The Power And The Glory
"The roof couldn't keep out this rain." (p. 152)
"Hope is an instinct only the reasoning human mind can kill. An animal never knows despair."
-Graham Greene, "" (p. 141)
In Graham Greene's , setting is essential in understanding the spiritual conquest of the main character. The story takes place in post-revolution Mexico of the nineteen-thirties, where Catholicism has been banned. The government has shut down all of the churches and established anti-Catholic laws, jealous of the rising power of the church, and nervous of the corrupt ways in which the church has been dealing with sin. The main character, a nameless "whiskey priest," hopelessly roams the desolate plains of southern Mexico, ...
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meaning in the world, as it parallels the priest's internal perspective, and symbolizes his redemptive conversion and his final unconscious achievement of martyrdom.
Ater the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican government established anti-Catholic laws against the churches. The government dismissed the Church's system of redemption, and became jealous of the Church's rising influence over society. This system required "sinners" to pay the church money in order to escape eternal damnation in the afterlife. "And the priest came round with the collecting bag, taking their centavos, abusing them for their small comforting sins, and sacrificing nothing at all in return- except a little sexual indulgence." (pp. 22-3) Every priest denounced their profession and became married in order to remain lawful citizens. However, this "whiskey priest" "felt bound to his sin by love… And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed." (pp. 172-3) The priest claims he is too proud to denounce ...
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guilt to his anxiety, and he continues to question God about the meaning behind his situation.
It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state
who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics
who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic,
too, and what he had experienced was vacancy- a complete
certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human
beings who had evolved from animals for no pupose at all.
p. 24
As the priest becomes more humble from self-awareness, he becomes less self-centered and begins to regret his careless sins in the past and develops a more compassionate mindframe. "'Oh God, forgive ...
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