Silence Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Chapter 6 Summary: Chapter 6

Rodrigues is led toward Nagasaki. During the procession, his group is joined by another set of prisoners heading for Nagasaki. Rodrigues is brought to a small prison on the side of a hill where he is kept alone for a few days. Rodrigues is surprised to find that this is the first time he has felt peaceful since arriving in Japan. A few days later, Rodrigues is brought to a different cell to join the other prisoners. Rodrigues prays that God will end his silence and help them, but nothing happens. The next day, the guards bring Rodrigues outside to watch the new prisoners as they labor, knowing his presence will make them more docile. Rodrigues is surprised to see Monica and the One-Eyed Man among them. The guards allow Rodrigues to say prayers and hear confessions, which makes Rodrigues happy. For the first time in Japan, he can formerly fulfill his priestly role.

Several days later, a guard brings Rodrigues a set of red robes to wear. Even though his clothes are tattered, Rodrigues balks, knowing these are Buddhist robes. The guard tells him he has to wear the robes because he’s about to meet the officials for cross-examination. Rodrigues feels humiliated. When the officials arrive, Rodrigues notices that one of them is eyeing him sympathetically. The officials explain that they are not there to refute Christianity but to argue that it has no value or relevance for the Japanese. Rodrigues counters that Christianity is universally true. Rodrigues, growing tired of arguing, wonders out loud why they’re even questioning him if they plan to kill him. The sympathetic official says they don’t kill without reason, but Rodrigues quips that Inoue surely intends to. When it is revealed that the sympathetic man is Inoue himself, Rodrigues is left shocked and confused.

A few days later, the guards make several prisoners dig holes in the courtyard. One of the prisoners dies from exhaustion, and Rodrigues is allowed to give the man a Christian burial, which he finds odd. The next day, Kichijiro arrives, yelling loudly that he is Christian and should be imprisoned. Rodrigues, annoyed that Kichijiro has once again found him, tries to avoid him, but Kichijiro openly begs Rodrigues for forgiveness. Rodrigues imagines Christ’s face and considers how Christ died for such sinners as Kichijiro, yet he can’t find it in himself to forgive Kichijiro, which fills him with shame.

Finally, the day of the fumie arrives. Everyone except Rodrigues is brought into the courtyard to stomp on the fumie. The officials try to reason with the prisoners, reassuring them that their public renunciation is only symbolic and they are free to believe what they want. No one apostatizes, and the guards seem unfazed. One guard, however, takes the One-Eyed Man aside and coldly decapitates him in a show to the others. Kichijiro rushes out, cowering. He stomps on the fumie and is set free. Rodrigues, who has been watching the entire ordeal from inside, can’t believe that God is still, once again, silent.

Analysis: Chapter 6

In Chapter 6, Rodrigues once again grapples with the problem of God’s silence in the face of human suffering. While he is in his cell, he prays for God to end his silence and intervene on the prisoners’ behalf, but nothing happens. Rodrigues’s faith is continuing to be tested. Ironically, Rodrigues finds the silence in his cell, before the prisoners arrive, to be comforting. The calm and peace he feels while alone inside the cell make him think his death must be near. The tranquility he experiences does indeed foreshadow his eventual peace and relief, but from apostasy, not death. The novel, by juxtaposing these two forms of silence—one that feels peaceful and one that does not—suggests that silence is more of a psychological problem within Rodrigues himself, not an ideological one to be solved by religious theories or ideas.

When the guards allow Rodrigues to practice his priestly role among the prisoners, it is a surprising move for both Rodrigues and likely the reader. The guards’ acceptance further underlines the idea that the Japanese are not really at odds with Christianity itself but with its influence among the people. At the very least, with the priest behind bars, they know Rodrigues’s influence is contained. The guards continue to go about their work, not paying much attention to Rodrigues and the blessings and confessions he conducts with the other prisoners. The guards’ lack of antagonism also suggests there is some level of acceptance of other ideas on behalf of Japanese Buddhists or the Japanese culture at large.

In contrast, Rodrigues’s views seem more rigid and unaccepting. Rodrigues argues among the samurai that there is a universal truth that everyone should accept regardless of culture. This is proven to be a presupposition on Rodrigues’s part, for his Japanese captors simply don’t hold this view. Rather, the novel suggests the Buddhists don’t have a concept of making such final, definitive claims about truth. This is shown in their responses to Rodrigues and also in the way the guards let Rodrigues practice without protest.

Another moment of foreshadowing occurs when Rodrigues is given red Buddhist garb to wear for his cross-examination by the samurai. In his heart, Rodrigues detests the idea of wearing the clothing of who he feels is his enemy: the Buddhists and their religion. In his Christian view, the idea of wearing clothing of another religion is sacrilege. This suggests the emphasis the Catholic faith puts on external shows of faith (more dramatically demonstrated, of course, by the Catholic religion’s forbidding of the public act of stepping on the fumie). But the guard insists Rodrigues put the robe on and that it isn’t a matter of much importance to wear it. Rodrigues, too tired to fight, puts the robe on, though he feels humiliated. The simple act of Rodrigues putting on the Buddhist robe foreshadows his later assimilation into Japanese culture.

Furthermore, the humiliation Rodrigues feels foreshadows the humiliation he will experience later before he arrives at a deeper understanding of his faith. He’ll have to sacrifice some part of his identity, his concept of himself as a religious hero, to understand the teachings of Christ. Rodrigues’s weariness and lack of fight at this point show how he is giving over to the larger forces at play, both within himself and within the larger social, political, and religious spheres he is existing in.

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