom but Rodrigues, the main character of Silence, is not the traditional Christian hero. To trample upon the bronze figure of the crucified Christ in order to save the lives of Japanese Christians being tortured in the pit, or to refuse and condemn them to a terrifying death-this is the dilemma that confronts Portuguese missionary Sebastian Rodrigues. ![]()
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