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Religion plays an important part in GG’s The Heart of the Matter. Do you agree with this statement.

It is a fact that GG was a late convert to Catholicism, however his brand of Catholicism was not the
traditional ritual based religion of the Roman Curia (Vatican). His Catholicism was a very personal
interpretation of man’s relationship with God. So much so that his religious views brought him into trouble
with the Church authorities to the extent that some of his novels were put on the Vatican’s prohibited
reading list, albeit temporarily. GG brilliantly projects his spiritual and religious beliefs into the characters
of his novels. Prime examples are the Whisky Priest in Power and the Glory and Scobie in Hear of the
Matter.

The novel is set in isolated Sierra Leone during the war. It is a setting worthy of the Greeneland that GG is
a master in creating. It is a setting of decay , corruption (both physical and moral) , treachery and
espionage that Greene uses to deliver his message that God is open to everybody, not only those who
practice the Roman Catholic rituals. Scobie, his wife Louise and Father Rank are in a minority amongst an
expatriate community made up of WASPs that exhibit the characteristics of arrogance, social snobbery
and homesickness that pervaded many other similar British colonies of the time. The Club symbolizes this
ethos of an Empire ‘on which the sun never set’.

The Catholic religion is, in fact, a major social barrier for the couple’s integration into this community.
However, whilst this is of no major importance to Scobie, the same cannot be said for Louise. She
desperately wants to be accepted by the other British expatriates who shun her because of her religion,
but also because of her cultural pretensions. Louise takes solace in the careful practice of the Sacraments
in an attempt to retain her sanity in a land she so desperately wants to leave but cannot.

She practices her religion to the letter, unlike her husband who only goes along with her to keep her
happy. One has to remember that Scobie has a perverted sense of responsibility that makes him take on
more than he can or should do. His compassion and pity for Louise and later Helen Rolt are examples of
this misplaced sense of responsibility.

Scobie’s personal interpretation of Catholicism is seen when he refuses his wife’s pleas for him to take
Communion, a stand taken by him in his belief that he was a sinner for contemplating suicide. He feels
that it would be hypocritical of him to take Communion when his intention was to commit the
unforgivable sin of suicide. His sense of honesty prevents him from performing the ritual of communion
as he feels he is duping God by doing so. This is the perfect reflection of the personal relationship Scobie
(and Greene) believe they have with God.

Another example of this interpretation is the dialogue Scobie has with God in the church towards the end
of the novel, just prior to his suicide. Scobie’s exaggerated sense of self importance him push him to
comparing his suffering with that of Christ himself.

Father Rank has a role to play in the delivery of GG’s personal religious interpretation message. Greene
uses this character to deliver a damning indictment of the Church when he says that ‘ The Church knows
all the rules but it does not know what goes on in a single human heart ’. It is ironic that the author uses
a Catholic priest to deliver the message that the road to salvation is not through ritual but through one’s
goodness of heart.

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