SMITH, CHRISTINA JEAN. What Disappears and What Remains

Chapter OneThe Deterministic Techno-Primitive Landscape ofWalter Miller's A Canticle for LeibowitzWalter Miller's 1959 A Canticle for Leibowitz was published at a time when Americafound itself both horrified and enchanted with the possibilities of mass destruction via theatom bomb. Technological advancements made our everyday lives easier but also enhancedthe weaponry of governments around the world. Inherent in these advances, in this growingarsenal of ever-larger bombs, was a threat that haunted us: the threat of reciprocal action,"mutually assured destruction." Indeed, Miller himself, Amanda Cockrell says, "returnedfrom World War II to a world that now contained a weapon and a technology so fearsome itcould melt the ground and remake the human body into something that could only bespeculated about" (21).Thus, in his science-fiction masterpiece, Miller speaks to the fears of this Americathat is just beginning to grapple with its own hypothetical demise. Just fifteen years removedfrom the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, A Canticle for Leibowitz speaks for a societythat is struggling to incorporate the realities of atomic technology into its collectiveconsciousness and to work through the guilt and sense of fatalism that any nation, which hasdestroyed a vast number of people, must face.The novel is broken into three main sections: Fiat Homo ("Let there be man"), FiatLux ("Let there be light") and Fiat Voluntas Tua ("Let thy will be done"). Fiat Homo is set600 years after the "Flame Deluge" - a catastrophic nuclear war that destroys modern9