What do you understand by the term 'seedy'? Do you find any example of seediness in The Power and the Glory?
or
'The Power and the Glory' is symbolically significant so far as its imagery and setting are concerned. How far do you agree?
Introduction:
Figuratively, the word 'seedy' means 'shabby-looking'. But this term has been used in connection with the novels of Graham Greene in a wider and particular sense. Several critics have referred to 'Greeneland' in connection with the setting of his novels. This Greeneland has been said to be consistently seedy.
In other words, it is sordid, cruel and too violent. In fact these words describe the spiritual condition. It is the world abandoned by God. The novels of Greene are said to give an impression that man has been discarded from the sight of God. That is why we find an atmosphere of violence, horror and disgust in his novel. The Power and the Glory is not free from all this.
Seediness in The Power and the Glory.
The Power and the Glory is full of seediness. There is an atmosphere of squalor and emptiness. A sense of failure prevails among human beings. The sense of failure and loneliness is a part of the seediness in the novel. In the very opening of the novel, the suggestion of seediness and squalor has been created.
The very appearance of Mr. Tench produces this effect. Mr. Tench is fed up with his existence in this totalitarian and prohibitionist state where he has been living alone for more than fifteen years. Here he has developed chronic indigestion because of the contaminated water. The very opening paragraph gives the suggestion of dreariness and squalor : "Mr. Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the blazing Mexico sun and the bleaching dust.
A few vultures looked down from the roof with shabby indifference: he wasn't a carrion yet. A faint feeling of rebellion stirred in Mr. Tench's heart, and he wrenched up a piece of the road with splintering finger-nails and tossed it feebly towards them. One rose and flapped across the town; over the plaza, 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.
It wouldn't find anything there; the sharks looked after the carrion on the side." The description of the boat General Obregon is also suggestive of a sort of desolation: "The General Obregon was about thirty yards long. A few feet of damaged rail, one life-boat, a bell hanging on a rotten cord, an oil-lamp in the bow, the looked as if she might weathern two or three more Atlantic years, if she didn't strike a Norther in the gulf.
That of course, would be the end of her." We are also told that several ships had, in the course of years, been stranded against the river-bank and that they now helped to prop up the bank. Likewise, the narrow street of the town has been described as "petering out two hundred yards away in a swamp."
The clinic of Mr. Tench gives a dreary look: "He led the way inside, locking the door behind him, through a dining room where two rocking-chairs stood on either side of a bare table: an oil lamp, some copies of old American papers, a cupboard....... The dentist's operating room looked out on a yard where a few turkeys moved with shabby nervous pomp : drill which worked with a pedal, a dentist's chair gaudy in bright red plush, a glass cupboard in which instruments were dustily jumbled. A forceps stood in a cup, a broken spirit-lamp was pushed into a corner, the gaps of cotton-wool lay on all the shelves."
References of Vultures, Snakes, Mosquitoes, etc. :
In the novel there are images of such abominable creatures as vultures, snakes, mosquitoes, beetles, etc. In the very opening chapter a few vultures are seen looking down from the roof with shabby indifference. Then in the village, "the vultures on the roofs looked contented, like domestic fowls: they searched under wide dusty wings for parasites."
Then there are references to snakes. When the priest is travelling away from the village of Maria, his mule suddenly stops "because a tiny green snake raised itself on the path and then hissed away into the grass like a match-flame." Yet another reference to snakes as well as mosquitoes is seen in these words: "There was a rubble in the grass beside the path-the priest thought of snakes and his unprotected feet.
The mosquitoes jabbed at his wrists; they were like little surgical syringes filled with poison and aimed at the bloodstream." When the priest goes with the mestizo, the following picture appears: "The dusk fell and then, almost at once, the dark. The mule moved yet more slowly.
Things you couldn't put a name to, jaguars, perhaps, cried in the undergrowth, monkeys moved in the upper boughs and the mosquitoes hummed all round like sewing machines." No other author has given such a striking picture of the mosquitoes as Greene has done. The reference to such insects increases the ugliness of the atmosphere in the novel.
The Desolate Pictures of the Prison and the Bungalow of Captain Fellows:
The general geographical descriptions in the novel also give the suggestion of seediness. The villages, the pathways, the mountains, the woods through which the priest happens to pass-all project desolation prevailing in the novel. The scene of the prison where the priest is put is a dull and gloomy place.
It is described: "This place was very like the world: overcrowded with lust and crime and unhappy love, it stank to heaven." The filthiness of the prison is much more highlighted when the priest is seen cleaning the lavatories in the prison. The appearance of the mestizo in a prison-cell is also one of detestable scenes.
Then the sight of the desolate and deserted bungalow of the Fellows also gives the suggestion of seediness. When the priest visits this bungalow the second time he finds the place desolate because it has been deserted by the Fellows family. There is only one living creature to be found in the house, and that is a mongrel bitch and she too has a broken leg and is whimpering.
Everything in the house is broken and useless. There is a pile of old medicine-bottles-medicines of headache, stomachache, medicines to be taken before meals and after meals. The priest searches the house and finds nothing to eat except a piece of bone with a little meat on it for which there is a competition between the priest and the bitch. This is quite a disgusting scene.
Horror and Violence:
Besides scenes of desolation and ruin there is much of horror and violence in the novel which also makes the novel grim. "Horror and disgust touched him-violence everywhere was there no end to violence ?" These are the feelings of the priest when he comes across the woman whose child lies wounded and is about to die.
When the child dies, the priest asks: "Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?" The priest means to give the suggestion that this world is full of sufferings and so the child would be blessed in death. Violence is also seen when the lieutenant kills the innocent hostages in order to get information about the priest from the villagers. Even the Chief of Police is against such killings. The scene of the sexual activity in the prison cell is also full of disgust. Nothing can be more seedy than this.
Sense of Failure and Uselessness in the Priest:
The sense of failure is also a factor responsible for the seediness in the novel. In fact, sense of failure is a recurrent theme in the novels of Graham Greene. In The Power and the Glory the priest is obsessed with this sense of failure from the beginning to the end. He experiences a deep sense of frustration when he is on the way to the village of Maria. Greene throws light on the mental state of the priest thus; "it was only one more surrender.
The years behind him were littered with similar surrenders-feast days and fast days and days of abstinence had been the first to go; then he had ceased to trouble more than occasionally about his breviary - and finally he had left it behind altogether at the port in one of his periodic attempts to escape. 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. The routine of his life was like a dam was cracked and forgetfulness came dribbling through wiping out this and that.
Five years he had given way to despair-the unforgivable sin-and he was going back now to the scene of his despair with a curious lightening of the heart. For he had got over despair too. He was a bad priest, he knew it. They had a word for his kind-a whisky priest, but every failure dropped out of sight and mind: somewhere they accumulated in secret-the rubble of his failures." When the priest finds his illegitimate daughter gazing at him, "it was like seeing his own mortal sin look back at him without contribution." The priest is always haunted by a sense of unworthiness and uselessness.
The best expression of his such feelings is seen towards the end of the novel when the priest wakes up in the morning of his execution: "It was the morning of his death. He crouched on the floor with the empty brandy-flask in his hand trying to remember an Act of Contrition, 'O God. I am sorry and beg pardon, for all my sins......crucified......worthy of the dreadful punishment.' He was confused, his mind was on other things: it was not the good death for which one always prayed.
He caught sight of his own shadow on the cell wall; it had a look of surprise and grotesque unimportance. What a fool he had been to think that he was strong enough to stay when others fled. What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody, I might just as well have never lived....He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all."
We feel that the priest is in fact a martyr, but he himself does not consider him to be so. He feels that "it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint, and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted-to be a saint."
Spiritual Emptiness in the Novel:
There is certainly an atmosphere of spiritual emptiness in the novel. The description of Padre Jose and his wife suggests the prevailing spiritual decay in the state. This priest has forsaken religion and married an awkward woman. This woman can be seen "lying in the big shameless bed that filled half the room, a bony shadow within the mosquito net, a lanky jaw and a short grey pig-tail and an absurd bonnet."
Padre Jose himself is "very fat and short of breath; he panted a little as if after great exertion in the heat." The description of the lieutenant, the policemen and the police station-all are squalid. The policemen are seen walking "raggedly with rifles slung anyhow: ends of cotton where buttons should have; a puttee slipping down over the ankle; small man with black secret Indian eyes."
In the police station there is a sour smell coming up to the plaza from the river, and the vultures are bedded on the roofs. In the room of the lieutenant "the beatles denoted on the ceiling." The scene of the prison cell where the priest is imprisoned is highly squalid. It is a den of sin where even the sexual activity is seen going on in the midst of utter darkness. There is actually spiritual darkness here.
The dissatisfaction of Mr. Tench with his present situation is also indicative of emptiness. His family life has come to nothing and his wife is even ready to divorce him. His writing a letter to his wife (which he could not complete) is quite pathetic. Mr. Tench feels highly shocked to see the execution of the priest.
In the end Mrs. Fellows is also suggestive of a sense of failure and waste. Always remaining sick, or complaining about her sickness, she makes her husband agree to her proposal to leave this state. Thus, almost all the characters have a feeling of failure and incompleteness at one stage or the other in the novel.
Thus, the world of the novel is full of squalor and waste. There is much of violence and spiritual emptiness in the novel. The novel can, therefore, be said to be seedy.
