Purity, Forgiveness, Trust

In the novel, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, the lives of ironic beings are portrayed as well known figures from the Bible."Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain: Temptation shall not come in this kind again, The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."(T.S Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral) Following your convictions and your heart will take you farther in life than creating happiness for the goodness of others rather than yourself. Bible figures were represented as strong beings that taught people lessons about life and their religious beliefs. This novel takes you to a place where belief, heart, and passion are important, and since the characters are carefully emphasized to have the free will to decide their own paths in life, their decisions on what paths they take will lead them to the amount of power and glory they get in life.

Judas--one of the twelve apostles of Jesus in the New Testament and best known for his role in betraying Jesus into the hands of Jewish religious authorities--is much like the mestizo in the novel, The Power and the Glory. The irony is that although he means the priest nothing but harm, he actually provides prospects for the priest to commend heroic and gallant acts. Throughout the novel the mestizo knows that death surrounds him, but has faith in the priest to comfort him with health and hospitality along the way, but soon comes an opportunity for the priest to turn away from the life of leisure, and recommit himself to his ideals and his duties. During his night in the hut with the mestizo, the priest has trouble keeping himself awake, recalling the night Jesus spends in the garden with the disciples who cannot seem to keep themselves awake. The mestizo, with a never ending desire of selfish devotion, asks the captured priest to pray for him. The priest then begins to tell him that forgiveness just isn't handed to you, but instead it must be earned.

In order to find forgiveness of your sins true soul-searching will lead your way. You need to find yourself first and understand that the sins you have committed were wrong and have some reason to why they should be forgiven. The mestizo is, in many ways, a mirror image of the priest. The priest--who has done this soul-searching-- despairs over having no listeners to hear his confession. But, while the priest attempts to root out all self-interested motivations from his mind, the mestizo is concerned only with his own advantage. Nevertheless, the priest's actions towards the mestizo make the mestizo a seem like a sympathetic character.

When you think of a priest you picture a man with a soulful heart and very wide open to helping and listening, but the reflection of the priest in the novel is a mirror image of a priest opposite of what we believe to be true. The unnamed main character in the novel, the priest, is on the run from the authorities, who will kill him if they catch him. A "whisky priest," and not the finest example of his profession, he is an alcoholic who has also fathered a child. Now as a fugitive, he feels guilt for his mistakes and sins. Nevertheless, he continues to perform his priestly functions and it is his determination to attend to the spiritual needs of a dying man that leads to his eventual capture and death."It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization-- it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt." (97) The priest had lost all respect from the people that followed him before for his crimes and mistakes he has undertaken. The priest had lost himself, but some were still dependent on his beliefs, they believed in the priest and were destined to find God within him, just as people did with Jesus. They searched to find answers and the reason for those answers given by Jesus. All it took was trust in Jesus and know his deeds are having an impact on the followers of the Christ figure.

There is a relationship between Judas, the mestizo, and Jesus, the priest. When Judas turn Jesus in to the police, Jesus is being hunted down to be arrested, whereas in the novel the priest is arrested by police for his use of alcohol after the hunted him down through the city. Another scene in the book parallel to the Bible was when the priest and the Mestizo were traveling to hear the confession of a man who was both a murderer and a thief. When they arrived to speak to the man about his confession, the priest was able to convince the man that he shall confess, but soon after the he dies. This has a relation to the bible because when Jesus was on the cross he had a thief and a murderer standing next to him. Here Greene shows the exact relation of one perfect man's crucifixion to another imperfect man's death ironically.

Purity, Forgiveness, Trust. Three words that describe the Bible. Three words that the priest was trying to find in himself after his life when down the drain to the point where he felt nothing at all, not even pain, it was nothingness. Jesus has forgiven our mistakes and sins even before they are made. No human being is perfect and no human being makes all the right decisions. Its about learning from you mistakes and moving forward. The priest did the exact opposite of this. He dreaded his mistakes and kept hiding from them, digging a bigger and bigger whole for himself to a point where t was impossible for him to get out. The novel, The Power and the Glory, is about living up to yourself and your convictions and doing things because you know its right no matter what happens in the end.