The Power and Glory by Graham Greene

Graham Greene's Deceptive Life Seen in

Graham Greene’s Deceptive Life Seen in:

The Power and the Glory

“What he had experienced was a vacancy– a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all. He knew.” (Greene- Power 24-25) Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, confuses readers tends to mislead them about the ideas he is trying to get across. Greene was a man, who some say, incorporated deception in his life. The influence and Greene’s inner-struggle to measure evil is evident throughout as he makes villains sympathetic, innocent characters guilty, and heroes weak.

Graham Greene was born in Berkamstead, Hertfordshire, in the year 1904. His father and mother were Charles and Marion Raymond Greene. Graham went to Berkamstead school as a child, where his father was headmaster. Later, he went to Balliol College in Oxford, where he started to experiment around with alcohol. Greene said in his autobiography that he was drunk for one whole term from breakfast to bed. Early in The Power and the Glory, Greene’s portrayal of the main character, the “whisky” priest, is degrading for a leader of the Roman Catholic church. His teeth are described as being ‘spiritually unfit’ for the sacrament of the Eucharist. The “whisky” priest appears to be a drunken failure. This image could be seen as a priest with an addiction that is just a part of someone’s life, or it could be seen as Greene’s way of setting up the Roman Catholic church’s image of the last priest as weak and irresponsible. In the book, the “whisky” priest is with the governor’s cousin, the jefe, and a beggar in a hotel room. The priest has wine that he uses for saying mass in...

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