The theme of order versus chaos, or meaning versus meaninglessness, is one that runs throughout The Name of the Rose. William of Baskerville is a man of reason devoted to the then-new ideas of Roger Bacon and William of Occam. This makes him somewhat of an oddity in a medieval setting in which many characters rely on faith, tradition, or superstition in their interpretation of the world. William sets out to solve the mystery of the abbey’s serial deaths using logic and pursues a trail of clues that appear to follow a pattern corresponding to the Book of Revelation. In the end, however, this pattern turns out to be a red herring and William is disillusioned by the fact that he has solved the mystery through a mistaken line of reasoning, helped along by chance. Each of the signs that William and Adso work to interpret in order to understand the abbey, which William regards as a microcosm of the world, have many potential meanings—as well as the potential to bear no relevant meaning at all. The abbey’s library, supposedly the greatest in Christendom, is a revered storehouse of signs, symbols, learning, and meaning; its very layout, modeled on the map of the known world, speaks to the sense of an elegant order to the universe: a divine order. As the library is engulfed by the fire that will eventually destroy the entire abbey, William reflects that there may be, in fact, no order to the universe at all, even leaving up in the air the question of whether God does or does not exist. Adso, remembering these ultimately ambiguous events as an old man, describes having attempted for years to decipher the manuscript he pieced together from the scattered scraps of books that were all that was left of the great library. On the threshold of death, however, he remains unconvinced that there is any meaning or order either to this reconstruction or to the tale he has told.