The_Power_and_The_Glory

The Power and The Glory The Extended Allegory in The Power and The Glory Graham Greene pieced together The Power and the Glory from his own personal memoirs in 1940 after a three-year trip to Mexico. Drawing from his own observations of a small town torn between the anti-religious laws of the secular government and the people’s religious beliefs, Greene created the story of a Catholic priest being pursued by the police to illustrate the conflicting relationship between the church and state (Greene 2-4). Greene used his experiences in Mexico to create an extended allegory that illustrates the conflict between the two world views and, in turn, reveals his own values and philosophy. Drawing from his experience in Mexico, Greene developed a "whiskey priest," a character introduced to Greene by a friend in Mexico in a story of a drunken priest that christened a child by the wrong name, to embody the religious world view. The priest, who remains nameless throughout the novel to emphasize his allegorical role, is less an individual than a symbol of the "Church [and] of the cumulative wisdom of the past, in short, of Western Humanism" (DeVitis 89). The priest, however, is seen as a traitor to the state and to priest, greene, lieutenant, priest’s, own, world, devitis, between, state, secular, religious, police, god, church, catholic, power, mexico, image, god’s, glory, conflict, after, views, view, order, novel, laughter, flight, faith, being, becoming, allegory, allegorical, whiskey, two, traitor