LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:12 December 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Evil, Sin and Suffering in The Select Novels of Graham Greene
Doctoral Dissertation

Suma Aleya John, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Abstract

Graham Greene is one of the foremost post-war novelists who gave English novel the spiritual dimension. Greene has been considered as a modern spiritual writer.

As a Catholic writer, Greene has dealt with evil in his writings. Greene feels that de-moralization of the modern society has led to a loss of faith in God and traditional human values. Greene tries to deal with themes like man's relationship with himself, with society and with God, Greene writes about 'sin and salvation' in his spiritual novels and believes that only faith in God can save man from his ruin. Graham Greene is generally regarded as one of the greatest English Catholic novelist of the twentieth Century. Greene's Catholicism is evidently moral, action-centered, rather than contemplative or mystic. The Church institutionalizes conscience, which for a Greene’s hero would be exacerbating in any case.

Graham Greene was born on 2nd October 1904. His Father C.H. Greene was the head master of an English Public School at Berkhamsted. Greene was given a conventional middle class and Anglican up bringing in the confines of his father’s school, which he attended as a pupil. He was educated at this school until he went up to Balliol College Oxford.

Graham Greene is one of the greatest fashionable novelists. He represents the contemporary English novel. Evil, Sin and Suffering transforms a man to towards god through redemption. They are the conceptions that are central to Christian theology. Greene's view of evil and sin and his imaginative and sympathetic view of the darker side of man provide the real source of religious dimensions which are the shades of Greene as good, love and faith are in many of Greene's fiction. It is the deep study of sin that prompts Greene to think of the redemption of the sinner. Greene suggests that a true believer and in the process of redemption he finds the presence of God.

In this process, Greene seems to say that even if, one has committed a mortal sin, and it is quite possible that he would be redeemed by the touch of the Grace of God.

The significance of the study shows that in the social life, man lives amidst all happenings. Man has to deal with the historical impact of political and cultural transformation in which religion has produced a profound meaning.

The introductory chapter one is titled as “Shades of Greene” with regard to the religious dimensions of writers of the age. Shades of evil, sin and suffering can influence man in different ways.

Chapter two is titled as “The Pursuit of Peace” through Greene’s work “The Man within” and “Brighton Rock”. The novel analyses the nature of an individual in search of peace. Greene has championed, through his character, the cause of the human heart to fall and has voiced the deepest hope and fears of man – the lonely man, the hungry man, the angry man, the defeated man and the divided man.

Chapter three is titled as “The Pursuit of Belief” with the novel “The Power and the Glory” from Greene’s travel to Mexico and the Mexican travel book, The Lawless Road that acts as a curtain raiser to the novel. Greene is concerned with the Catholic persecution in Mexico. That narrow sympathy is transmuted into a wider concern for the persecution of man by forces from both within and outside. The experience of human being consumed by the conflict of life and the hapless situation of the human is emphasized in The Power and Glory.

Chapter four is titled “The pursuit of moral values” from the novel The Heart and the Matter and The End of Affair. The Heart of the Matter deals with the exploration of the human condition and stresses on the necessity as well as the difficulty of having some sort of belief.

Chapter five gives the summation Greene’s religious novel. It reveals that faith ultimately wins. Souls are saved from all evil forces and sufferings. Greene indirectly condemns modern civilization with its deep sense of spiritual sense to reach God from the darker side of life. Greene often plunges into violence in quest of peace, belief and moral values. Greene probes into Evils Sin and Suffering in order to explore sin and enhance the possibilities of salvation.

This is only the beginning part of the dissertation. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE DISSERTATION IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. Suma Aleya John

Dr. Suma Aleya John
Associate Professor of English
Tiruppur Kumaran College for Women
Tiruppur 641687
Tamilnadu
India
sushan87@gmail.com
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