1. How does Tench’s meeting with the priest establish at the outset of the novel a sense of decay and sterility? 2. How does the story of young Juan contrast with the unfolding of the priest’s martyrdom? 3. How does the Fellows family manifest Greene’s theme of human indifference or […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsCritical Essays Motifs in The Power and the Glory
The Biblical Motif The priest’s journey through Mexico is his Via Crucis (Way of the Cross), and the novel is filled with comparisons between the priest and Christ. The protagonist’s salvation is worked out upon a “true cross,” which ironically necessitates his staying away from Vera Cruz. The priest’s mission […]
Read more Critical Essays Motifs in The Power and the GloryCritical Essays Themes of The Power and the Glory
Communion This novel is unified partially by the failing efforts of several characters to communicate significantly with one another, and Greene uses the metaphor of the Communion of the Mass, the Eucharist, to delineate their frustrated attempts. At the beginning of the novel, the dentist Tench pours symbolic wine (brandy) […]
Read more Critical Essays Themes of The Power and the GloryGraham Greene Biography
Graham Greene describes his boyhood traumas in A Sort of Life (1971), the first volume of his autobiography. He was born in 1904, attended a public school, of which his father was headmaster, and later he studied at Oxford. The unhappiness of his home and school life led him to […]
Read more Graham Greene BiographySummary and Analysis Part 4
The final chapter of The Power and the Glory offers us a direct, last look at most of the supporting characters in the — in stark contrast to the third-hand, briefly noted look at the main character, the priest, when he is executed (a scene narrated by Mr. Tench). In […]
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As he promised, the lieutenant visits Padre Jose and asks him to hear the priest’s confession, but the padre’s wife, fearing that he will lose his government pension, forbids her already fearful husband to leave. When the lieutenant returns and tells the fugitive priest that Padre Jose will not come […]
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The priest has been arrested, and for awhile, he and the lieutenant must sit alongside Calver’s corpse while they wait for a heavy downpour to end. During that time, using a pack of cards that Mr. Lehr gave him, the priest is able to perform the card trick that he […]
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After seven hours on the road and after drinking some brandy, the priest and the mestizo approach the hut where Calver, the American, is supposed to be dying. He is inside. He refuses to confess to the priest, but he admits that he may have wanted to do so when […]
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This chapter is a romantic idyll in the midst of the priest’s harrowing, ambiguous quest for self-reform. Accordingly, Greene’s description of the Lehrs’ house suggests the dreamlike, transitory nature of the priest’s stay in this oasis of “the good life.” The details used to depict the Lehr family are diametrically […]
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Several days after his release from jail, the priest cautiously enters the Fellowses’ now-deserted banana station; he is looking for Coral, who, he hopes, will help him cross the mountains (some twenty miles away) before the rains make the journey impossible. He hopes to reach a Mexican state where religion […]
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