Authorial Discourse On The Power And The Glory

Jacob Mullins

English 12, Hopkins

Death affects everyone. Throughout people’s lives death is surrounding them; Grandparents, friends, brothers, sisters, parents. It is something that is common in the human experience, whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is often debated. The Power and The Glory holds Greene’s realistic depiction of death, showing that it is a routine issue in the human experience.

One of the priest’s main conflicts in the novel is his fight for survival. By simply carrying out his role and his duties as a priest he is putting his life at risk; if he is caught he will be tried for treason, and shot and killed. On page 58 we see the little boy Luis asks a curious question of the Lieutenant. The Lieutenant has taken his pistol out and is showing it to Luis and his friends, and Luis asks if he has killed anyone with it. A young boy already understands the implications of the gun, and that its main purpose is for killing, for creating death. Death has become part of these characters everyday lives. Page 47 through 49 shares the scene of a family in a grave site burying a small child of theirs. Padre Jose is walking by at this time and they ask for him to pray over the dead child and he refuses. The family is devastated, but, not because of the loss of their child. No, “They had been used to losing children, but they hadn’t been used to what the rest of the world knows best of all- hope which peters out.” (49) The ideas and descriptions of death are prominent throughout The Power and The Glory.

Children are dear to almost all, no one would ever think of harming a child. Those that do, are sick and twisted individuals, they are shunned for destroying such perfect life, full of potential. But death affects everyone, it doesn’t care what age, what situation, who the person is, it is not sentimental. The scene in the novel where the priest stumbles upon a dead baby, hidden within a pile of maize, and later on it is discarded under a cross....