The main concern of thisis is to analyze the religious sense rooted in The
Power and the Glory, and to prove that Graham Greene is a Catholic
writer. In this novel, the failing but fascinating whisky priest enacts
the role of Christ by abandoning his only chance to escape only to
administer the last rites to a dying robber. Even though he knows it is
a trap set by the police and he will be caught for sure, yet he
determines to help the dying man. In many ways the protagonist is a
representative of modern man, who is always undergoing the spiritual
journey and suffering from temptation as well as severe moral judgment.
The whisky priest's life ends up in failure in his own judgment; his
martyrdom. however, achieves power and golry for god.
Is the interctory ctapter a brief biographical background of Graham Greene
is , is to this partlcular novel with other works. Also includes in this
are Creene's favorite themes of pursuit and betrayal, and using priest
character in his novels.
Chapter II is devoted to examining the parallel relationship between the
novel and The Passion Narrative. Many a Biblical allusion is traced,
compared, explained and reconstructed in order to relate the whisky
priest to Jesus Christ. In this chapter, the protagonist is understood as
bearing three types of characters in himself: sinner, saint, and Christ.
Chapter III unfolds the typical Greeneland in the land ot Tabasco. It is
an abandoned world in which people are alienated from one another. The
focal points are placed on inquiring into the mutual relationship between
abandoned locale and loneliness of heart, and examining the theme of
abandonment as a leitmotif recurring in the story.
The focus of Chapter VI is on the ambiguity in the novel and the stance
Greene takes. Human nature, in this story, is delineated as a mixture of
black and white, and it is the very place where saint and sinner meet.
The whisky priest embodies the complex side of human nature.
The concluding chapter is an overall assessment of the previous chapters.
I conclude this thesis by reaffirming the eminent contribution of Greene
as a Catholic novelist.