The Heart of Glory: Children, Humanism, and Character in Greene's Novel Anonymous College

In Graham Greene’s dynamic novel The Power and the Glory, we follow the Whiskey Priest throughout his harrowing journey as he runs for his life, avoiding capture and death at the hands of the Lieutenant. This novel shows the development of the priest as he turns from a previously selfish man before meeting his daughter, into a man who gives everything including himself to trying to help children after meeting Brigetta. Greene shows the diversity and parallels between the Lieutenant and the Whiskey Priest as they both struggle with theological beliefs while embarking on their journey of making a better world for children, both handling it in extremely contrasting ways. We follow the Priest while on the run from persecution in Mexico; from watching him meet his love child to helping a woman carry her dead son along a dangerous path to a church. The Lieutenant and the Whiskey Priest dance around each other from place to place but the Priest is finally caught when he steps back into a dangerous territory to deliver the last rights to a murderer. A major distinction that grows larger throughout the progression of the novel is how the Whiskey Priest changes drastically throughout the novel and is a person who has immense influence,...