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Can a Sinner Be a Saint? Graham Greene’s Unorthodox Saints in The Power and the Glory and Brighton Rock

100%

Zgierska R.

Religious and Sacred Poetry: An International Quarterly of Religion, Culture and Education

2014

issue 2(6)

163-186

The article addresses the theme of unorthodox saints in Graham Greene’s novels – Brighton Rock and The Power and the Glory and also deals with the author’s attitude to religious problems, particularly his views on salvation and damnation. There is also a discussion of the question whether the title of “a Catholic writer” has been rightly used in Greene’s case. The first part of the paper presents the character of the whisky-priest from The Power and the Glory. Particular attention has been paid to the author’s use of two perspectives upon the figure of the priest: one shows the character in his mundane existence, with all his human weaknesses and vices, whereas the other view stresses the character’s moral and religious superiority which testifies to his sainthood. This point is argued with numerous references to the Bible and to the philosophy of Charles Peguy which underline the martyrdom of the sinful priest and his similarity to Jesus Christ. The second part of the article focuses on the figure of Rose from Brighton Rock, highlighting a contrast between the weakness of her character and the strength of her convictions. The fact that she is torn between good and evil has been pointed out as well as the power of her feelings which is the reason of both her fall and her salvation. Similarly to the analysis of The Power and the Glory, references to the Bible and to Peguy’s philosophy have been used in order to underline Rose’s motivation which was rooted in her love of God. The final part of the article presents similarities between the two characters; what they have in common is both a human, sinful nature as well as the ability to offer superhuman love and self-sacrifice. The conclusion of the article underlines the fact that although both characters have sometimes acted in the ways questioning the principles of faith and the teaching of the Church, they can be perceived as saints because of the superiority of their morality with regard to their love of God and love of their neighbours whose good they put above their own.

Foreign-Space Dramatization in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory: Revisiting Greeneland

71%

Valverde B.

Roczniki Humanistyczne

2020

vol. 68

issue 11

225-234

Graham Greene was a frequent traveler and he commonly chose different spaces around the world as settings for his novels. Critics have generally agreed, however, that the British author created in his novels an a-topos, a space that conformed not to the reality of the country depicted, but to the development of the topics, spiritual or political, with which Greene was obsessed. That atopical location became over time what has been called Greeneland, a concept with which any Greene scholar inevitably becomes familiar. In this paper, I revisit the concept of Greeneland, arguing that scholars tend to focus on the major themes present in Greene’s literary world and to ignore the fact that a close analysis of the fictional landscape in his work challenges the assertion that what Greene created in his novels was a mental entity, a non-place. In order to do so, I focus on the representation of space and society in Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940), the Mexico of the religious persecution of the late 1920s. I compare Greene’s representation with the Mexico of the same period depicted in Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (1955), a novel whose fictional landscape bears uncanny resemblances to the one described in The Power and the Glory. This analysis leads us to rethink the concept of Greeneland as generally defined in the criticism.

Dramatyzacja obcej przestrzeni w powieści Moc i chwała Grahama Greene’a: Ponowna wizyta w Greeneland Graham Greene często podróżował i akcja jego książek często ma miejsce w różnych zakątkach świata. Mimo to krytycy są zgodni, że w swych powieściach Greene stworzył a-topos – przestrzeń odzwierciedlającą rozwój tematów (czy to duchowych, czy politycznych) zajmujących autora, a nie konkretne rzeczywiste miejsce. Z czasem ów a-topos otrzymał nazwę Greeneland. Niniejszy artykuł stawia tezę, że krytycy, skupiając się na głównych motywach w twórczości Greene’a, ignorują fakt, że dokładna analiza świata przedstawionego podważa powszechnie panujące przekonanie, jakoby Greene wykreował w swojej twórczości przestrzeń mentalną, nie-miejsce. W celu dowiedzenia postawionej tezy, artykuł analizuje reprezentację przestrzeni i społeczeństwa w Mocy i chwale (1940), powieści, której akcja toczy się podczas religijnych prześladowań w Meksyku w latach dwudziestych dwudziestego wieku. Porównuję utwór Greene’a z powieścią Pedro Páramo Juana Rulfo (1955), gdyż powieść ta opisuje ten sam okres, a krajobrazy w niej opisane przypominają te z powieści Greene’a. Tym samym artykuł proponuje redefinicję idei Greeneland.

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1 Religious and Sacred Poetry: An International Quarterly of Religion, Culture and Education

1 Roczniki Humanistyczne

1 Valverde B.

1 Zgierska R.

1 2020

1 2014

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Can a Sinner Be a Saint? Graham Greene’s Unorthodox Saints in The Power and the Glory and Brighton Rock

Foreign-Space Dramatization in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory: Revisiting Greeneland