SMITH, CHRISTINA JEAN. What Disappears and What Remains

the "Flame Deluge". The manner in which his murderers (or predators) kill him illuminatesthe desperation, hunger and lack of sentimentality, which Miller believes is the hallmark ofany primitive, simple life. Brother Francis' death stands in stark contrast to his cloisteredlife in the abbey, a relatively protected haven where he spent countless and, arguably, dulldays in the service of the relics. Once he completes his illuminated copy of the Leibowitzblueprint and ventures into the primitive landscape, his death at the hands of the malformed,beastly innocent "children of the Pope" is swift and relatively merciful. And after his death,as one "child's" eager exclamations ("Eat! Eat! Eat!" p. 96) lead us to believe, Millerindicates that Francis' body is ingested and digested by the bodies of his simpleton killers.His body, post-mortem, serves as a metaphor for the overarching cycle of this era in which helives - one that is simple in its understanding of the world around it, but one that is beginningto grasp small fragments of knowledge and use those fragments to build towards a ScientificRenaissance. And Miller uses his death to underscore this phase of the techno-primitivecycle.Miller assigns a slower, less merciful death to Dom Paulo in Fiat Lux; he dies ofmore modern ailments: old age and worry - ulcers that eat slowly at his health and his holdon the church. And, as with Francis' abrupt death at the hands of his predators, Miller usesPaulo's sedate, acidic unraveling to denote the next phase in the techno-primitivemachinations of this post-apocalyptic society - a society that is making the transition between13