The Power and the Glory – Book Review

The real world and religion are usually portrayed to be inseparable. The church as a whole has experienced different persecutions and priests have received scandalous issues such as having mistresses and being gay. But in the midst of these problems, many priests still continue their duties in the church.

Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory tells the story of Father José, a native priest in Mexico who was compelled by the state and his cowardice to marry. When persecution became worse, he remembers “the gift he had been given which nobody could take away. That was what made him worthy of damnation – the power he still had of turning the wafer into the flesh and blood of God.” The whisky priest can no longer find the meaning in prayer but to him “the Host was different: to lay that between a dying man’s lips was to lay God.”

Graham Greene’s pessimism about the temporal world, derived apparently form his childhood memories and reinforced by is experience of the Depression of the 1930’3, was both intensified and made bearable by his religion. Catholicism was a major influence on his works.

He was also influenced by his experiences as journalist, which contributed to the remarkable topic of many of his novels. Works of this type include The Quiet American (1955), set in Indochina; Our man in Havana (1958), set in pre-Castro Cuba; and The Comedians (1966), set in Haiti of President Duvalier.

Greene also wrote short stories and a number of plays, including The Living Room (1953), The Plotting Shed (1957), and The Complaisant Lover (1959). He adapted several of his works for the screen.