Silence Chapters 2 & 3 Summary & Analysis

Chapters 2 & 3

Summary: Chapter 2

Two months later, Rodrigues writes another letter describing his new life in Japan. also recounts the journey there. While at sea, a violent storm hits, and their ship almost sinks. During the height of the storm, Rodrigues catches Kichijiro vomiting and muttering a prayer in Latin. Rodrigues is dismayed to hear the language of the Church being spoken by someone he considers to be base and cowardly. When pressed to tell whether he’s a Christian, Kichijiro denies it.

When the men make landfall, Kichijiro runs ahead to talk with the villagers there and find out if there are any Christians. Rodrigues and Garrpe wonder if they’re about to be betrayed. Kichijiro returns with a group of peasants, secret Catholics who agree to hide the priests and keep them safe. They have landed in Tomogi, a small fishing village near Nagasaki. There are Christians there, but they have had to remain undercover for fear of persecution. They haven’t seen a priest in over six years and don’t know if there are any other Christians nearby. In the meantime, the villagers have devised a makeshift underground church and have instituted their own religious leaders: a Jisama who oversees baptisms and a Tossama who leads prayers. One young man in particular, Mokichi, is noticeably devout. The villagers lead Garrpe and Rodrigues to a small charcoal hut on a mountain overlooking the village that will be their new home. It is here that the priests spend their days receiving visitors and leading mass.

Summary: Chapter 3

Rodrigues continues to describe life in another letter during the same year. It is now June, the start of the rainy season. Rodrigues feels encouraged by his work with the villagers, who’ve remained lost without a priest. Rodrigues describes the villagers’ harsh life, working like animals and enduring harsh taxes. Furthermore, anyone practicing Christianity is heavily persecuted, and a reward is given to anyone who informs on another Christian. For turning over a priest, the villagers are offered three hundred silver pieces.

Rodrigues grows irritable staying in the hut all day, but Garrpe remains positive, making jokes to keep their spirits up. When the rains let up, they finally step outside. They see two men watching them from a neighboring hill. Ichizo, a Tossama, grows nervous and digs a hole in the hut as a hideout for the priests. A few days later, two peasants arrive at their door asking to confess their sins. They reveal they were the men watching the priests. Rodrigues notices their feet are all cut up from the trek and takes pity on them. Rodrigues and Garrpe learn that Kichijiro is from the peasants’ village, Goto, and is a Christian. Rodrigues agrees to return to the village with the two men, where he administers baptisms, confessions, and Sunday masses. Garrpe stays behind. When Rodrigues returns to Tomogi, a nervous Mokichi and Kichijiro greet him at the shore, telling him he has to hide—the guards are patrolling the village for Christians.

Analysis: Chapters 2 & 3

Chapters 2 and 3 are a continuation of Rodrigues’s letters, making a large portion of the novel epistolary. In this way, readers continue to learn the inner thoughts and feelings of the main character and protagonist. Readers discover more about what is driving Rodrigues as well as some of his potential blind spots and flaws. One of these potential flaws emerges in his relationship with Kichijiro, the drunk Japanese fisherman he hires to escort him from China to Japan. When Rodrigues first picks Kichijiro up, he notices that he has a drinking problem and has a shifty look in his eyes. Rodrigues finds it almost comical that his mission is to be helped by someone of such low class and stature, signaling the high-minded view Rodrigues has of his mission. Rodrigues laughs that God would entrust him with such a figure, but his faith in God remains intact—he assumes God must have a higher plan and doesn’t question the issue any further.

Furthermore, when Rodrigues hears Kichijiro utter the words of a Latin prayer under his breath while their ship is in the middle of a violent storm out to sea, Rodrigues is stunned. Rodrigues can’t believe that the words of his faith could be uttered by such a wretch who never truly helped on their journey and only served as a nuisance. Rodrigues comments in an aside to Garrpe that there is no way “faith could . . . turn a man into such a coward.” These comments are the first indication that Rodrigues might find himself at odds with Japan, the people he means to help there, and even his understanding of the Christian religion itself. Rodrigues clearly feels that Christianity is a noble business and its followers are made into noble men, not a weak coward like Kichijiro who is slovenly and slacks off of work on the ship. These are ideas that will be challenged later in the novel by Rodrigues’s experiences with the Christian Japanese peasants he meets there.

The theme of the clash between Eastern and Western cultures continues in Chapter 2 with Rodrigues’s commentary and views of the Christian peasants of Tomogi and the peasants’ construction of their own customs without the help of priests. Earlier, in Chapter 1, Rodrigues’s colleague Juan de Santa Maria commented that the Japanese must be lost without their Christian priest shepherds, indicating the priest’s paternal and patronizing view of the Japanese peasants. In Chapter 2, readers may note that Rodrigues also carries this view. Since the quelling of the Shimabara Rebellion, the Japanese Christian followers have had to practice in secret, setting up their own systems and authorities to continue the priestly duties. They’ve appointed those who conduct baptisms (the Jisama) and those who lead prayers (the Tossama). Despite observing all of the ways the peasants have persisted, Rodrigues still considers them lost and is eager to go around to more villages to help guide them despite this putting himself and the villagers at risk. This scenario may make readers wonder if the system the Japanese peasants set up is truly false and misguided or a valid adapted form of Christianity and if Rodrigues’s presence is, in fact, helpful. These issues continue to draw out the theme of East versus West in the novel.

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