The priest spends the night in prison while a couple make love in a filthy corner of the dark cell. He talks with an old man whose daughter has been taken from him by the Church priests because she is illegitimate, and he also talks with a proud, self-righteous woman […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 2: Chapter 3Summary and Analysis Part 2: Chapter 2
The events of this section take place a few months after the priest’s attempt to flee to Vera Cruz. In this capital city of a Mexican province, the priest, dressed in a drill uniform, meets a beggar who promises to secure wine for him. And, sure enough, before long, the […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 2: Chapter 2Summary and Analysis Part 2: Chapter 1
A few weeks after his life has been saved by Coral Fellows, the priest, desperately trying to evade the soldiers, arrives in a tiny village. Maria, the mother of his child, Brigitta, who is now about six years old, lives here. The villagers ask the priest to say Mass for […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 2: Chapter 1Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 4
In this chapter, structured like a multi-scene collage, Greene shows us: Mr. Tench, the dentist, waiting for a patient and beginning a letter to his estranged wife, Sylvia, and then hearing the bell of the General Obregon; the frail old ship has returned from Vera Cruz. Meanwhile, Padre Jose fearing […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 4Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 3
The scene changes: Captain Fellows, the director of the Central American Banana Company, is greeted by his wife, Trix, as he returns home from a business trip upriver. She informs him that a policeman (the lieutenant) is talking with their daughter, Coral, who arranged for the officer to sleep overnight […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 3Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 2
In this chapter, the Chief of Police (the jefe) informs the lieutenant that he has heard that there is still a priest practicing in Mexico and that this priest attempted to “get away last week to Vera Cruz.” The pink and flabby jefe complains that the Governor is pressuring him […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 2Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 1
The first chapter of The Power and the Glory centers upon the meeting between Mr. Tench, the English dentist who is living in Mexico, and the priest-protagonist, who presents himself to Tench as a “quack.” The priest secretly plans to escape further religious persecution by sailing to Vera Cruz (a […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Part 1: Chapter 1Character List
Anita A dead five-year-old girl, at whose grave Padre Jose refuses to pray. Beckley, Henry The director of the correspondence school who sends Coral Fellows packets of school lessons that are far more elementary than her chronological potential. Brigitta The illegitimate daughter of the fugitive priest- protagonist. Calver, James An […]
Read more Character ListAbout The Power and the Glory
In The Power and the Glory, Greene examines the bases of sin and salvation by focusing on the final months in the life of a man who is the last priest still practicing his calling in Mexico. In his treatment of the fugitive, Greene offers two possible views of the […]
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