Last Silence

He wasn't writing a book against his faith (it was a ploy; he fooled the Japanese, and he who wrote the account).

Rod's acceptance of a name not his own, and from a man he didn't know, has great metaphorical implications.  I argue that he had done this beforehand, both in name (as a representative of the Society of Jesus) and in the comparisons of his face to that of whom he loved most dear.  He didn't know the real man in either case (this is his claim, not my own).

And what an honest ending!  Maybe it's not as easy as saying definitively he was right or wrong.  Maybe either way was right for him (each had its own benefits).  Indeed, he came to know his God better for his apostasy, in a way he never would have had he not trampled.

Nathan's