Agents of History: 'A Canticle for Leibowitz' (Walter M. Miller Jr., 1959)

A review of ‘A Canticle For Leibowitz’, by Walter Michael Miller Jr. (1959)

600 years into the future, a monk is fasting in the deserts of the American Southwest. Dazed by sun, starvation and the weight of sin, he stumbles into an old ruin and finds a shopping list predating an ancient nuclear war. This discovery will restart the cycle of history.

A Canticle For Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic epic following the monks of a Cistercian monastery through three distinct eras— roughly 600, 1000, and 1500 years after a devastating nuclear war and the era of anti-intellectual pogroms it spawned (the so-called ‘Simplification’). The Order of St. Leibowitz is dedicated to the preservation of pre-war knowledge. Its monks must struggle to maintain this mission in the face of an evolving world beset by warfare, chauvinism, and their own theological disputes.

The cycle of recurrence is a major theme of the novel. Familiar old-world phenomena are transplanted to the new. Dark ages, Renaissances, and the tension between settled and nomadic peoples all occur across this neo-medieval America, concluding in a new modernity punctuated by another nuclear exchange. Yet Miller’s worldbuilding is not just a rehash of history. Each event is arrived at by its own convoluted chains of cause and effect. His portrayal of history highlights the tension between agency and complexity.

Starting in a tiny desert hermitage, the first section follows a novice monk as he painstakingly copies and illuminates ancient schematics far beyond his ability to understand. The world around him is Stone Age, with a few pockets of medieval complexity scattered across the vast continent. Much of the population is still plagued with deformities and illness from the lingering fallout. Yet despite this desolation, despite the intellectual ineptitude of both the world and this young novice, his multi-decadal work still manages to be of historical significance. In a world of such simplicity, the willpower of one (in many ways mediocre) man is enough to shift the arc of history.

Fast forward 500 years and complex kingdoms have emerged, gunpowder has been rediscovered and the struggle between church and state is slowly being won by the latter. In this political flux, the Order of St. Leibowitz persists. Though its archives are important for the re-emerging world, the will of anyone outside polymath mavericks and imperial ‘mayors’ is increasingly lost in the noise. Change happens faster and on a much greater scale, but the ability of any one person to have agency over it is slipping away.

In the final component, history is seemingly automatic, with technological superpowers acting as emergent agents beyond the control of their constituent communities. The Order of St. Leibowitz still exists but as a footnote in a space-faring civilization rapidly heading towards another nuclear Armageddon. Its monks can only watch and pray as the future they have helped build comes crashing down.

As complexity grows, the ability of individual or communal agency to control its direction diminishes. Despite technological advances, the wisdom to moderate its destructive potential fades—or is rendered impotent. Miller Jr.’s speculative history feels especially relevant to the present struggles with climate change. Greater power does not imply greater agency. Despite knowing more, we seem less able to moderate excess than cultures of much less complexity. If our civilization falls to this inertia, will there be similar monks to preserve our knowledge through a Simplification event? And would this prevent us from repeating the same mistakes?

-Ben Shread-Hewitt