A Canticle For Leibowitz By Walter Miller Essay - 2003 Words

Walter Miller, the complex personality who produced the apocalyptic novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, shot himself in January 1996 following the unexpected death of his wife, Anne. His passing is an unfortunate loss to the world, but this novel survives and will continue to influence generations of people whose inner souls have been powerfully influenced and inspired by his work. A Canticle for Leibowitz is an emotional roller coaster, full of the fluctuations of life, and exhibits an eternal tale about treacherous times and the fall from innocence as well as the rise to a more technologically advanced, yet further delusional world. Like many novels, Canticle attempts to answer some of the most fundamental questions of life: Who are we? Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? These are significant questions that many different religions have attempted to answer, including the Catholic Church. According to Miller, science can answer questions about how the world works, but only re ligion can answer questions about why things are the way they are. Miller’s religious answers, given by theistic characters, are contrasted with the opinions of secular, nonspiritual characters in a way that embodies both the faith and ethics of the church. Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz contains the debates of the raging conflict of religion versus science, religious ethics and secular ethics, and sin and redemption. It is a comprehensive analysis of apocalyptic sequences and how theyShow MoreRelatedThe Role Of The Transmission Of Knowledge Walter M. Miller s A Canticle For Leibowitz1307 Words   |  6 Pagesthe transmission of knowledge in Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is vital for people to recall and study more of the past prior to the nuclear war. Our contemporary world understands the significance contained in past literacy and oral traditions to teach us our civilization’s past, however, their current forms are not cherishe d by this generation due to technological advances. Even though the situations and settings in the world of Canticle for Leibowitz and the contemporary world differRead More Knowledge as a Double Edged Sword in the novels Oryx and Crake as well as A Canticle for Leibowitz4038 Words   |  17 PagesCrake’s synthetic virus, he eliminates the entirety of human race, with the tools knowledge supplied him with. In the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz the human race is just an insignificant remnant of its former glory, after it obliterated itself with the use of nuclear weapons. This novel shows humanity’s rise out of the ashes, with focus being placed on the Order of St. Leibowitz, the sole caretakers’ of the hated knowledge from the age past. With the knowledge contained with the Order, humanity experiencesRead MoreVisions of Utopia Essay3140 Words   |  13 Pagesfactors vitally important in the bringing-forth (as Heidegger might term it) of those factors which bri ng about the degradation of humanity which so frequently occurs in dystopian novels. (The notable exception to this rule is Walter M. Millers novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, which will be considered later in this paper.) The first is some sort of reduction in the value of individual human beings. The second is a large degree of control over the mental processes of these individuals.    TheRead MoreThe Pros and Cons of Technology Essay3669 Words   |  15 Pagesenslaved by technology. Not only ivory-tower intellectuals and maladjusted hermits spend time considering the problems posed by technology, however. Diverse popular fiction writers such as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Walter M. Miller Jr. have also considered them. In his own way, each of these authors addresses the problems that technology poses our society. Entire genres of popular music with revealing names, such as Industrial and Techno have also arisen in recent decades