A World of Empathy, Part One: The Novels of Graham Greene

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Graham Greene was a British novelist of the mid-twentieth century. I have just finished reading three of his novels, and will probably read more, because his novels are some of the best that I have ever read in which deep religious issues are brought to life.

Greene’s novels would probably not be published today by publishers of Christian literature, because they insist on heroes who are absolutely certain about every detail of theology. Very clear and stark good and evil: this is what Christian publishers want. And most secular publishers do not want any religious characters who are not blatant hypocrites or filled with religious hatred. In modern literature, with the exception of things such as the novels of Mary Doria Russell, religious characters have to be completely good or completely evil. But Graham Greene wrote about the impossibility of being sure what is good and what is evil. This makes his novels irresistible reading for a Christian agnostic.

Greene adopted Catholicism, and whether he actually believed all of the doctrine, he certainly understood its significance, and could create sympathetic characters who believed them. If it is true that the eucharist really is the body and blood of Jesus, really, not just symbolically, and if (as the Bible says) you eat and drink damnation unto yourself if you partake of it while in a state of mortal sin, then this has some real-world consequences. You can reject it, but if you accept it, you have to face up to what it means.

Greene’s novels also focus on people who, despite themselves, have empathy, a true selfless love, for other people. We are all trapped by the web of love for others, which leads to contradictions that cannot be avoided. You can ignore it, but if you accept it, you have to face up to what it means.

Greene faces up to both of these things in two novels: The Power and the Glory, and The Heart of the Matter. In the first, a priest understands himself as a sinner, but he cannot stop being a priest, even if it sends him to his death. In the second, a man trapped by his love for two women chooses to damn himself rather than to hurt either of them.

From inside the mind of one character in The Heart of the Matter, Greene writes, “How absurd it is to expect happiness in a world so full of misery…Point me out the happy man, and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil—or else an absolute ignorance…If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they call the heart of the matter?” That is Greene’s point: the world is thick with the bonds of empathy, even pity, which both makes it good and fills it with misery.

In the next entry, I will explore some of the ideas in what is considered Greene’s greatest novel, The Power and the Glory.