The Power and the Glory Fear Quotes

Parents often want to shield their children from unsavory influences and characters. The pious parents in The Power and the Glory are in the unhappy position of wanting their children to have contact with the Church when the only representatives of the Church are unsavory characters. It's like wanting to eat candy, even though it'll give you cavities. In this passage, the priest under discussion is Padre José who abandoned the faith. The mother doesn't want her children even thinking about him.

Padre José is envious, but he's also afraid. He could still share the quick death of his fellow clergyman, but he fears the bullets too much. So he lives on in fear and envy, and complains the whole way through.

We get the impression that Mrs. Fellows suffers from some sort of mental illness. Whatever it is that she fears most—we suspect death—it's worse than vermin and poverty. She can't escape the terror that's always with her, so she copes by focusing her fear on things she has the strength to face.

As every parent knows, you can't love your children without also fearing for them. This is a truth learned the hard way by Mr. and Mrs. Fellows, the mother who reads to her three children, and the priest himself. He has a daughter whose life is beyond his power to influence. It tears him up inside, like a fork in a garbage disposal.

What is Greene up to with the extremely terrified character of Mrs. Fellows? Why create this character whose heart beats anxiously at the word "life" because it reminds her of its opposite?

Here Padre José is hesitant to offer a simple blessing for dead child. His fear of sanction (and possibly death) breeds distrust of others. If trust is necessary for a social order, then you arguably can't build a social order on fear. The lieutenant seems to understand this: he tries several times to appeal to the children of the city so as to get them on his side.

In Catholic moral theology, despair is one of the worst of sins. Someone in despair has given up hope and ceased to seek God, making repentance and conversion more difficult than they otherwise would be. Someone in despair won't make the effort for redemption, just like someone who's lazy won't make the effort to get up off the couch.

The priest prays for his daughter, who doesn't appear to be on a path toward holiness. Given that the priest flees from her to save his own life, do you believe that his prayer here is sincere?

Someone hasn't seen Toy Story 3. Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear, anyone? To the narrator's point: despair is more than a feeling of resignation or frustration. It's a frame of mind. It has to be reasoned into.

Is the priest's martyrdom diminished at all because he doesn't face death with the fearlessness of Juan? Without explicitly asking it, Greene leaves us with this question.