A Canticle for Leibowitz

Book review : How human civilization struggled to preserve technology of the past

            From approximately 3150 A.D. to 3800 A.D., the monks of the Order of St. Leibowitz desperately struggled to preserve the fading knowledge of a once so great civilization of the ancients. Faced with the constant danger of extremists who believed that exposure to knowledge of the ancients would cause another chaotic world event, they had to secure this information of the ancients; often risking their lives to save it.

            Those who wished the knowledge to be destroyed were called simpletons. To preserve human history, the “…members [of the Order of St. Leibowitz] were either “bookleggers” or “memorizers,” according to the tasks assigned. The bookleggers smuggled books to the southwest desert and buried the there in kegs. The memorizers committed to rote memory entire volumes of history, sacred writings, literature, and science, in case some unfortunate book smuggler was caught tortured, and forced to reveal the location of the kegs. Meanwhile, other members of the new Order located a water hole about three days journey from the book the book cache and began building the monastery. The project, aimed at saving a small remnant of human culture from the remnant of humanity who wanted it destroyed, was then underway.” (Pg. 60)

            Storage, re-writing books and memorization were necessary because the original copies and blueprint would soon fade when exposed to light and the scorching conditions of the desert. One of the books of greatest importance in the novel was the Memorabilia. It’s contents; kept by the followers of St. Leibowitz, were vital in repossessing the lost knowledge of the ancients. Hundreds of pages of mathematical work revealed a new way to help recover the lost pages of the book. However, this process to restore the Memorabilia proved extremely slow and took decades to accomplish.

            The abbey of St. Leibowitz was under a constant threat of simpletons. Similar to the refusal to advance technologically by the Catholics around 600-1300 A.D., simpletons wished to destroy the technology of the ancients. Transporting important documents was dangerous Brother Francis in the early years of post-devastation. Bands of robbers were also a constant threat.

Hundreds of years later, the world replenished it’s knowledge to even a further extent than today. Cars, planes, and even starships were common. From this knowledge, a new destructive force came out against the abbey of St. Leibowitz; this was the invention and destructive use of nuclear warfare. “Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing?” (Pg. 245) Unfortunately the world hadn’t learned from its previous mistake. Without any explanation as to why, nuclear “testing” became too fierce. Eventually over two million people died and eventually the abbey was blown to bits with the silent gnawing power of radiation. Those who were responsible for the worlds recover became responsible for its extinction. They had led humanity into another Dark Age.

As the saying goes “The only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” History repeats itself time and time again. Those who struggled to restore and preserve the knowledge of the ancients eventually became the cause of another fall of humanity. Perhaps it would have been better if the simpletons had destroyed all the ancient’s books in the first place. All these questions boil down to a reality. Have we gone too far?