Plot Summary
Forbidden State: Sun & Shadows
In a small Mexican state shaped by anti-Catholic laws, the blazing sun burns the land and its people with the weight of repression. Drab lives idle through dust and apprehension—buzzards wait, police lurk, and routine fear eats at everyone, even outsiders like the lonely dentist Tench. An English-speaking stranger emerges, carrying his exhaustion, brandy, and the ache of a hunted existence. Authorities hunt not only criminals, but especially outlawed priests. As Tench desires only forgetfulness and relief, a desperate child appeals for help for his dying mother, drawing the exhausted stranger—an anonymous fugitive priest—once more into the cycle of need and sacrifice that chains him to a destiny of both futility and purpose.
The Hunted: Priest and Police
Police officers, led by an ascetic, idealistic lieutenant, move through the sleepy provincial town; they keep order, impose heavy fines, and hunt forbidden symbols, especially the last surviving priest. The lieutenant despises the corruption and slackness of the old Church but has a zeal for purity and reform. Yet the power struggle is not only political but existential: a battle of souls and symbols. Among the townspeople, forbidden stories of martyrdom are read to children at night. In the dark, even the broken priest's old rival, Padre José, lives as a public embarrassment, a married clergyman haunted by shame and self-loathing. The persecution is relentless, and faith, compliance, and compromise bind the characters in a web of fear, longing, and betrayal.
English Outpost, Dangerous Shelter
Bananas, mosquitoes, and the fog of fear shape the days of Captain Fellows and his anxious wife and independent daughter, Coral, living on a plantation as outsiders. Their Britishness grants little safety, and Coral, more resourceful than her parents, boldly shelters the outlaw priest in a barn, inventing codes and defenses. While danger hovers—police search the district—Coral's lack of belief, her brisk competence, and the priest's gratitude produce a fragile, quiet hope. Yet both host and fugitive remain fundamentally powerless against the land's inexorable laws and the currents of violence and abandonment that pull everyone, foreigner or native, into the state's despair.
Relics of Faith and Failure
The priest leaves behind more than he takes—a hidden Latin missal, a cast-off case, the fading symbolism of what was once a respectable vocation. Padre José dodges mourners at a child's grave, unable even to mutter a prayer; bitterness taints every connection. Different families argue about the meaning of faith as martyr stories become children's bedtime fare. The old betrayals and new absences mark a people reconciled to loss: hope is easily extinguished, and faith, when maintained, is brittle, defensive, or transactional. Even acts of kindness—hiding a priest, the giving of bread—carry with them the possibility of condemnation and ruin.
Children, Saints, and Martyrs
Childhood, meant to be innocent, is corrupted by constant fear, privation, and the heavy stories of martyrdom that mothers read aloud. The young ask skeptical questions about saints, about real versus fake martyrs, about priests who stumble and fail. The Church's vanishing presence leaves only relic stories and parental anxieties—can faith be more than habit? Elsewhere, Father's rivals and supporters alike debate the value of dogma, the price of compliance, and the impossibility of return. In the hush between superstition and skepticism, hope flickers on.
Flight North: Paths of Betrayal
The priest, in rags and ever more desperate, travels north, evading Red Shirts and police—villages are closed to him, and treachery stalks his every move. He is accompanied for a time by a cunning, sickly mestizo who claims camaraderie but smells opportunity: he is Judas, waiting for the right price. The priest's own home—his daughter, Brigida, and her mother—brings little comfort. His clandestine return is marked by mutual disappointment and the realization that sin, both carnal and spiritual, has alienated him from those he once served. Even love for his child cannot save him from the web of suspicion and the consequences of his failures.
Return to Home and Sin
The priest's reunion with Maria and his daughter is fraught—practical needs, accusations of endangering the village, and reminders of his unworthiness pile up. He is a relic, unwelcome and unsafe, a disease rather than a blessing. Attempts at closeness with Brigida expose the limits of his authority and love; she is already hardened by a world without tenderness. The villagers regret his presence, fearing reprisals, and demand he move on. In the priest's mind, shame churns with the longing for forgiveness, knowing even heroic death would bring only mockery, not redemption.
Hostages for Salvation
The police implement ruthless tactics—hostages are taken, and if a priest is suspected in a village, an innocent man is shot. The priest, desperate to protect others, offers himself in vain; his irrelevance is confirmed by events beyond his control. Maria despairs of his usefulness, strips him of the sacramental wine, and banishes him for the safety of all. Among villagers, survival matters more than faith; hope and sanctity have been devoured by fear, and the priest's fate, while tragic, is no longer the people's concern.
Encounters with the Half-Caste
The mestizo half-caste reappears, a constant shadow—now guide, confidant, traitor, and abuser. Sickness and poverty vie with cunning for control of his actions, but it is clear the priest walks in the company of his own Judas. All bargains, all pleas, are shaped by the threat of exposure for the uncertain reward of blood money. The half-caste's own misery mirrors the world's, yet he cannot rise above selfish calculation. Still, some embers of Catholic guilt tinge his interactions, and the priest is forced to recognize, with weary resignation, that betrayal is as human as hunger.
Hunger, Fear, and Abandonment
Beaten, feverish, starving, the priest stumbles through abandoned settlements and impassable marshes, often in the company of the half-caste. Recurring symbols—buzzards, abandoned dogs, empty huts—reflect the world's utter indifference to mercy or innocence. Even a dead child is simply left under a cross as superstition meets the need for hope. Hunger and terror pare down the priest's thoughts to brutal essentials; yet in moments of hallucination and humility, he sees both his pride and his real love, understanding that sainthood is always a possibility, though constantly missed by mere seconds and lack of will.
Sanctuary Lost: The Unraveling
After grueling travel, the priest finds temporary respite at the home of Lutheran siblings, the Lehrs, whose quiet decency and simple order highlight the violence and moral confusion he is fleeing. For a moment, practical Christianity and a bath seem redemptive, but reminders of danger and guilt force him to accept another perilous call: a dying soul—an outlaw American—needs confession. He resumes his flight, passing up safety and grace for a peril that is, he realizes, inescapably bound to his flawed calling. There can be no haven for those marked by the state's vengeance.
Prison Nights, Prison Faith
Caught in the city, betrayed by those seeking rewards or protecting themselves, the priest's final days pass in a stinking, overcrowded prison cell. He confesses his failures to thieves, murderers, pious women, and himself. Amidst the chaos and animalistic conditions, he searches for some act—an honest confession of his sins, a gesture of love, or a final courage—that might save more than just his own soul. Fellow prisoners, even the bitter or hostile, recognize his difference, but he finds himself, as always, more convicted by his failures than his virtues. At dawn, he is carried to execution, empty-handed but not free of hope for grace.
Las Casas: Dream and Fugitive
Vague yearnings for security and dignity tempt the priest to Las Casas—a city promising churches, confession, and anonymity. Plans for survival—taking baptisms and money from villagers, enjoying small comforts—are undone by a nagging conscience and a sense of responsibility for the poor and helpless left behind. Even in moments where safety seems possible, the call to mercy, to the needs of a dying soul, summons him back across the border of safety, and into the heart of the danger he hoped to leave forever.
Mercy, Treachery, and Temptation
The final act is set by the mestizo's trap, using the lure of true mercy—a dying man's confession—as bait for reward. The priest discerns the danger but cannot ignore a soul in need. His journey to the wounded American, hunted and hiding, marks his fate: acts of pure charity are entangled with self-recognition and with the banality of betrayal. Even the conversation with his captors is marked by ambiguity—savagery and kindness mingle, and justice is muddied by personal and cosmic guilt.
Last Rites for Outlaws
The priest's final duty is to a dying criminal—more concerned in his agony for the priest's safety than his own soul. The confession is rushed, incomplete; the chance for true repentance slips past, mirroring the priest's own fate. Arrest follows, not with cruelty but with weary inevitability; even the captain of the guards recognizes the pointlessness and sadness of the outcome, and the absurd courage of the priest's long flight.
Authority and Meaninglessness
The lieutenant who hounded the priest is left empty by his triumph—ideology offers no satisfaction, and rebellion becomes as bureaucratic as the religion it replaced. Unable to sleep, haunted by his acts, he reflects on the futility of both his own and the Church's ideals. Even small acts of kindness—brandishing a child's interest in his gun, permitting brandy for a condemned man—are corrupted by past violence and self-doubt. The world is left with dead priests, forgotten saints, and cynics inheriting old institutions.
Death's Shadow in Morning
At dawn, the priest is led to execution—a routine act, witnessed only by indolent officials and scavenging buzzards. His death is orderly, quick, and leaves oddly little impression on the crowd or his executioners. No heroics mark his end—his last words are lost in the dryness of his throat. He has nothing to offer but disappointment and a faint wish that he had found the courage and constancy of a saint. In death he is, above all, human—and his failures are recognized as those of all who wish desperately to do good, but are broken by circumstance, fear, and temptation.
Aftermath: The Faith Endures
The world goes on—it is ordinary, anxious, petty, and amnesiac. Foreigners prepare to leave; wives and husbands argue, children grow up skeptical, and officials seek only comfort. Martyr stories are recycled for young ears. Yet as a new priest arrives clandestinely by night, summoned to a house where faith (and perhaps the need for faith) persists, it is clear that the cycle will begin anew. Saints, after all, may exist only in stories, but suffering and grace, sin and attempted redemption, survive the execution squad.
Analysis
Modern meaning: Sainthood through failure and the endurance of ambiguous faithThe Power and the Glory is not merely a tale of a hunted priest, but an unflinching meditation on the nature of grace, the limits of human virtue, and the persistence of faith under the twin assaults of violence and spiritual emptiness. Greene constructs a world where the traditional sources of meaning—the Church, the state, family, and revolutionary justice—are all ironically hollow or corrupted. Yet within this arid landscape, the unheroic, self-loathing priest becomes a vessel for a deeper truth: that sainthood consists not in purity or courage but in the capacity to endure, to serve, and to keep loving amidst repeated failure. The novel subverts both secular and ecclesiastical ideals: the reformist lieutenant's revolution leads only to new forms of suffering, and the Church's martyrs, admired from afar, never truly belong to the living world. Yet faith itself, battered and compromised almost out of existence, endures—not as ideology but as compassion, regret, and the lasting impact of mercy given and denied. Greene leaves the reader with no easy consolations: the world remains broken, but hope, if found at all, lies in the continued, painful effort to love without illusion or reward.
Review Summary
Reviews of The Power and the Glory are largely positive, averaging 3.98/5. Many praise Greene's masterful prose, complex characterization of the flawed "whiskey priest," and rich historical backdrop of 1930s Mexico's anti-clerical persecution. Admirers highlight the novel's profound exploration of faith, sin, redemption, and human frailty. Critics, however, find the plot slow and struggle to connect with the protagonist's Catholic guilt-driven internal struggles. The moral tension between the hunted priest and his idealistic pursuer resonates deeply with most readers, regardless of religious belief.
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Characters
The Priest (The "Whisky Priest")
The nameless priest is the last outlawed Catholic cleric in the state, pursued for his persistence in ministering despite government persecution. A failed man haunted by his sins—drunkenness, fathering a child, cowardice, and pride—he remains driven by a sense of spiritual obligation that is sometimes indistinguishable from inertia or despair. His interactions are marked by deep compassion for the suffering, especially children, and by moments of genuine self-knowledge and personal loathing. Psychoanalytically, he is constantly torn between self-reproach and the vestiges of pride that fuel both his resistance and his inability to surrender. His greatest agony is not physical suffering but the fear that, despite all his running and acts of grace (baptisms, confessions, final rites), he will die empty-handed, bringing mockery on the faith he serves and love only for his own child, rather than all God's children.
The Lieutenant
The lieutenant stands as both nemesis and mirror to the priest. Ruthless, ascetic, and incorruptible in his own way, he despises the Church for its historic hypocrisies, especially its complicity in poverty and superstition. Believing only in the tangible world, in justice, and order, he implements state terror (hostage-taking, executions) with icy devotion. Psychologically, he carries the wounds of a childhood shaped by failed faith and now invests quasi-religious fervor in his secular creed. Despite his cruelty, he is capable of real mercy, small acts of kindness, and a deep, almost mystical identification with the suffering of the children he claims to protect. He is also plagued by dissatisfaction and emptiness after his apparent victory.
Maria
Once consumed by fear and passion, Maria became the mother of the priest's unwanted child. Over time, she transforms into a woman hardened by necessity, disenchanted with the Church and her former lover. Her faith becomes transactional, shaped more by survival than piety, and she does not shrink from reproaching the priest for bringing danger and disappointment. She cares for their daughter, Brigida, with a resigned, almost fatalistic love, and in the end, pushes the priest away—not only for the safety of the village, but out of bitterness at his perceived failures.
Brigida
Raised in an environment of scarcity, suspicion, and covert shame, Brigida is the priest's illegitimate child. Already showing adult malice and knowledge at a young age, she is a cipher for the loss of innocence and the corruption of youth in a broken society. Her psychological development is marked by mistrust, a hardened voice, and the capacity to both long for protection and fend for herself. Through her, the priest feels both infinite love and the limits of his power to save anyone, even (and especially) his own.
The Half-Caste (Mestizo, Judas Figure)
The mestizo is the Judas to the priest's Christ, betraying his companion for a bounty; yet he is not so much evil as shaped by poverty, resentment, and insecurity. He oscillates between abject camaraderie and calculated self-interest, haunted by Catholic guilt but never able to transcend his circumstances. He is the living symbol of how survival in this world erodes all ideals—desperate, conniving, and pitiful; the priest sees his own weakness reflected in him.
Lieutenant's Chief (The Jefe)
The jefe is the fat, self-centered, often ineffectual lead official of the police, more obsessed with his toothache than with the ideological crusade of his subordinate. Wavering between expediency and cynicism, he illustrates the banality and inefficacy of local power. His comfort with compromise and unwillingness to confront larger issues represents the everyday machinery that enables cruelty to persist.
Captain and Mrs. Fellows
Captain Fellows is a mostly contented, superficial, well-intentioned plantation manager and ex-military man; his wife is brittle, neurotic, plagued by fearful imaginings and depression. Their daughter Coral, far more competent and grounded, is emotionally divorced from them. The parents' relationship is marked by distance, denial, and fear of both local unrest and their own mortality.
Coral Fellows
Coral shields the priest but is herself an unbeliever, coolly rational, and stoic in the face of danger and emotional deprivation. She treats her family as dependents and the fugitive as a project, not a savior. Her worldview is formed by responsibility imposed too young and by a world that has robbed childhood of magic and security.
Padre José
Once a priest, now a state-pensioned married man, Padre José is the Church's living defeat—a grotesque figure of ridicule, self-loathing, and impotence. His life is a daily mortification; he cannot even perform the last rites for a dying brother. Psychologically, his horror at his own capitulation is matched by the derision of those around him, but he is, in the priest's eyes, perhaps more honest and humble than himself.
The Lieutenant's Hostages (various)
These villagers, chosen at random as collateral against the priest's presence, are the casualties of ideological and religious struggle. Their pain, resignation, or anger becomes a measure of the world's senseless injustice and the ultimate futility of sacrifice when meaning has drained from all systems—political and ecclesial alike.
Plot Devices
Relentless Pursuit and Imminent Danger
The novel establishes a constant sense of threat with the priest hunted by police, Red Shirts, and informants. The journey-driven narrative (the "fugitive priest" on the run) creates momentum, anxiety, and relentless testing of faith and weakness. This pursuit structure ensures readers experience no respite—mirroring the priest's own exhaustion and dread. The ever-present danger is not just external but infuses internal landscapes, infecting even love and memory with worry and self-sabotage.
Dramatic Irony and Foreshadowing
From early pages, the doomed nature of the priest's situation is clear—not only through the physical pursuit but through dreams, omens (buzzards, storms, abandonment), and the direct statements about the fate of priests. Encounters with Judas-like figures, betrayals by villagers, or the dullness of the authorities, foreshadow a martyrdom stripped of glory. Readers are in the painful position of prophetic observers—aware, as the priest is, that small acts of mercy or compromise can never quite redeem the fatal worldview borne by the characters.
Cyclical Structure, Repetition, and Ritual
Rituals—Mass, confession, bedtime stories of martyrs, executions—are repeated, losing and regaining meaning across the narrative. The priest's flight is itself cyclical, ending where it begins: in villages, among children, facing death. The cycles echo the cycles of history and faith, suggesting that the battle between grace and failure, between secular power and religious hope, is always being re-enacted.
Outsider Perspectives and Interwoven Subplots
Subplots involving Captain Fellows and his family, Mr. Tench, and the Lehrs provide prisms for understanding the larger drama—each confronted with the futility or necessity of involvement. Their stories intersect with the priest's but also serve as commentaries on apathy, helplessness, and accidental heroism.
Psychological Realism and Stream-of-Consciousness
Greene deploys close third-person narration and interior monologue to render the priest's feverish, self-critical, sometimes hallucinatory thought processes. Readers are embedded deep in shame, longing, and the small lies of survival, which heighten empathy and the sense of shared culpability.
Use of Symbolism
Buzzards, abandoned dogs, monsoon rain, and fever all symbolize decay, abandonment, and the persistence of hope or life in the midst of ruin. Objects abandoned or hidden—missals, cases, bones, bottles—are freighted with spiritual resonance: they are relics of a faith or innocence that no longer exert power, but still resist extinction.
Antiheroic Martyrdom
The priest's inevitable execution echoes the sanitized, idealized narrative of martyrs read to children—except his death is routine, un-heroic, and emotionally ambiguous. Through the banality of death, Greene ironically reconstructs a deeper, more authentic version of martyrdom, one not built on purity but on the persistent attempt to love and serve amidst failure.
