SOURCE: Williams, Mark B. “Towards Reconciliation.” In Endō Shūsaku: A Literature of Reconciliation, pp. 25-57. London: Routledge, 1999.

In the following essay, Williams explores Endō's use of character and technique in what Williams maintains is “a consistent search for reconciliation of the self.”

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

(Hamlet, Act 2, sc. ii)

We have tacitly assumed, for some centuries past, that there is no relation between literature and theology. This is not to deny that literature—I mean, again, primarily works of the imagination—has been, is, and probably always will be judged by some moral standards...