Power And The Glory Greene example essay topic

For Thine is the Kingdom Many things influence us in our lives. We are influenced by our upbringing. We are influenced by what we read, see, and hear. We are also influenced by our beliefs. Graham Greene is no different.

He to was influenced by all of these things. In his book The Power and the Glory, Greene writes about a Mexican priest who attempts to carry out the traditions of the Catholic Church in Mexico in the 1930's. In this historical criticism we will look at the specific things that may have influenced Greene as he wrote this book. We will begin with a look at who Greene was. Graham Green was born on October 2, 1904, in Berhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, Greene was one of six children. He attended Berhamsted public school, where his father was the headmaster.

Most students harassed Greene because his father was the headmaster of the school in which he attended. He preferred reading rather than physical activity, which helped aid in his alienation. He read mostly adventure books by such authors as Rider Haggard and R.M. Ballantyne. These authors had a great impact on his method of writing.

He then attended Balliol College at Oxford in 1922 where he was able to earn a Bachelors degree in modern history (Sherry 7). During his higher education, Graham became an editor for The Oxford Outlook. He then finished his first novel, Anthony Sant, and even went on to join the Communist Party. While in college, Greene was often teased and tormented by peers for playing games badly. Needless to say, because of this stress coupled with the fact that his home life was not idyllic, he became emotionally unstable and attempted to take his own life (122). Pursuant to the attempt at taking his own life and running away from home for a brief period of time, Greene was sent to a London psychiatrist named Kenneth Richmond.

Richmond was able to get Greene to take his depressive emotions and channel them into a form of expression. Writing became the medium by which Greene spilled his emotions. Greene was introduced to the poetic writings of Walter de la Mare during this time as well. Whether Greene became officially cured is left to question. After months of counseling, "he took up Russian roulette (qtd. In Greene Dies)".

As Sherry put it: "Greene took his revolver back to Balliol where he continued to play Russian roulette until he found that he was beginning to pull the trigger about as casually as one might take an aspirin". She described this crisis as "the event that may well have established his life's pattern of escaping from the impossible or the boring into unknown and dangerous environments, which would stimulate, offer fresh experiences, and also provide copy for his novels (qtd. in Greene Dies)". After college, Greene worked as a journalist for the Nottingham Journal. In a film review that he wrote for the journal, he made an incorrect statement about Catholicism. Vivien Day rel-Browning wrote to him, correcting his mistake. They met, fell in love, and got married.

In 1926, he became a Catholic, in part to understand and appreciate the religious beliefs of his wife and in part to help him cope with his belief in the strong presence of evil in the world (D'Souza 1). He moved on to becoming a full time writer. At crucial times during the 20th century, Graham worked for several government agencies. He would travel much during this time and learn an extensive amount about war and politics.

Greene gained popularity in the thirties, largely because his style of story telling was straightforward narration, which was easy and enjoyable to read. His career as a journalist contributed to the documentary style of writing that he employed in his novels. His career as a film critic also made him clever at presenting individual scenes and shifting focus from one scene to another (Greenland). All his experiences would eventually be incorporated into his writings. We have now looked at who Graham Greene was. We will next look at what was going on in Mexico during the time in this book.

Historically the time of the plot is the 1930's. The Power and the Glory portrays characters living under religious persecution in Mexico after the Mexican Revolution of 1910. As the book tells us, this historical period was very difficult for the country, because it was a time of drastic reforms that began with the Revolution. This was a time of passage from a monarchial government to communism.

The events of the book take place in one of the Mexican states, somewhere in the Tabasco region. During this period, there were clashes between the state and the church. Under the presidency of Plutarch Elias Calles (1924-28), anti-clerical measures were adopted and organized religion was banned. Calles believed that the Catholic Church was responsible for spreading superstition and that priests were corrupt, greedy, and responsible for the poverty in Mexico. Calles formed the National Revolution Party, a coalition of military, labor, and peasant organizations that totally excluded the church from the party. During this time, churches were closed, and religious persecution was the policy of the government.

Many priests were shot as traitors, and people possessing Bibles were heavily fined or imprisoned. As a result, the Catholic Church suspended all religious ceremonies and sponsored the Crist eros rebellion in Western Mexico. The majority of priests fled the country or left the church (McCreary 80-94). It is against this backdrop that the action of The Power and the Glory takes place (Allot 4). Graham Greene pieced together The Power and the Glory from his own personal memoirs in 1940 after a three-year trip to Mexico. Greene used his experiences in Mexico to create an extended symbolism that illustrates the conflict between two entirely different views.

One can easily come to the conclusion that he also reveals to his readers his own values, and ideals as well, as he tells his tale. He does this using key characters. The first, the priest, who remains nameless throughout the novel to emphasize his symbolic role, is less an individual than a symbol of the "Church and of the cumulative wisdom of the past, in short, of Western Humanism" (DeVitis 89). Arrested and thrown in a crowded prison surrounded by some very interesting characters, the priest finally realizes what the power, and the glory of God is.

He sees the beauty of God reflected in the other prisoners. At the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge. By using the priest as a symbol of the Church, Greene successfully asserts the "vitality of the Roman Catholic Church" and "explains the value of its beliefs" (DeVitis 89). Through the actions and thoughts of the priest the reader is able to detect the author's sympathetic tone towards the Church in the conflict between religion and state. The other character that Greene uses well is that of the Lieutenant.

To represent the opposing world view, Greene used the lieutenant in pursuit of the priest to embody the secular order (DeVitis 91). The lieutenant, who also remains nameless throughout the novel, is described as "a theologian going back over the errors of the past to destroy them again" (Greene 24). The lieutenant promises "food, clothing, and security" contrary to the priest's ideology of "misery, poverty, and superstition" (DeVitis 92). Although Greene portrays the role of the lieutenant as that of being superior to the priest, one could decide to believe that his true beliefs are revealed in the conflict between the two views with his use of the priest and the lieutenant. Near the end of the book when the lieutenant is planning for the priest's death, he falls asleep and has a dream. Greene uses the dream to suggest that the lieutenant is the prisoner and the laughter is the priest's "celebrating the release of a captive human soul from punishment and its entrance into paradise" (Hynes 67).

Only after the priest's execution is the lieutenant forced to realize his own emptiness and does Greene reveal his religious compassion. Although often criticized for being "chiefly Roman Catholic", The Power and the Glory masterfully illustrates the intense conflict between the secular and religious world views (Hynes 70). By developing complex symbolic characters, Greene achieves an almost myth-like quality. Greene deals masterfully with the mystery of God, and with people's beliefs. It is a story in which religion is represented by the priest, and the politics by the communist police lieutenant (Greene).

In The Power and the Glory Greene illustrates God's kindness as it defies the government and all those that wish harm upon him. Because of the faith of ordinary people, who all have made mistakes, does the religion's ability to continue thrive. And as communism began to spread all over the world, Greene's book assured the reader that there is a God. No matter what your religion or faith, your God will never leave you, and that evil will never win.

It just so happens that the lieutenant's views of this situation coincide with that of the state. The lieutenant wants to wipe out Catholicism and create a better, communistic society. He does not believe in God or an afterlife as implied by the lieutenant when saying, "No, I don't fight against a fiction [God] and Death's a fact. We don't try to alter facts" (194). He believes that the church is corrupt because a person can buy a place in heaven, a person having an indulgence when paying to pray and to go to mass, and a person having to pay for a priest to perform a baptism.

The lieutenant believes these are unethical and wrong and that people could spend their money and time on better, more efficient things. The lieutenant states, "No more money for saying prayers, no more money for building places to say prayers in. We " ll give people food instead, teach them to read, give them books" (194). His actions are aiding the people around him and making their lives better.

Greene has a style of writing, which incorporates much meaning with a hint of dry humor. The environment in which a writer grows up and lives can determine all of the different type of works that they may write. Furthermore, another factor which effects many writers is what types of books or authors that they read at other times in their lives. Like most writers, Greene's style reflects his upbringing.

The Power and the Glory was arguably Greene's best work. It was acclaimed as being the Hawthorn den Prize Winner in 1941. However, this fine work was not without its criticism. It was condemned by the Vatican, although that criticism did come 14 years after the book was published. In gaining an understanding of Graham Greene, there was much to be discovered about this man and author.

Greene had the inherent ability to take his many life experiences and apply them to this thought provoking novel that, at times, seems to challenge mainstream religion and government politics. Graham Greene had many life experiences that lead him many different directions in his life. He was ridiculed as a child, attempted suicide, joined the communist party, married, became Catholic, lived through many wars and political struggles. All of these things have played a part in his life, and his writings. For thine is the kingdom in which he was able to give us The Power and the Glory.

Bibliography

Allot, Kenneth and Miriam Farris. The Art of Graham Greene. New York: Russell & Russell, 1951.
DeVitis, A.A. Graham Greene. New York: T wayne Publishers, 1964.
D'Souza, Santosh. Not So Brief Biography of Graham Green. web Graham Green, 86, Dies: Novelist of the Soul. 4 Apr. 1991 New York Times, web Greene, Graham.
The Power and the Glory. New York: Penguin, 1940.
Hynes, Samuel. Graham Greene: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973.
McCreary, Guy W eddington. From Glory to Oblivion: The Real Truth About the Mexican Revolution, New York, Vantage, 1974.
Sherry, Norman. The Life of Graham Greene, Volume 1: 1904-1939".
New York: Viking, 1989.
Schlosser, S.J. Altogether Adverse. The American Press, (11/2000).