The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God: Sex, Salvation, and Damnation in Graham Greene's Early Novels

Greeneland, the name that scholars have given to the world Graham Greene’s characters inhabit, is cold and unforgiving. It’s dark, and there is almost never a character who is without a significant moral flaw. It’s a fantastic landscape for an exploration of humanity and its relationship with God—a topic that fascinated Greene, who was raised the son of an Anglican boarding-school housemaster, and considered himself an agnostic until he converted to Catholicism in 1926 to marry Vivien Dayrell Browning (Sherry, vol. 1, 352). His religion and preoccupation with the relationship between humanity and God influenced his writing for the duration of his career, which spanned most of the 20th century. He wrote 26 novels, along with autobiographical works, screenplays, and short stories. Though most or all of Greene’s novels contain some religious themes, he wrote four in the first half of his career that critics have deemed his “Catholic novels”: Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), and The End of the Affair (1951). Each novel critically examines Catholic beliefs and practices. More importantly, each produces fierce debates about what does and does not constitute a sin. Along with religious influences, Greene’s novels are also influenced by his personal experiences and places he lived. For instance, The End of the Affair is loosely tied to an affair he had with a woman named Catherine Walston; The Power and the Glory is based on his time spent in Mexico; and The Heart of the Matter is influenced by the time he spent in Sierra Leone as a spy. Greene’s preoccupation with religious themes leads me to entitle my thesis “The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God,” which is a reference to a statement made by an old priest at the end of Brighton Rock. He says to the young and immature Rose: “You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the…appalling…strangeness of the mercy of God” (Greene, Brighton 268). As we’ll soon see, God’s mercy isn’t always peaceful—it’s often agonizing. The word “agony” comes from the classical Latin agōn, meaning a contest or struggle (OED). In a sense, these novels are agōns. Each character’s path through life is a struggle—a struggle to find meaning, a struggle to build a relationship with God, and a struggle to answer two central questions: One, what does it mean to be a good Catholic? Two, how does one achieve salvation? Through close analyses of each text and, more specifically, their male protagonists, we’ll attempt to answer these questions.