The power and the glory door Graham Greene

The last Mexican priest

He is hunted and chased because of his religion. For the police he is wanted even more than a serial killer. A priest in Mexico during the anti-clerical purge in the 20s. He walks through the country, fleeing from the police and the army. A priest with to faces: One of the caring, nice man, almost a saint. His other side is that of the ‘whiskey priest’ who even has a child.

‘The power and the glory” (Graham Green, 1968) is a very lively description of the fleeing, hiding and praying of the most wanted priest of Mexico. Greene uses different techniques to let the reader keep fixed on the story. One of them is using different angles of view in the first and last chapter.

The structure of the story is special. It is chronologically told and consists of three parts. The first one is an introduction to the priest. The second part tells the story of the fugitive priest who runs through the country of Mexico. each chapter tells about another part in the story which is closed at the end of it. The whole story is written in the 3rd person narrator but the first part and the last one are told from different persons while the middle part is told from the priest.

The story is very well told and the reader is immediately associated with the main and other characters. It is easy to read and once started, you read on and on until the end. The story itself is impressing because some of the ‘strange’ thoughts used in it by the police and authorities. It also shows that someone who is enormously miserable can still be a good human in his heart. The priest has a child and he always is drunk, but he always tries to help people who are in trouble, even when he knows that he risks his life and illegally organizing masses for the Christian people so that they can draw hope out of it.

Of course, a story like this one, dramatic, could not have a happy ending “The crash of the rifles shook mister Tench (…) and the little man was a routine heap beside the wall, something which had to be cleared away.”
(p. 226)