Thursday, February 14, 2013

Trust No One, Love Everyone


             
            After having read many of Graham Greene’s works this trimester, I must admit that it has changed the way I read literature. When I read that Fowler is not engaged in the situation in Vietnam, I expect him to be distant and withdrawn from the events. Instead, we see Fowler’s opinion seep through at times, until he finally realizes it is impossible to not be engagé. Similarly, when I read that Scobie wants to attain peace, I expect him to head towards that goal rather than go out of his way to involve himself in others’ problems. The Third Man is narrated by a character who is biased, and appears untrustworthy in the beginning. Thanks to Graham Greene, I am not so easily trusting of the narrator any more. That may seem cynical, but in fact, it is eye-opening. You read each word over carefully, thinking whether or not the narrator is telling the truth, hiding a secret, or simply rejecting reality. It’s a step further in critical reading that I would never have discovered without reading Greene.

The whisky priest from The Power and the Glory is my absolute favorite character from Greene’s masterpieces. Despite his flaws and his past, the priest is practically a saint. However, he believes that he is a terrible sinner; he sees the good in everyone but himself. Therefore, we cannot take the priest’s thoughts completely to heart. First, we have to compare them to his actions because actions speak louder than words, especially in this case. The priest’s selfless acts contrast his pitiful state of mind, and Greene leaves it up to us to evaluate which is more important. The Power and the Glory also includes the famous, wonderful insight: “Hate was just a failure of imagination.” This is actually a very Christian notion. Everyone’s situation is different, and if we look hard enough, we can find the origin of someone’s faults so that we may then forgive them. Those seven words are packed with so much meaning and wisdom about love, forgiveness, compassion, and even faith, that only Graham Greene could have compressed so much thought into just one short phrase.

Greene’s characters are multi-dimensional and paradoxical. Greene created such genuine characters that it was not even possible to hate the villains. Relating back to his insightful line, every antagonist had some quality that evoked pity or sympathy, removing hatred from the picture entirely. Greene made each character, even the minor ones, multi-faceted and complex so that it was impossible not to get emotionally attached to them, and thus he got a more intense reaction from the reader at the end of a novel.  So reading Graham Greene has taught me not to fully trust the narrator, and to love and forgive, which is paradoxical in and of itself, which only adds to the point that Graham Greene was a tremendous author. 

2 comments:

Eddie Bannon said...

A biased narrator indeed seems to be a hallmark of Greene literature - so much so that as Piotr has mentioned, the narrator is often untrustworthy. I think this comes across most clearly in The Quiet American in the case of Fowler, where there exists a dichotomy between speech and thought, which is portrayed through the narration. If the reader is only getting the dialog, they would probably believe Fowler when he claims repeatedly that he keeps himself separated from the situation around him, like a good reporter. The truth, of course, is that Fowler is certainly tied to the situation, but this is never really expressed aloud until the very end of the novel. Instead, the reader must in this case depend on a biased narrative in order to gain the full picture, as it is only in the narrative that Fowler's thoughts emerge, and it is from these unguarded thoughts that we can draw our conclusions. Stylistically, of course, it is much more effective ot let the reader figure out whats going on for themselves, but it also adds a human element to Fowler as well. He insists repeatedly that he is not engaged; he may even believe it of himself. His true feelings are only revealed to the reader, creating an intimacy between Fowler and his audience that would otherwise be absent.

Eddie Bannon said...
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