The Power And The Glory (1939) Compare and Contrast the Priest and the Lieutenant.

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Sahil Singh                                                                                                             07/05/2007

GCSE ENGLISH LITERATURE COURSEWORK

Graham Greene (1904-1991)

The Power And The Glory (1939)

Compare and Contrast the Priest and the Lieutenant

When the powers of good and evil collide, a battle is inevitable. At first glance, Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory appears to agree with this idea. However, under closer observation of the two great adversaries in the novel, the priest and the lieutenant, it would be difficult to say clearly who is good and who is evil. Graham Greene tends to take the sides of both characters, creating an interesting conflict. In an initial comparison, the two seem to be opposites (the priest playing the criminal and the lieutenant playing the cop). However, is the criminal bad and the cop good? Or are both good and both bad? When both personalities are examined, their equality becomes clear.

The main unnamed characters of the story are ‘the whisky priest,’ the last working priest, who is being pursued by the ‘lieutenant’. The priest is a small, shabby, smelly, dirty, and alcoholic man, whose appearance is a reflection of the turmoil of his inner self. The lieutenant, whom is a well-groomed ‘dapper fellow’, is a stark contrast to the priest. The lieutenant has been scarred, both literally and symbolically in his childhood. His crooked nose and the mark on his face reveal the harsh reality he has endured.  As a result, he wants to purge the Government from all things that caused pain, especially organized religion.  He blames the Church for the poverty in Mexico, and believes that the Church is simply a waste of money:

‘No more money for saying prayers, no more money for building places to say prayers in.’

When shown a card trick by the priest, it reminds him of the Church as a form of ‘trickery.’ The lieutenant sees religion as a hoax, taking peasant’s money away from them, in the form of a collection plate, with the promise of a happier after-life:

‘The old peasants knelt there before the holy images with their arms held out in the attitude of the cross: tired by the long day’s labour in the plantations they squeezed out a further mortification’

This clearly shows the hatred that the lieutenant feels towards religion.

At first, the lieutenant may appear to be the whisky-priest’s enemy or rival, but exploring his personality suggests otherwise. First, although the lieutenant does not believe in the church, he is very open-minded. He is willing to listen to the whiskey-priest and have long discussions with him about God and the church. The lieutenant replies to one of the whisky-priest’s inquiries saying, “I am not afraid of other people’s ideas.”

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Surprisingly, at the end of the novel, the lieutenant summons Padre Jose so the priest may confess all his sins and be forgiven. The lieutenant could easily refuse to summon Padre Jose, but he does so because he knows it is important for the whisky-priest’s beliefs. The lieutenant is constantly asking the priest if there is ‘anything I can do for you?’ This shows the lieutenant is a kind and humane man, who sympathizes with the priest.

‘Is there anything at all I can do for you?’

‘If you would give me permission to confess.’

As I ...

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