This research provides a summary of Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory. It will set forth the general pattern of ideas and events in the text and then discuss the means by which the narrative unfolds.
Set in Mexico during the political revolution that took place there between 1911 and the late 1930s, this book focuses mainly on the manhunt for a fugitive priest by a revolutionary military officer. What has to be understood is that the Mexican revolutionary government of this period was officially antireligious. Revolutionary enforcement was partly carried out by Red Shirts, paramilitary units made up mainly of opportunistic youths.
The reason for the antireligious feeling in Mexico is hinted at in a passage that describes poor Mexican peasants giving money that they cannot really afford to the parish Altar Society and the appeal by the priest for even more money for the local church (Greene 126). Indeed, the priests even charge for administering the sacraments. Beyond wanting to curb Church influence, the revolution outlawed priests and shot them as traitors. The Lieutenant chasing the priest takes hostages and shoots villagers who do not give priests up. That anticlerical attitude is in the background of the manhunt for the fugitive priest with no name that takes up most of the novel.
For 10 years, the priest has traveled from village to village in secret, sometimes hearing confessions and saying the mass for peasants who shelter him (Greene 169). But this middle-aged priest also has secrets. He is called a "whisky priest," meaning he is known as an alcoholic, and his first action in the narrative is to beg for some brandy--a problem complicated by the government's prohibition policy. Another secret is connected to the Church's moral corruption: He has fathered an illegitimate child in a village. He was also rather superficial in his vocation ("he could never take the complications of destiny quite seriously" (135)...