The Heart of the Matter

This is not the first time that I have blogged on Graham Greene, and it will certainly not be the last time. Greene was not an admirable man, he was difficult, even unpleasant, constantly cheating on his wife, and betraying his faith. Yet, he still possessed enormous insight into the subject of God, man, and love. To understand his power as a writer, it is worth examining how he tackled a painful, sensitive topic like suicide.

The Heart of the Matter is a dark novel about adultery, obsession, dishonesty, the loss of trust, pity, responsibility, and the cost of betraying one’s principles, all set in wartime West Africa. It is ultimately a story about how Satan is powerless before God’s love. 

It does not seem so, when you reach the end of the book. Scobie - the protagonist - has killed himself, shattering the lives of his wife, and of his mistress, the death affecting his entire community. Even God, for all his love and for all his pleading (in an internal dialogue with Scobie), could not prevent the suicide. Scobie realizes the enormity of what he has done. Once an upright man, he has committed adultery. He has taken bribes and perverted justice. He has even been complicit in murder, David-like, to keep his sin concealed. What pushes him to take his own life is knowing that he has blasphemed God, and damned his own soul by partaking of communion as a sinner who refused to seek absolution. As it turns out, the affair wasn’t much of a secret. Everyone knew.

The novel is realistic in its portrayal of people, place and events, but the reader catches glimpses of Heaven and Hell. This is more than the mere struggles of British colonials in West Africa, it is how the oldest struggle in the world – for the soul of man, for salvation – plays out in the lives of individuals living in this world. Satan acts but once in the book, and is very subtle. Scobie takes pity on a young widow, the survivor of a U-boat attack, and visits her. This is the start of his affair, and what sets the events in motion. “[S]he raised her mouth and they kissed. What they had both thought was safety proved to have been the camouflage of an enemy who worked in terms of friendship, trust, and pity.”

How is it that God has won, and not Satan?  

The novel’s central idea, indeed, its title, is that how we perceive people is not who they really are. After bringing in the survivors of the U-boat attack, the emaciated, the mad, and the dying, Scobie reflects on the contrast between outward calm and inward turmoil.“Outside the rest-house he stopped again. 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?”

Scobie himself seems to be a lax Catholic, he doesn’t know if he believes, and his observance is a matter of habit. As the novel progresses, it is apparent that Scobie is actually scrupulous such a degree that he cannot bring himself to accept God’s mercy. Scobie comes to see himself as the cross upon which Jesus is crucified anew. If God and everyone around him suffer because of their foolish love for him, then he will cease to exist, and his death and damnation will cure them of their illness once and for all. Suicide is the Devil’s triumph because it is the ultimate declaration that there is no hope.

Scobie’s wife discovers through the diary that this was suicide and not an unintentional overdose. In her anguish and bitterness, she takes the diary to their priest. 

"He was a bad Catholic."

"That's the silliest phrase in common use," Father Rank said.

 “And at the end, this – horror. He must have known that he was damning himself.”

"Yes, he knew that all right. He never had any trust in mercy except for other people."

"It's no good even praying . . ."

Father Rank clapped the cover of the diary to and said, furiously, “For goodness’ sake, Mrs. Scobie, don't imagine you or I know a thing about God's mercy."

"The Church says . . ."

"I know the Church says. The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."

God triumphs because he – and only he – knows the heart of the matter.