In What Ways May the Lieutenant and the Priest be Compared and Differentiated in Part One of the Novel.

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In What Ways May the Lieutenant and the Priest be Compared and Differentiated in Part One of the Novel.

Greene has created two fascinating and complex characters. The first part of the novel revolves, most of the time, around these two characters. The whisky priest and the lieutenant may seem to be opposite characters but they share many characteristics which makes the relationship between these two main figures an uncommon and complicated one. In this essay I shall explore the differences and the contrasts between these two characters.

The main factor which unites the characters of the whisky priest and the lieutenant is that both characters are dominated by their ideals, that is, both characters not only are willing to die for their ideals, but they are also willing to live solely to fulfill them. The lieutenant believes that he must eliminate the church in order to create a better world. He has very strong motives, these have undoubtedly emerged from his past: "he remembered...the churches of his boyhood...demands made from the altar steps by men who didn't know the meaning of sacrifice." He believes that suffering is the path towards a better world, future. The lieutenant's ideals live on with the essential objective of creating a better world for the future and for the people who have been humiliated and cheated by the church. The lieutenant's ideals are clear in the following fragment: "All they want is your money. What has God ever done for you?".
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One factor which differentiates the priest and the lieutenant is the origin of their idealistic-dominated lives; the lieutenant pursues his objective because of hate and moral obligation: "The new children would have new memories...It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God." Whilst the ideals which the priest represents were born out of ambition and continued to live on inside him with the same forces: power and money: "he had ambition...He talked for a long while, enjoying the sound of his own voice..." Although later on ...

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