A Canticle For Lebowitz Essay, Research Paper

A Canticle for Lebowitz

Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Copyright date: 1959

In A Canticle for Lebowitz, the character that starts everything off is Brother Francis. Brother Francis was just a young novice looking for a place of refuge, in the time were mutants roamed the deserts and barbarians ruled the plains. Brother Francis is a well-mannered man, who believes in himself greatly. When the Abbot kept on questioning his thoughts, Brother Francis always stood his ground and never changed his mind. Even after 7 years of being a novice, Brother Francis never changed his mind of what he had saw in the desert. This shows great determination and shows that he has a great mind. He knew what was right and he never changed his story.

The focus of the plot is, Earth has just gone through a nuclear war, and civilization has just started to begin again, but with the help of Brother Francis civilization will rebuild it self. On Brother Francis first novice Lenten fast, he is led to an underground facility that holds some precious valuables of the Order. The valuables are just some junk to us, but to them the papers, shopping lists, and others miscellaneous stuff is worth gold to them. Unknown to Brother Francis, his findings will eventually lead to the reconstruction of civilization on Earth. After about 8 years, the Pope approves of the Saint hood of Lebowitz. Then a century later, the civilization has rebuilt itself. It now has spaceships, cars, light, and all the stuff that we have now. But the world is coming to an end again. The countries are about to fire their nuclear weapons, and the end of Earth is going to happen again.

Kevin Tsai

Mr. Canavese

4th Period

One memorable scene was in the end of the book when Dom Zerchi is lying on the ground. He is lying on the ground because the first of the nuclear bombs have been launched, and the church was hit from the aftershock. He finds himself near the crypts and they had been broken. Dom Zerchi picks up an old head that has an arrow through his head. Unknowingly Dom Zerchi does not know that this head is Brother Francis, the man who started all of this. I think that this was a memorable scene because Walter M. Miller had tied in the future with the past with that one head.

A Canticle for Lebowitz was a very dull book. I did not like this book because there was no real plot in this. They just talk about the rebuilding of a civilization and the destruction of it. I admit, it is a way to think of the world, that when we are technologically capable of destroying the world, would we? And then would we just rebuild it and destroy it again? That is the only part that I liked in the book, the message that Walter M. Miller gave us, that we cannot do this to ourselves, and we have to prevent war from breaking out.