Power and the Glory (Greene)

The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene, 1940
Penguin Group USA
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780142437308


Summary
In a poor, remote section of southern Mexico, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest strives to overcome physical and moral cowardice in order to find redemption. (From the publisher.)

This is the second of four in what are considered Graham Greene's explicitiy Catholic novels. The other three are Brighton Rock (1938), The Heart of the Matter (1948), and The End of the Affair (1951).

Author Bio
• Birth—October 2, 1904
• Where—Berkhamstd, England, UK
• Death—April 3, 1991
• Where—Vevey, Switzerland
• Education—Oxford University
• Awards—Hawthornden Prize; Companion
   of Honour; Chevalier of the Legion of
   Honour; Order of Merit.


Known for his espionage thrillers set in exotic locales, Graham Greene is the writer who launched a thousand travel journalists. But although Greene produced some unabashedly commercial works—he called them "entertainments," to distinguish them from his novels—even his escapist fiction is rooted in the gritty realities he encountered around the globe. "Greeneland" is a place of seedy bars and strained loyalties, of moral dissolution and physical decay.

Greene spent his university years at Oxford "drunk and debt-ridden," and claimed to have played Russian roulette as an antidote to boredom. At age 21 he converted to Roman Catholicism, later saying, "I had to find a religion...to measure my evil against." His first published novel, The Man Within, did well enough to earn him an advance from his publishers, but though Greene quit his job as a London Times subeditor to write full-time, his next two novels were unsuccessful. Finally, pressed for money, he set out to write a work of popular fiction. Stamboul Train (also published as The Orient Express) was the first of many commercial successes.

Throughout the 1930s, Greene wrote novels, reviewed books and movies for the Spectator, and traveled through eastern Europe, Liberia, and Mexico. One of his best-known works, Brighton Rock, was published during this time; The Power and the Glory, generally considered Greene's masterpiece, appeared in 1940. Along with The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair, they cemented Greene's reputation as a serious novelist—though George Orwell complained about Greene's idea "that there is something rather distingué in being damned; Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only."

During World War II, Greene was stationed in Sierra Leone, where he worked in an intelligence capacity for the British Foreign Office under Kim Philby, who later defected to the Soviet Union. After the war, Greene continued to write stories, plays, and novels, including The Quiet American, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, and The Captain and the Enemy. For a time, he worked as a screenwriter for MGM, producing both original screenplays and scripts adapted from his fiction.

He also continued to travel, reporting from Vietnam, Haiti, and Panama, among other places, and he became a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy in Central America. Some biographers have suggested that his friendships with Communist leaders were a ploy, and that he was secretly gathering intelligence for the British government. The more common view is that Greene's leftist leanings were part of his lifelong sympathy with the world's underdogs—what John Updike called his "will to compassion, an ideal communism even more Christian than Communist. Its unit is the individual, not any class."

But if Greene's politics were sometimes difficult to decipher, his stature as a novelist has seldom been in doubt, in spite of the light fiction he produced. Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, and R. K. Narayan paid tribute to his work, and William Golding prophesied: "He will be read and remembered as the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety."

Extras
• Greene's philandering ways were legendary; he frequently visited prostitutes and had several mistresses, including Catherine Walston, who converted to Catholicism after reading The Power and the Glory and wrote to Greene asking him to be her godfather. After a brief period of correspondence, the two met, and their relationship inspired Greene's novel The End of the Affair.

• Greene was a film critic, screenwriter, and avid moviegoer, and critics have sometimes praised the cinematic quality of his style. His most famous screenplay was The Third Man, which he cowrote with director Carol Reed. Recently, new film adaptations have been made of Greene's novels The End of the Affair and The Quiet American. Greene's work has also formed the basis for an opera: Our Man in Havana, composed by Malcolm Williamson. (From Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

Brilliant.... a splendid achievement.
Atlantic Monthly

As brilliantly written as it is magnificently conceived.
Chicago Sun

The book should attract...not only those who read for diversion and excitement, but those, too, who read for the pleasure of superb writing and shrewd contriving of story.
Chicago Tribune 

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Power and the Glory:

1. Why has this Mexican state outlawed the practice of Catholicism? What is its argument against the religion?

2. Why is Father Jose's presence tolerated by the state? What purpose does he serve for the government? What comparisons can you make between him and the Whiskey Priest?

3. Discuss the complicated character of the whiskey priest. What keeps him from leaving for another state, one more tolerant of Catholicism? Why does he continue to minister to the peasants despite the risk to his life? How does he view those he is so determined to serve?

4. In what way is the priest tormented by his faith...or lack thereof? What is the nature of his self-doubt?

5. What do you make of the fact that many have been executed as a result of their involvement with the priest, while the priest himself flees. Is the priest's sense of guilt justified...or not?

6. Talk about the priest's nemisis—the lieutenant? What are his motives for pursuing the priest? How would you describe him—as purely evil...or a more complicated character?

7. Follow-up to Questions #3 and #4: Graham Greene has given readers a priest who is hardly an exemplar among his peers. For what purposes would the author have created such a character—with his many failings—as the novel's hero. Why does the priest remain nameless throughout the novel?

8. Is the whiskey priest a martyr? Why does he himself not believe he is one? What does he mean when he says, "I don't think martyrs are like this"? What qualifies one as a true martyr?

9. What is the symbolic significance of the priest's misplaced Bible and other religious paraphernalia? What is symbolic about trading his clothes and donning those of a peasant?

10. Do you think Greene intended the priest to be a Christ figure? Do you see him as such? Why...or why not?

11. The culmination of the novel occurs in the jail cell. What revelation comes to the whiskey priest? What is the irony of an imprisoned body vs. the spirit?

12. How does the author portray Mexico? How does he use the setting of Mexico as an atmospheric/thematic backdrop for the novel?

13. What do you make of the fact that in 1953, 13 years after it was published, a Vatican curia condemned the novel and asked Greene to make revisions? Apparently the Vatican took issue with the corrupted character of the whiskey priest. (Greene made no revisions.)

14. Greene's novel explores the tension between belief and nonbelief. How does the story come to grips with that dichotomy? What is the central "message"? Is it one of hope...or despair?

15. Has reading this book altered, in any way, your faith, or your understanding of faith?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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