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  • Essay / The Heart of Glory: Children, Humanism, and Character in Greene's Novel

    In Graham Greene's dynamic novel, The Power and the Glory, we follow the Whiskey Priest on his harrowing journey as he runs for his life, avoiding capture and death. in the hands of the lieutenant. This novel shows the evolution of the priest as he goes from a previously selfish man before meeting his daughter to a man who gives everything, including himself, to try to help the children after meeting Brigetta. Greene shows the diversity and parallels between the Lieutenant and the Whiskey Priest as they both struggle with their theological beliefs while embarking on their journey to create a better world for children, both handling it extremely contrasted. We follow the priest as he flees persecution in Mexico; whether it's watching him meet his love child or helping a woman carry her deceased son down a dangerous path to a church. The lieutenant and the Whiskey Priest dance around each other from place to place, but the priest is finally caught when he returns to dangerous territory to deliver final rights to a murderer. A major distinction that becomes more pronounced throughout the progression of the novel is how the Whiskey Priest changes drastically throughout the novel and is a person who has immense influence, even after death. Both the Lieutenant and the Whiskey Priest care very much about the children; however, the Whiskey Priest's Christianity influences more people than the Lieutenant's humanism. Throughout the novel, the Whiskey Priest and the Lieutenant love children and are ready to devote their lives to their future. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay While on the run from the Lieutenant, the Whiskey Priest travels to a village where he meets his illegitimate daughter Brigetta. The Whiskey Priest knows it is a sin but he cannot repent of having his daughter whom he loves but feels condemned by Christianity: "He said, I don't know how to repent." It was true: he had lost his faculty. He could not say to himself that he wished his sin had never existed, because sin now seemed so unimportant to him and he loved the fruits of it” (Greene 152). From this point on, the "bad" priest quickly evolves from a man who reluctantly returns to hear a confession to a man who marches toward certain death to hear the confession of a murderer. Unlike the Whiskey Priest, the lieutenant does everything for the children from the start, but he does it for all the children. His need to create a better world for children comes from his own childhood which “seemed like a weakness to him: it was his own land, he would have walled it off if he could with steel until he eradicated from it everything that reminded him of the way he had once appeared to a miserable child. He wanted to destroy everything: to be alone, without any memories” (49). In an attempt to make the world a better place, the lieutenant attempts to rid Mexico of the corrupt evil associated with the misleading "fairy tales" the Church has spun. In killing priests and religious figures, the lieutenant found purpose but more importantly, "he had [found a way to try] to give the children a bright material future and his solitary failure is approved" (Sharrok109). Each man devotes his life to children, but both go about it in radically opposite ways. The Whiskey Priest focuses his love on just one child, Brigetta, while the Lieutenant focuses on all the children. Continually, because of the lieutenant's humanist convictions, hedoes her best to care for the children but rejects church. The lieutenant's actions are motivated by his humanist views. He believes that all children would be better off without the corrupt Catholic Church. His point becomes abundantly clear when he questions the Whiskey Priest about how he could possibly support a Church that disregards those who actually need support but instead "supports the rich and ignores their brutal oppression." and their continued plunder of the poor [and] blames the Whiskey Priest for deceiving the poor about the obvious reasons for their suffering” (Gordon 50). The lieutenant struggles to meet the children's physical needs, which correlates with his atheist belief that only accepts the physical world. However, he becomes increasingly frustrated, as he does not understand how people can have faith in a God that he does not believe can exist, as there is only a void resulting from evolution animals (Greene 48). Thus, the lieutenant believes he is purging the citizens and paving the way for a better future by trying to “eliminate from their childhood everything that had made them unhappy, everything that was poor, superstitious and corrupt. They deserved nothing less than the truth” (58). The lieutenant does everything to deconstruct the Catholic Church because he considers it the source of everything that could harm children and their innocence. In contrast to the Lieutenant's humanism, the corrupt Whiskey Priest has strong Christian beliefs. Because of his theological beliefs, he attempts to care for children in a spiritual and moral way while striving for the eternal goodness of each child. Contrary to stereotypes, the priest feels “even less worthy in the eyes of God” (Leah 19) but continues to serve people throughout his personal struggle and physical journey through spiritual, moral and mental support. Continually, the Whiskey Priest is motivated by his Christian beliefs even if he is corrupt he still believes that God is good and that He is incorruptible which he specifies "in his conversation with the Lieutenant after his arrest, [he] states his faith. “God is love. I'm not saying that the heart doesn't feel the taste, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint of ditch water. We would not recognize this love... it would be enough to frighten us: the love of God. He settled in a bush in the desert, didn't he, and broke open graves…'” (21). Regardless of his personal sin and struggles, the Whiskey Priest remains strong in his faith and is unwavering, which helps him through the difficult decisions ahead as he finds love in his daughter and a new flame. lights up in him. Even when the Whiskey Priest was half-starved, overcome by fever, and the police carried him away, he still did God's will. Even inside the thick walls of a prison cell, the Whiskey Priest still finds God's light and spreads it to all who need it and even admits to being a priest so that he can minister to those who have desperately needed a priest (Greene 123-134). ). Even though the priest does not see it, he is a selfless and pious man, but he believes that he is not a good priest; however, he continues to care for those in need while demonstrating that "Christ is intimately connected with every sinner" (Bosco 50) and does what he can to meet the spiritual and mental needs of children through opposition to their physical needs. while the actions he takes through humanism have a significant positive impact, he ends up harming them physically and mentally. The lieutenant does everything for the people but they still fear him and don't respect him as a person or what he represents, but rather obligepeople to follow him out of fear. Indeed, he harbors a deeply rooted hatred for Christianity and does not hesitate to take hostages to kill them in the villages he claims to protect, because "his brutality and his persistence in wanting to kill the fleeing Whiskey Priest leads him astray, taking him away from the people he wants to help, away from the poverty-stricken Mexicans, to whom he wishes to restore their stolen goods and their integrity” (Gordon 50). Regardless, the lieutenant believes that all his efforts will bear fruit because they will benefit the people he cares about; However, "When the hero-worshipped boy Luis spits on his polished boot" (Sharrok 109), it becomes clear that the lieutenant is not as influential as he believed. The lieutenant did not see the harm in what he was doing, because his opinions blocked the reality from his conscience: “A man like that… doesn't really do any harm. A few deaths. We all must die” (Greene 34). The lieutenant's single mindedness is a hindrance to seeing how scared people are, but it also distracts from how he tries to do everything for people, but he actually makes them suffer, which he demonstrates after "winning" as "he [goes] into the office." The photos of the priest and the shooter were still hanging on the wall: he tore them down – we would never want them again” (207). Once the two men leave, the lieutenant is at a loss for what to do as he thought the purge would help the future of Mexican children, but in reality he has murdered countless people, many of them innocent, creating a state out of fear for the children. The lieutenant devotes his entire life to trying to make Mexico a better place for children, but he has little positive impact and ends up emphasizing what he tried to drive away. Although the whiskey priest thinks that he and his Christian beliefs have no impact on people, he actually influences the children for the better. His life and even his death are caused by his sense of duty. The Whiskey Priest could have stayed safely through the mountains, but he instead chose to administer the Last Rites to the dying outlaw, who has murdered countless people. Even though he felt he would be wasting his time and the message summoning him was almost certainly a police ruse, he went anyway (Greene 188-90). The Whiskey Priest does everything in his ability to do God's will, even if his spiritual situation is unnecessarily complicated by issues that target priests like him; however, through this “daily knowledge of acute suffering and death which enables him to save his own soul and to provide aid and comfort to the souls of others” (Bosco 50). Before and after his death, the Whiskey Priest influences many people for good. After meeting the Whiskey Priest, Mr. Tench "[a] strange impulse came to [him] to project this lost letter to the last address he had [for his wife]...he tried to begin...he began to write” (Greene 45-46). Likewise, during the Whiskey Priest's brief interaction with the young ex-Christian Coral, "'turned his mind to God in time'—that is, in time to earn his eternal salvation—to 'the sesame' for the future, as the Priest's Dream suggests” (Baldridge 63). The Whiskey Priest does not seek power or glory but still has a strong effect on the children, including Louis. When Louis is introduced, he doesn't care about the stories his mother tries to tell him but after the Whiskey Priest, he "begins to see the pious story of the martyr Juan that his mother read to him in a new light: it is a convert. of the party of lieutenants to the Church” (Sharrock 118). Even through his death, he paved the way for a new priest and, through.: 1,205