Bridge of San Luis Rey and the Problem of Evil

The discussion of the Lisbon earthquake as it relates to the problem of evil, or the idea of how the seemingly random evil and cruel nature of the world can be reconciled with the idea of a benevolent God, reminded me of the book The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which is closely related with this philosophical question. The book is by American writer Thornton Wilder, who is best known for this novel and his play Our Town. The book is set in colonial South American, and concerns a monk named Brother Juniper who investigates a tragedy that occurred when an old Incan bridge over a gorge broke and killed 5 people who were crossing it. Juniper investigates the incident to determine why God might have chosen to make the bridge break at that moment and kill these seemingly innocent people. Most of the book is concerned with details of the lives of the various characters who died on the bridge. The lives of the characters are found to be interrelated through various coincidences throughout their lives. The random deaths of these people weaves an interesting interesting narrative that Juniper unravels, but fails to provide obvious reasons for their deaths. The monk even attempts to quantify their various virtues and vices to determine why they were killed, but the results seem inconclusive. At the end of the novel, it is revealed that the Church banned and burned Brother Juniper's book for its heretical exploration and killed Juniper himself. This adds an additional similarity to Candide in its criticism of the Church. I thought it was interesting to compare this work to Candide and how they both deal with the problem of evil. If anyone is looking for something to read and finds this theme of the problem of evil interesting, I'd recommend the Bridge of San Luis Rey for a quick, interesting read.