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Volume : III, Issue : IV, May - 2013 GRAHAM GREENE'S THE POWER AND THE LORY: THE ANTITHESIS BETWEEN RELIGION AND MATERIALISM ALKA SAROHA AND S. K. VASISHTA Published By : Laxmi Book Publication Abstract : Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, set in the primitive landscape of
Mexico symbolizes the struggle between the church and the state, represented by the
Priest and Lieutenant, respectively. Graham Greene addresses the relation between the
spiritual and material principle in society and in human soul. He found the perfect story
to illustrate this opposition at narrative and ideological levels, tightly and logically
interwoven, providing natural action rather than abstraction. The Power and the Glory
is not only the best novel in the Catholic trilogy, but also one of the best novels written by
Graham Greene. On ideological level, it is unique in Greene's opus as religion is used to
promote life, not death. The novel dramatizes the flight of Whisky Priest through the
Mexican Godless state where religion is outland, churches are dismantled and the
religious sacraments are prohibited. In spite of threat of the state, the priest secretly
carries out his religious duties. Finally he is arrested and is hanged but soon he is
replaced by another priest to continue the religious faith. It seems that the religious faith
is unquenchable and indestructible. Keywords : Article : Cite This Article : ALKA SAROHA AND S. K. VASISHTA, (2013). GRAHAM GREENE'S THE POWER AND THE LORY: THE ANTITHESIS BETWEEN RELIGION AND MATERIALISM. Indian Streams Research Journal, Vol. III, Issue. IV, http://oldisrj.lbp.world/UploadedData/2330.pdf References : - The title of the novel is taken from the Lord's Prayer "Thine is the kingdom, the Power and the Glory."
- Reading these two books, that is The Power and the Glory and The Lawless Roads,we can locate many parallels of landscape, milieu, situations and happenings
- Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory. 1943; (rpt Penguin Books, 1967), p.125. All subsequent quotations from the novel are from this edition and page references are given at the end of the quotation in parenthesis (p).
- Frank Kermode, 'Mr Greene's Eggs and Crosses' in Puzzles and Epiphanies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962). p.72.
- The conflict between the Communist Party and the Catholic Church with the background of the Vietnamese war is present in another novel of Graham Greene viz., The Quiet American, (1955).
- In The Power and the Glory, the priest namely Padre Jose has submitted to the tyranny of the state and married a great mountain of flesh in a form of a nagging wife.
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