All spoilers are unmarked in Fridge pages. You Have Been Warned!
Fridge Brilliance
- In Roman Catholicism, the Latin phrase Sic transit gloria mundi ("Thus passes the glory of the world") has traditionally been invoked in reference the transitory nature of life and earthly honors. Which makes the last spoken lines uttered in the novel, Sic transit mundus ("Thus passes the world"), all the more poignant, for how this is consigned to the entire planet, and with much greater finality.
- Assuming that the Wandering Jew/Benjamin is Leibowitz himself, even if he's long since abandoned that identity, it might seem contrived that he would mark an entrance towards an old, half-buried shelter for Brother Francis to find in Fiat Homo. One which so happens to include the remains of Leibowitz's wife, Emma/Emily. Yet it works twofold.
- The site contains valuable pre-Deluge relics untouched by the centuries. Given how most ruins by then had either been lost to nature, or been picked clean, this would be miraculous enough for the Church to elevate Leibowitz to sainthood, thus granting the abbey even more legitimacy in upholding its key mission.
- Enough time would have passed that by the time Benjamin/Leibowitz first found the shelter, what's left of Emma/Emily's corpse would have been almost unrecognizable. By discreetly pushing Francis, and the abbey, to confirm that it really is his wife, he could finally put her memory to rest, once and for all, along with his past.
