Epilogue, Meditatio Pauperis in Solitudine Summary and Analysis

The Epilogue of the book contains quite a bit of essay about contemplative orders and day-to-day life at Gethsemani. It also tells the happy news of Bob Lax's conversion and, finally, of Merton's simple profession—his permanent vows that kept him a Trappist until he died in 1968.

The sections of the epilogue were obviously written at different times with several months in between. They seem disjointed and superfluous. Merton is happy in his cloister. One doesn't doubt that. The reader learns nothing else about him from the seventeen-page epilogue. It might have been better to leave the story without it.