Paradoxes in Graham Green Novels

PARADOXES IN GRAHAM GREENE’S NOVELS

by Mrs Amanda Lingen

Taking into consideration his ‘Catholic’ novels, (Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Power and the Glory and The End of the Aff air) it seems that Graham Greene’s writing centres on paradox. Greene’s faith as a Roman Catholic, which was by no means unquestioning or orthodox in its nature, gave a theological framework to his writing. He famously described himself as a writer, ‘who happens to be Catholic’, suggesting that he is not specifi cally a Catholic writer, but rather, as part of his philosophy and outlook, faith naturally enters his writing. While these novels are in no way dogmatic, they contain many Catholic characters and probe the place of Catholicism in a predominantly sceptical and secular twentieth century society. It is in the questions of faith and doctrine that most of Greene’s paradoxes can be found and these paradoxes are dramatised through his protagonists - Pinkie, Scobie, the whisky priest and Benedrix.

Let us consider Brighton Rock, Greene’s fi rst major ‘Catholic’ novel. The novel contains a double discourse: it is at once a detective story, with Ida Arnold determined to solve the mystery of Hale’s murder, and a mystery of the mercy and nature of God. The very distinct secular and religious paths cross, or rather clash, in Brighton Rock in the battle between the worldly Ida, who insists on the moral justice of right and wrong, and the Catholic Pinkie and Rose, who exemplify evil and good respectively. Ida dismisses Rose’s theology, retorting, “That’s just religion”. Similarly, Rose is unable to react to the moral standards Ida holds by:

‘[Ida] “I know one thing you don’t. I know the diff erence between Right and Wrong. They didn’t teach you that at school.”

Rose didn’t answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods - Good and Evil.’

PARADOXES IN GRAHAM GREENE’S NOVELS

In this novel the secular and the religious are shown as incomprehensible to one another. They are as remote as two diff erent countries and Ida fi nds herself in the religious land:

“She [Ida] was as far from either of them as she was from Hell - or Heaven. Good or evil lived in the same country, spoke the same language, came together like old friends, feeling the same completion.” This exemplifi es the fi rst paradox: good and evil, supposed opposites, are aligned as companions, coming together in the marriage of Pinkie and Rose. In fact, these opposites are said to need each other, as Pinkie’s thoughts demonstrates: ‘What was most evil in him needed her: it couldn’t get along without goodness.’ While good and evil complete one another, good and right, usually thought to be closely aligned, are conversely alien to one another in Brighton Rock.

So, if good and right are incompatible, where does this leave wrong and evil? Does this mean that Greene advocates that the world should favour evil doers like Pinkie over the well-meaning people like Ida? Lewis argues that the rhetoric of Brighton Rock seems condemning of Ida, described with her ‘remorseless optimism’ and ‘merciless compassion’. Pinkie’s judgement of Ida when Rose asks, “Is she good?’ supports this critical tone. ‘“She?” The boy laughed. “She’s just nothing.”’ Despite the novel’s subtle rhetorical condemnations, Gordon regards Ida as one of Greene’s ‘unsung heroes’. One of the few to stand up and fi ght against evil. While it is true that Pinkie is ultimately reduced to a panic stricken schoolboy, defeated and almost certainly damned, this does not necessarily equate to the success of Ida and the moral world in the way that Gordon argues. Gordon fails to recognise the insignifi cance of a victory in this world given the context of the novel and while there is a slight hope, ‘between the stirrup and the ground,’ for God’s mercy to extend to

Pinkie, Ida remains equally as far from heaven or hell. So if Gordon is wrong about Brighton Rock favouring Ida’s success over Pinkie, this leaves us in moral confusion. How can Brighton Rock be reproachful of Ida and condoning of the murderer Pinkie? The answer lies in a complicated paradox – Greene’s work implies that failure brings one closer to holiness. This failure is more specifi cally affi liated here to religious orthodoxy: that one is self-deprecating being aware of their failure to attain religious ideals. This failure requires two provisos: fi rst that one believes in the standards they are failing to achieve and yet one rejects them:

‘The characters’ failure to conform to the standard, it is essential for humane action; their continued acceptance of it is necessary, not only if they are to be distinguished from nonChristian humanists, but if they are to experience that self-deprecating humility of failure which is, for Greene, the condition of holiness’ (Terry Eagleton).

Greene’s protagonists who come closest to sainthood thus regard themselves as failures, and can be seen as such. The whiskey priest in The Power and the Glory sees himself as an unworthy representative of God, a mockery to the church with his drinking and his daughter. By the end of the novel the priest is stripped of all his possessions, and without wine or alter he is unable to perform the sacraments correctly. Similarly, Sarah in The End of the Aff air condemns herself in her diary as a bitch and a fake. However, Eagleton believes that both of these self-denigrating judgements must be regarded by the reader as incredibly harsh in order that the characters be seen as embodying the holiness the novels suggest, (both seemed elevated to sainthood by the end). However, the characters must believe in their unworthiness to avoid being pious and to come close to God through suff ering and humility. Therefore, their failure is a source of anxiety at being bad Catholics and is one of their most notably Catholic traits. This does not apply, however, to Pinkie whose actions the novel does not necessary condone but rather explores. Although Pinkie fails to adhere to orthodoxy while believing in it, he does not achieve holiness and seems to be most certainly damned. His failure to achieve holiness must then be down to his bad intentions. This leads to yet another paradox, identifi ed by Eagleton, that ‘sanctity and damnation lie in simultaneously recognising and rejecting the rules,’ one’s intention providing the only distinction between the two. This paradox supports the companionship of good and evil found in Greene’s work as they require many of the same beliefs and actions and so a thin line between salvation and Damnation exists. The logic based on paradox, qualifi es the obscure statement of the priest at the end of Brighton Rock: ‘a Catholic is more capable of evil than anyone. I think perhaps-because we believe in him-we are more in touch with the devil than other people.

Greene described his choice of Catholic characters for Brighton Rock by his wish to examine more closely the eff ect of faith on action. This leads to another paradox: religious faith cannot kill evil and has failed to do so and Pinkie who commits crimes (which he more importantly regards as mortal sins) while contemplating the subsequent damnation of his soul. Despite the sadistic contemplation, his evil deeds go unrestrained. This has wider political implications and most immediately can be demonstrated by the Nazis’ shame of twentieth-century Europe. Peter Mudford argues that in Pinkie, Greene mirrors the ineffi ciency of faith against evil in both individuals and in society. In fact, Pinkie’s carefully considered leap into damnation has left some critics fi nding his actions almost heroic. While Pinkie is almost certainly damned, given the strange nature of God's mercy we can never be completely sure given the nature of god’s mercy cannot be known.

Another key paradox found in Greene’s work is that his protagonists fi nd God through evil and hate, or rather God seems to fi nd them in this condition in what has been described as a reversal of the Pilgrim's Progress quest for salvation: ‘Greene’s God seeks those furthest from him, Greene suggests, paradoxically, that in reaching out for the Devil one may well fi nd God intervening and conversely in reaching for God, one may indeed fi nd the devil (Mudford). This can be seen most notably in The Power and the Glory by the whisky priest. ‘You only had to turn up the underside

of any situation and out came scuttling these small absurd contradictory situations. He had given way to despair and out of that had emerged a human soul and love-not the best love but love all the same.’ Just as his character was about to give up, God seems to reach out to him. The priest acknowledges that when he was serving God in the comfortable situation before the persecution in Mexico he was less holy than in the desperation of his life in pursuit. However, he must not question this orthodoxy, for although the rules are broken for humanitarian reasons, they must not be seen as arbitrary rules, insignifi cant in themselves. On occasions the tension between accepting and rejecting the rules is threatened in The Power and the Glory by the idea that the rules do not matter. For instance, the whiskey Priest on giving confessions, ‘wanted to say to this man love is not wrong you don't need penance my child you have suff ered quite enough’. However, this design is overruled and a habit of the confessional surfaced: ‘He said mortal sin, danger, self-control’. The reason the policeman cannot reject the rules and simply trust his heart is revealed in the fi nal confrontation between the priest and the lieutenant. The lieutenant knows that he wants to let his heart speak but the priest tells the lieutenant that the heart is an untrustworthy beast. Instead one must obey the rules of the church or break them reluctantly for humanitarian reasons as human pity can be false especially when compared to the mysterious workings of God's mercy. This dilemma between humanity and God seems to be played out in The End of the Aff air, where the protagonist Benedrix and God are seen as rivals. Not only are they rivals for Sarah's love, but given Benedrix’s profession as a creative writer they are also rivals in the act of creation. In both instances God is victorious, for the novel which Bendrix is writing seems to be the one that we are reading, and it becomes apparent that an absent god is controlling the action of the novel. Throughout the ‘story’ of the novel Bendrix remains the sceptic, refusing to believe the ‘miracles’ that occur after Sarah’s death. Yet by the end of the novel, it seems that Benedrix has reluctantly been converted. It seems that one of the key themes of the novel is hate. Bendrix hates God for being one step of head of him by controlling the actions, for it seems the end or purpose of the aff air was to convert Bendrix. And more pressingly, he hates Him for taking Sarah away from him. However, it is of course Sarah's free will and her vow which places God as an obstacle in their illicit relationship. It seems that while in the other novels we have discussed one can fi nd God through failure, the central paradox in this novel is that fi nding God can also lead to pain, suff ering and, for Bendrix, hate. The End of the Aff air seems to carry on the idea that following the heart is untrustworthy, yet this doesn't make the sacrifi ces of the heart any easier to bear. It seems that Greene’s novels are able to value ‘human worth without challenging human worthlessness’ (Eagleton). Beauty is found in sin, as the whisky priests in prison and announces, ‘suddenly we discover that our sins have so much beauty’. In the face of the ugliest human the whiskey priest must remind himself that here too God's image is present:

When you visualise a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity - that was a quality God's image carried with it.

It seems that God for Greene is not only love, but also pain and suff ering. In fact Greene adhered to a theory of evolution that God and man were both evolving together, and in the end this evolution will reach a state where evil is eradicated. However, Greene’s work explores God from the perspective of evil, failure and hatred and Greene is consistently interested in the underdog, the underground world of Pinkie, the persecuted Mexico inhabited by the whisky priest and the tainted world of adultery Sarah and Bendrix fi nd themselves in. In essence Greene’s protagonists are anti-heroes, placed in a fallen world making the heroic leap of faith or disbelief, anything but indiff erence which Greene abhorred. While these novels contain a framework of Catholic theology, much of the anxiety and uncertainty found in his work is symptomatic of the 20th century world Green was writing in.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

By Grace Turner

It could be argued that one of the most signifi cant events of this year (and there certainly have been many) is the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement which has swept the globe in the form of protests, petitions and activism, with people searching for ways in which they can become stronger allies to the community. In this I was led to refl ect on the lack of people of colour within the literary canon and how it important it is to celebrate these less popular authors who seem to have been swallowed by a wave of ‘old, dead white men’. I have collected three female authors of colour who touch base on a range of genres. In simply opening up a space in a small publication like this, educating a small number of people, a big diff erence can be made.

Maya Angelou, 1928-2014, amongst other things, was an American author, poet and civil rights activist best known for her memoir ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’, the fi rst nonfi ction bestseller by an African American woman in literary history. Much of her autobiographical work, including this one, explores themes of economic, racial and sexual oppression, all of which are issues she had experienced fi rst-hand.

When moving to New York City in the late 50’s Angelou was encouraged for her literary talents at the Harlem Writer’s Guild and her writing fl ourished under the rise of the African cultural renaissance. After travelling around the world as part of her performance career, she returned to California in 1966 and wrote ‘Black, Blues, Black’, which revolves around the role of African culture in American life. Alongside this, her writing of the movie drama ‘Georgia, Georgia’ made ger one of the fi rst African American women to have a screenplay produced as a feature fi lm. Angelou’s poetry work, including ‘Now Sheba Sings the Song’ (1987) and ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’ (1990), drew heavily on her personal journey whilst using multiple perspectives and viewpoints. One of her greatest honours, amongst many, was in 1993 when invited to compose the poem ‘On the Pulse of Morning’ for the inauguration of the U.S President Bill Clinton. Another notable moment in her career was when Angelou versifi ed Nelson Mandela in her 2013 poem ‘His Day is Done’, which went on to be commissioned by the U.S State Department. Angelou died in North Carolina, on May 28, 2014 at 86 years old.

Octavia Estelle Butler, 1947-2006, was an African American author noted for her science fi ction novels surrounding future societies and superhuman powers, including mythology and African American spiritualism.

Butler was born in Pasadena, California. After the death of her father, she was raised by her widowed mother. As an extremely shy child, she became fascinated by the fantasy reads at her library and began writing fi ction in her teenage years. Butler was educated at the University of California in Los Angeles and, encouraged by writer Harlan Ellison, her career began in 1970. The fi rst of her novels, ‘Patternmaster’ (1976), was the beginning of her fi ve-volume Patternist

series about an elite group of mentally linked telepaths ruled by Doro, a 4000-year-old immortal African. Her novel ‘Kindred’ (1979) involves a modern black woman who is sent back in time to a pre-Civil War plantation, becomes a slave, and rescues her white, slave-owning ancestor. Butlers short story ‘Speech Sounds’ won a Hugo Award in 1984, and her novel ‘Bloodchild’ , published in 1995, about human male slaves who incubate their alien masters’ eggs, won both Hugo and Nebular awards. That same year Butler became the fi rst Sci-Fi writer to be awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and in 2000 she received a PEN Award for her lifetime achievement.

Toni Morrison, 1931–2019, was an American writer noted for her examination of black experience, particularly black female experience, within the black community. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Growing up in the American Midwest, Morrison was raised by a family which possessed an intense love of and appreciation for black culture, with storytelling, songs and folktales being a deeply formative part of her childhood. In 1965 Morrison became a fi ction editor, after teaching at Morrison became a fi ction editor, after teaching at Texas Southern University and Howard for a combined 10 years.

Morrison’s fi rst of many books, ‘The Bluest Eye’ (1970), is a novel based around a victimised black girl of adolescent age who is obsessed with the ideology of white beauty, longing to have blue eyes. In 1973, she published her second novel ‘Sula’, examining the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community. The critically acclaimed ‘Beloved’ (1987) is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery. A fi lm adaptation of the novel was released in 1998 and starred Oprah Winfrey.

The central motif running through Morrison's novels is the black experience; in an unjust society her characters struggle to fi nd themselves and their cultural identity. Her use of fantasy, poetic style alongside raw and eye-opening subject matter is what gives her stories strength and great importance.