Best Intentions

Throughout the first two chapters of The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene portrays the lieutenant as the antagonist.  Ruthless and cunning, he doesn’t hesitate to end numerous lives to achieve his ultimate goal: the death of the whiskey priest.  He also appears to be utterly devoid of any emotion, thinking of the lives taken as merely a means to achieve an end.  In the small exchange between him and the priest in chapter three, when the priest says his cousin was shot in a neighborhood that the lieutenant had frequented (and presumably taken lives in), the lieutenant replies rather flatly with “that was not my fault,” only further demonstrating the way he disregards life.

Yet in this very passage, we see a side of the lieutenant that goes against his character.  There are actually a number of quotes that support this.  First, when the priest asks permission to leave the prison, he refers to the lieutenant as “Excellency.”  While the lieutenant the reader is familiar with comes across as controlling and power hungry, yet here he replies with, “I am not an excellency.  Learn to call things by their right names.”  Now granted, he did end his response with a bit of a retort, but the fact that he directly denies that he is anything of “an excellency,” especially when a meager prisoner refers to him as such, speaks to a much different lieutenant, a somewhat more relatable one.  He is not as arrogant as he once appeared.

However, the best example of the lieutenant’s break in character occurs in the lines that follow.  After the priest admits he has no money to pay his fine, the lieutenant asks a very humane question: “How will you live?”  It appears as though he genuinely cares (on some level) about the stranger’s future.  The whiskey priest replies by saying he could possibly find some work, and the passage that follows paints a very compassionate version of the lieutenant: “‘You are getting too old for work.’  He put his hand suddenly in his pocket and pulled out a five-peso piece.  ‘There,’ he said.”  Analyzing the quote, what is first apparent is the lieutenant’s initial reply.  His statement furthers the notion that he is actually a fairly kind person - he doesn’t want the stranger to have to work, because he believes it will be too hard for him.  In addition, the act of giving a stranger (a convict, even) a fairly sizable sum of money like he did demonstrates the utmost concern and consideration for his villagers.  Simply put, he broke the mold.

If one were to merely read this passage out of the context of the book, he or she would get a starkly contrasting image of the lieutenant that we are familiar with.  I believe that in this passage, Graham Greene illustrates that the lieutenant is acting on best intentions when attempting to eradicate the priest from the village, and that he is delusional in his methods (not fully realizing the harm and pain he causes by killing in order to achieve his goal).  The question I leave you with is this: Do you agree with me - is the lieutenant actually a good man? Or do you believe this is more of a PR stunt, or (alternatively) a mere positive blip on his overall negative radar?