The Heart of the Matter (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

Rating:
Summary: "O God , I offer up my damnation to you."
Review: "What an absurd thing it was to expect happiness in a world so full of misery," Graham Greene's protagonist observes in this novel; "point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, evil--or else an absolute ignorance" (p. 111). Like THE END OF THE AFFAIR (1951), this is a religious novel which explores the the dark interior landscape of human suffering. Originally published in 1948, Penguin Classics recently published a centennial edition of Greene's "Catholic novel," THE HEART OF THE MATTER, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The novel tells the story of Major Henry Scobie, a police officer serving duty in a miserable West African state during WWII. After he is passed over for a promotion, scrupulously honest Scobie borrows money from Yusef, a Syrian moneylender of dubious character, to send his wife, Louise, to South Africa. Despite the fact that he is incapable of love, as demonstrated by his loveless marriage to Louise, Scobie then falls into an affair with a woman, Helen Rolt, who is thirty years younger than him. Consumed by guilt, Scobie's attempts to reconcile the affair to his devout Catholic beliefs eventually lead him to spiral downward through a profound spiritual crisis to his final devastation, reveaing along the way an intense, unrelenting inner hell seemingly devoid of God's love. At one point in the novel, Scobie says that hell is more a sense of loss than an actual place.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER is a powerful exploration of suicide by one of the world's best novelists.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
Review: It is only fair that I quickly mention that Greene is my favorite author, and that this is my favorite fictional work, period. But I of course have constructive reasons for these opinions, which goes to show that impartiality is often such a dumb requirement for evaluation. Like Greene, I have always had a confused relationship with Christianity; we both, I think, have struggled with those persistent questions which one's intellect enlists to assault one's faith, and thus also those feelings of guilt by which the latter defends itself. The result is most often some ethical, or worse existential, paradox. And, not surprisingly, this is exactly the focus of THOTM.

I expect most people struggle with similar spiritual dilemmas, and so this novel is highly recommended generally. If, however, you are firm in your faith or atheism, this story is a beautiful adventure into the life of those less spiritually stable. Greene's writing is quintessentially British, but in its most artistic capacity; his unoffending prose hides a wealth of latent emotional attachment to his characters. Finally, THOTM has one of the most morally intricate plots I know of, but Greene never stumbles in unfolding it.

In addition to THOTM, I recommend ... well, everything else Greene has written, including his collection of essays, which is rather hard to find, I think. Also, Norman Sherry somewhat recently wrote a three-volume biography of Greene, which is exceptional - although I admit I have only read volumes one and two thus far. His life is inordinately exciting for a writer. Greene was more than a novelist; he was an intelligence agent for the British government, and, less dramatic but still politically interesting, a newspaper - the London Times, I think - correspondent based in Mexico and North Africa throughout periods of social upheaval.

Rating:
Summary: Of all things life is supreme
Review: In his inimmitable manner Graham Green has shown in this distinctly humanist novel why the dictates of heart that recognizes life as the supreme should ultimately be valued. Religion has not been rejected but in a way rather integrated to an idea of life but it extracts its price for life to claim its own place. Major Scobie didn't know that the love that never existed between him and Louise would not be honoured even by mistake after his death. He was mistaken to assume that he was setting Helen free from the sin and trouble of their love by his death. Everything remains the same vindicating Heart and even religion at the end! What a grand story telling, excellent plot and unfolding of thoughts!

Rating:
Summary: One has to accept the premises in order to begin.
Review: Were I to recommend a novel by Greene on his politics alone, I would recommend _The Quiet American_, or the _Human Factor_. This is a novel apparently very removed from Greene's later concerns- a Pascalian set piece, very akin to various pieces produced by Catholic novelists with a taste from Jansenism during the 1930s and 1940s (viz. the Brazilians Octavio de Faria and Lucio Cardoso) about the futility of Man searching salvation on the strenghth of one's good works and about the paramountacy of God's Grace that can save one in the last minute of one's life. But then there's is something in the feeling of alienation that Greene conveys in this novel that transcends his strictly Catholic concerns - an urge to make sense, to overcome the feeling of general meaningless, that makes his novel enjoyable and worthy of a recommendation for the more "general" public- and that perhaps explains the sharp turn made by Greene in the 1950s.

Rating:
Summary: Forget the hype, The Heart of the Matter is overrated
Review: There is a line somewhere in the middle of Greene's The Heart of the Matter where two charcters are discussing about a stroy they have read. One character says to the other, "This story is dull." I couldn't help but chuckle that the characters in this story could put Greene's story in such an accurate choice of words.

The Heart of the Matter does have some good insights about the depth of a man's soul, and near the end of the story we finally get some insight into this man's character, but that, unfortunatley, is short lived. There is some good ideas of man's guilt about religion and his relationship to God here, if only Greene could have figured out a better way to tie it all together.

The main problem with Greene's novel is that while you are reading it, you don't actually care about any of the cold, one dimentional characters portrayed here, with the exception of Scobie. The story takes forever to get going, and once it finally gets some steam to it, we are cheated by an over the top ending. The ending made this novel worse, in my opinion. It is not that I don't enjoy dark novels or twisted endings. In fact, some of the darkest novels are my most favorite. In those novels, however, I acutally cared about what happended in the end. This is one of the most overrated classics I have ever read. And I am sure when you get to the so called climatic, "shocking" ending, you will be thinking the same thing as I was. "Am I supposed to care?"

Grade: C-

Rating:
Summary: Dark and powerful
Review: The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene is perhaps the darkest Greene novel I've read to date, and that's saying something. The setting, the barrenness of the main characters' social and personal lives and the apparent presence of the devil in the book combine to make this a depressing -- and engaging -- read by Greene, one of the master writers of the internal and spiritual landscape.

Henry Scobie is a police officer passed over for promotion for commissioner in a west African coastal colony of the British Empire in the twentieth century. The setting of the novel is indicative of the oppressive spiritual crisis that is to build and explode for Scobie throughout the course of the novel. The colony is either baking in heat or inundated with rains. At the end of each season, the characters seem about to go mad for want of the next, only to repeat the cycle of exhaustion. There are rats, cockroaches and other assorted irritating and dangerous creatures everywhere, in the houses and hotel rooms, in the baths, everywhere. Malaria hits Scobie early on, and we can see from his casual decision to "sweat it out" while on a trip to investigate a suicide that it's not an unusual occurrence. The pain of the landscape is exacerbated by WWII and the allegiances and enemies it creates in a faraway land as well as its rendering of normal activities, like writing and carrying letters for post, as crimes. This is a miserable, miserable place to be.

But Scobie seems to like it; he is comfortable in this landscape. He, unlike his wife, is not ambitious, and is not unhappy about being passed over for promotion. However, he does worry about the effect this has on his wife, Louise. His love for her is anything but idealized, if it even is love. He seems more to pity her than anything else and feels the burden to provide for her happiness however he can very deeply. They are both devoutly Catholic, and have lost a daughter in their marriage, their only child. Scobie, who writes "just the facts" in his diary every night noted their daughter's death with only, "C. died." against that day's date.

In an effort to provide for his wife's happiness, Scobie borrows money from a man of dubious character, Yusef, a Syrian merchant living in the colony who seems to be often under police surveillance. The money is spent to send Louise to South Africa. Both Scobie and Louise know that she is not liked in the colony and has few friends except for a new clerk, Wilson, who is not really welcomed at the club due to his lowly status. Wilson is in love with Louise and hates Scobie for not valuing her as he does (in idealizing her and his feelings).

It is in his dealings with Louise that we first see that Scobie is sadly unable to estimate her understanding of him and their relationship accurately. He always seems surprised when she guesses what he is thinking or when she knows he is lying to her about his feelings, etc. And yet they have been married some years. The reader starts to see that Scobie's view of others is (humanly) inaccurate and serves his own purposes of pity and concern more than it serves the future of any close relationship.

While Louise is gone, Scobie is called to a rescue site of some boat passengers who were victims of a German sea attack. Many tragically die, but one woman, who looks like a child as she is carried into his life on a stretcher clutching only a stamp album, becomes a new love interest to Scobie. Helen Rolt has lost her husband in the attack, and after her recovery is living in the colony waiting to return to England or move on somewhere else, and Scobie, in his efforts to care for her -- she was such a heartbreaking vision -- falls in love with her and starts an affair.

It isn't long before we can see the same patterns in his relationship with Helen that we see with Louise. He says he loves her -- and seems to -- and yet his love is played out only by promises he doubts he can fulfill and pitied concern. Again he underestimates his lovers' perception of realit; again he seems to have taken on a burden, rather than a companion; again he seems to be more lonely in the relationship than outside of it. And yet he craves it and cannot let it go. Even when Louise returns.

Scobie's spiritual life matters to him, and he, a policeman, is very concerned with the law, and struggles to cope with meeting the laws of his Christianity while pleasing and helping the two women he says he loves, neither of which seem to understand him completely, though they "get" him more than he seems to get them. In further dealings with Yusef, real and palpable evil comes into the story in a manner as oppressive as the weather and the climate. While Scobie seems to be succeeding in Louise's ambitions, he struggles more and more with meeting the law of his Catholicism while not hurting Louise or Helen.

The sad and tragic aspect of Scobie is that he sees the rules of his religious life more clearly than he sees the love and grace it is to provide for him. Just as in his relationships with women, he underestimates what God knows and understands about him and might do for him if asked. He takes on all the responsibility of the pain and loneliness and the evil of this place, while never seeking assistance. The pain of the last chapters is unrelenting, though a small bit of hope and grace is articulated by one of the characters toward the end. I'm clinging to these few words, or I'd lose all my hope myself.





Rating:
Summary: An Enjoyable Masterpiece
Review: What is the "heart of the matter"? For me, Graham Greene ranks with Faulkner and Conrad in his unsparingly honest, yet empathetic insight into the human heart. And, not that of great men, but of ordinary people like you and me, who try so hard to stay right, not always succeeding, but often failing nobly. The Heart of the Matter is to me Greene's most vivid and memorable foray into this terra incognita. Scobie is noble, flawed and fully realized. The so-called "invented" world through which he walks is so richly atmospheric that it hardly seems fictional.The plot here is a bit less animated than in some of Greene's other famous novels, but the richness of character and detail keeps you involved. Ultimately, this is a book I will never forget, largely because it gave me the chance to view the world through the eyes of of another human being, which to me is truly the "heart of the matter."