In writing "A Canticle for Leibowitz", Walter M. Miller, provides an amazing, fascinating and rich story of faith, hope, sacrifice, service and suffering. This essay seeks to analyse the book with respect to the latter theme, that of "suffering". .
Walter M. Miller takes a close look at one of our times most discussed and debated moral issues, that of euthanasia. Miller opposes euthanasia. However, he does not ignore the arguments for it. Indeed, it is easy to sympathise with the young women and her baby who in great pain are dying of radiation poisoning. "Radiation sickness. Flash burns. The women has a broken hip. The father's dead. The fillings in the women's teeth are radioactive. The child almost glows in the dark Nausea, anemia, rotten follicles. Blind in one eye. The child cries constantly because of the burns." It would be so easy to say "go to the clinic, let the pain come to an end", and Miller acknowledges this.
This is however far from Miller's last word on the matter. He does not hold back in writing a wonderfully convincing attack on euthanasia. Miller uses the character of the abbot as a great mouthpiece on the issue. The abbot "Fr. Zerchi" is almost a St. Peter type of character, he is honest and bold. He has great integrity but can be rash. In a heated conversation with Dr. Cors, Zerchi attacks the state, accusing it of allowing euthanasia for the sake of convenience. "Is it? [euthanasia]. Better for whom? The street cleaners? Better to have your living corpses walk to a central disposal station while they can still walk? Less public spectacle? Less horror lying around. Less disorder?" .
In contrast with the horror of the Green-Star "mercy camps" where lives are taken, the abbey of St. Leibowitz stands in stark contrast.
Here lives are saved. The monks show mercy to all that need help. They are noble, selfless men. They feed and clothe the destitute. With suffering comes Christian mercy so much so that the true camp of "mercy" was not the Green-Star camp but the abbey itself.
