Silence

2 Pages 565 Words

Shusaku Endo, Silence

Silence is a book written as a book describing basic Christian beliefs and to discuss and show how a Christian priest traveled to Japan to spread the Christian beliefs. This book was not just any ordinary book of Christianity; it showed how one priest who had such strong beliefs struggled to stay alive everyday while he was in captivity in a Japanese prison. This book gives the reader a basic understanding of the Christian beliefs.
This book starts off with describing how a well known priest, known for his strong Christian beliefs, was taken into custody by the Japanese. The author goes into detail describing how the priest apostatize his beliefs. Thus meaning he had given into the Japanese and told them that he would forget about his beliefs. The book soon continues and describes how four other priests set off on a voyage to Japan to follow this priest’s doings, in denial of what they were told about him apostatizing his Christianity. Consequently they did end up reaching Japan hoping they could spread the word and act as a missionary to the Japanese. The only problem was the fact that Japan had forbidden the Christian beliefs throughout the country. All in all the priest was taken captive because of his beliefs. He spent many days in many different jail cells. The only thing that kept him motivated along with the other Christian prisoners was there beliefs. After a while the guards were even feeling bad for the Christian followers, but could not fully say so due to the fact that they were descendants of the Buddhists belief and could only support that specific religion. In the end the Christian priest did apostatize and he remained in Nagasaki, Japan where he lost his Christian beliefs.
A word that I would use to describe the religion and the people who supported this religion in the book would be loyalty. Loyalty is a word that is well respected and can describe the type of person one can be...