Daughters' Role in Graham Greene's 'The Power and the Glory': Redemption of Coral and Prie, Study notes of English

Download Daughters' Role in Graham Greene's 'The Power and the Glory': Redemption of Coral and Prie and more Study notes English in PDF only on Docsity! THE MOTIF OF DAUGHTERS IN "THE POWER AND THE GLORY" Roman .Azzopardi The greatness of The Power and the Glory derives in no small way from the superb portrayal of the central character in th;e book, the unnamed whisky-priest. He is an ambiguous being with conflicting elements of strength and weakness that, by all ordinary standards, is the least qualified to lead men into holiness through Holy Sacraments and yet capable of fulfilling his spi­ ritual mission to the end of his life. A prey to a double hunt, pursued by the Police and by God, the whisky· priest, whom we were so ready to accept with contempt for his feeble nature, turns out to be the priest-hero that invests a whole province with spiritl)al promise by suff:ering mar­ tyrdom. The puzzle of the priest-he­ ro's personality is undoubtedly an engrossi~'g feature of the book. But the priest is not the only character that claims the reader's sympathies. The Police Lieutenant (also unnamed) is treated by Graham Greene with such dignity and under­ standing that it is only natural for the reader to set up the police officer as the deserving rival to the repre­ sentative of God. Although he is the traditional enemy of God, with nothing to offer but "a vacant uni- verse and a ,cooling world," the Lieutenant is far from being a lost soul, considering that he is closer. to the God whom he reckons is fiction than so many others who simply ignore Him. The Priest and the Lieutenant, on . their own, and in contrast with each other, raise significant questions on the nature of courage, sanctity and love. But the interpretation of the novel's meaning and the proper judgement of the human and divine values involved require us to examine the lesser characters with the same attention as we do the main ones. We have Mr and Mrs Fellows, the English couple who own a banana plantation; Coral Fellows, their daughter; Mr Tench, the English dentist; the half-caste who betrays the priest; Padre Jose, the married priest; and :I,ames Calver, the Ameri­ can gunman wanted for murder. The Priest's meetings with each of these characters (together with the more dominant encounter with the Police Lieutenant) help to convey Graham Greene's view of human experience as being that of a wander­ ing soul battling to embrace faith and regain grace in a world that is either hostile or indifferent. Of spe- "THE POWER AND THE GLORY" 131 cial mention in this respect is the unfolding of a tender compassionate theme conveyed by the young-old child characters in the book. As early as Part One, chapter two, we are introduced to the Mexican family of three children: two girls, aged six and ten respectively, and Luis, a boy of fourteen. The conduct of the two daughters during the cus­ tomary bedtime reading of the life of Juan, the young martyr, "with their beady intense eyes, drinking in sweet piety", puts the mother's mind at rest. She confides to her husband that they are "two little saints al­ ready". It is the boy whom the mother worries about. Soon weary of the family reading (though not averse to hear the reading of the last chap­ ter where the young Juan is shot against a wall shouting: Viva el Christo Rey), Luis even dares -ask awkward questions about the whis­ ky-priest. Things come to a head when at a later date Luis scandalous­ ly exclaims, "I don't believe a word of it." The daughters of course will have nothing of this. They sit "motionless, their eyes large and brown and pious". Indeed, Luis's sisters are mere "Bystanders" (the end-chapter of Part One being so entitled). They hardly motivate the plot or have any bearing on the character of the whis­ ky-priest. The scenes in which the Mexican sisters appear may be Cdn­ sidered as an integral part of the novel's structure in juxtaposing the actual hunt of the renegade priest with the pious literary account of a perfect martyr. But the contrast bet­ ween the child world and the whis- ky-priest'sexistence is more effect­ Ively seen when Coral Fellows appears in the book. Coral, the daughter of the English banana planter', Captain Fellows, actively seeks to help the hunted priest es­ cape capture and gives him shelter in their barns. She is only thirteen. "with a neat accurately moulded face and two pinched pigtails', and she is not frightened. Only the night before she handled the Lieutenant with such ease, allowing him to sleep on the verandah before continuing the search for the priest. What is the effect of Coral on her parents and, more particularly, on her father? With some surprise we read that Mr and Mrs Fellows feel her as a stranger in the house, an outsider who makes people wary of entrusting themselves to her. And yet she inspires "an inordinate love" in her father, a love tmlched with fear because he knows he cannot deter­ mine the future of his daughter. At that moment, the compromises, an­ xieties and shame lay outside the gate. But one day the future will be allowed in. It is like watching the one you love "driving recklessly to­ wards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead". Coral, however, is far from being vulnerable. Precisely because life has not yet got at her, she wore a false air of impregnability. The future has yet to claim her. Her father may not be prepared for the eventuality of 'what is to happen?'. He flinches away from problems which he has never dared to confront. But Coral, ever so ready to accept responsibili- 134 ROMAN AZZOPARDI daughter: "0 God, give me any kind of death - without contrition, in a state of sin - only save this child". The reader of The Power and the Glory is rewarded by looking closely into the personalities of the two girls. Coral (a modem name) is a thirteen­ year old; Brigitta (a more Christian name) is merely seven. The English girl is the innocent that the Priest's daughter can never hope to be. But nevertheless Coral has her weak­ nesses. With all her goodwill and efficiency, Coral can hardly claim to understand the pity and the wicked­ ness of the world. She has not even had the companionship of other children, having known only swamps and vultures. She may be grown-up - "an awful pain took her suddenly in the stomach... it was a new pain (not worms this time)" - but she hardly knows what tenderness is. Pretending and the games of child­ hood had never appealed to her .. Always brisk, always alert and com­ petent, Coral has been for long a mature young woman. No less mat­ ure is Brigitta. But in her case it is an appalling reality. Her very smile is enticing and "whipped-up". "The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit". Born in sin and deprived of God's grace, she seems doomed to eternal damiliation. The !Priest is "shaken by the conviction of loss". There is very litt1e if anything which she does not known. Yet how far does she understand? Her mind has been rushed through a whirlwind of adult passions. She is already singled out in the village because she is the Priest's daughter, and priests do not work in the fields and, anyway, (according to the ten-year old Pedro in Brigitta's village) priests are not any good for women. The parting conversation with Bri­ gitta by the rubbish heap near the river leaves the Priest wretchedly aware of the evils that life brings and of the power of sin. But there is no dark despair. Strengthened by his faith and his priestly mission, the Priest concludes: "One mustn't have human affections - or rather one must love every soul as if it were one's OWn child. The passion to pro­ tect must extend itself over a world .. _" To some of us this may appear a mark of presumption on the part of the Priest. The pitying and shielding concern for the spirit­ ual and material welfare of one's daughter is best left to God because revelation teaches us that our whole life is in the hands of an eternal love. Yet, we feel that the promptings of divine concern that well up in the human heart of the whisky-priest are far from upsetting our religious values since the parental role of the Priest as the actual father of Brigitta is sufficiently harmonised wih his priestly vocation as the spiritual father of us all. The moments spent with his own daughter and with Coral Fellows serve to underline the humanness of the Priest while at the same time marking him (notwithstanding his moral bankruptcy) as a man who walks with God. The Catholic priest becomes the parent. To know that the Priest feels the heavy responsi­ bility of parenthood is to convey to "THE POWER AND THE GLORY" 135 ordinary readers the sense of God taking care of everything. The vision of the whisky-priest, in so far as his daughter is concerned J would have been incomplete had he not extended it to include the world. Parents long for the respect of their children and seek to love them. They strive to provide them with a bright future and warn them about the dangers that await them. The office of fatherhood on its own is encompassed by care, pain and res­ ponsibility. The Priest in The Power and the Glory helps us to understand t.hat a child is not simply entrusted to parents who may choose to leave unfinished or exposed to ruin that which they themselves gave birth to. The child has to be given back to God. Brigitta and Coral, in their diffe­ rent ways ,suggest that they are self­ sufficient in the matter of natural needs and everyday life. But the young-old girls are unprotected. Dis­ ease, hunger and lust, not to mention compromise and shame, will assail the frail humanity of the girls. The Priest will offer to pray for Coral; for Brigitta he will give his life. But the desperate inadequacy remains. To care for the girls and yet to be powerless to control the evil that will charter their fall. ROMAN AZZOPARDI B.A., (Gen.), B.A. Hons.) teaches English at the Lyceum, Malta.