Like Miller before him, Hoban in Riddley Walker has imagined our civilization reduced to its second infancy following worldwide nuclear conflict. It was the recipient of the Nebula Award in 1981 for being an outstanding work of imagination. On the island of England, approximately two and half millennia in the future; small semi-nomadic bands of people and loosely associated families travel among muddy villages fenced in from wild animals that roam the land. Riddley’s character is associated with packs of wolves that patrol the wilderness, not only making him an outcast and an adventurer who discovers a powerful secret (Spoiler: The recipe for gunpowder), but it is the wolves who give him safe harbor and aid him in his quest to defeat the tyrannical antagonists of Goodparley and Orfing; characters who exploit others and Riddley’s knowledge of gunpowder for their own personal gain.
In many ways, this is probably what Einstein had in mind, the technology of sticks, stones and rudimentary alchemy being the articles of conflict. What is unique about Hoban’s style of writing is self evident when held in the eye, as he was an author of children’s literature for many years before imagining Riddley Walker in Canterbury Cathedral in 1974. The inhabitants of the villages are forcibly employed by the local governing body known as The Ram to excavate and crudely study the smashed machinery left over from our contemporary civilization. The Ram is able to govern the people through the discourse of the puppet show, a mimetic device that authorizes the cultural memory, entertains children, and maintains a hegemonic discourse of power over the enslaved masses from which Riddley Walker, the title character and supposed author of the book, arises. Goodparley and Orfing are government puppeteers who perform for quarter and tribute in the medieval villages. The content of the government authorized puppet show is the Eusa play, a collection of theatrical skits that tell the history of Riddley’s world while harboring encoded recipes for advanced weaponry. The character of Lissener is found by Riddley in one of The Ram’s prisons, as the young blind boy is part of a subversive collective working to rediscover the technology of a passed civilization. Riddley inherited his literacy from his father who serves as a record keeper and interpreter of the Eusa plays, analogous to the monks who work tirelessly at preserving and translating salvaged texts.
In the wake of his father’s death while excavating a mangled chunk of machinery, Riddley must assume the responsibility of cultural interpreter not only to the constituents of his village, but also to us, the outside readers and champions of his cause. As in
Canticle, these excavators of familiar twentieth century ruins have mythologized our civilization, but do not have any idea what the unifying principle is that enables and enlivens the symbols and artifacts they discover. Riddley discovers that in order to preserve life, he must keep his knowledge a secret while at the same time surviving in a wilderness full of ferocious beasts and cunning people. Inventing an alternate puppet show with some puppets he found while excavating the familiar artifacts of the past, Riddley can preserve the secrets he has uncovered and promote peace and unity through his own theatre. His own puppet show, utilizing the characters of Punch and Judy, is an attempt to create an antithetical social discourse that rejects the content and message of the Eusa play.
Both key sets of players, The Monks of Leibowitz and Riddley Walker, realize in their historical adventures that making choices is not only a matter of every day living, but that the concepts of soul and imagination have the power to influence history in a positive fashion. These characters have a unique sense of the future, and the ideological battles they fight represent their respective hopes for the fate of humankind.
The clashing of these values and the choices that determine the validity of each ideology is the propellant of history and the motivator of these great novelistic plots. The coming together of people to exchange ideas and create a community of discourse is a crucial point of interest for both authors, because rationally, how could a cultural dialectic occur if no people were present to form competitive ideological factions? Virtually all of the important debates about truth and the nature of rationality in Canticle are held within the walls of a monastery. Riddley makes his most startling revelations in the charred ruins of Canterbury Cathedral. Both authors make it clear that without people coming together to argue, debate, or even exchange ideas, no progress whatsoever would be made in these newly developed patches of civilization. The lonely abbey becomes a way station for the exchange of ideas and cultural inquiry. An ancient highway (Route 66?) running through the former desert of Utah is reestablished as a ferociously busy thoroughfare by the conclusion of the novel. These locations of cultural conflict and synthesis tease out the forces that are under scrutiny by the authors. Miller does not seem completely at ease with the concept of the rational mind, identifying it as a key player in the evolution of history.
In the following exchange between Brother Francis and one of his detractors, Brother Jeris, a fellow monk at the abbey who serves as a skeptical nuisance to the faithful Francis, Miller is creating a living dialectic, two competing ideologies personified in each monk. As Francis is illuminating the pre-flame deluge blueprint that he had discovered earlier in “Fiat Homo,” Brother Jeris seems to take genuine satisfaction in proving to Francis that although the blueprint may be aesthetically pleasing, he really has no idea what the symbols could possibly mean. This skepticism embodied by Brother Jeris is also the chief quality of Thon Taddeo, who represents in the second book, “Fiat Lux,” the scientific mind in its greatest moments of discovery and revelation. Dominic Manganello goes into great detail on how possessing a skeptical rationality is the defining quality of characters like Thon Taddeo, but overlooks this same quality in characters like Brother Jeris.
The dialogue between Francis and Jeris is fraught with the irony that what they are unknowingly discussing is the fastest path to human-made global annihilation, but they must first go through the motions of using dialogue and debate to develop a cultural inquiry that will enable that possible future:
Jeris was becoming pretentious in his sarcasm, Francis thought, and decided to meet it with a soft answer. “Well, observe this column of figures, and its heading: ‘Electronic Parts Numbers.’ There was once, an art or science, called Electronics, which might belong to both Art and Science.
“Uh huh! Thus settling ‘genus’ and ‘species.’ Now as to the ‘difference,’ if I may pursue the line. What was the subject matter of electronics?”
“That too is written,” said Francis, who had searched the Memorabilia from high to low in an attempt to find clues which might make the blueprint slightly more comprehensible, but to very small avail. “The Subject matter of Electronics was the electron,” he explained.
“So it is written, indeed. I am impressed. I know so little of these things. What, pray, was the ‘electron’?”
“Well, there is one fragmentary source which alludes to it as a “Negative Twist of Nothingness.’”
“What! How did they negate nothingness? Wouldn’t that make it a somethingness?”
“Perhaps the negation applies to the ‘twist.’”
“Ah! Then we would have an “Untwisted Nothing,” eh?
Have you discovered how to untwist nothingness?”
“Not yet,” Francis admitted.
“Well keep at it Brother! How clever they must have been, those ancients, to know how to untwist nothing. Keep at it, and you may learn how. Then we’d have the ‘electron’ in our midst, wouldn’t we? Whatever would we do with it? Put it on the altar in the chapel? (Miller 77-78).
Ironically, when the arc lamp is re-invented, Brother Jeris’ joking prediction comes true, as the illuminating apparatus replaces a crucifix on the wall of the abbey. This is a dialogue of an empirical nature, both parties realizing the limits of their knowledge in regard to the symbols, but nonetheless striving to make sense of the patterns and designs featured on the tattered document. The methodology of Hegel fills in the gaps if you consider that the argument between the two monks, Francis and Jeris, is part of a much longer dialogue that not only spans the length of the book, but also the entire history of this future civilization. Miller is deft at weaving petty skepticism into synthesis with humanity’s cultural capacity for competitive behavior, which for the author culminates in the nuclear arms race, the cold war, and the final war. In Hegelian terms, the process of contrapuntal conjecture that the monks participate in is not featured to simply promote the comedic irony of accidental discoveries. Rather, for both Miller and his philosophical predecessor Hegel, the most subversive and destructive quality of humanity is that of the innate scientific mind which manifests itself in the character of Jeris. The ability to name things accurately is lampooned, as this is the first step by which a concept can enter a cultural discourse. Miller comments in his essay “Logos, Thanatos, Agape” that “This is the hereditary eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; learning how to talk and to think in syllogisms…” (Miller, Beyond Armageddon 14)
Continuity of dialectic structures has a major impact on the philosophy of historical causality for Miller, Hegel, and as well as for Hoban. Miller’s acidic sense of comedy causes these two monks to inadvertently discuss exactly what the atomic bomb is capable of, literally the “untwisting” of matter. Its analogue can be found in Hoban’s Eusa story, wherein the character of Eusa was the mythologized physicist who had enabled nuclear weaponry through scientific and linguistic finesse. In Riddleyspeak, an atom is called “Addom,” and the symbol of the “little Shynin man” represents the mass of uranium that can be pulled apart through atomic fission to produce a catastrophic explosion. The little shining man is embodied as the figure of the shattered crucifix. The play on words indicates that even the staid symbols of the Judeo-Christian culture have been modified to suit the linguistic needs of the future. The image of the crucifix, pulled to pieces, is the metaphor through which Riddley can grasp our concept of atomic fission. The pulling apart of the shining man runs parallel to the “untwisting” of matter described by Brother Jeris. The cyclical nature of Hoban’s text implies that once the ‘Little Shynin Man’ is reassembled, the only logical conclusion will be to disassemble him once again, and Riddley is the character and representative power in society that would seek to avoid the reigniting of this particular fate.
“Eusas off then and the Little Shynin Man comes down hes in 2 peaces. He says, “Onlyes way Iwl get to put to gether is when people pul to gether.’ (Hoban 58)
The image of the atom and the soul is deftly woven by Hoban in this passage. In both Canticle and Riddley Walker, the development of the bomb is directly tied to conflagrations of pride, which is the greatest sin in the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, both of which generate the respective signifiers of Satan and St. Eustace. Like Riddley Walker, Brother Francis is decoding a text that is reliant upon the reader having a basic knowledge of science and engineering; only both sets of characters live in an age where the discovery of such things is far off in the future. It is this sort of playful exchange between the monks that represents the innate curiosity about the nature of matter and the ungovernable forces of the universe. What is important to note is the structure by which Miller has chosen to construct the scene; he uses actual dialogue to show how these monks are developing a system to rediscover the means their own destruction. The ignorance of their subject matter allows them to continue developing the methods of skeptical discourse without knowing they are programming the culture of the future to have a vested interest in the nature and function of matter.
For the inhabitants of Riddley’s world, a symposium is the means by which people come together to unravel the nature of matter for malicious purposes. In this passage, Riddley is asking the character of Lissener how he plans to rediscover the methods of physics and chemistry, the pulling together of data becoming the metaphor for scientific discourse:
I said, “ ‘How dyou do that kind of gathering what youre going to do? Do you all set down and pul datter or dyou jus think to gether or what?
He said, “We do some poasyum.” (Hoban 107)
Both authors celebrate the gathering of people to debate and share information, but are acutely aware that such arenas can foster competition among ideological bodies of people, and when the subject of inquiry is weaponry and the suppression of others, the stakes go far beyond these dens of destruction. Perhaps that is why theatres, courts, libraries and symposiums ironically signify the physical locations of dialectic synthesis in the novels. The dialectic is the most effective and transparent means by which one can organize history into a rational evolution of cultural progress. The revelations of scientific and cerebral truths through a process of communal discourse is the soul of cultural progress and the Hegelian dialectic, but to Riddley Walker and The Monks of Leibowitz, realizing that to endure as a species, humility must triumph over pride, and diversions to this struggle can be found in the arts and humanitarian sciences.
Riddley Walker is a young man who is telling this tale in his own unique tongue, relating to the reader the choices he must make when he realizes that technology, when harnessed by the wicked, can easily aid in the suppression of humanity by those in positions of power. Also, through his development of a primitive literacy, “Riddleyspeak,” he is able to decode the Eusa play, and discover the objects of power sought for by Lissener, Goodparley, and Orfing. The Eusa play is derived from the pre-atomic war era, and is the substantive oral tradition maintained in this community through the aforementioned puppet shows. Through careful extrapolation, Riddley unlocks the formula for gunpowder from these encoded historical artifacts, the same way Thon Taddeo stands off the shoulders of ancient giants to further his career. The motivator of the antagonistic characters is the lust for the power attained through the development of physics and chemistry, which can enable devices and weapons that can perpetuate the systems of power already in place. Even though Riddley is the one who is able to interpret the Eusa play, he is not interested in using his knowledge for political purposes. The characters of Goodparley and Orfing in Riddley Walker, who embody this lust for power through superior science, are the ideological counterparts to Thon Taddeo.
Thon Taddeo, while making a humanist case for the rediscovery of mechanical society, cannot see the full implications of reestablishing society on a similar track to our own. In his discourse with the monks in the era of “Fiat Lux,” he makes it clear that the society and ambitions he represents has already made considerable headway into the natural sciences and other observable physical properties of matter, as the unseen character of Esser Shon has already pioneered the “refrangible properties of light.” The turgid scholar soon discovers that without the monks, his discoveries are already old news.(Miller Canticle 212). The monks at the Abbey of Leibowitz, by preserving literacy and rational thought, are kindling a force that will eventually enable minds to build grand engines of death. David Seed holds that Miller’s uses of light and dark imagery represent the thematic crux of Canticle, and as the title of part two, “Fiat Lux,” lends weight to Seeds argument.I would venture to say that technology and the cultural development of science is even more central to the novel’s design and to post-nuclear fiction at large. The relationship between technology and political power not only ties Canticle and Riddley Walker together thematically; it also leads to the pointed criticism of rationality itself.Continued on Next Page »
Asimov, Isaac, Martin H. Greenberg, and Patricia Warrick, Eds. Machines That Think: The Best Science Fiction Stories About Robots and Computers. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984.
A comprehensive anthology of the short stories that specifically deal with the impact that technology and artificial intelligence has had on the development of Science Fiction in the twentieth century. Some of Miller’s short stories are reproduced, illustrating the profound affect that artificial intelligence had on the author, predicting for several of the most startling revelations to be found in Canticle. In particular, Miller’s short story “I made you” (1953) addresses the relationship between a man and a wayward machine possessing intelligence. Also featured as a companion text to Miller’s work is Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I must Scream” (1967)
Bennet, Walker. “The Theme of Responsibility in Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz.” English Journal 51 (April 1970), [484-489]
A short article that examines the importance of morality and choice in Miller’s novel, and how that morality is manifest in both religious and secular characters in the course of the story. It does not address “choice” as a possible component of the “dialectic.”
Brians, Paul. Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction. Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1987.
Brians maintains that Miller’s novel, among others produced in the nuclear age, is a direct action to philosophically address the implications of a nuclear catastrophe in modern culture. The importance of survival, as a historical necessity in prolonging human life following a nuclear catastrophe, adds a unique ecological perspective on the ‘arid irradiated desert’ in which Miller’s future history takes place.
Dowling, David. Fictions of Nuclear Disaster. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987.
Dowling’s book is a survey of modern fiction concerned with nuclear weapons and the effect that such technology may have on the fate of humanity. He gives due credit to the concepts of the ‘cyclical’ history and artificial intelligence as players upon the modern nuclear stage. Most important is the chapter “Two Exemplary Fictions” in which Canticle and Riddley Walker are discussed as the capstones of the ‘post nuclear genre.’
Fried, Lewis. “A Canticle for Leibowitz: A Song for Benjamin.” Extrapolation 42, (Winter 2001) Kent State University Press, Ohio [362-373]
An astute treatment of Miller’s novel focusing primarily on the religious symbolism and the latent stereotypes of the Semitic characters present therein. Contextualizes Miller’s novel as morosely Christian, and only pays lip service to Riddley Walker as an interesting companion text.
Hegel, Georg. The Essential Writings Ed. by Frederick G. Weiss. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1974
This is the best compilation in English of Hegel’s theories and methods. This is a crucial text for the understanding of Hegel’s role in the discourse of philosophy and the impact that he has had upon the philosophical community at large. Therein, the Phenomenology of the Spirit and Verstand are reproduced, detailing the philosophical constructs of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis that make up the process of the historical dialectic. Also included is a treatise “With What Must Science Begin?” that takes into account rational and spiritual conventions as competing ideologies within historical dialectic of humanity.
Hoban, Russell. Riddley Walker 1980 Rpt. First Indiana University Press Ed. 1998
Herbert, Gary B. “The Hegelian ‘Bad Infinite’ in Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Extrapolation: 31 (Summer 1990), [160-169]
Herbert’s essay finds many examples of competing ideologies within Canticle that ‘define’ as much as they disdain one another in the process of the dialectic. Herbert’s focus is mostly on the possible negative results of the dialectic (‘Bad Infinite’) rather than on the examination of the dialectical process itself.
Manganello, Dominic. “History as Judgment and Promise in A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Science Fiction Studies 13 (1986), [159-169]
An excellent article that shows how Canticle can be considered a literal history of the future, and how over time a cultural memory has the ability to misappropriate symbols and skew historical dialogues. He illustrates how ‘logos’ is literally up for grabs when spread over several generations of thought and cultural revolution, citing Miller’s Thon Taddeo as the principal player in the historical process of Canticle.
Miller, Walter Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz. 1959, Rpt. New York: Doubleday, 1997
Miller, Walter Jr. and Martin Greenberg Eds. Beyond Armageddon Copyright Walter
Miller and Martin Greenberg 1985 New York: Primus Press
A thrilling anthology of post-apocalyptic short stories edited and introduced by Walter Miller. Harlan Ellison’s “A Boy and His Dog” is featured and praised by Miller. In the introduction, Miller takes ample space explaining his disgust with the modern nuclear nation, how language barriers only exasperate political tension, and how art is an important diversion to hawkish politics.
Mullen, R.D. “Dialect, Grapholect, and Story: Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker as Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 27 (November 2000) [381-417]
An extensive exploration of “Riddleyspeak’ and the linguistic trends that unify the language employed in the novel. Also highlights contrasting points of view from other science fiction authors (notably Norman Spinrad who wrote an introduction to Canticle in one of its reprints) Extremely useful in decoding Riddleyspeak, as well as in showing how language is the signifying article of the ongoing historical process.
Mustazza, Leonard. “Myth and History in Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker” Studies in
Contemporary Fiction 31 (Fall 1989), [17-26]
Mustazza expertly illustrates the importance of myth in its relation to history within cultures that are primarily oral in the transmission of cultural information, specifically citing Mircea Eliade’s construction of myth. Mustazza also shows how Riddley’s creation of his own identity through the act of writing, and his decoding of the Eusa myth, illustrates a metamorphosis from an oral culture to a text based culture.
Percy, Walker. “Walker Percy on Walter M Miller Jr’s A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Rediscoveries, ed. David Madden. New York: Crown, 1971, [262-269]
Percy explores the nature of symbols and the importance that they have to the development of Miller’s plot. Also illustrates that because Miller’s novel is a collection of symbols and themes (a novel per se), the text becomes self reflexive with the knowledge that all texts and symbols are transient and open to interpretation.
Porter, Jeffrey. “‘Three Quarks for Muster Mark:’ Quantum Wordplay and Nuclear Discourse in Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker.” Contemporary Literature 31 1990 [448-69]
Porter contextualizes the importance of nuclear technology and atomic theory within Hoban’s novel and modern examples of literature at large. Also, he keenly illustrates how ‘dialect’ (not the Hegelian dialectic) is a natural process by which language evolves through the development of ‘anti-languages.’ Also, shows how the preservation of texts and the evolution of language in history thematically unite Miller and Hoban as artists.
Rank, Hugh. “Song out of Season: A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Renascence 21 Summer 1969 [313-321]
One of the earliest critical evaluations of Miller’s novel; explaining the importance and groundbreaking nature of Miller’s work, identifying cyclical themes, the importance of a historical consciousness, and the comedic nature of the monks who toil in service to their Christian idealism.
Seed, David. “H.G. Wells and the Liberating Atom” Science Fiction Studies 30 (March, 2003), [33-48]
Along with Warrick’s historical analysis, this article best situates any reader of texts that deal specifically with nuclear weaponry and its associated catastrophes. Specifically outlines how much of the fiction produced after World War II that deals with nuclear war is constructed in the form of ‘future histories.’ Seed outlines the philosophical implications that arise from man’s ability to master the atom, and the effect that this power has had on twentieth century thought, citing many examples in contemporary science fiction.
Seed, David. “Recycling Texts of the Culture: Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Extrapolation 37 (Fall 1996), [257-271]
This article best articulates the roles that texts and language play in the context of Miller’s novel, by showing that without the ‘memorabilia’ the course of history for this futuristic world would have been very different. Also includes a thorough examination of short stories by Miller (“Dumb Waiter,” among others) that illustrate the popular and recurrent themes of his work: the future of humanity, the soul, and the technology that enables the future and the presence of history.
Senior, W.A. “From Begetting of Monsters: Distortion as Unifier in A Canticle for Leibowitz.” Extrapolation 34 (1993) [329-339]
An excellent article that illustrates the innate tension and ‘distortion’ that arises out of dialogue and linguistic exchange. Most importantly, Senior finds many examples of how misappropriated symbols can have disastrous effects when employed out of context, such as Benjamin’s strange glyphs on the arch-stone and Thon Taddeo’s disgust with his inability to fully decode some of the memorabilia.
Spector, Judith A. “Walter Miller’s “A Canticle for Leibowitz:”A parable of our time?” Midwest Quarterly 22 (1981), [337-345]
A short article that examines how stories set in the future can be used as parodies of our own times. Specifically addresses the folly of nuclear armaments in general, and how Miller’s novel unabashedly attacks the culturally embedded arguments in man’s soul that leads to the development of nuclear weapons.
Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster” in Against Interpretation. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1966.
A very useful article when reading any work in which world wide destruction is the subject matter. Contextualizes the profound impact that violence can have upon artists and the communities in which they live and work. Although not quoted directly, this book is an essential resource for understanding many of the literary methods utilized in describing massive deaths and catastrophic destruction.
Stapledon, Olaf. Last and First Men 1930 Rpt. Dover Publications 2008
Stapledon, Olaf. Philosophy and Living, Vol. 2. London: Penguin, 1939 [304-307]
Explicitly illustrates the importance of the Hegelian dialectic to not only Stapledon as an author and philosopher, but also to writers of cyclical histories in general, as it is widely considered that Stapledon was immensely influential on the entire canon of Science Fiction in the twentieth century. This book serves as the crucial hinge between Hegel’s philosophy of history and the literary experiments in cyclical dialectic histories undertaken by Hoban and Miller.
Wagar, Warren W. Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
Wagar’s book is an insightful study that contextualizes and explains many of the popular conventions of apocalyptic literature.
Warrick, Patricia S. The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction 1974 Rpt. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Cambridge MA 1980
Aside from Hegel and Stapledon, Warrick’s book is probably the most important critical work for illustrating the historical relevance of nuclear technology, the impact that artificial intelligence has had on the Science Fiction community, and accurately predicting many of the themes and literary constructions found in both Canticle and Riddley Walker; even though neither of the two novels receive mention in the work.
Endnotes
1.) Inspectah Deck is the nom de plume of Staten Island’s Jason Hunter. His lyrical content on the song “Triumph,” which addresses the importance of song in apocalyptic times, has helped to propel the album Wu-Tang Forever (RCA/Loud 1997) to the highest realms of contemporary cultural status, selling over half a million copies in its first week of release.
2.) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Atomic Bomb (1964 Columbia Pictures), based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George, is widely considered to be one of the darkest satirical reflections of Cold War politics and warfare.
3.) The largest storehouse of radioactive waste in the terrestrial western hemisphere: Hanford, Washington.
4.) Hegel and nearly the entire canon of Western philosophy universally define this as the ability to make rational decisions based on empirically/phenomenologically derived data from the mind/senses. When something as catastrophic as the total extinction can be made with a “rational decision,” this faculty of the mind has come under attack by artists, scientists and those associated with politics and religion fervently since the dawn of atomic warfare in the twentieth century.
5.) Georg Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher who was profoundly affected by the French Revolution and the extraordinary figure of Napoleon. His major work The Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807)established him as one of the most important philosophers of the European enlightenment. Therein, the concept and method of the dialectic was originated, outlining the concepts of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis as the basic modes in which competing historical ideologies assumed mastery over one another through the processes of social and political discourse.
6.) “Understanding” A corollary section of Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit, in which the basic tenets of the historical dialectic are imagined and discussed: the apprehension of concepts and the naming thereof as the first crucial step in the process of forming dialectical ideologies that will ultimately be subverted or consumed in the course of history. Hegel and Miller both allude to the story of Genesis, where the serpent promises the knowledge to differentiate between “good” and “evil” to Eve and society.
7.) “Short lyrical song or melody”
8.) The year in which “Fiat Homo” occurs is supposedly the “Year of Our Lord 3174,” which would be the approximate equivalent of our own 1215, the immanence of nuclear war provoking Miller to subtract the 1959 years of civilization that had passed since the first beginning of Western.society. The Year 1215 is a watershed year in Western civilization, not just for the historical artifacts such as Magna Carta, but also what it represents to Miller as a reflection of human history: a time when the Roman Catholic Church was beginning to establish itself, when war, disease and superstition are rampant, and the first lights of the modern rational mind are beginning to twinkle in the arts, sciences and humanities for the first time in the West since the fall of the Roman empire. For Miller, this is where Canticle really begins.
9.) Through the rediscovery and innovation upon the classical humanist arts of Rome and Greece, these three luminaries established the enlightened Western mind and scientific discourses which enabled the development of modern civilization.
10.) Three of the most distinguished atomic scientists of the modern nuclear age, whose united work and distinguished research created the first atomic bombs sewn into the political and social fabric of history. Texts bearing their names, among other scientists, are discovered by Thon Taddeo while rifling through the library of preserved pre-holocaust texts.
11.) See R.D. Mullen’s article “Dialect, Grapholect…” for a comprehensive analysis of “Riddleyspeak.”
12.) Riddleyspeak: “connexion man” (Hoban 53).
13.) Not only is the theatre box one of the oldest forms of entertainment in Western culture, the characters of Punch and Judy show are one of the few puppet shows that have attained celebrity status through centuries of performance in both Europe and America. See Illustration 1 “Punch” (Doherty 2009).
14.) Riddleyspeak: “some poasyum” (Hoban Glossary)
15.) Apart: Sex is moot point in both novels, as Riddley is twelve years old, and the cloistered halls of Leibowitz do not feature any women as protagonist characters. When mentioned at all, conjugation is only featured as a passing reference to motherhood or as a functional component of survival.
16.) The reason for Benjamin’s longevity is never fully revealed by Miller, but Lewis Fried contends that Benjamin is a reflection of the archetypical wandering Jew, commonly found in many thematically religious texts that deal with the Diaspora and its related literature. The Poet muses in “Fiat Lux” that perhaps the consumption of an irradiated blue headed goat’s milk is the secret to eternal life.
17.) Heat Death: An era in the projected history of the universe in which all of the stored fuels and energies found in stars, and other natural phenomenon of the cosmos, achieve equilibrium and no kinetic forces are at work to continue the expansion and modulation of space. The essential feature of Hegelian synthesis is reaching an equilibrium or compromise among competing forces or ideologies.
18.) Lat. “Thinking Machine”
19.) “Sulfur,” which is known as “yellow stoans” in the world of Riddley Walker is the volatile element which has a sickly yellow pallor and scent, is one of the three essential ingredients of gunpowder. The “1 Big 1” or “atom bomb,” is the abstract goal of he characters in Riddley Walker that seek power. (Hoban, Riddley Walker, included glossary in Kent State Edition.)
20.) “Fiat Voluntas Tua”
21.) The mysterious hypothetical origin of the universe, in which all of the matter found in the cosmos was suddenly created and sown outwards into space-time.
22.) See Illustration 2 “The Arch of Brother Francis” Doherty 2009
23.) “Dog Eat Dog”
24.) The Terminator, (1984 Orion Pictures), Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991 Metro-Goldwyn Mayer), and Terminator III: Rise of the Machines (2003 Warner Bros.)Dir. James Cameron, Jonathon Mostow
25.) The Watchmen (2009 Fox/Warner Brothers Pictures and Distribution) directed by Zack Snyder, based on the original graphic novel The Watchmen by Alan Moore and David Gibbons, DC Comics 1987
26.) Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, “The Humans are Dead,” featured on The Flight of the Conchords’ The Distant Future (Sub Pop 2007) Best viewed at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64
