Not so Warm Welcome

            We’ve all seen the classic sitcom opening; the husband has the longest, most tiresome day at work, and comes home to his wife and family berating him.  Yet we do not hear a laugh track or feel a sense of slapstick when a similar scene plays out in the whisky priest’s return home.  Instead of coming home in a cushy automobile to a nice, warm house, the priest instead trots into a pretty meek town on a smelly mule.  This scene and the dialogue that follows between the priest, Maria, and the townspeople, represent the recurring theme of the priest being unwanted.  His warm welcome has turned into a rude awakening, and thanks to the practices of the lieutenant, no matter where the priest goes from now on, it seems he will be shunned. 

            As the priest trots into town on the tired mule, he feels like he has come to the place that “he most wanted to be” (59), a place that will welcome him at last.  He soon finds out that nothing could be further from the truth.  Instead of being welcomed home, he is met by a very anxious group of people who cannot wait to show him the door.  Maria, whom he had an affair and child with, certainly is not thrilled to see him, and one-by-one the townspeople express their discomfort at his homecoming.  They ask if “he will be here long, father” (63), or if he “couldn’t go a bit further north to Pueblito” (63).  Clearly, this is not the welcome he anticipated and their “expressions of shyness and unwillingness” (63) at his presence only furthers the idea that he is truly unwelcome.  It seems as though this town is like Captain Fellows’s barn, it is a place to stay the night, but no longer than that. 

           Although the townspeople appear to be keen on shunning the whisky priest only due to the lieutenant’s harsh practices in taking and killing hostages, I believe this meeting in his hometown is the first of many.  Where could he possibly turn to now?  He has already gotten a man killed due to leaving wine behind in Concepciòn, and many weren’t exactly hospitable to him before the lieutenant’s harsh practices took effect.  Even as the whisky priest looks to leave, he is met by Maria who destroys his wine to prevent another "mistake" of his, and blatantly states that he is “no good any more to anyone” (78).  With no one and nowhere to turn to, the whisky priest turns southward, his fleeting happiness gone.

Question for discussion:  With the practices of the lieutenant revealed to him, should the whisky priest turn himself in?