How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph.)
Quote #1
"Why, I could guarantee to fetch this man in, inside a month if …"
"If what?"
"If I had the power."
"It's easy to talk," the chief said. What would you do?"
"This is a small state. Mountains on the north, the sea on the south. I'd beat it as you beat a street, house by house." (1.2.36-40)
As an officer of the law, the lieutenant obviously has power over others, but he wants more. Power doesn't come to the passive—he has to reach for it. He's not a cartoonish power-hungry Big Bad Wolf, though. He has a clear if unrealistic purpose for that power: destroy the church. For him power is a means, not an end.
Quote #2
He shivered: he knew that he was a buffoon. An old man who married was grotesque enough, but an old priest. […] That was what made him worthy of damnation—the power he still had of turning the wafer into the flesh and blood of God. (1.2.92)
With great power comes great responsibility. Does that mean that those with power who neglect their responsibility are worse than neglectful people with less power? What would Spiderman say?
Quote #3
He was scared, and yet a curious pride bubbled in his throat because he was being treated as a priest again, with respect. (1.4.18)
Being a priest carries a responsibility to serve, but it's also a position of power. When Padre José renounced the priesthood, he gave up both, but his old ways still carry influence over true believers who still see him as a priest. You know the saying, "Once a priest, always a priest." (Okay, you might not actually know that saying because we just made it up. You heard it here first!)
Quote #4
The jefe was silent. He studied the lieutenant unobtrusively with little astute eyes. Then he said, "You know I trust you. Do what you think best."
"Will you put that in writing?"
"Oh—not necessarily. We know each other."
All the way up the road they fenced warily for positions.
"Didn't the governor give you anything in writing?" the lieutenant asked.
"No. He said we knew each other."
It was the lieutenant who gave way because it was he who really cared. He was indifferent to his personal future. He said, "I shall take hostages from every village." (1.4.90-6)
Ah, politics. Everybody trying to cover their rears…and for good reason. If things go downhill, there must be someone to blame. There's always got to be someone to blame.
Quote #5
Then the altar stone went—too dangerous to carry with him. He had no business to say Mass without it; he was probably liable to suspension, but penalties of the ecclesiastical kind began to seem unreal in a state where the only penalty was the civil one of death. (2.1.3)
Within the institutional church, the bishop has authority over the priests in his diocese. Technically, the whisky priest's bishop is still in charge of him, despite the distance and total absence of communication. In practice, however, the persecution has pretty much made the power of the bishop and his policies meaningless.
Quote #6
Out of the huts the villagers were reluctantly emerging—the children first: they were inquisitive and unfrightened. The men and women had the air already of people condemned by authority—authority was never wrong. (2.1.110)
It's important for authoritarian regimes to nurture a belief that they can do no wrong. If they can be wrong, then they can be questioned. If it can be questioned, then it can be corrected and potentially replaced. It's similar to why dogs wield so much power over their owners—they can do no wrong, and you can't question them even if you want to. Is it a coincidence that dog is God spelled backwards? We don't think so. Anyways, back to the story.
Quote #7
"Better not to believe—and be a brave man."
"I see—yes. And of course, if one believed the Governor did not exist or the jefe, if we could pretend that this prison was not a prison at all but a garden, how brave we could be then."
"That's just foolishness.""But when we found that the prison was a prison, and the Governor up there in the square undoubtedly existed, well, it wouldn't much matter if we'd been brave for an hour or two."
"Nobody could say that this prison was not a prison.""No? You don't think so? I can see that you don't listen to the politicians." (2.3.70-75)
By shaping people's beliefs, you shape their behavior. Part of shaping people's beliefs is controlling the definition (and the way people think) of certain terms and words. Can you think of ways that politicians do this?
Quote #8
The priest waited: there was nothing else to do; he was at the man's mercy—a silly phrase, for those malarial eyes had never known what mercy was. He was saved at any rate from the indignity of pleading. (2.3.156)
The phrase is silly, isn't it? The half-caste knows that the priest is a priest and under the circumstances, this gives him power over the priest and the opportunity to cause him great harm. Mercy indeed.
Quote #10
One didn't trust one's superiors when one was more successful than they were. (3.4.1)
The lieutenant is playing the game of thrones. And he knows it. His chief doesn't seem all that interested in the game, but who knows when the higher ups begin to recognize the lieutenant's accomplishments, or when the lieutenant turns his ire on the chief.