Chương 3: The Cure to Loneliness- A relation to the Divine
Ickapoo eventually overcomes solitude through a romance through a human companion. However, aside from relations with temporal, finite beings to overcome solitude, one may also connect to the Divine. Graham Greene's novels reveal God as an infinite being who reveals His hidden presence to the characters through fate and destiny He orchestrates.
In Graham Greene’s the End of the Affair, God is shown to be an omniscient presence whom the characters fail to escape even though they try to pretend that he does not exist. Bendrix is deeply jealous of Henry, whose wife Sarah had an affair with him in the past. However he could never persuade Sarah to leave Henry for him even though it was a loveless marriage. He hires a private detective Savage to find out what had happened in the two year interval since she had stopped seeing him, and discovers she has since had an affair with another man.
Sarah for one is a woman who desperately does not want to believe in God but discovers that she cannot escape his presence. It turns out that she had prayed to God to keep Bendrix alive when a bomb blast took place in the building they were having an affair in. She had prayed that if God kept Bendrix alive, she would stop seeing him. Indeed Bendrix emerges alive in an answered prayer to her and she has to stop seeing him and start believing in God even though it was not what she wanted.
Sarah had told God to make her believe in him even though she did not by keeping Bendrix alive. It turns out that the God she was trying so desperately to escape did exist by answering her prayer and keeping Bendrix alive though she did not wish to believe in him as she was committing adultery which she thought was only between her and God. It turns out that the omniscient God did apprehend her being deeply mired in sin and did care about her purity, sending the signal that she should end the affair by keeping Bendrix alive in response to her prayer.
Years later when Sarah dies, Sarah’s mother discloses to Bendrix that Sarah had been baptized a Catholic even though she did not know it herself. This explains her bursts of religiosity even though she for most of her life had thought herself agnostic.
Bendrix himself while being deeply in love with Sarah could never quite separate love from hate. He hated Henry for being able to keep Sarah even though he had long ceased to have any physical desire for her and had lulled the marriage into a pallid and loveless one. He hated Henry for being able to hold on to Sarah only by virtue of a marriage vow which he had held on to without bringing any sparks to the marriage which was what prompted Sarah to seek love outside the marriage in the first place.
Bendrix describes himself as a deeply jealous man. Throughout his affair with Sarah he cannot cease feeling jealous towards Henry for possessing Sarah even though he had long ceased feeling passion for her or igniting passion in the marriage. It was this jealousy that led Bendix to hire a private detective to find out if Sarah had gotten intimate with another man since she had abruptly stopped seeing her two years ago
. It turned out she indeed was seeing a colleague of Henry’s whose wife had run away with a civil servant and they had not taken very long to fall in love. Bendrix is jealous that Sarah seems such a loose and fickle woman, though it is revealed in her diaries that it is Bendrix she really loved.
As a result the characters in Graham Greene’s novel apprehend the existence of God, even though they do not love God and in fact, hate God for not allowing them to love each other. For Sarah and Bendrix, it is the simple marriage vow to Henry which keeps them from getting together, but Sarah apprehends that what she is doing is sinful when she prays to God upon the bomb blast that her vow matters only to him but she will cease her adultery if God keeps Bendrix alive.
Indeed God reveals his presence and existence by keeping Bendrix alive and from then on, Sarah begins to fear God and apprehend that he exists though she does not necessarily love him and indeed hates him for keeping her apart from the man she truly loves.
Eventually Sarah sees Henry’s colleague Richard in another affair and another adulterous relationship but when Richard asks him to leave Henry for her she tells him she loves another, who is of course, Bendrix. The irony is thus heavy, while Bendrix suffocates all the love out of Sarah by being jealous and possessive all the time because of the guilt that drives him in an adulterous relationship it is he that Sarah truly loves but is kept apart from by law and by God’s justice.
The characters of the novel eventually begin to apprehend the existence of God and understand the nature of his laws even though they do not necessarily love God because it is his law that keeps them apart from their true passions. Sarah and Bendrix are kept apart by the hollow marriage vow that keeps Sarah and Henry together even though the passion has long since evaporated from their marriage and their marriage has lost its vitality.
Often the characters question if free will is an illusion. They think that God has predestined them to be trapped in sin by arranging that they fall in love in an adulterous relationship which they prefer over the legitimate marriage. At one point Bendrix questions if God had arranged him to be an agent of the devil so that saints such as Henry could emerge pure and untarnished by the lust of adultery.
Indeed he argues that if God can choose and appoint his saints, the devil can likewise choose and appoint his saint and Bendrix feels that he has been appointed by the devil to destroy Henry’s marriage and to be kept from his true love Sarah. At one point Bendrix describes himself as the demon speaking to Henry when he denies that Henry is a fool when he knows he has been taking him for one by cuckolding him.
At the end of the novel when Sarah dies Bendrix does learn to believe in God and fear him though he does not necessarily love God and indeed hates him for punishing Sarah for her adultery through death and keeping them apart though they were truly in love when Sarah was alove.
The novel ends with Bendrix uttering that he has no doubt that God exists and is a God who sends justice and retribution for sins while he does not love this God and indeed hates this God for keeping him from what he most desires.
Indeed God’s justice is inescapable for each of the characters of the novel even though they try to ignore God at various points and pretend that he does not exist. God’s justice is indeed, inexorable and something they cannot flee from.
Throughout the novel the characters are tormented by guilt for engaging in sin and adultery. Bendrix destroys the relationship by manifesting this guilt in jealousy of Henry and seeking to possess Sarah all the time and being jealous of her past, present and future. Sarah on the other hand, is led to believe the bomb blast is retribution for their adultery and prays to God to relieve her of her punishment by promising to turn away from sin if God keeps Bendrix alive.
Indeed uncannily God responds by keeping Bendrix alive and Sarah is forced to turn away from her adulterous ways even though her marriage has become pallid and loveless and it is Bendrix rather than Henry whom she truly loves.
At one point Sarah tells God she hates Henry for being the factor that keeps her away from running away with Bendrix even though he has long since stopped physically desiring her or kindling any sparks in their marriage.
It is at moment like those that she feels she does not seem to have free will and is rather a puppet of God because she feels she is bound by his invisible laws to steer her away from what is most precious to her,
There is a thin line between love and hate in the novel. Bendrix tells us many times that his love for Sarah came closer to hatred for abandoning him after the bomb blast and for not gathering the courage to leave Henry even though their passion in the marriage has long faded.
Sarah hates Henry for being the factor that keeps her away from finding true love though she fears the God whose law she must honour by staying true to Henry because God had sought her out and shown her that he existed through inflicting the bomb blast where Bendrix and she were having the affair and securing her promise not to continue in adultery.
God’s justice is thus inexorable and inescapable for all the characters in the novel. Bendrix is eventually punished for his adultery by having the woman who he loves most, Sarah taken away from his once through abandonment after the bomb blast and second through her death.
While Sarah had come to apprehend and appreciate the existence of God, she too did not escape his relentless justice for her two affairs outside marriage as she eventually meets with an early death.
Hence the God of Greene’s world is a God that all the characters come to fear though they do not necessarily love Him because He keeps them from their most intimate desires because he construes them as sin and punishes and distributes justice accordingly. Indeed, all the characters of the novel express their hatred for God and his wrath at one point or another because they are kept from their true passions due to his law and his swift justice in punishing those who fail to keep God’s standards and God’s law.
The attitude of Greene towards the biblical God is thus ambivalent. Greene depicts the biblical God as a God of justice who sees to the swift retribution of sins but does not seem to depict the biblical God as a merciful God of compassion because the reasons they are kept from their passions seems to be a hollow law which preserves a marriage which has long since gone stale with Henry. There is little doubt that Greene believes that the biblical God exists, as all his characters come to apprehend through the dealing of justice in their lives.
On the other hand, it would be false to say the Biblical God that Greene depicts is free of compassion and mercy. He spares Bendrix’s life on the condition that Sarah turns away from sin, indeed, God secures this promise from her by keeping Bendrix alive and thus steering her away from adultery.
The conflict at the heart of the novel is thus the temporary satiation of desires at the expense of the eternal preservation of one’s sanctity with God which the characters willingly forgo. God is merciful to those who preserve his law, as He demonstrated through his preservation of Bendrix. But for those who flout his laws repeatedly, as Sarah does when she goes on to have another affair outside marriage, the punishment is swift. Sarah dies early, much to the grief of all her lovers.
On the other hand, Greene’s ambivalence towards the biblical God cannot be denied as Greene seems to be implying that this biblical God would rather preserve a marriage which has become a lie, hollow and empty rather than allow the characters to pursue their true passions.
The unfolding of Sarah’s life is a tragedy for all who know her because she cannot escape her sham marriage and repeatedly falls into sin by trying to escape her marriage which has become a falsehood and false bond for her which she is swiftly punished for. According to Greene thus the biblical God does not seem to allow his characters to authenticate their desires, or live their lives true to themselves.
Indeed God demands that marriage vows be kept, without considering the state or authenticity of the marriage. Greene thus seems to imply that while adultery is a sin and the punishment for adultery is inexorable and swift, God does not seem to heed the authenticity of the marriage being violated or the true passion that is destroyed by God seeing to the punishment of his laws through swiftly punishing adultery by having Sarah meet an early death and destroying the affair between Sarah and Bendrix.
Greene thus seems to depict God as an austere and jealous God who distributes his justice and retribution swiftly on those who violate his commandments but seems to imply that God does not heed the conditions which lead to the violation of his commandments. As a result, all the characters of Greene’s novel fear God but do not love him and indeed hate God for keeping them from their truest desires.
The End of the Affair, thus while being a religious novel seems to be ambivalent overall about religion. While it presents God as an undeniable presence, it does not seem to present that God as a character that the characters of the novel love because they cannot live with the consequences of their actions. What in ultimate however is the certitude of God’s existence that all the characters of the novel come to know through the consequences of their actions. The biblical God is someone all the characters come to know, though not necessarily love as He keeps them from their innermost desires.
Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock juxtaposes the justice of law and Ida’s sense of right and wrong with a more religious sense of justice and issues of salvation and damnation in relating the tale of Pinkie, who seems from the beginning of the novel bound for hell. Yet Pinkie, depraved and evil as he is, is a product of the poverty and deprivation from which he emerges, he has experienced a life of squalor and poverty from birth and is such devoid of any human sense of compassion and mercy due to the keen sense of injustice dealt to him from very young. The brassy world of Ida, the easy sex and world of lovers and cars and happiness is a far cry from the oppressive poverty that Pinkie who has experienced nothing but deprivation and poverty since young. His catholic sensibility and his disgust towards sex as something which is intrinsically evil put him in a greater religious sensibility and grander metaphysical dimension from Ida who seems shallow with her trust of nothing but the senses, the Ouija board and empiricism. At the heart of the novel is thus a conflict between 2 spheres of justice – the grander narrative of salvation, damnation and redemption according to the Catholic beliefs of Pinky and Rose and the shallow empirical world of Ida and her relentless pursuit of justice according to the law.
“He wouldn’t do me any harm.”
“ You’re young. You don’t know things like I do,”
“There’s things you don’t know.” She brooded darkly by the bed while the woman argued on: a God wept in a garden and cried upon a cros Molly Carthew went to everlasting fire.
“I know one thing you don’t. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn’t teach you that at school.”
Rose didn’t answer, the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods- Good and Evil. The woman could tell her nothing she didn’t know about these – she knew by tests as clear as mathematics that Pinkie was evil – what did it matter in that case whether he was right or wrong? (Greene, 1938:199)
Yet Rose would rather be damned with Pinkie than choose the secular shallowness of Ida.The morning after the wedding, she wakes up in Pinkie's room:
She . . . was about to mutter her quick "Our Father" and "Hail Marys" while she dressed, when she remembered . . . What was the good of praying now? . . . she had chosen her side: if they damned him they'd got to damn her, too.
He was going to damn himself, but she was going to show them that they couldn't damn him without damning her too. There was nothing he could do, she wouldn't do: she felt capable of sharing any murder . . . she wouldn't let him go into that darkness alone. (Greene, 1938:262)
Thus juxtaposed is the secular empiricism of Ida Arnold and the intense religious sensibilities of Pinkie and Rose – it is legal justice that Ida seeks in seeking revenge for Hale’s murder but Pinkie and Rose are spiritually awakened to a different kind of justice – a divine justice in which there is salvation and damnation and the mercies of God are infinitely more mysterious than the earthbound legal justice as a priest explains to Rose carrying Pinkie’s child at the end of the book.
“You’re young. That’s what it is.” Ida said, “romantic. I was like you once. You’ll grow out of it. All you need is a bit of experience.” The Nelson Place eyes stared back at her without understanding. Driven to her hold the small animal peered out at the bright and breezy world; in the hold were murder, copulation, extreme poverty, fidelity and the love and fear of God, but the small animal had not the knowledge to deny that only in the glare and open world outside was something people called experience” (Greene, 1938:123)
The world of Idea Arnold is just s superficial and breezy one in which there is no suffering and intense experience of religious sensibilities – herein lies Greene’s critique of middle class morals – the materialism of Ida Arnold, her superficial dependence on the oujia board for spiritual truths, lacks the intensity and depth of the deeply Catholic sensibility of Rose and Pinkie.
As mentioned earlier, for Ida, life is “sunlight on brass bedposts, Ruby port, the leap of the heart when the outsider you have backed passes the post and the colours go bobbing up. Life is poor Fred’s mouth pressed down on hers in a taxi vibrating with the engine parade. There was something dangerous and remorseless in her optimism.” (Greene, 1938: 36) Ida’s one dimensional view of the world thus lacks an awareness of mortality and the greater metaphysical environment: “Nothing could ever make her believe that one day, she too, like Fred would be where the worms….Her mind couldn’t take that track, she could only go a short way before the points automatically shifted and set her vibrating down the accustomed line, the season ticket line marked by desirable residence and advertisements of cruises and small fenced boskages for rural love, “ (Greene, 1938:36)
In contrast to the bright breezy and superficial world of Ida Arnold is the darker and religiously intense world of Pinkie Brown: “ I’ll tell you what life is. It’s gaol, it’s not knowing where to get some money, Worms and cataract, cancer. You hear ‘em shrieking from the upper windows- children being born. It’s dying slowly.” (Greene, 1938:226)
Brighton Rock as a novel thus complexifies our ideas of worldly justice and ideas of freedom and determinism- Pinkie is indeed evil and a criminal but he is also a product of his upbringing and environment, if Rose feels she must be damned with Pinkie it is because she feels more compassion for their similar background rooted in poverty than for the shallow bourgeoisie legal justice of Ide Arnold. Brighton Rock is thus a complex examination of how metaphysical and divine justice, which is explained as more merciful and mysterious than legal justice to Rose at the end of the novel, contrasts with the empirical, logical but also superficial and entirely rational justice lacking divine mercy and compassion for the at produce the evil that Pinkie Brown has become.
Why [...] do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn't had time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, while on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you didn't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed. Book 1, Part 1, ch 1, sect. 5)
Scobie thus loves Sierra Leone for what it is in all its fallen-ness and mean-ness and imperfection. Heaven remains firmly on the other side of death while Sierra Leone was fallen, inadequate, imperfect, but which Scobie loved anyway because it was so honest and without pretense.
Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast. (Book 1, Part 1, ch. 2, sect. 2)
In this passage Scobie describes his feelings of pity and responsibility for his wife Louise, she is not perfect and she is unattractive, it is this unattractive nature of hers that stirs pity and responsibility in Scobie though he has long ceased loving her, he feels enough responsibility toward her to borrow money from Yusef to send her to South Africa after which he begins his doomed affair with Helen Rolt whom he falls in love with again out of pity because she is recently widowed and she reminds him of his daughter, eventually the sense of pity and responsibility towards both Helen Rolt and Louise will lead him to take his life as he cannot bring himself out of adultery and cannot bring himself to divorce Louise as it is a fatal sin for a Catholic like himself.
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practises. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation. (Book 1, Part 1, ch. 2, sect. 4)
It is thus because Scobie has a conscience that he experiences despair because he knows the gravity of his sin unlike the evil man who is without conscience and always has the hope that sin has no consequence, it is Scobie’s conscience as a man of faith that convinces him of his damnation because of his acute sense of guilt from sinning while the evil man is always convinced of his flawlessness and never experiences any sense of failure because he does not have a moral bearing or ideals which he holds dear to him or a capacity for something greater, so it is Scobie’s goodwill and conscience which damns him and convinces him that his adultery will never be absolved by God.
The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and the philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. ( Book 1, Part 1, ch. 2, sect. 4)
It is thus Scobie’s kindness towards others as towards Louise he wishes to spare her from the truth that he no longer loves her, as he wishes to spare Helen Rolt from the truth that he cannot bring himself to divorce Louise and start again with her because it is a fatal sin for him as a Catholic to divorce. Thus he is entrapped in a deepening web of lies from which only suicide can set him free as his pity and responsibility towards both Louise and Helen Rolt makes it such that he cannot bring himself to hurt either or choose between the two and bring one of them to despair. He would rather sacrifice his own life like Christ than bring one of them to despair.
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, evil - or else an absolute ignorance. (Book 2, Part 1, ch. 1, sect. 3)
Scobie thus rationalizes that it is only extreme egotism that convinces a man he is without sin and thus happy or absolute ignorance like the evil man who is without conscience and thus lives without awareness of his sin and a fear of damnation that comes out of the consequences of sin.
People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person’s habitual misery. (Book 2, Part 1, ch. 2, sect. 3)
Again it is Scobie’s sense of pity and responsibility that leads him to view himself as a penitent savior for Louise and Helen Rolt’s misery, it is his sense of pity for Louise’s misery that makes him stay in the marriage, it is pity for Helen Rolt’s loneliness as a widow that leads him to begin his affair with her it takes courage on his part to constantly feel the need to engage and remove the misery of others from this terrible sense of pity he feels towards Louise and Helen Rolt.
"Pity smouldered like decay at his heart. He would never rid himself of it. He knew from experience how passion died away and how love went, but pity always stayed. Nothing ever diminished pity. The conditions of life nurtured it. There was only a single person in the world who was unpitiable, oneself." (Book 2, Part 3, ch. 1, sect.1)
The fatal flaw of Scobie is thus pity, he cannot bring himself to rid himself of pity towards Helen Rolt and Louise and the accompanying sense of responsibility which comes with it with which he can only envision suicide as an escape because he cannot bear to let either woman down.
He whispered, 'Oh God, I have deserted you. Do not desert me.' ( Book 2, Part 3, ch. 1, sect. 1)
Scobie thus feels a terrible sense of guilt from his adultery and feels that he has deserted God but feels in turn that God might not desert him out of the same kind of pity he demonstrates towards Louise and Helen Rolt.
God can wait, he thought: how can one love God at the expense of one of his creatures? Would a woman accept the love for which a child had to be sacrificed? (Book 2, Part 3, ch. 1, sect. 3)
Scobie thus rationalizes his sin of adultery – God would not allow him to love him at the expense of Helen Rolt like a mother loves a child to be sacrificed, this is again a terrible rationalization of his adultery just like he rationalized Christ’s atoning death was a suicide to comfort himself of committing the mortal sin of suicide.
He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return. (Book 2, Part 3, ch. 2, sect. 1)
Scobie is caught between two women whom he feels a deep sense of pity and responsibility towards and finds himself tangled in lies which he cannot absolve himself of and thus sees the need to escape the life of lies and acting through his suicide.
One must be reasonable, he told himself, and recognize that despair doesn't last (is that true?), that love doesn't last (but isn't that the very reason that despair does?)[...] (Book 3, Part 1, ch. 2, sect 2. )
Scobie again tries to rationalize that his despair towards offending God with his adultery will not last as love does not last either. Perhaps despair lasts only because love does not, because love towards a fellow human being is transient while despair towards separation from God is eternal.
You can look after yourself. You survive the cross every day. You can only suffer. You can never be lost. Admit that you must come second to these others.' And myself, he thought, [...] I must come last. (Book 3, Part 1, ch. 2, sect. 2)
Scobie rationalizes again that God can take care of himself from the crucifixions that occur to him daily and this somehow makes God in a subordinate position to sin.Clearly this is a nonsensical rationalization as was his rationalization that Christ’s death was a suicide to spare himself the guilt of his suicide.
Scobie thus commits suicide out of despair that he has let God down and that he wants to spare God from himself as well as the act that he cannot bring himself to let either Louise of Helen Rolt down. In the end Father Rank hints that though Scobie’s death was a suicide, his love of God that led him to commit suicide is what may eventually spare him from the wrath and damnation of God as it was a genuine desire to spare God from himself that leads him to kill himself.
In The Power and the Glory, the Catholic Church in Mexico is undergoing persecution and faces its last days as its priests are captured and executed or made to renounce their religious vows. In the story we follow the last days of the whiskey priest, who is fallen and sinful and has a problem with drinking and even succumbed to sins of the flesh and fathered a daughter. Yet it is his faith and heart for the downtrodden which redeems him, it is this fallen priest who is made a saint at the end of the novel because he persists in faith and wishes to redeem those around him by giving a dying gangster his confessional though this turns out to be a trap by the authorities to take him into custody and execute him.
Graham Greene shows how much bravery the whiskey priest has when he can forgive people that betray him. An example of this is when the Mestizo tells the whiskey priest that a fellow fugitive and gangster is in trouble and needs him to allow him to form a confession and blessing. The Mestizo has cunningly set up a trap that later costs the whiskey priest his life, but the whiskey priest forgives the Mestizo.. This is best shown when he eventually forgives and even prays for the Mestizo who betrayed him: "The priest waved his hand; he bore no grudge because he expected nothing else of anything human..." (Greene, 2004:198)This shows that that whiskey priest has a forgiving heart.
Graham Greene presents the whiskey priest as someone who puts others needs before his own. This is clearly evident when he goes to help the child's dying mother even though he knows that he will miss his boat:
But the stranger got up as though unwillingly he had been summoned to an occasion he couldn't pass by. He said sadly,
"It always seems to happen. Like this."
"You'll have a job not to miss the boat."
"I shall miss it," he said. (Greene, 2004:17)
Hence while the whiskey priest is a wretched sinner who has fathered a child with Maria, Brigitta and who incessantly drinks, we see there are redeeming sides of his character, such as his ability to forgive easily and his constant desire to help others.
On the other hand, the whiskey priest is deeply alcoholic. . First early in the novel when we first meet the whiskey priest and he reveals a flask of brandy from the side of his hip:
"I have a little brandy," the stranger said.
Mr. Tench regarded him sharply. "Where?"
The hollow man put his hand to his hip- ... (Greene, 2004: 11)
Also when the lieutenant asks the whiskey priest if he would like one final drink:
"I've brought you some brandy."
"Against the law?"
"Yes."
"It's very good of you." He took the small flask. (Greene, 2004:206)
However in opposition to notions of saintliness, the whiskey priest commits a mortal sin of having a sexual relationship with Maria and getting her pregnant, and later abandoning his daughter Brigitta:
"When you-know-what happened, I was proud. I thought the good days would come back. It's not everyone who's a priest's women. And the child... I thought you could do a lot for her. But you might as while be a thief for all the good..." (Greene, 2004: 79)
The whiskey priest has thus made use of Maria by having sex with her on a carnal impulse and then abandoning her to bring up Brigitta on her own, demonstrating that he is hardly a saint and that while he is capable of sometimes putting others needs before his own, he can at times and in this case be completely selfish and morally deplorable as he abandons responsibility for his own daughter to Maria who has suffered for years bringing up their illegitimate daughter Brigitta.
The priest feels though he wishes to escape the persecution by the lieutenant that he was still a servant to the Mexican people who he feels obliged to serve as their spiritual master.
“He had tried to escape, but he was like the King of a West African tribe, the slave of his people, who may not even lie down in case the winds should fail.” (Greene, 2004:13)
The lieutenant on the other hand feels that by purging the Church from Mexico he is doing the people of Mexico a great favour by ridding Mexico of an institution which is rich, corrupt and has not helped the poor.
“He would eliminate from their childhood everything which had made him miserable, all that was poor, superstitious, and corrupt.” (Greene, 2004:20)
Heat stood in the room like an enemy. But he believed against the evidence of his senses in the cold empty ether spaces. A radio was playing somewhere: music from Mexico City, or perhaps even from London or New York filtered into this obscure neglected state. It seemed to him like a weakness: this was his own land, and he would have walled it in with steel if he could, until he had eradicated from it everything which reminded him of how it had once appeared to a miserable child. He wanted to destroy everything: to be alone without any memories at all. (Greene: 2004:19)
Hence the lieutenant believes in the truth that nothing or absence rather than the transcendentals such as God and faith exist. His belief is violent and strong and described as steel. He wants to destroy faith and belief in the supernatural as a strong atheist but the strength of his belief against the supernatural and things unseen seems as irrational as the faith he has so much against and seems to be a kind of faith itself- a belief in the actuality of nothing and absence over the transcendental- this is the lieutenant’s unshakeable belief in the empirical over the transcendental. Greene however by using terms destroy and steel intimates what he truly thinks of the lieutenant’s beliefs: that these are destructive and nihilistic and cruel thoughts which imprison the true faith that is the ultimate truth. The fact that another priest turns up at the end of the novel shows that faith cannot ever be annihilated from the world despite the lieutenant’s efforts because as a true representation of the metaphysical state of the world, faith is bound to persist as while the lieutenant might want and wish to eliminate all traces of faith in humanity he cannot destroy the existence of God and the supernatural which is imminently real and accessible to those who possess faith in him.
Maria having known a darker side of the priest and the deadly irresponsibility he has by abandoning Brigitta and her is highly cynical of the priest’s bid to be a Martyr.She knows the priest for the ugly fornication he had used her for on a carnal impulse while defecting his responsibility as a father by abandoning both her and Brigitta.
“Suppose you die. You’ll be a martyr, won’t you? What kind of a martyr do you think you’ll make? It’s enough to make people mock.” (Greene: 2004:76)
One mustn't have human affections—or rather one must love every soul as if it were one's own child. The passion to protect must extend itself over a world—but he felt it tethered and aching like a hobbling animal to the tree trunk. He turned his mule south. (Greene: 2004:64)
The priest feels guilt over the daughter he has fathered and wishes on the other hand to extend this love he actually feels for his daughter to other members of the human race. In this we see the priest is redeemable through the love he feels for his daughter which he universalizes because of the guilt he feels at abandoning Brigitta and Maria. Hence we see the priest’s love for his daughter is what potentially redeems him even though he has been a heartless and rotten father.But the priest though he has an inclination to protect his daughter is weak to act on his higher impulses as he is described as a hobbling animal and turns his mule south indicating though he has higher impulses he acts in a way that is contrary to those higher impulses of universal love and love for his daughter.
The lieutenant said in a tone of fury: "Well, you're going to be a martyr—you've got that satisfaction." "Oh, no. Martyrs are not like me. They don't think all the time—if I had drunk more brandy I shouldn't be so afraid." (Greene: 2004:193)
The opposition between thinking and action is thus brought up by the priest in this passage but the priest underestimates himself. Though on the surface the priest is a rotten sinner his second thoughts always lead him to doing good as he helps the Mestizo and the child’s dying mother. Hence the priest is capable of doing more good than he is aware of and is actually worthy of the title of martyr and saint at the end of the novel though he has committed mortal sin by having a child through illicit fornication and drinking heavily all his life.
The priest sheds all religious pretensions before the lieutenant and confesses that he does not comprehend a single thing about God’s ways and mercies. He believes humanity is so fallen God may abhor every single human being that comes before him.
“I don’t know a thing about the mercy of God: I don’t know how awful the human heart looks to Him.” (Greene, 2004: 194)
On the morning of his death the priest feels that he has let God down and has been a disappointment to God because he has been such a wretched sinner and not lived up to the ideals of priesthood by fathering a child through carnal impulses and then abandoning the child and mother and being an alcoholic all his life. He then truly feels, on his execution day, that only one thing had truly mattered, to be a good person and blameless before God, but just as the judgment of Pinkie in Brighton Rock was ambivalent, so is the judgment of the priest in the Power and the Glory because the priest has also helped people and has a heart for serving others and helping the downtrodden and God’s forsaken.
“He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint.” (Greene, 2004:209)
He dreamed that the priest whom they had shot that morning was back in the house dressed in the clothes his father had lent him and laid out stiffly for burial. The boy sat beside the bed and his mother read out of a very long book all about how the priest had acted in front of the bishop the part of Julius Caesar: there was a fish basket at her feet, and the fish were bleeding, wrapped in her handkerchief. He was very bored and very tired and somebody was hammering nails into a coffin in the passage. Suddenly the dead priest winked at him—an unmistakable flicker of the eyelid, just like that. (Greene, 2004: 219-220)
Greene examines reactions to the priest’s death and in the young boy’s dream Greene enacts a resurrection of the priest: The priest lives on in the boy’s mind even though they have executed him and taken his mortal life. The priest is likened to Christ as Julius Caesar’s initials like Jesus Christ are J.C. and there is the reference to the feeding of the five thousand with the references to fish and their multiplication. Hence despite all evidences to the contrary, the lieutenant has failed to eliminate faith from Mexico as the priest lives on in the boy’s mind and seems to be resurrected as an image of martyrdom and sacred magic. The priest has come alive perhaps not mortally but as an image of sacred mystery and miracles in the imagination of the young boy and hence as Christ does is resurrected in the hearts and minds of his followers as an indwelling leader through the holy spirit which lives on in the minds of the followers of Christ even though he is not physically present on earth. Thus Greene has examined the nature of the inexhaustibility of the Church though the lieutenant has strived to eliminate all physical traces of the church the church is ultimately transcendental and lives on as a spiritual presence and an image of Christ that lives on in the minds and hearts of his followers even though Christ is no longer physically present on earth. Christ has always been a supernatural and otherworldly presence as he is the son of God and origin of the world.
Hence, aside from a relation to finite beings in a temporal world, one could also relate to the Divine, infinite, existing outside space and time and revealing Himself through fate and destiny.
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