The Power and the Glory

I found Graham Green's, The Power and the Glory to be a bit tedious. But it was a book that I was glad to have read, even though I did not enjoy reading it. The story tells of a Catholic priest who is being  hunted during the anti-clerical purge in a southern state of Mexico. To get a sense of it, the American TV series, The Fugitive, was loosely based on the novel.

Why was I glad to have read it? The character of the priest was brilliant. What was tedious about the book? The chase. Not-for-me, the story that enthralled millions of people over a several-year period. So goes taste. But I recommend the book to you.

The priest is an interesting character. He's a coward, whiskey-priest, sire to a 10 year-old child. He could marry and go free. He could cross the border into another state and find safe-haven. Instead, he shows up in towns and villages offering confessions, baptisms, marriages and masses to the local residents.

This pattern goes on for several years until an edict comes from on-high to track him down and execute him. A man simply called, The Lieutenant, takes charge of the hunt and begins to take hostages from the Catholic towns he searches as a way of putting pressure on the priest. Some of the hostages are executed. The priest searches his soul and attempts to do the right thing, but his need for whiskey continues to betray him until he finally realizes that he must leave the state or die.

It is his fear of death that he must come to terms with. He fears both the pain of death and the prospect of hell if he dies before confessing his sins to another priest. The plot has some interesting twists toward the end of the book that allow the priest to look deeply into psychological self and grow from that sight.

In the end, the priest is an honorable character worthy of a great book of his tale.