Hamlet and Getrude: incest, obsession and lies

Hamlet and Gertrude, mother and son consumed in tragedy or incestuous lovers consumed by lust? Throughout this play Shakespeare has adopted many conventional ingredients of the revenge tragedy genre. Shakespeare possibly took his inspirations from the Roman ideology of prized family honour and the belief that a man’s reputation lived on after him. Roman-style revenge plays were popular in Elizabethan London and Shakespeare may have taken ideas from plays such as Tyestes. Typically revenge tragedies would have a revenge hero, the protagonist who was generally of good virtue, who is forced into a pursuit of private vengeance against some wrongdoing. The revenge hero is often confronted with the moral dilemma arising out of the need to fight evil with evil. Shakespeare incorporates several more specific conventions such as the appearance of a ghost. He does, however, take the moral conflict to a new level by exploring the tensions caused between the Roman and Christian set of moral codes. It is, however, Shakespeare’s choice of subplots that define his work from the conventional revenge tragedy plays. The relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet does delay Hamlet in his quest for revenge since he is so torn apart by his mother’s decision to marry his father’s brother. 

Hamlet, the individual, is possibly the most analysed character of all time. For three hundred years he has been at the centre of speculation from many noted critics. The character is often considered as if he were a real person, existing separately from the play. There has also been a trend for scholars and academics, such as Goethe and Samuel Coleridge to declare that they have a heightened ability to empathise with Hamlet, because they share a lot of his attributes, namely his highly sensitive intelligence, ‘A little more than kin, and less than kind’, and the feeling of social alienation: ‘Tis an unweeded that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature’. It is, however, Hamlet’s relationship with women and in particular, with his mother, that has sparked most debate in recent years. Hamlet’s early declaration:

‘Frailty thy name is woman’

has been typically assumed to be Hamlet’s personal sexual stereotyping, the view that women are inherently weaker. However with the emergence of Marxist views came the reading that Hamlet was merely pointing out the social situation in which women were forced to be ‘frail’. This argument is weakened by his cruel mocking of Ophelia in Act 3 scene 2. Having taken into account Hamlet’s sensitivity to the political climate in Elsinor, ‘The players cannot keep counsel’, I am inclined to agree with the Marxist view that Hamlet was not sexist but simply judging the established place of a woman in his society.

  Ernest Jones has suggested that Hamlet displays some characteristics of the Oedipus complex, broadly this is known as a sexual attraction a boy may feel towards his mother. He argues that Hamlet only hesitates to kill Claudius because he has committed the deed that Hamlet himself fantasised over carrying out; killing Old Hamlet and taking Gertrude as his own wife. However popular this suggestion is with contemporary critics, it does not go unchallenged. John Jump points out that this incestuous reading of the text ‘would be more of Freud’s imagination than of Shakespeare’s’. I believe that Hamlet’s powerful metaphors associating incest with disease:

‘It will but skin and film the ulcerous place

Whiles rank corruption, mining all within

Infects unseen’

Is substantial proof that he is genuinely appalled by such thoughts and would therefore never think of Gertrude in this way.

            As the imagery of disease that runs throughout the play, it is complemented by the imagery of prostitution. This may be indicative that Hamlet’s opinion of the women in his life, his mother and his girlfriend, falls short of the ideal he portrays in the ‘mouse trap’ scene. A particularly disturbing image is in juxtaposition against a romantic semantic field when Hamlet says in Act 3 scene 4:

            ‘an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty,

            …takes off the rose

            from the fair forehead of innocent love

            and sets a blister there’.

He is suggesting that his mother’s sexual behaviour has polluted his relationship with Ophelia.

            Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, is possibly the character that is attributed most of the audience’s pathos. Her limited and underdeveloped character leaves a void of ambiguity exploited by various directors. Lawrence Olivier presents Gertrude as being exceptionally young, this may be indicative of his sensitivity to the position of women in Elizabethan London. Her youth may symbolise her vulnerability without a husband and this may help to qualify her decision to marry the late king’s brother to a modern audience. A decision with which an Elizabethan audience would have whole-heartedly sympathised with. In Zeffirelli’s 1992 version Gertrude remains entirely innocent of the corrupt plans of the men around her. She is portrayed as being genuinely shocked to hear of her husband’s murder and unaware of Polonius’s intentions. She is, however, portrayed in this version as highly passionate and exotic when contrasted with Ophelia. This may imply that Gertrude is more suited to entertaining Hamlet’s highly intellectual, demanding personality and high expectation of women than poor plain Ophelia is. Gertrude is arguably an iconic victim as she has been forced, due to the social position of women, to marry her husband’s brother rather than loose her status, she has also had to deal with the wild and violent emotions of her grieving son.

            In Act 1 Scene 2 the first insight into Gertrude and Hamlet’s relationship appears. Gertrude is dismissive of Hamlet’s open shows of emotion: ‘Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted colour off’, perhaps because she is not fully at ease with her own sense of grief or perhaps because she is feeling immense guilt for marrying Claudius. She speaks in metaphor, ‘knighted colour’, this shows that she is unwilling to be directly critical of him, she illustrates her point diplomatically. This may indicate their relationship is formal rather than nurturing. She states that ‘tis common that all that lives must die’, this is a way of associating the old king’s death with nature, throwing the scent away from the fact that he may have died of unnatural causes, or as Zeffirelli portrays, it may be her truly innocent way of comforting Hamlet with no hidden agenda. It is immediately apparent that Hamlet is repressing his true feelings when he distances himself from Gertrude by saying, ‘I shall in all my best obey you madam’. It is not until his later angst- ridden soliloquies that the audience is subjected to Hamlet’s venomous thoughts towards Gertrude’s ‘incestuous’ relationship with Claudius, in that ‘it is not nor cannot come to good’. Hamlet’s true state of mind is also revealed:

            ‘How weary, flat and unprofitable seem to me,

            all the uses of this world’

as being completely irrational fuelled by a sense of suicidal recklessness. Evidently, Hamlet’s thoughts are in no way sexually inclined towards Gertrude and his raw emotions reveal that he is genuinely grieving for his father’s death.

            This, however, can be seen to have changed by Act 3 scene 4. This scene, in many contemporary performances, is from the opening tableau, one of explicit sexual tension. It is known as the ‘closet scene’ because it is directed to take place in Gertrude’s closet. This is often interpreted as a ‘bedroom’ scene, adding to the Freudian sexual undercurrent between mother and son. Some actors, in this scene, use non-verbal communication to suggest Hamlet’s desires for Gertrude, and to suggest Gertrude’s submissive not dismissive reaction to Hamlet’s emotions.

In this scene Hamlet arrives highly charged with emotion after refraining from killing a praying Claudius. His repressed emotions are bubbling to the surface, he speaks very directly, ‘you have my father much offended’, this is uncharacteristically blunt. Gertrude was engaged in discourse with Polonius who, upon hearing Hamlet plants seeds of doubt in Gertrude’s mind:

‘Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with’.

This was aimed at grooming Gertrude to question the reliability of anything Hamlet has to say. Although Gertrude and Hamlet are alone on stage, Gertrude speaks to Hamlet with constrained formality: ‘I’ll set those to you that can speak’, as she knows Polonius is eavesdropping. It is dramatically ironic that Hamlet should take Gertrude’s reserve as a performance intended to alienate him from her true feelings. Gertrude reverts into an immediate sense of panic and unease with Hamlets upfront attitude:

‘Queen: Hamlet thou hast thy father much offended.

Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended.

Queen: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.

Hamlet: Go, Go, you question with a wicked tongue’

She is obviously unaccustomed to Hamlet’s satirical attitude towards her. Hamlet mocks her in order to assert that they are both tainted with sin, this could be symbolic of a mutually sinful sexual desire they both share.

            When Hamlet powerfully kills Polonius it is a landmark occasion. He has finally broken the Christian moral restraints and indulged in the ‘vengeance’ ideology that is typical of the Roman era. This happening in the presence of Gertrude is symbolic of the fact that she is the key to Hamlet’s madness in that she is the passion outside of the conflicting moral codes that is fuelling Hamlet’s actions.

            ‘O what a rash and bloody deed is this!’

Is emotionally exclaimed as Hamlet corners Gertrude and further criticises her:

            ‘Almost as bad, good mother

            as kill a king, and marry with his brother’.

The killing of Polonius, therefore, is to accentuate the extent of Gertrude’s sins in Hamlet’s eyes.

            Then as Hamlet shows Gertrude the pictures of the two brothers an episode of passionate intimacy follows. Hamlet’s intricate knowledge of his parent’s private relationship suggests that perhaps he has at least considered the sexual merits of his father in comparison to himself,

‘Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself’

 He instils godlike qualities upon his father as if to justify why he had the privilege of Gertrude’s attention. He then makes reference to Gertrude’s ‘sense’, which is implied to be her sexual desires. It breaks the conventional social role of a son to be speaking to his mother about this topic. This would suggest that Hamlet is a Shakespearean Oedipus, a son who harbours sexual desires for his mother.

However, an alternative reading which I find more accurate is that Hamlet is simply impressing his over-inflated self appointed post of imposing justice upon Claudius

‘…O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right’

The religious register reinforces Hamlet’s reflection that he is ‘heavens scourge and minister’. This is more typical of Hamlet’s character throughout the play, it is also more fitted with his revenge hero attributes that he should be more inclined to be overly virtuous than a harbourer of incestuous desires. Hamlet’s possible sexual connotations could simply be spurges of over-zealous purifying. An advocate of this argument is the actor Thomas Sheridan who suggests that Hamlet was ‘a young man of good heart and fine feelings’, the dark emotions touched open in this scene are merely a product of a tortured soul. Shakespeare would have expected the audience to empathise with Hamlet during this scene, since he is their protagonist whom they should naturally side with, it would be highly irregular for the audience to be expected to link devilish and unnatural associations with him.

The context in which Hamlet was written produces some significant contrasts. Queen Elizabeth was the monarch. She, in contrast to Gertrude had not sought marriage in order to secure her power, she would not be addressed as: ‘Frailty thy name is woman’. The position of women as explored by Shakespeare was probably a popular topic at the time. Perhaps Hamlet’s ideal woman, as described in the mousetrap scene, one of strength and virtue was based on Shakespeare’s admiration for the strength exercised by Queen Elizabeth 1^st. Gertrude’s biggest weakness in the play seems to be her relationships with Hamlet, the King and Claudius. Queen Elizabeth, known as the virgin queen, showed no weakness for men since she never married and never had children. Shakespeare’s Gertrude may have been shaped in order to flatter the ruling monarch.

            The relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude serves as an underlying tension that delays the inevitable tragedy. Both characters inspire pathos with the audience as they are largely seen as the iconic victims of the other characters’ immorality. They both react to the king’s death in a way that is socially pre-determined and this contributes to their misfortune. Hamlet feels he ‘must avenge’ his father’s death and Gertrude ‘must’ marry Claudius in order to remain Queen. Interestingly, Hamlet is the rightful heir to the throne, Claudius and Gertrude’s marriage may not have secured her place as Queen if Hamlet had become monarch. This again would support the argument that Shakespeare did not intend any sexual tension between mother and son. Their relationship does seem to blur the conventional distinctions between mother and son and mother and lover, however they are both so preoccupied by Gertrude’s incestuous relationship with Claudius that nothing ‘unnatural’ develops between the two of them. Perhaps only a modern audience that is culturally conditioned to detect signs of possible incest or child-abuse would find such a sexually charged message in the text. It does seem that Gertrude is a driving force behind Hamlet’s actions: ‘Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me’ but his tragic death cannot be attributed to her, she is outside of the polarised moral codes of Christianity and Roman ideology that eventually consume him . 

Two great authors: John Bunyan and Grahame Greene

Analyse the literary techniques used by John Bunyan and Graham Greene in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and ‘The Power and The Glory’, that present and question the roles of Christians in Society.

 Christian literature, as a genre, has fallen out of favour in recent years, perhaps due to a shift towards a more secular culture and governing. However, from Medieval England up to the nineteenth century, a church-dominated education system ensured Christian Literature was both widely read and written. Defining the genre are certain paradigm sets, known as dominant themes notably fortitude, original sin and human mortality: these themes reoccur to a differing extent throughout the novels ‘The Pilgrims Progress’ and ‘The Power and the Glory’. It is no coincidence that whilst contributing to verisimilitude or ‘the appearance of truth’ in the Christian Literature genre, both of these books have been considered to provide insight into the meaning of human existence, much like the Christian bible. Their central and unifying plot revolves around ‘the quest for salvation’.

 John Bunyan was a Baptist preacher and even spent time in prison for preaching his beliefs. His writing is a reflection of a turbulent period of time for culture and religion as different sects of the Church of England were starting to break away. The Pilgrim’s Progress by design and idiom underpins the notion of verisimilitude since it is Bunyan’s aim to propagate his ‘puritan’ beliefs and repudiate any dissension from them.

‘… I did not understand

That I should make a little book

…before I was aware, I this begun’

 From the outset he suggests that divine powers caused him to right it, implying an absolute God- inspired truth. He is specific and imperative, his religious message is one of strict Christian ‘purity’ and he delivers it emotively.

Graham Greene’s novel is not a religious manual, instead his writing is often assumed to have a political agenda. He was an English Catholic convert who travelled South America and was openly critical of the political regime there, several of his other written works feature Latin America. ‘The Power and the Glory’ typically reflects the struggle of religion in an oppressive regime as seen by Greene:

‘‘The other,’ the leuitenant said, ‘is a Priest’. He raised his

voice: ‘you know what this means- a traitor to the republic.’

‘…everything will be fine, when they[the priests] are dead’’

Although he explores the notions of fortitude, original sin and human mortality through his protagonist, the ‘Whisky Priest’, he is preoccupied with the dialectic conflict between religion and the state. At no point is the reader allowed to form a positive opinion of the government or police in El Salvador, Greene’s values are too dominant to ignor, his description too realistic to dismiss as fantasy.

             Both authors have chosen the format of a novel to covey their ideas: therefore conditioning the reader at first instance into accepting the piece as a whole due to its aesthetic unity. However, form is the only conventional structural technique they share. Bunyan chooses a ‘dream’ framework, evident from the sub-tittle: ‘In the similitude of a dream’. Psychoanalytical critic Frank Kermode said of dreams in literature: ‘they serve to muddle routine readings, to confound explanation and expectation and to make necessary the intrinsic plurality of a text’. This structure legitimises, Bunyan’s abstract presentation of ideas. Its plural aspect allows reader to negotiate a highly personalised reading of the text; this technique is a way of tailoring the image of truth, which is the dominant reading, to each individual reader. However Kermode’s argument is undermined by the popular notion that ‘dreams are more ‘real’ than reality’, Bunyan may have been creating a setting that is not confused by the contradiction of a ‘reality’ framework, in a dream a consistent internal surrounding can be manufactured. The dream framework does complicate the narration:

‘Chr. Then Christian and Faithful told him of all things that had happened to them’

It is clear that ‘Chr.’ Indicates that Christian is speaking, yet he refers to himself in the third person: ‘Then Christian’. It is Bunyan’s dream and he narrates in the first person: ‘Then the man looked into his book’ but Christian and Bunyan seem to merge during the main body of the text and it is debatable as to who is truly narrating. Bunyan has derived a sense of verisimilitude from the audiences’ ‘bond’ with the protagonist’s views: who they are conditioned to respect as an iconic Christian.

            Graham Greene uses a third person narrative. His narrative tone is far more detached than Bunyan’s highly personal narration. Greene uses the tactic of a seemingly non-biased narrator who merely tells events as they are: ‘then the Priest stepped out’. The narrator is presented as all knowing, with insight into the character’s inner feelings: ‘A faint feeling of rebellion stirred in Mr Tench’s heart’. There is a lack of noticeable characterisation of the narrator. However, this leaves the audience in a somewhat vulnerable position- luring them to regard assumed truths and values within the novel as absolute. The narrator is generally reliable since there is no evidence he with hold information, however there is no contrast to narrative voice except direct speech and this does not help the reader to form judgements of the narrator. 

‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ is told allegorically, the protagonist embarks on a ‘quest for celestial city’, meeting several characters along the way. The characters are symbolic representations of abstract qualities: the character named ‘Faithful’ symbolises the notion of faithfulness. The characters are iconic because their behaviour is a personification of the quality they are named after. Bunyan tactfully uses juxtapostioning with certain characters with opposite qualities: ‘Obstinate’ and ‘Pliable’ are placed together to emphasise their representative quality.  Bunyan uses representation as a channel for his intended meaning to reach his audience, by using epithets as his channel; his message is virtually unquestionable since it denies the reader any scope for personal reflection on the characters in the text. Thus ‘the Pilgrim’s Progress’ has been structured with timelessly universal qualities: the characters are not to be interpreted in the light of social, economic or political circumstance but as accepted truths. Further evidence for this is littered throughout the novel: ‘wouldest thou see a truth within a Fable?’ when Bunyan uses a paradigm set designed to create an association between his own work and ‘truth’. Greene’s innocent, all-knowing narrative alleviates the need for him to create this association for his message to be accepted.

‘The Power and the Glory’ has a linear structure and follows the structural conventions of a novel. A Marxist critic could accuse Graham Greene of structuring his novel to conform to bourgeois expectations, he is writing to the class which we presume his is born of. Graham Greene uses a conventional channel for his message, he is writing in a different time period from Bunyan, perhaps one in which the ideology conditions into pleasing those who are going to pay to read their novel. Greene’s use of an accepted structure, with which the readers can identify, gives his content an anchor of credibility. His intention is to create controversy over his ideas and revelations rather than to risk criticism focusing on the way he delivers his message.

As mentioned above, Bunyan names his characters in order to represent, symbolically; abstract qualities. Greene does not use a pattern of naming in such an apparent way yet names are clearly used as a linguistic tool. A variety of titles are employed: surnames such as ‘Mr Tench’ and ‘Miss Lehr’ are used to describe less important, older characters, it signifies respect. Nationalities are used to describe ‘the American’ and ‘an Indian’, reinforcing their cultural isolation. Most commonly, however, characters are named by their occupation: ‘Chief of Police’, ‘the Lieutenant’, ‘the Priest’, ‘the dentist’ and ‘the beggar’. The occupational titles are acquired during earthly existence; this places a focus on what someone is, or what they have done. The stigma of ‘sin’ is enforced seamlessly by Greene as a degradation of title: ‘the Whisky Priest’. This notion is then alluded to every time a character with the attached stigma is mentioned.

            Both authors were trying to motivate their readers, not merely to impress or inform them. The texts must be constructed to offer meaning and motivation to even the most limited of readers. John Bunyan uses capitalisation of important words in order to emphasise their individual importance:

‘His house is as empty of Religion, as the white of an Egg is of Savour’

This acts as a visual guide to his readers. Bunyan also relies on the preposition of words to guide the reader:

‘Then I am in this man, greatly deceived.’

The word that gives this sentence anchorage is ‘deceived’, and Bunyan tactfully places it at the end of the line in order to draw attention to it. However, there are critics, such as Tamsin Spargo who insist Bunyan intended for his works to ‘be delivered orally to the illiterate masses’. This suggests that Bunyan intended to rely on intonation rather than syntactical emphasis.

            Graham Greene, contrasting Bunyan, masterfully uses syntax to convey meaning of individual phrases as well as to set the tone of certain passages. At points of tension or excitement, the sentences are short and direct:

‘You know how often. It doesn’t mean much. I thought I’d stay till next month, say, and see if things get better. Then- oh you don’t know.’

Whereas, at the beginning of several chapters when narrative explanation or description is required, the sentences become long and complex:

‘One rose and flapped across the town: over the tiny plazza over the bust of an ex-president, ex-general, ex-human being, over the two stalls which sold mineral water, towards the river and the sea’.

He uses syntax as a tool to deliver his message in a lively and interesting way; he has had to make a greater effort to do this than Bunyan because he is competing not only with classical writers like Bunyan but with other contemporary writers too. Greene does not have the luxury afforded to Bunyan of writing without precedent; Greene had to construct his medium with an awareness of the other Christian literature before him.

            Language is the building block of meaning, each word is a symbol for a concept, object or phenomena. Some of Bunyan’s meaning is lost since his language is archaic to modern readers. Terms such as ‘a sorry scrub’ and descriptions like ‘the water rose amain’ are simply not in use any more because they have been made redundant by modern neologisms or they refer to incidents that did not hold any relevance over time. Bunyan’s language is, at times, criticised as being colloquial and having a tendency to circumlocution. There was certainly no agreed Standard English or standard writing conventions in the 1600’s. It has been asserted that he wrote simply as he heard language being used, this would explain his phonetic and idiosyncratic spelling: ‘perswaded’ (p.22), ‘hazzards’(p.27), ‘shew’(p.85). Bunyan’s writing is typified by its omission of speech marks, apostrophes for possession and exclamation marks. It highlights difficulties of conveying meaning when there are no pre-agreed signals.

Greene’s narrative language is far more formal and at times it is elevated far above spoken use: ‘ A delusive promise of peace tempted him’. Elevated language associated with the ruling class, it has been used to exclude the uneducated working classes. From a Marxist perspective this is a textual leakage of Greene’s prejudice towards assuming ruling class intellectual and moral superiority. From a psychoanalytical perspective, this could be another device used to condition the reader into accepting the narration as a higher authority. However, Greene’s narrative language is polarised against the naturalistic dialogue of his characters:

‘You can do anything’, the jefe said, ‘anything’

‘He leaves it to us?’

‘On conditions,’ he winced

‘What are they?’

‘He’ll hold you responsible-if-not caught before- rains.’

Plain language and the use of dashes give an almost improvised tone, this reinforces verisimilitude within the novel because spontaneity is associated with truth and innocence, polarised from the association between pre-meditation and criminal intent. Further to this, Greene uses adjectives: ‘little astute eyes’, ‘proper picture’, ‘obscure and intricate game’ to define mood and appearance, much as a film maker would add brief, tiny details to add realism to the main narrative. By adding realism, Greene attempts to move his work away from ‘fiction’ and creates a false sense of worldly attributes within the novel.

Bunyan uses repetition of words and ideas, as well as lists of synonymous objects throughout his novel:

‘Religion hath no place in his heart, or house, or conversation; all he hath lieth in his tongue and his Religion is to make a noise therewith.’

His repetition forces the reader to identify with the equivalent connotations of the words, in the hope that each word used will reform and reshape the overall connotation that is unachievable by a single word.

            In place of repetition, a technique that has come to be criticised as messy and platitudinous, Graham Greene favours the use of oxymorons: ‘facetious brightness’; ‘repulsive humility’. Here dialectical connotations negotiate in order to find a meaning entirely different from that denoted by the words individually.

In a sense ‘The Power and The Glory’ is built around contemporary idioms, it cannot be attributed with the same universality as ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’. Greene employs other types of figurative language:

‘A woman kissed the Priest’s hand: it was odd to be wanted again: not to feel himself the carrier of death.’

Metaphors are used to normalise the concepts Greene raises. They are used as a method to install empathy into the audience; to draw them into the mindset of a character or place by comparing the situation or emotion with more accepted notions. Often nature is used in metaphors or similes: ‘pride wavered in his voice like a plant with shallow roots’ because it is the least contested of all subjects, since most people have some value placed in a ‘higher order’ or ‘natural law’. In the genre of Christian writing, where nature falls short of an appropriate comparison, the notions of fortitude and original sin are means for the Christian justification of an antithetical portrayal of the nature of religion and the justification for why ‘natural law’ is unfair.

The Pilgrim’s Progress features the notion that heaven is an antithesis of earthly existence. If Bunyan’s text is to be accepted, by a ‘Christian’ audience, whom are likely to adhere to the belief that heaven is perfect and pure, then the notion of original sin is necessary in order to explain any aspect of earth that is good but ‘better’ in heaven: ‘thou it tastes sweet in the valley, it will be sweeter upon deliverance to the celestial place’. Bunyan’s literary techniques are at times inconsistent, his repetitive structure and confused preposition of words shows how he struggled to manipulate his medium in order to convey a truly ‘holy’ message. His social status, a rebellious preacher, allowed him to exploit his autonomous individualised expression and this has won his work admiration from modern readers. Antithesis is the predominant literary technique in ‘The Power and The Glory’ by the opposition of the state and the church. The notion of original sin is manifest within the protagonist, who is imperfect largely due to his alcoholism: he is the ‘Whisky Priest’. He is a representation of the Church, as opposed to the Lieutenant, who is a representation of the state. The notion of original sin here is used to justify the Priest’s flaws as innately ‘human’, whilst leaving the church as an unflawed opposite to the state. The state, to Greene, was the cause of trouble in South America, as he saw it. His book is a form of Christian writing but also a political cry for change and this is reflect in his rationalised, earthy tone and the sophisticated adherence to conventional structure.

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