Silence Chapters 8 & 9 Summary & Analysis

Chapters 8 & 9

Summary: Chapter 8

The Interpreter returns to visit Rodrigues. This time, he tries to force Rodrigues to apostatize. Psychologically numb at this point, Rodrigues refuses. Now, the guards treat him more roughly. He is put onto a donkey and paraded through the streets. For the first time, Rodrigues thinks, he’s suffering true physical and mental punishment at the hands of the Japanese. He almost feels elated. He imagines what Christ, who also was led through the streets in shame, would have felt like and whether it was the same. Rodrigues spots Kichijiro in the crowd. This time, Rodrigues feels genuine pity for Kichijiro and realizes he’s been his only faithful friend in Japan. Rodrigues nods to him, but Kichijiro runs away ashamed.

Rodrigues is brought into a small dark cell inside magistrate Inoue’s home. Tracing his fingers across the wall in the dark, Rodrigues discovers that someone has carved the Latin phrase “Laudate Eum,” or “praise him,” into the walls. Once again, Rodrigues imagines the face of Christ, who says he’s suffering alongside Rodrigues to the end. After a while, Rodrigues becomes annoyed with a sound he thinks is snoring. He starts beating his fists against the wall, overcome with frustration. Ferreira comes to check on Rodrigues, stepping inside his cell. He tells Rodrigues the sound is not snoring but the moaning of Christians being hung upside down in the pit.

Ferreira tries to reason with Rodrigues. He says that he was kept prisoner in the same room and carved the Latin phrase into the wall. Ferreira tells Rodrigues how he was hung in the pit, and after three days of praying and listening to his fellow Christians suffering while God did nothing, he apostatized. He tells Rodrigues his intentions are misguided, that he’s more worried about saving his reputation, and that Christ himself would have apostatized. Rodrigues yet begins to lose his resolve. Ferreira, sympathizing with him, puts his hand on Rodrigues’s shoulder while leading him out, saying Rodrigues is about to commit the “most painful act of love.” Rodrigues is brought to a room where the Interpreter is waiting with a fumie. Rodrigues, his foot over the fumie, sees the face of Christ, now dirty and distorted in the metal image, imploring him to step on the object. Christ tells Rodrigues it is for this reason he incarnated—to suffer alongside men and share their pain.

Summary: Chapter 9

Rodrigues now lives in Nagasaki under house arrest, leaving only with Inoue’s permission. Rodrigues spends his days looking out the window, where children from below call him Apostate Paul. Rodrigues realizes news has likely reached Portugal that he has apostatized. He wonders if his peers back home could ever understand that what he did was out of love but also wonders if this is just an excuse to justify his weakness. He imagines Christ’s face on the metal fumie—not beautiful or transcendent but exhausted and worn down from being trampled. Rodrigues is given a job identifying Christian objects being smuggled into Japan. Sometimes he sees Ferreira on the streets—both men feel shame looking at each other, realizing they are seeing his own defeat in each other.

Analysis: Chapters 8 & 9

Earlier, Rodrigues worried that Inoue’s gentle treatment of him was making him soft and weakening his resolve. When Rodrigues refuses to apostatize, the guards become more hostile to him, no longer feeding him or treating him well and binding his arms. Finally, Rodrigues feels, he’s experiencing the pain of Christ. He feels a sense of strange elation, which revives his resolve. This suggests that Inoue’s method of getting priests to apostatize by treating them well actually does work, for the priests are motivated by suffering, to be like Christ. As he is paraded through the streets, Rodrigues imagines how Christ would have looked as he was led to his crucifixion. He imagines that Christ smiled and tries to mimic the same expression. Rodrigues, despite all the suffering he’s witnessed, is still focused on maintaining a heroic image of Christ. His arrogance, it is shown, is as stubborn as his faith.

Rodrigues’s inability to maintain the smile, however, suggests that Rodrigues’s resolve actually might be waning. Furthermore, when he sees Kichijiro, he isn’t as disgusted as before. Now, he finds it easier to express pity and compassion toward Kichijiro and even nods toward him. Kichijiro, who has betrayed Rodrigues several times at this point, has been a Judas-like figure in Rodrigues’s life. Kichijiro has caused Rodrigues to struggle with the meaning of Christ’s relationship with Judas, often wondering why Christ instigated Judas to betray him. Now, with his willpower in flux, Rodrigues finds himself softening toward Kichijiro. This could suggest two things—Rodrigues is either sensing his apostasy drawing near and discovering a kinship with Kichijiro, or he is simply still trying to mimic Christ and possess a benevolent attitude, knowing his death is approaching. At the very least, Rodrigues decides, Kichijiro has been his unlikely friend, always being by his side, betrayer or not.

Both Chapters 8 and 9 show how Rodrigues’s identity is truly unraveling, his experience literally and thematically paralleling Ferreira’s. Ferreira explains that he was held in the same prison cell as Rodrigues and underwent the same torture. He was forced to listen to the Christian peasants suffering as they were suspended over a pit as well. Furthermore, Ferreira was hung upside down with them, something Rodrigues is spared. Because of their shared experience, Rodrigues’s ears are unscarred and open to what Ferreira has to say.

Ferreira deals the final blow to Rodrigues’s resolve when he points out Rodrigues’s essential weakness: arrogance. He tells Rodrigues that it is vanity that makes Rodrigues refuse to apostatize and that Christ would have apostatized as well if it meant saving another person’s life. Stomping on the fumie is only a symbolic gesture. Rodrigues, weakened at this point, finally gives in, and his identity as a faithful Christian servant is morphed. It is only when he completely surrenders that he experiences a transcendent moment with Christ when he tramples on the fumie. This suggests that it is Rodrigues’s former identity and feelings of superiority that had to be sacrificed for him to truly understand Christ.

Previous section Chapter 7 Next section Chapter 10 & Appendix