Loneliness Shaping the Characters of the Two Novels in Different Essence - Essay Example

Loneliness Shaping the Characters of the Two Novels In Different Essence Loneliness and seclusion set the prime tone of the structures and plots of the two novels, “the Power and the Glory”. Consequently the theme of loneliness plays a crucial role to the development of the main characters. Loneliness shapes the characters in same outline but in different essences. Solitude of Greene’s characters is multiplied by their conflict with the state, fate, ideologies, religion and with themselves. In “the Quiet American” Fowler is in conflict with his conscience, his desires for love, his sense of duty to his country, with Alden and his ideology. In the sorrowful and bleak context of “the Quiet American” and “the Power and the Glory” the theme of loneliness is handled to expose the bare nature of life. Fowler in his fifties is a drug addicted middle aged British correspondence in Vietnam. He is in love with a beautiful young Vietnamese girl Phuong who eludes with Pyle, a young American. Indeed amid this triangle love grows to alleviate the pain of loneliness. Fowler is detached from his wife for some years and his life is sagged with the burdens of blood, death and the destructions of the war. Here love plays the role of a soothing factor of loneliness. Fowler’s loneliness appears to crave for love of the orphan as a soothing bypass of his inner suffering. Even then the bleakness of the novel facilitates to the dawning of the question whether mercy of God for his creature man as religion asserts is believable enough or if life is meaningful enough to live or even all the institutions and systems concerned with human life are worthy enough to obey, when man thrown amid the crunch and crisis of this world has to struggle to find the way-out himself by his own laws. Loneliness Shaping the Characters of the Two Novels In Different Essence Introduction Incontrovertibly the two novels “The Power and the Glory” and “The Quiet American” deal with the interactions among politics, religion and common life of human beings, but in the two novels Graham Greene’s treatment of ‘loneliness’ sets their tone of these interactions on the premise that man is too lonely in his lonely path of life to receive any sympathy from others for his pain and agony. Man himself is to take care of his own wound and agony. Greene is always aware of the fact that Man’s pain and suffering are further stimulated by his loneliness and vice-versa. Greene’s characters are apparently modern; they suffer from the crunches between their belief and disbelief in God, duty and desires, individual and ideals, and sometimes between individual and the society. These crunches are tormenting enough to make life bleak, miserable and austere. It is clear that the loneliness of the characters in the two novels never evolves from their miseries and agonies; neither their miseries evolve from their loneliness. Rather loneliness is a growing syndrome of modern man or, in other word, their character trait, individualism that is facilitated by their questions to their own existence or the existence of God. Even then the treatments of ‘loneliness’ differs from each other in depicting the two main characters, “the Whisky Priest” and Fowler in the two novels “The Power and the Glory” and “the Quiet American”. In the first novel the characters are the lonely sufferers. But in the second, the sufferers are querulous also of their suffering. As Pritchett says, In one book at least, The Power and the Glory, he transcends his perverse and morbid tendencies and presents a whole and memorable human being; this wholeness is exceptional, for Greene is generally an impressionist, or rather a cutter of mosaics. We expect from incisive talents some kind of diagnosis, some instinctive knowledge of the human situation which we have not attended to; this Greene has had. His subjects are the contemporary loneliness, ugliness, and transience (Pritchett). Theme of Loneliness within the Structures of the Two Novels Loneliness and seclusion set the prime tone of the structures and plots of the two novels in which the characters are allowed to grow. In the very beginning of the novel “the Power and the Glory” Greene attempts to create a sense of gloomy and ominous environment forecasting that its character has been plunged into an invisible prison. That the loneliness, seclusion and boredom of the dentist Mr. Tench, though he is one of the minor characters of the novel and also the feeling that he cannot escape from the town to meet his wife in Mexico contribute a lot to the development of the theme of loneliness in the novel. The constant toothache of the Chief of Police significantly reminds its readers that pain whether it is physical or mental is omnipresent throughout the whole novel. Human condition appears to be inescapable. The Lieutenant of police in “The Power and the Glory”, though he is of the socialistic view and he is ready to do anything the sake of the society, fails to communicate effectively because of his individualistic adherence to his own decision. He fails to understand that happiness in a society comes only if her individuals are happy. The characters of this novel are locked within themselves; they fail to understand each other. Their loneliness evolves from their views on life and by their situation also. “Whisky Priest” suffers from refugee life. He is secluded from his from his beloved and daughter and also from their love. He is secluded from his church life. He believes that though he is strayed he is capable of performing salvation. Common people most often love and help him to escape from the Lieutenant. This view makes him more secluded from others. The fact that each time he introduces people as a priest proves that he always tries to evade his loneliness and indeed by doing so he wants to be in touch of people. Similarly the horror, boredom, seclusion are replaced by the fear, blood-shedding, and destruction of war in “the Quiet American”. The narrator who is also the major character of the novel begins with the death of Alden Pyle another main character of the novel. Even more the entirety of the novel is spoken by Fowler as his memoirs through a succession of events. This technique of expression keeps the readers locked within the solitude of the narrator. Loneliness as a Result of Conflicts between Religion, Politics and Ideologies Very often solitude of Greene’s characters is multiplied by their conflict with the state, fate, ideologies, religion and with themselves. In “the Quiet American” Fowler is in conflict with his conscience, his desires for love, his sense of duty to his country, with Alden and his ideology. Also the social backgrounds have been handled with great dexterity to make the action vivid. In this novel the interactions are specially political and ideological. What Fowler views in the warring context of Vietnam is the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians. Consequently it forces him toward his “uninvolvedness” as he says, "I was tired of the whole pack of them, with their private stores of Coca-Cola and their portable hospitals and their wide cars and their not quite latest guns" (Greene 31) In this regard xxx says, “The sensual Fowler, incidentally, seems to have been tired of everything, including himself” (Davis). The same conflict between the ideology of communism and the religion appears in “the Power and the Glory”. The darkest aspect of the novel is vividly expressed along the course of suppression, by the Government, of the Catholic Church. In this novel Greene does not engage any critic like Fowler in “the Quiet American”. Rather he upholds life of common people amid these conflicts between the church and the communist government. Here common people are subjected to the terror of the fascist groups, ‘Red Shirt’ and the anticlerical governor. Though no character like Phuong in “the Quiet American” represents the commons, the characters from both of the rival sects are presented as the representatives of the oppressed. The common people have had to face the same persecutions, oppression, and seclusion that the “Whisky Priest” suffers. In the novel “the Power and the Glory” the coolest and ruthless character is the Lieutenant. Even if the Priest has to live in exile, he earns warm reception and help from most of the people. They honor him and help him to escape. But in a round about way the Lieutenant is the loneliest character because of his view about the church and the priest. He is a committed socialist. He is assigned the task of hunting down the Priest. But on the personal level he hates everything related with church. He has had to support his cynical view with the fact that he is “living for the people”. Even he approves taking hostages from different villages and shooting them if their villagers do not help him to hunt down the priest. This cynical view of the Lieutenant is further engendered with his bad experiences with the church inn his youth. According to him church and all of its members are evil. How the Characters Cope with Loneliness The Priest’s faith in God prevents him from reaching the verge of insanity in his seclusion. But the more pain of seclusion is, the more he is aware of his power for salvation. He is accompanied and assisted with people in his loneliness. His faith in God provides him mental support. The priest and Fowler uphold different views of dealing with the pain seclusion and loneliness in life. One utterly depends on religion and the hope of salvation, while Fowler continues to suffer because of having no escape route from loneliness. Apparently he depends on the love for the Vietnamese girl and ardently longs for her accompany. The only thing he cares all about his life in his fifties is his love for Phuong. But when Alden snatches her away from him, he loses his only hope to live and is forced to the verge of insanity. It seems that Fowler’s aesthetic view inspires him to rely on the materialistic hope of life. But he is more prone to be affected with exhaustion than the priest. As he says, I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the possibility of love dying. (Greene 44) Theme of Loneliness Shaping the Characters In the sorrowful and bleak context of “the Quiet American” the theme of loneliness is handled to expose the bare nature of colonialism and its fake facetiousness in contrast to the grim reality of life. Fowler in his fifties is a drug addicted middle aged British correspondence in Vietnam. He is in love with a beautiful young Vietnamese girl Phuong who eludes with Pyle, a young American. Indeed amid this triangle love grows to alleviate the pain of loneliness. Fowler is detached from his wife for some years and his life is sagged with the burdens of blood, death and the destructions of the war. Here love plays the role of a soothing factor of loneliness. Fowler’s loneliness appears to crave for love of the orphan as a soothing bypass of his inner suffering. Indeed Greene puts his character Fowler in such a context that takes away him from the conventional rules, laws and the domination of the society and its ideals. It makes him secluded from the bonds and dominations of the conventional society in order to examine it with the oddities and harshness of life. Loneliness of the Lieutenant is a clear foil to the main character, the whisky priest. Loneliness of the Lieutenant grows from his cynic view about the welfare of the society. He believes that the priests are harmful for the society. So they are to be cleaned in any way. He does not care about what other think. He is devoid of any understanding with the country people. As a result country people hold back from helping him to find out the “Whisky Priest”. They hide the Priest and help him to escape. Intellectually the Lieutenant feels lonely and tries to support himself by arguing that he is doing all these in order to save the children. In order to alleviate his loneliness he tries to play with the children. If Greene’s treatment of loneliness speaks of the naked nature and reality of life on one hand, it gets the fakeness and deception of ideals exposed, that ideals always overlooks and ignores the grim reality of life. It is evident in the character of Alden Pyle the idealist American. Pyle’s folly to follow every word of Harding’s books and his willingness to live accordingly resonate the very fallible nature of the idealists. This Harvard Graduate is grossly criticized by Fowler for his puppet style of living. As he says, “Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm" (Greene 65). This idealistic American arrives in the country with ideas from writers and authors of books like “the Role of the West”. He plays the role of a direct foil to the character of Fowler. It is remarkable that both of Fowler and Alden Pyle falls in love with Phuong but the natures of their love for Phuong are different from each other. Fowler is in love with Phuong because he is forced with the oddities of the warring period; he is in need of company of a girl. Fowler’s love for the girl is somewhat the call of life. But Alden’s love is shaped by his ideal. He is strictly a moralist; he is cultured to show respect to women in a mannered way. He believes that he is capable of assigning a better life for Phuong. Indeed the part of his passion for Phuong that he falls in love with her is to be characterized as the call of life but the rest is shaped by his ideal. Alden Pyle’s naivety and innocence are remarkable in term of his ideals. Greene, here, is supposed to prove that ideals ignoring the needs of life always go with the naïve and innocent youth. His innocence leads to the dangerous and tragic end for Fowler. Phuong’s love whether it is for Fowler or for Alden Pyle is also shaped by the compassionless life which she lives. She is an orphan who is in need of shelter and support of the powerful. Her elder sister tries to get her marry but she fails. Phuong is not quite a prostitute rather she takes prostitution as a means to support herself. Similarly her love is not shaped by any ideal as Alden’s is. If she falls in love with Alden, it appears to be partly because of her human weakness to Alden, but most of her love is inspired by the dream for a better life that Alden provokes her to. She stays with Fowler because she needs security for life and for the same cause she leaves him. The fact that Phuong never shows her emotion for any of Fowler or Alden Pyle shows that she is passive in her love. Indeed the apparently mute character of Phuong represents most of the common people of Vietnam who are passive to the political ups and downs, and also to the war of ideals. They need support, security and protection irrespective of ideals. Most of the common Vietnamese are as lonely and passive as Phuong is. The Vietnamese are depicted fruitfully through the character of Phuong, an orphan being continually kicked out by the harshness of life, in need of shelter whether it is from Fowler or by Alden Pyle. Loneliness: the Conflict of Religion and the Human Desires Like other novels of Graham Greene, “The Power and the Glory” has a theme of the interaction between politics and religion. The two has been placed in the opposite poles are hostile to each other. According to the socialistic view of the Lieutenant politics is itself concerned with the improvement of social conditions of common people. But according to the view of the Priest Religion involves the salvation of souls. In the novel it has been suggested that both of the approaches are grossly flawed within themselves. The lieutenant fails to pursue the fact that any fervent idealism is as harmful as it is good for the society. He feels totally secluded in his intellectual world where he is prone to ignore the ardent devotion of the common people to their religion. He simply wants to trample down their devotion for a transcendental reality without any replacement. Consequently though the Whisky Priest is executed, another priest knocks the door of the common people immediately after the execution. At the same time, the readers of this novel are made aware of numerous hypocrisies of the church. The miserable condition of the common is of less importance than the salvation of soul. But the hypocrisies are glaring at the point that the church is ready to steal away poor people’s property in the name of salvation. Indeed the figure of the priests is grossly flawed. The propriety of the priest is challenged when the readers are presented with the fact that the priest themselves are sinners and they reproach themselves. The religious process of confession and salvation is programmed in such a way that it appears to be destined to contribute to the loneliness of the characters especially “the Power and the Glory’. The religious procedures in the novel ascertain that a man cannot be relieved of his sins, till he makes confessions before the Priest. This procedure of confession and salvation has a clear psychological impact on the characters of the novel. A man makes a realm of his own where he is as lonely as a sinner and he keeps going on reproaching himself. In his virtual world of sin-reality he cannot share his feelings with anyone until any priest makes the salvation and confession for him. Yet the priest is the one and only person who accompanies in that lonely world. So in “the Power and the Glory” it seems that the characters are desperate and frantic more to get relief of their unshared sin-reality that multiply their pain of loneliness than to save their sole from the religious point of view. The farmer The “Whisky Priest” still believes that he has the power to save the soul of man. But for his own sins he is to be locked within himself; mentally he is not prepared to confess. Self-reproaches make him confined within himself from the joys of the outside world. Conflict of Beliefs: the Meaninglessness of Life and Loneliness Very often Greene’s loneliness speaks the best parts of his novels. Man’s struggle against the oddities of life is exposed best through his lonely struggle. It is like the scramble for the bone between the abandoned dog of the Fellows and the Whisky Priest. Through the struggle over the bone life is exposed with its essentials that man is to survive through the struggle over the basics of life. It is true that the Priest’s belief never wavers on the point that he is capable of saving people’s souls and to communicate the essence of God. Necessarily some other characters appear as non-believers. But it is also remarkable that no character in the novel “the Power and the Glory” whether he is a believer or a non-believer, wavers about their belief in the existence of God. Even then the bleakness of the novel facilitates to the dawning of the question whether mercy of God for his creature man as religion asserts is believable enough or if life is meaningful enough to live or even all the institutions and systems concerned with human life are worthy enough to obey, when man thrown amid the crunch and crisis of this world has to struggle to find the way-out himself by his own laws. Captain Fellows, seeing the priest who hides in his barn, comments, “He walked slowly: happiness drained out of him more quickly and completely than out of an unhappy man: an unhappy man is always prepared.” (Greene 37) In this regard the imagery of the insects and the abandoned dog are remarkable. The insects come into focus frequently through out the whole novel “the Power and the Glory”. Once in the novel the lieutenant crushes an insect that run across the book-pages. There is another insect, “scurrying for refuge: in this heat there was no end to life” (Greene 140). Primarily the imagery of the insect refers to the helplessness of man in front of a superpower who is too arbitrary to be responsible. In part I chapter 2, insects appear to be everywhere. They rush about and get injured and die unnecessarily. It reflects that human life is as meaningless as the insect to be crushed by a superpower. Indeed this is the belief and view of the Lieutenant about life. And for him the world is earth as a “dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all” (Greene 24). They will suffer; they will cry; they will drag their life up to their death and die without any respect or aim like the Whisky Priest. In chapter III the priest comments about the pain of life, while speaking with the dying American, “You’ve killed a lot of people—that’s about all. Anybody can do that for a while, and then he is killed too, just as you are killed. Nothing left except pain.” (Greene 188)”. Conflicts of within the Characters in both of the novels contribute to a crucial extent to screwing up the pain of loneliness and at the same to the bleakness of the novels. ‘The Power and the Glory’ is essentially the depiction of scrambles between inevitable reality of life and the ideals that make people dream of fake higher meaning of life as the fallen glory of the Whisky priest is prone to cling to. The Whisky Priest believes in a higher purpose or reality where people are supposed to live in a make-believe world, keeping the inevitable wants of life aside. The Whisky Priest is blind of the human weakness in terms of his religious ideal while he himself is a victim of such weakness. On one hand there is the reality in which the Priest is subdued by the human weaknesses that he tries to conceal from the public eyes. He is haunted by the reality that he thinks to be his personal demons and it is the reality that he has fathered a child. But he is unable to be regretful of his action. He meets his daughter and feels strong affection for the little awkward girl. But the thing notable here is that the firmness of his belief is exposed through his desire to save his from damnation by any means. Once the priest realizes about his daughter, “The knowledge of the world lay in her like the dark explicable spot in an X-ray photograph.” (Greene 127) ”. On the other hand His religiosity makes him believe in his power and a higher purpose of life. The conflict between these two locks him within himself and he suffers lonely. Indeed the whisky priest represents the existence of might for self-destruction, painful penitence and distressed quest for dignity. Situational Seclusion and Loneliness Loneliness in both of the two novels has been treated as a repercussion of the situation in which the characters are plunged in. In “the Quiet American” most of the characters are in such a situation that contributes crucially to their loneliness. The British journalist Fowler has been sent to cover the ongoing war in Vietnam. This man is married but he has had to be separated from his wife. A man weary of quirk and strangeness of life seeks the quantum of solace in the love of a young Vietnamese Girl whom he wants to marry. But he cannot marry her because of his wife’s refusal to divorce. In his fifty what he needs most is love, rest and accompany. Being deprived of them he is forced be cynical and deliberately “uninvolved”. It is remarkable that Vigot the French inspector at Surete resemble to Fowler in his attitude to life. Both of them are weary of life and the discussion of Blaise Pascal. But they oppose each other in their faith. The first one is a Roman Catholic but the second is an atheist. So it is evident that in “the Quiet American” it is not religion that is responsible for their loneliness, rather it is the situation that makes them lonely, cynical and weary of the world. In this regard The “Whisky Priest” in the novel resemble partly to Fowler. Both of the Whisky Priest and Fowler have to welcome a life of seclusion. One is engaged in war but the other in evading. Both of them are addicted as they want to escape from the grim reality of life. Also the Fowler and the Lieutenant are oddly akin in some respects. Both of them possess a similar about life and the world. For the Lieutenant life has no meaning while Fowler is weary of the world that he lives in. As it is evident in one of his speech, “I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity”(Greene 44). In the novel “the Power and the Glory” the character of Fellow is similar with the character of Phuong. In his lonely struggle Fellow takes life as it is. In “the Quiet American” Phuong’s solitude arises from a situation that is different from that of Vigot and Fowler. Though Phuong as a character does not speak much in the novel, she appears to be the lonely struggler against the grim reality of life. She lives by prostitution though she is not quite a prostitute. War makes her life more difficult. But she takes life as it is. She keeps on looking for a better means for survival. Conclusion In the two novels “the Power and the Glory” and “the Quiet American”, the theme of loneliness plays a crucial role in the development of the main characters and even in the development of some of the major characters. Loneliness outlines the characters as well as it determines the essence on which the characters grow. Indeed the theme of loneliness also prepares the plot and the structure of the novels that the characters have grown to emerge in their own traits that differ from each other; fully in an individual course. Works Cited Davis, Robert Gorham. “In Our Time No Man Is a Neutral”. 11Mar. 1956, 6 Dec.1956, Greene, Graham. The Power and the Glory. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. New York: Penguin Classics, 2007. Pritchett, V. S. in “Critics on Graham Greene”, 23 Jan. 2009 from Read More