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Greene<-novels<-chapter 8<-contents<-position

11. Graham Greene (1904-1991)
Life

    Greene was born in Hertfordshire, a small town near London. His father was a schoolmaster. He did not like school life and played truant to read the adventure stories by such authors as Rider Haggard and R. M. Ballantyne. These novels gave him so great influence that they helped shape his writing style. He was educated at his father’s school and later at Balliol College, Oxford where he took his B. A. degree in modern history in 1928. He joined Roman Catholic Church in 1926, which was a significant event in his life. From 1926 to 1930 he was on the staff of the Times. After that, he tried to make a living as a writer. He had been a regular contributor to several periodicals and editor of the Spectator until 1940. During this period, he traveled a lot. He had notoriety in his personal life for many extra-marital affairs. He separated from his wife in 1948, but they never divorced. He died peacefully in Vevey, Switzerland on April 3, 1991.
Major works
    Greene was a very prolific writer and tried his hand in various genres such as novels, plays, detective stories, travel books, children’s books, screenplays and verses. In 1938 Green published his first full-length novel Brighton Rock. The originally designed as a detective novel turned out to be a story discussing sociology and morality. The Heart of the Matter (1948) was such a novel setting in the West Africa during the Second World War. The hero, Sobie, is a colonial policeman. He is originally a just and honorable man, but is led to various false moves, initially out of compassion for his unhappy wife, them out of a mixture of love and pity for a 19-year-old widow, Helen. He is indirectly involved in a crime and commits suicide at last. A young intelligence agent has been watching his every move and told the truth to Sobie’s wife, Louisa. In the novel Greene combines realism with symbolism, serious moral concerns with the form of detective stories and the psychoanalysis of thrillers.
    After his conversion to Catholic Church, the searching for spiritual relief occurred in many of his novels. Throughout his literary career many of his novels take Catholicism as their subject. Yet he never agreed with being labeled as a Catholic writer. His characters are not blind believers of the orthodox doctrines of Catholicism. Green believed that it was novelist’s responsibility to question those religious beliefs and political propositions and reveal the real meaning in life. Thus his characters always have their own understanding of Catholic values and reflect the complexity of human nature. His other major novels are The Power and the Glory (1940), The Quiet American (1955), A Burnt Out-Case (1961), The Human Factor (1978) and Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (1980).

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