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johnnyFive  ·  2080 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Book Discussion: A Canticle for Leibowitz

    Did I miss something? Is my lack of knowledge of religion preventing me from "seeing" the witty and insightful nature of this story?

Yes and not really. Rather than a lack of knowledge of religion, I think your preconceived notions/issues with religion caused you to miss things. After all, you critcize the religious orders for "growing in influence and idiocy," despite their being the only reason technology survives the anti-scientific pograms that took place shortly after the nuclear war (both of which are prior to the book's beginning). So to me, your forcing this arbitrary distinction between science and religion led you to miss a lot.

In particular, you seemed to have missed what was, to me, the main point of the book. The story being structured the way it is shows the cyclical nature of humanity, and how technology doesn't truly change us. Every time, the cycle ends by violence. But note that the violence is usually borne of ignorance: the aforementioned anti-science pogroms; the raider who kills Francis at the end of the first section is too mutated to even really understand what's going on; Hannegan goes war-ing just as technology is really starting to come back; the two nation-states then do the same thing and manage to fuck up a prosperous society. Meanwhile, when the Abbott dies at the end, he sees a skull from the Abbey's crypt with an arrow through it, presumably Francis from the first section.

As for the Abbot/two-headed woman thing, I think this ties into the other overall theme, which counterpoints the first, namely that despite the violence and ignorance, some people will keep trying to move forward. The Order of Leibowitz survives for over 1,000 years, and if they're the reason the world has nukes again, they're also the reason the world has antibiotics again. In each order there are people striving for something greater than themselves, and to make their world a better place. So that's part of the cycle too.