Rating: Summary: An extraordinary writer's most enduring work Review: Graham Greene is an extraordinary writer; his descriptions truly carry a cinematic sweep and his pacing is perfect. He has an ouevre that should perhaps give him classic status, but he will most likely never receive it. So read him now and keep him alive! "The Power and the Glory" is his most famous and perhaps greatest novel - incredibly moving, thoughtful, wonderful. "The End of the Affair," "Brighton Rock," "The Heart of the Matter," and "Our Man in Havana" are all wonderful as well.
Rating: Summary: A Well Written Novel Review: This was a book I had to read for an English 104 assignment. I wasn't looking forward to it but low and behold a masterpiece sprang forth. This story is told in a most unique way that I found enjoyable and insightful throught. I enjoyed the different perspective this novel provides concerning catholic priests and their work in Latin America/Mexico, and find it a worthwhile book! A very good book, highly recommended to all.
Rating: Summary: My favorite novel Review: Incredibly moving and written with beauty and patience, "The Power and the Glory" is dominated by its two primary characters: the lieutenant, who thinks himself a Nietzchean superman, and the nameless whiskey priest. The lieutenant is an incredibly fascinating character, but it is the whiskey priest who is unforgettable - so real that a Catholic teacher wrote Greene in 1960, "One day I gave "The Power and the Glory" to ... a native of Mexico who had lived through the worst persecutions ... She confessed that your descriptions were so vivid, your priest so real, that she found herself praying for him at Mass." Please read this book. It might be initially frustrating for some (because of the pacing), but this frustration should soon dissipate. The novel is suspenseful through the body and ends beautifully, tying up all the loose ends. Most of all, the story is moving: many will weep after reading this. The Power is in the State, but the Glory will always rest in the Church. Greene knows it.
Rating: Summary: The power of God transcends human unworthiness... Review: This is one of the most moving books I have ever read. The hunted and haunted priest is, even by his own definition, deeply flawed. As a priest, he may consider himself a failure, but God still uses him in a redemptive manner. His decision to fulfill his priestly obligations will echo the Passion, and will give an element of grace and saintliness to this deeply flawed priest and human being.
Rating: Summary: I thought this book was unfocused and basically boring. Review: This book is terrible for many reasons. One being that it is set in a depressing time and place, and the way Greene depicts his characters, at times, made me sick and I had to put the book down just imagining what they looked like. I really felt depressed while reading this book. It was not uplifting at all. And as Faulkner said in his Nobel Prize Speech 'it is the duty of the writer to uplift the audience and help their spirits soar high.' This book didn't even increase my pulse.
Rating: Summary: The Power & the Glory Review: A magnificient story about a priest outlawed during a insurrection in Mexico during the 1930's. The "whisky priest", according to other reviews travelled his area in Mexico performing his duties as a Priest. I disagree. He was represented as truly "human" man, who happened to be a priest, who could NOT do his duties particularly during trying and difficult times. When it came to escaping the territory and possibly living in a comparativly free (religiously speaking) area he did feel enough responsibilty toward his religion, not to leave. This cost him his life. To me he was a real person, weak and again, very human, ending up with more integrity than he began. Many other interesting characters in this book well worth reading about. Lots of religious discussion here. Graham Greene is a wonderful author.
Rating: Summary: Hands down Greene's best Review: I don't know why it took me so long to read "The Power and the Glory" (incidentally, for a long time this has been how I remember the last phrase in the Our Father... I used to always put glory before power, but not anymore!).
I fell in love with Graham Greene when I was in high school, but I didn't read this book until last year. I finished it in a couple of days of train commuting. All I can say is WOW. Defintely a good one to start on if you haven't read Graham Greene before.
Rating: Summary: Modern Cruxifiction story Review: The story is a cruel, tragic tale, imbued on several levels with chronic suffering and guilt. Greene travelled in Mexico in the 1930s, a miserable journey, chronicled in his travelogue 'The Lawless Roads'. During his travels, he found the majority of the provinces in Mexico to be crooked, and anti clerical. In the post 1910 Revolutionary era, under the presidency of Plutarco Elias Calles, anti clerical measures were adapted and organized religion banned. Calles believed that the Catholic Church was responsible for spreading superstition, priests were greedy and corrupt. Many of them were hunted down and shot. Others fled.
'The Power and the Glory' is based on a fictional version of one such priest, the nameless 'whisky priest', the only one left in his province who continues to practice his priestly duties under the constant threat of capture and execution. Unlike Jesus, however, the priest is an imperfect man. He drinks excessively, he commits adultery. And, perhaps most poignantly towards the end of the novel, he declares that it was pride rather than innate spiritual kindness that compelled him to bloody mindedly remain in the province.
Despite all of this, however, the priest is portrayed as a hero. For all his faults, he continues to practice religion during the worst of times.
The portrayal of Mexico in this novel is the perfect backdrop to the priest's plight. The tone is bleak and gloomy. Vultures, snakes, hyenas, beetles and sharks lurk ominously near the action. Fever is rife, sweltering heat is everywhere, as is thirst, poverty, decay and degredation.
The ultimate message of 'The Power and the Glory', however, is optimistic. The priest, although he does not realise it, has, through his actions, enabled the church to survive. He realises that he has fallen well short of what he considers to be the only thing that is worthy - to live the life of a saint. But in fact he is a saint, albeit a flawed one. It is he, and he alone during this time that enables the glory of the Church to prevail against the repressive power of the Government.
Incidentally, 'The Power and the Glory' was published in 1940. The Vatican wrote to Greene, condemning the novel and asking for revisions, in 1953 leading Evelyn Waugh to utter his famous reply 'They have taken fourteen years to write their first letter. You should take fourteen years to answer it'.
Rating: Summary: The English Dostoyevsky Does It Again Review: Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" may be his best foray into English existentialism. More than his other works with similar themes such as "The End of the Affair," this work really seems like the opus of an English Dostoyevsky. Like the grand Russian novelist, Greene attacks serious religious issues while still retaining realistic fallible characters. Though he truly has a thesis - mainly that organized religion is vitally important in our lives - he asks as many questions as he tries to answer. Like Dostoyevsky, sometimes it is the questions that are more important than the answers given by the author.
The real conflict is between the whisky priest and the lieutenant. In different ways, each represents both the power and the glory of the title's Biblical reference. The priest has power over his congregation and the glory of God. The Lieutenant has power over the people and the glory of serving them. What fascinates me so much is how similar these two opposite characters are and how they might have been friends in a more perfect world. Moreover, I like that some of the most truly blessed or religious people in the book claim to have no belief in God. Thought-provoking stuff - deeds or words = deeds or beliefs.
In short, if you're looking for an honest attempt to ask real spiritual questions about organized religion - not just another sermon from someone who claims to have all the answers - then this is the book for you.
Rating: Summary: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." Review: Originally published in 1940, Penguin Classics has not yet reissued a centenial edition of Graham Greene's masterpiece, THE POWER AND THE GLORY. Greene (1904-1991) converted to Catholicism in 1926, and later reported on religious persecution in Mexico in 1938, which provides the historical background for his novel. Following civil war in central-western Mexico, the government banned Catholocism and its practice in the southern states of Tobasco and Chiapas. An army of government thugs--anticlerical "Red Shirts," enforced the ban by executing priests.
Set in Tobasco the 1930s, THE POWER AND THE GLORY follows the last remaining priest on his flight from the fascist Red Shirts pursuing him, to his ascent to martyrdom. Greene's anonymous hero is an outlaw and a gentle "whisky priest" (p. 79), with a love for brandy. In fact, he has broken most of his vows, and even fathered an illegitimate daughter. Although he no longer finds prayer meaningful, Greene's whiskey priest continues to perform rites as a fugitive from the state until he is betrayed by a Judas-like, toothless mestizo, and is tortured along the way by the inner knowledge that, "when he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay?"
Readers don't have to be Catholic or even religious to appreciate this book. Greene's novel not only offers readers a religious parable that transcends its written pages, contrasting God's power and glory against twentieth century secular materialism, but it also offers a source of comfort for anyone feeling out of step with their country's politics.
G. Merritt
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