In Graham Greene's dynamic novel The Power and the Glory, we follow the whiskey priest on his harrowing journey as he runs for his life, avoiding the capture and death at the hands of the Lieutenant. This novel shows the development of the priest as he transforms from a previously selfish man before meeting his daughter, into a man who gives everything, including himself, to try to help the children after meeting Brigetta. Greene shows the diversity and parallels between the Lieutenant and the Whiskey Priest as they both struggle with theological beliefs as they embark on their journey to create a better world for children, both approaching it in extremely contrasting ways. We follow the priest as he flees persecution in Mexico; from watching him meet his love-born son to helping a woman carry her dead son along a dangerous route to a church. The lieutenant and the whiskey priest dance around each other from place to place, but the priest is finally captured when he returns to dangerous territory to hand over his last rights to a murderer. An important distinction that increases throughout the novel is how the Whiskey Priest changes dramatically throughout the novel and is a person who has enormous influence, even after death. Both the lieutenant and the whiskey priest take great care of the children; However, the Whiskey Priest's Christianity influences more people than the Lieutenant's humanism. Throughout the novel, both the Whiskey Priest and the Lieutenant love children and are willing to dedicate their existence to the children's future. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay While fleeing from the lieutenant, the whiskey priest travels to a village where he meets his illegitimate daughter Brigetta. The whiskey priest knows it is a sin but cannot regret having his daughter whom he loves but feels condemned by Christianity: "He said, I don't know how to repent." It was true: he had lost his faculty. He could not tell himself that he wished his sin had never existed, because sin now seemed so unimportant to him and he loved the fruit of it” (Greene 152). From that point on the “bad” priest rapidly evolves from a man who reluctantly returns to hear a confession to a man who faces certain death to hear the confession of a murderer. Unlike the Whiskey Priest, the Lieutenant does everything for the children from the beginning, but he does it for all the children. His need to create a better world for children comes from his childhood which "seemed like a weakness to him: this was his land, if he could he would have walled it up with steel until he had eradicated from it everything that reminded him of of how he had once appeared to a miserable child. He wanted to destroy everything: to be alone, without any memories” (49). In an effort to make the world a better place, the Lieutenant attempts to rid Mexico of the corrupt evil associated with the deceptive "fairytales" the Church has woven. By killing priests and religious figures the Lieutenant found a purpose but, more importantly, “he had [found a way to try to] give the children a bright material future and his solitary failure is approved” (Sharrok109). Each man dedicates his life to children, but both do so in drastically opposite ways. The Whiskey Priest focuses his love on a single child, Brigetta, while the Lieutenant focuses on all children. Continuously, due to the Lieutenant's humanist beliefs, he tries his best to take care of the children but rejects the church. The lieutenant's actions are motivated by his views on humanism. He believes that all children will be better off without the Churchcorrupt Catholic. His views become perfectly clear when he questions the whiskey priest about how he could support a Church that ignores those who actually need it. helps but instead “supports the rich and ignore[s] their brutal oppression and continued plunder of the poor [ and] blames the Whiskey Priest for deceiving the poor about the obvious reasons for their suffering” (Gordon 50). The lieutenant fights to take care of children's physical needs, which correlates to his atheistic belief that he only accepts the physical world. However he becomes increasingly frustrated, because he cannot understand how people can have faith in a God that he does not believe can exist since there is only vacancy as a result of evolution from animals (Greene 48). The lieutenant therefore believes he is purging the citizens and paving the way for a better future as he tries to “eliminate from their childhood everything that had made them unhappy, everything that was poor, superstitious and corrupt. They deserved nothing less than the truth” (58). The lieutenant goes out of his way to deconstruct the Catholic Church as he sees it as the source of everything that could harm children and their innocence. In contrast to the lieutenant's humanism, the corrupt whiskey priest has strong Christian beliefs. Because of his theological beliefs he seeks to care for children in a spiritual and moral way while striving for eternal goodness for every child. In contrast to stereotypes, the priest feels “even less worthy in the eyes of God” (Lea 19), but still continues to minister to people during his personal struggle and physical journey through spiritual, moral, and mental support. Continuously, the whiskey priest is motivated by his Christian beliefs, even though he is corrupt, he still believes that God is good and that he is incorruptible, which he specifies “in his conversation with the lieutenant after his arrest, [he] states his wedding ring. «God is love. I'm not saying that the heart doesn't feel the flavour, but what a flavour. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint of ditch water. We wouldn't recognize that love... it would be enough to scare us: the love of God. It rested on a bush in the desert, didn't it, and broke open graves...'” (21). Regardless of his personal sins and struggles, the Whiskey Priest is still strong in his faith and is unshakable, which helps him in the difficult decisions ahead as he finds love for his daughter and a new flame ignites within him. Even when the Whiskey Priest was half-starved, feverish and the police took him away, he continued to do God's will. Even from within the thick walls of a prison cell, the Whiskey Priest still finds the light of God and spreads it to all who need it and even admits to being a priest so that he can assist those who are in desperate need of a priest (Greene 123-134). Even if the priest does not see it, he is a selfless and devoted man and yet believes he is not a good priest; however, he continues to care for those in need as he demonstrates that “Christ is intimately related to every sinner” (Bosco 50) and does what he can to foster the spiritual and mental needs of children as opposed to their physical needs. Furthermore, while the Lieutenant believes that the measures he takes through humanism have a great positive impact, it ends up harming them physically and mentally. The Lieutenant does everything for the people, but they still fear him and do not respect him as a person or what he represents, but rather make the people follow them through fear. This is because he has a deeply rooted hatred for Christianity and does not hesitate to take hostages to kill from the villages he claims to protect because "his brutality and persistence in wanting to kill the Whiskey Prieston the run they are leading him astray, away from the people he wants to help, driving away the poverty-stricken Mexicans to whom he wishes to return their stolen property and their integrity” (Gordon 50). Regardless, the Lieutenant believes that all of his efforts will pay off because it is for the benefit of the people he cares about; however, “When the boy Luis who had been idolized by the hero, spits on his shiny boot” (Sharrok 109) it becomes clear that the lieutenant is not as influential as he believed. The lieutenant did not see the harm in what he was doing as his opinions blocked reality from his consciousness: “Such a man…does no real harm. Some dead men. We must all die” (Greene 34). The Lieutenant's one-track mind is an obstacle to seeing how scared the people are, but it also distracts from how he is attempting to do everything for the people but is actually making them suffer, and he himself suffers, which he demonstrates after having " won" as "he [goes] to the office. The photos of the priest and the gunman were still hanging on the wall: he tore them down: they would never be wanted again” (207). gone, the lieutenant no longer knows what to do since he thought that the purge would help the future of the children of Mexico but in reality he killed countless people, many of them innocent, creating a state of fear in the children lives trying to make Mexico a better place for children, but has little positive impact and ends up emphasizing what he tried to drive away. Although the whiskey priest believes that he and his Christian beliefs have no impact on the people, it actually influences children for the better. His life and even his death are determined by his sense of duty. The Whiskey Priest could have remained safe beyond the mountains, but he chose instead to administer Extreme Unction to the dying outlaw, who killed countless others. Even though he felt that he would be wasting his time and that the message summoning him was almost certainly a police trick, he went anyway (Greene 188-90). The Whiskey Priest does everything in his ability to do God's will, even if his spiritual situation is needlessly complicated by issues that have targeted priests like him; however, through this «daily knowledge of acute suffering and death, which allows him to save his own soul and to dispense help and comfort to the souls of others» (Bosco 50). Both before and after his death, the Whiskey Priest influences many in a positive way. After the meeting with the whiskey priest, Mr. Tench “[had] a strange impulse [come] to project this lost letter towards the last address he had [for his wife]… he tried to start… started writing” (Greene 45-46). Likewise, during the Whiskey Priest's brief interaction with the young, ex-Christian Coral, “'he turned his mind to God in time' – that is, in time to earn eternal salvation – for 'the sesame' to the future, as the Priest's Dream suggests” (Baldridge 63). The Whiskey Priest seeks neither power nor glory, but he still has a great effect on the children, including Louis. When Louis is introduced, he is not interested in the stories his mother tries to tell him, but after the Whiskey Priest, he "begins to see the pious story of the martyr Juan read by his mother in a new light: he is a convert." from the party of Lieutenants to the Church” (Sharrock 118). Even through his death, he opened the way for a new priest and consequently Christianity, as the boy throws open the door to the new priest after witnessing the whiskey priest's execution. Unlike the lieutenant, the whiskey priest does not try to be influential towards the children but is actually the most influential character in the novel. Throughout the: 1,205