The Heart of the Matter

I shall say from the outset The Heart of the Matter does not make for comfortable reading. However, for anyone who wants to be challenged, not necessarily intellectually, but deeper down this is an excellent. Scobie, a man of honor in a climate which expects corruption, which seethed with jealousies, gossip and spying, is put under Greene's relentless microscope. His greatest quality, caring too much, is also his greatest failing. Watching the disintegration of an good man is not an easy thing to witness. As I read the latter fourth I kept thinking, "this doesn't have to end this way; there are so many ways this could be resolved. If I were Scobie, I would..." And that is the heart of the matter. I am not Scobie. I am not remotely like show more Scobie. I cannot ever fully understand Scobie. What I can do is hope for eternal mercy for all the Scobies of the world. For all the world. And that is where Greene leaves it.

Like many of Greene's books, The Heart of the Matter is shadowed by the author's faith. Like his schoolmate and writing contemporary Evelyn Waugh Catholicism is a continuing theme; however, with Greene it goes beyond a theme; it is nearly a haunting. I can't believe the stringency of his faith and how he portrayed it won many converts for the church. At times reading the book seemed an act of masochism in the name of art; a spiritual tormenting like self flagellation and wearing a hair shirt. Now this may not seem much of a recommendation for a book, in an odd way it his. It will get under your skin and flail its way through the corridors of your brain and heart. At least it did mine.

Throughout Greene masterfully manipulates scenes, details and characters producing subtle doubles, haunting metaphors, smalls clues, and well-conceived symbols (the broken rosary, the rusted handcuffs). But beyond the artistry, which is nothing if the book lacks a soul, is the lonely, responsibility-ridden Scobie, a man worthy of the reader's concern and love. show less

Book Circle Reads 35

Rating: 4* of five

The Book Description: Graham Greene's masterpiece The Heart of the Matter tells the story of a good man enmeshed in love, intrigue, and evil in a West African coastal town. Scobie is bound by strict integrity to his role as assistant police commissioner and by severe responsibility to his wife, Louise, for whom he cares with a fatal pity.

When Scobie falls in love with the young widow Helen, he finds vital passion again yielding to pity, integrity giving way to deceit and dishonor—a vortex leading directly to murder. As Scobie's world crumbles, his personal crisis makes for a novel that is suspenseful, fascinating, and, finally, tragic.

Originally published in 1948, The Heart of the Matter is the show more unforgettable portrait of one man, flawed yet heroic, destroyed and redeemed by a terrible conflict of passion and faith.

My Review: An excellent book. Simply magnificent writing, as always, but more than that the story is perfectly paced (a thing Greene's stories aren't always) and deeply emotional (another thing Greene's stories aren't always, eg Travels With My Aunt).

Greene himself didn't like the book, which was a species of roman à clef. I suspect, though I don't have proof, that he was simply uncomfortable at how much of his inner life he revealed in the book. Scobie's infidelity and his fraught relationship with the wife he's saddled with must have been bad reading for Mrs. Greene. But the essential conflict of the book is man versus church, the giant looming monster of judgment and hatred that is Catholicism. Greene's convert's zeal for the idiotic strictures, rules, and overarching dumb "philosophy" of the religion are tested here, and ultimately upheld, though the price of the struggle and the upholding aren't scanted in the text.

Stories require conflicts to make them interesting, and the essential question an author must address is "what's at stake here?" The more intense and vivid the answer to that question is, the more of an impact the story is able to make. Greene was fond of the story he tells here, that of an individual against his individuality. He told and retold the story. The state, the colonial power whose interests Scobie/Greene serves, is revealed in the text to be an uncaring and ungrateful master; the rules of the state are broken with remarkably few qualms when the stakes get high enough. It is the monolith of the oppressive church, admonishing Scobie of his "moral" failings and withholding "absolution of his sins", that he is in full rebellion against...and in the end it is the church that causes all parties the most trouble and pain.

Greene remained a believing Catholic. I read this book and was stumped as to why. The vileness of the hierarchy was so clear to me, I couldn't imagine why anyone would read it and not drop christianity on the spot. But no matter one's stance on the religion herein portrayed, there's no denying the power of the tension between authority and self in creating an engaging and passionate story. A must-read. show less

“If I could just arrange for her happiness first, he thought, and in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him—that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness.”

Published in 1948, this book is a psychological character study of Henry Scobie, a British police official living with his wife in Sierra Leone in 1942. He has recently been passed over for promotion. His wife is unhappy. He borrows money from a corrupt individual to send her to South Africa, setting off a spiral of poor choices. He meets a young widow who reminds him of his deceased daughter. “He was touched by uneasiness, as though he had accidentally set in motion a powerful machine he show more couldn’t control.”

Greene excels at describing flawed individuals and their struggles. He puts the reader into Scobie’s mind. Scobie, a Catholic, is consumed by guilt for his choices, though he cannot seem to extract himself from his dilemma. He uses the excuse that he is acting out of love, but the reader will discern that love is not the source. This book portrays the futility of trying to predict what will happen as a result of our actions. show less

"Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation"

God I love Graham Greene. It’s no great secret that most of the books I read are by American authors, so on the occasions that I need a bit of Englishness, I seek sanctuary in Graham Greene. It’s terribly English, all pink gins and polite/banal conversation. And The Heart of the Matter is terribly Catholic too. I was raised in a very strict Catholic household (my parents, like Graham Greene, were show more Catholic converts) and no matter how much you lapse you can never shake off the feeling of guilt or the fear of eternal damnation. That is the heart of the matter. Graham Greene doesn’t have the fire and brimstone of Flannery O’Connor, he’s more about despair and contrition.

Based in a West African colony during WW2, Major Henry Scobie is a senior policeman who prides himself on being incorruptible. His Catholic faith and honesty help him navigate a loveless marriage.
“The trouble is, he thought , we know answers – we Catholics are damned by our knowledge”
The symbolism throughout this claustrophobic novel is wonderful: broken Rosary beads, vultures, rusty handcuffs, sweat and storms. Things get interesting when Scobie commits a mortal sin by breaking one of the 10 commandments, and both his moral judgement and his life go into free fall.
“There was no hope anywhere he turned his eyes: the dead figure on the cross, the plaster Virgin, the hideous stations that representing a series of events that happened a long time ago. It seemed to him that he had only left for his exploration the territory of despair”
It’s a colossal piece of writing. The final 50 pages rank amongst the best I've ever read. Graham Greene's attempt to understand religious despair and theological fatalism are just astonishing . show less

“If I could just arrange for her happiness first, he thought, and in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him—that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness.”

Published in 1948, this book is a psychological character study of Henry Scobie, a British police official living with his wife in Sierra Leone in 1942. He has recently been passed over for promotion. His wife is unhappy. He borrows money from a corrupt individual to send her to South Africa, setting off a spiral of poor choices. He meets a young widow who reminds him of his deceased daughter. “He was touched by uneasiness, as though he had accidentally set in motion a powerful machine he show more couldn’t control.”

Greene excels at describing flawed individuals and their struggles. He puts the reader into Scobie’s mind. Scobie, a Catholic, is consumed by guilt for his choices, though he cannot seem to extract himself from his dilemma. He uses the excuse that he is acting out of love, but the reader will discern that love is not the source. This book portrays the futility of trying to predict what will happen as a result of our actions. show less

When you get right down to the heart of the matter, the heart is difficult to know and even more difficult to control. A good man can do bad things, and a bad man can get away with murder. Henry Scobie is a good man, in fact a rarer thing, a good policeman, who finds himself trapped in a situation in which there is no way out that won’t damage someone. Henry Scobie is not a man who is comfortable with damaging someone else to save himself. In fact, Greene seems to think it is ironically his very goodness that dooms him.

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself and impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the show more freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.

Henry carries this capacity like a millstone. He finds himself damned for being human, for being frail, and he comes to believe that he has failed the ultimate test. Like Abraham with Isaac, he has been asked to put his love for God above his love for the human beings he sees as being in his care, and he finds himself incapable of doing so.

He seems to feel, as well, that the suffering is his fate, unavoidable as breathing.

He put his head in his hands and wouldn’t look. He had been in Africa when his own child died. He had always thanked God that he had missed that. It seemed after all that one never really missed a thing. To be a human being one had to drink the cup. If one were lucky on one day, or cowardly on another, it was presented on a third occasion.

Graham Greene has written a staggering treatise on what it is to be human. He has shown how choices can collapse around a man like dominos and carry him down a road he never thought to travel. I love the way he looks at the human heart and sees what is good and kind and valiant; and what is cruel and evil and cowardly. I found so many of these characters so believably self-serving, so consummately unaware of any struggle that was not their own, so cruel in the demands they made in the guise of love, that I winced at the irony of Henry doing so much to spare their feelings and protect their futures.

There is also Greene’s tussle with religion. Scobie is a Catholic and he tortures himself over his beliefs and the surety that he will be punished forever if he fails to follow the religious dictates. Greene appears to think the Church might have it wrong, that what is in the heart might be what really matters, and therein lies whatever hope there might be for the Scobies of the world. show less

It's been a few months since I read this, but my feeling is one of annoyed disappointment, unless this is meant to be an ironic story about a man who makes an ultimately pointless ultimate sacrifice. Perhaps, if Scobie had had some frank, even difficult discussions with the people he thought he was protecting---if it had occurred to him that they might have something of value to say about themselves, he might have realized that his actions were unnecessary, unhelpful, and wrong. Hmmm---a lot of evil gets done by people who believe they are doing what must be done even though it causes them great suffering; at least Scobie's actions hurt him more than others. OK, maybe there's more to the novel than I thought. Maybe this book is really show more about people and countries, at what seems like great personal and national sacrifice, interfering when they "are only trying to help." And how you have to be careful when you think you are doing something very wrong in order to achieve something that is very right.

It's also very hot in Western Africa.

Ah, but I nearly forgot my favorite part: Scobie is asked to read to a sick boy, who would like a murder story; alas, the only books available are those approved by missionaries who don't approve of novels. Scobie picks up A Bishop among the Bantus and then, rather than read the book, he brilliantly makes up the beginning an exciting pirate story. He explains to the boy that if someone else continues the book, it may sound a little different.

A quote:
The lights inside would have given an extraordinary impression of peace if one hadn't known, just as the stars on this clear night gave also an impression of remoteness, security, freedom. If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter? [p. 111]

The main character commits suicide in a way he hopes will appear otherwise (he saves up medicine and takes it all at once) in order to protect his wife and mistress. But his wife, unknown to him, knows about his affair and his mistress is ready to move on from their relationship. I found his problem quite interesting, but he chooses his own eternal damnation for the sake of others who don't really care. show less