The Power and the Glory

Response 6 (5/13/11)
 Sin

Author's Note: This is my response to the priest character of the book. He is described as an alcoholic and a martyr for the Christian Church, but he himself denies the allegations that he should be a martyr, claiming that he is too flawed to represent the Church. My response not-so-successfully tries to counter this by using a passage from the book, namely the last 50 pages. 

 

The priest of The Power and the Glory constantly rebukes anyone who attempts to praise him or his actions. As a priest, this occurs quite often, though he is supposed to be incognito. Just because he is a priest, people assume he is this a highly spiritual being who never sins, while in reality he is a mere man who has a heavy drinking problem. Using this as leverage, he is able to convince everyone, even himself, that he is a terrible person.  Though he has a sinful past, I actually believe that the priest is a halfway decent person.

The beginning of the priest's decency is when he runs into the town and begins to stay with the Lehrs. After requiring a large sum of money for the baptisms that he was going to initiate, the priest steadily drops the price of his services before donating all of his money to the local school. This only happened as the priest ran into the principal of the school on his way out of town to give last rites to a murderer instead of escaping to freedom. Both of these actions are a change of pace from the selfishness that is typical of the priest, and they reflect his true personality. Deep down, the priest is a compassionate person who has the capacity to be kind as opposed to his hateful outside appearance. Not only does this occur because he is a priest, but this is most likely the reason he became a priest; at one time he wanted to use love to spread the word of God. Now, he attempts to fit in with other criminals by putting forth a façade of disdain and sin. The priest doesn't want to seem closer to God than anyone else, so he goes to extremes to sever his ties, though they are so greatly bound that they will always be attached. Granted, this is partially true as he is human and is bound to sin, but the priest is better than he gives himself credit for.

Response 5 (5/12/11)
Faults

Author's Note: I wrote this to respond to a part of The Power and the Glory that addressed a popular topic right now. I explain this in the first paragraphs, so this author's note will be short. Due note, this is not meant to be offending to anyone, though it may seem that way.

There's been a lot of pressure recently to accept our flaws and blame them on the fact that we were born with them.  Assemblies, TV episodes and famous figures are all pushing us to accept what we don't find desirable with ourselves and claim that it's a manufacturing default.  An extremely obese person did not become extremely obese simply because they were a heavy baby. They most likely ate mainly junk food, rarely exercised and now society is pushing us to accept that this is our natural inheritance. (Please notice that I'm not trying to harass obesity, but I'm simply using it as an example and no offense should be taken from it. There's a possibility that some tragedy occurred that indirectly or directly caused someone's obesity, but I find that the case in point is more common.) As of recently, people have become lazy and lost the desire to change, what they don't like about themselves and it is in our natural instinct to shift the blame away from ourselves. I'm not necessarily condemning this, but I find that there is a different reason for our insecurities than our birth, and to change them, we must accept that we caused them in the first place.

The priest in The Power and the Glory, while traveling alone, thinks of the American murderer who had fled to Mexico in order to escape persecution.  Being a priest, he question how we can be made in God's image and then commit such a heinous crime as murder. Though we are originally crafted in God's image, sin separates us from our divine originality. Adam and Eve were meant to be immortal and for a time they were perfect. After the first sin, the façade of purity fell and shattered in such a way that Adam and Eve drifted away from their perfection and began to develop undesirable qualities. A little lie here and there at first, but the intensity of the sin increased as they fell farther away from holiness.  The undesirable actions that they began to take part in were products of their own choices, not because God made them that way. Adam and Eve were originally perfect, but by their own choices they became monsters. Thieves and murders  are criminals because they chose to commit a felony, not because God made them bad people. We are simply the product of our own choices and when we accept this, we can work on improving ourselves.

Response 4 (For 5/5/11)
Personal Gain vs. Personal Sacrifice


Author's Note is the first paragraph.
It's normally very easy for me to respond to literature, even if I don't understand the text, as the case is with The Power and the Glory. For each response we've had to do, I've been able to identify a singular theme to talk about. For this reading, I was left without a clue as to a topic to write about that would be more quality than a summary. This weekend, we played in a soccer tournament and I had a lot of time while playing to try and pick a topic. Normally, my responses have some real-world connection and in the closing half of our last game, a real-world connection occurred that allowed me to gain the footing needed to write a response. I had originally planned for this to be my first response, as the text was in the first chapter, but without something to relate it to, my writing tripped over itself in order to explain the point I was trying to get across. As soon as I saw this soccer play happen, this response literally wrote itself in my head and all I had to do was remember it until I got home. Though I've oversold it, the play that occurred was really quite simple; as simple as a player kicking a ball out of bounds.
 
Like our other games this weekend, we were losing by a fair amount and most of us had given up. I was still going, but that's because I had had some good saves and was able to rest for a while in the first half. As the opposing team pushed down the field once again, their orange jerseys reflecting the sunlight, one of the smallest kids on our team - Henry - stepped up to face his much larger opponent. Because of his size, Henry gets injured a lot by kids ramming into him, kicking him, and mainly just being vicious towards his attacks. This time, as he attempted to prevent the inevitable shot, Henry was kicked in the neck, and though he was in pain, Henry's tough so he refused to kneel on the ground, which would have stopped play. Seeing that he was gasping for breath and shaking, the orange team's right defender who wasn't even involved in the play, yelled out to his wide open teammate who was about to take a shot to kick the ball out of bounds. Without hesitating, the teammate listened and changed his direction, kicking the ball to the sidelines instead of the back of the net. Once we resumed play, it was our throw in because the other team had kicked it out of bounds. Repaying the favor, we threw it calmly back into their territory and allowed it to be advanced once again. Every soccer player is taught this upon entering a program, by I think there was more to it than those unwritten rules.

In The Power and the Glory, the last priest in Mexico is on the run from the government and early in the book he has the opportunity to leave the current town that he is by way of boat. Before it departs, a little boy comes to him - assuming he is a doctor - and asks him to heal the boy's dying mother. As a Catholic priest, he is bound by his spiritual duties to apply the last rites to the mother and leaves the boat behind as he goes to do his work. The priest sacrificed his escape attempt in order to help the little boy in peril. Though he is bound by his duties, the soccer player we faced was completely free to hold his tongue and let his teammate shoot. Instead, he put personal sacrifice - kicking it out of bounds - over personal gain: a potential goal. I believe that although we were his current enemy, his morals, ethics or values couldn't let him stand a human being in pain. Though we may pretend that we are free, just like the priest we are bound to action by our ethics, as the priest was bound by his duties. Whenever there is a situation where morals are in play, we will always stop good from coming to us, if it can help ease the pain of someone else.



 
Response 3 (5/4/11)
Personal Identity

Author's Note: This is my response to the first chapter of Part Two of The Power and the Glory. I wrote about the priest unable to accept the sinful nature he has been forced into since the manhunt for him began. There's nothing really complex about it, it's more of a simple compilation of thought that is shorter than my last response.

 

There are many things in our history that we wish we could change: regrets, choices, actions. All of these  muddle our opinions of ourselves, making us lose confidence in our future choices and forcing us to become insecure with the creature we have become. The Power and the Glory uses a sinful priest to convey this message to its readers; a priest who is frightened by the man he has become. Though we may be displeased by our own identity, we must learn to accept what we are.

"His own natural face hadn't seemed the right one," writes Graham Greene on page 59. The face symbolizes our individualized personality, and the personality is directly formed by  our history, our choices. The priest has lead a sinful life since Communism has swept through Mexico: forcing innocent people to die for him, becoming an alcoholic, and overall living a life that strays from God's path. Though everyone sins, and we are all unworthy, an extra amount of pressure is put on priests to remain holy, as they are our singular link to Christ. Adopting these views, the nameless priest has decided that he is too pitiful to even call himself a priest anymore and has decided that he should change his face and his identity. Everyday, this occurs to real people in real life not just nameless priests in fictional stories. We constantly judge ourselves too harshly and feel that we need to change the identity we have cast for ourselves. But if we cannot accept ourselves, how can we expect to be accepted by others or by God. In order to be accepted, we must allow ourselves to love who we are.

 
Response 2 (4/27/11)
Slavery

Author's Note: This is my response to the second chapter of The Power and the Glory and this is back to my typical essay form for responses. I wrote this about how we can become the slave of a particular item, like money or electronics, and how most of the characters so far have been enslaved to their own object. I'm not sure I even agree with myself on this, as it wasn't directly stated, though I did feel it was implied and there was a particular quote that swayed my decision enough to write about it. I know it ends more abruptly than I would have liked, but I had been working for close to an hour and a half by the time I got to the end of the third paragraph and my brain was fried from not only this but my other homework, too. 

Slavery was first introduced into the United States soon after the first European settlers arrived. These slaves were taken from their African homeland with force and were sold off like cattle to work the fields of their masters.  Though they were a symbol of wealth, slaves were treated worse than the dirt they plowed, resulting in bodily harm and psychological trauma. The Supreme Court of the United States wouldn’t even realize slaves as citizens or legitimate human beings. Finally, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, everyone agreed that it was the end of slavery in the United States. Even so, there is just as much, if not more, slavery that occurs in modern day America and the world as in the past.

Graham Greene writes as though all of his characters are enslaved to their own masters, though they are all free men and women. The lieutenant of the police station is described, at least to me, as a slave to the Communistic government that he works for. “[The lieutenant] might have been chained to [his men] unwillingly – perhaps the scar on his jaw was a relic of an escape,” Green writes on page 20. As a federal worker, the lieutenant would be just like a slave, with simply Communism as the vicious master. Perhaps the lieutenant’s escape had been from the government’s regime, and like a slave he had been mercilessly beaten for his short-lived freedom. The unnamed priest is also enslaved to a particular item also: his clergy duties. When a little boy comes to the door, Mr. Tench ushers him away, but the priest leaves with the boy to perform the last rites on the boy’s dying mother, even though it means missing the boat that would help him to escape the lieutenant who was looking for him. He is on the run, but the priest is still a priest, so he is forced by his own vows to put personal duty in front of personal gain. Even Mr. Tench is bound by his ether, the one thing that allows him to feel nothing in the hell he has created for himself. What makes Graham Greene such a remembered author is the way he writes; there is no Mr. Tench, or a nameless priest, or the lonely lieutenant, they are instead mirror reflections of us.

As well-written book characters are extended metaphors of real behaviors, we in turn are simply metaphors of these behaviors. Though we like to pretend that we are not Mr. Tench, the priest or the lieutenant as we read The Power and the Glory, our life reflects a completely different philosophy. We are all enslaved to something, be it literal imprisonment or the more common surrendering our lives to an object.  Greed, one of the most abundantly broken of the Seven Deadly Sins, is a cruel master, even if it may not seem to be so on the surface. Money by itself isn’t harmful, though the ways some of us make or spend it may be criminal, which, if caught can lead to life in jail. Especially greedy people may even miss out on important events for fear of losing money. Both situations – jail and not participating – may be harsh, but being a slave deprives you of all life. In colonial America, a slave’s entire life was working on the plantation, so it is fitting that allowing yourself to become enslaved would confine your entire life to that particular master. Though there are numerous temptations out there, we must attempt to resist them all and become the master of our own lives instead of a nameless prisoner. 




Response 1 (4/26/11)
Control

Author's Note: I wrote this late at night after attempting to respond in my typical essay form and struggling tremendously. Normally I don't like to wrote poetry if I have to write to fill a certain requirement and have no inspiration, and I normally don't rhyme, but I decided to break all those rules here by making it up on the go. This was written to respond to the loss of control both men feel in the first chapter of the book, though I feel it is more of a summary than an actual text-to-life response. If you haven't read the book the poem will be slightly confusing so I'll explain it after the poem.

All is lost,

When a friend is made

                In the hot Mexican sun.

All is lost,

                When the boat departs

                                And the priest begins to run.

               

All is lost,

                When death comes to the door

                                Tapping with His knife.

All is lost,

                When a new king reigns

                                Depriving life of Life.

All is lost,

                When the church is burned,

                                And the priest has taken leave.

 All is lost,

                When the hunt begins

                                With best interests deceived.

As teeth removed

                As is control

The flame of life

                Is starved of coal

The dentist goes drinking

                The priest does his deeds

The flowers of control

                Killed off by the weeds.

Stanza 1: Mr Tench, the town dentist, meets a stranger in his hometown in Mexico; the stranger turns out to be a priest who has become a criminal when Communism came to Mexico and criminalized religion.

Stanza 2: The priest, in an attempt to escape the manhunt against him, attempts to catch a boat to flee from the current town, and though he misses it, he moves on to a different house than Mr Tench's

Stanza 3: At the end of the first chapter, a small boy comes to Mr Tench's house, where he tells the men that his mother is dying and that the "doctor" who is visiting Mr Tench should come and save her; even though he is not a doctor, the priest leaves to administer the last rites because he knows the boy's mother is dying

Stanza 4: The new ruler of Mexico (Communism) has made religion illegal, so that is depriving life of Life (Life as in Christian eternal life)

Stanza 5: The same as the last stanza, where religion has ended and the churches are destroyed, while the priest flees in order to escape persecution

Stanza 6: The search for the religious teachers in Mexico starts, even though they are hunting and killing innocent men; the hunt has its vision swayed by Communism

Stanza 7: Teeth symbolize control, so when they are removed, control is also, and as control is lost, we often lose the will to live

Stanza 8:  Both men, Mr Tench and the priest, have lost control in their own way; the priest has no more control over his situation and the manhunt against him; Mr Tench allows his control to die by continuing to live in Mexico, though he wishes to return to England