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The Heart of the Matter
• It is strongly pictorial
...

• The people have dreams and it’s as if there are no gap and it tells the
readers about the character (thinking and feeling)
• Novel is narrated in the third person – anonymous narrator – either
omniscient (will know everything that happened – what everyone is
thinking- God like) or oblique narration (narrator focuses on one point of
view -> Scobie’s) there are some rare instances where the narrator
shift’s to another character’s point of view
...
We enter their mind
...
This makes Wilson an
antagonist
...
We get
to see Scobie through someone else’s eyes
...
The narrator never provides
us with comments about Scobie, doesn’t tell us what we should think, but
does an evaluation of what is happening by similes, symbols, metaphors and
particular
images
...
These people are truly
human and make mistakes
...
He remembers his daughter who is dead
...
To acquire
peace, he can ultimately achieve the desire of peace
...

Wilson desires Scobie’s wife
...

The novel takes place in Freetown capital city of Sierra Leone
...
Vultures land on buildings; roofs are made out of metal
...


1




Freetown is a hostile place, dangerous to live there
...

Those who do are eccentric
...
He is an outsider
...
She wants to
leave and go back to Britain
...

Symbols – broken rosary (symbol of betrayal) rusty handcuffs, (symbol of
failure of justice system because of corruption – the natives are cunning and
they avoid prosecution)
...

Scobie’s first name is Henry, but everyone call him Scobie
...
His role is to protect
weak people
...
Greene was distorting reality (showing
inaccurately)
...

Greene said that in ‘the Heart of the Matter’ he wanted to explore the affect on
human beings of pity
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Pity and responsibility is the crucial theme
...
He replaced love
with pity, because he feels they need someone to save them from the misery
...
This is what destroys him
...
This epigraph said that the sinner is at the very heart of Christianity
because no one knows God better than the sinner unless it is the saint –
Peguy
Paradox – contradiction with an element of truth in it
...


2




LOVE:
The Power and the Glory – “when we love our sin then we are damned
indeed”
Scobie comes to love what he is doing thinking of making Louise happy but
commits suicide for his wife and lover to protect them from heartache
...
Love and responsibility are bound together
but we find out that he loves neither of them instead, he pities them
...

People like Louise know that their husbands do not love them and he treats
her like a helpless child and protects her
...
Scobie is the
kind of man who desires solitude only
...
Having a relationship is difficult because it carries responsibility and
this is a burden
...

There is a moment of happiness on pg 123 “it seemed to Scobie later
that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in
darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity”
His wife left to South Africa and he’s alone without a responsibility
...


Another moment of happiness is on pg 128 “ he walked away, feeling
an extraordinary happiness, but this he would not remember as
happiness, as he would remember setting out in the darkness, in the
rain, alone
...
Happiness is motivated by meeting Helen
...

Love, companionship is not as satisfying as solitude
...

Love cannot save Scobie from suicide
...

Attention between Scobie’s love to Helen and Louise and Scobie’s love
towards God
...
Human love has
actually robbed him from love for eternity, he is damned
...
He thinks that this is
what God wants him to do
...
Scobie was also a spiritual father (father figure
for his wife, lover, 6 year old child and Portuguese captain)
...
Scobie imitates God ‘Imitatia Dei’
...
Scobie is trying to lift a role which is too much for him (cannot carry
it)
...

Scobie is deeply religious but not pious; he interprets Christ’s words to an
extreme
...
He needs to play the role of a
father on the earth which is impossible
...
He had received
two telegrams, first saying that his father died and the other saying that his
father is seriously ill
...

Father figure:
• Pg 112, he finds a girl who is dying and prays
...

Take away my peace forever, but give her peace
...
He asks
God to damn him to save the child
...

• Through his job as a policeman, rather than being a normal job it is a
job to protect others
...
Scobie takes it and burns it, since he sympathizes
with the captain, he pities him
...

At the end of the book, Father Rank and Louise talk about Scobie, he thinks
that Scobie won’t be punished for what he did, he won’t be sent to hell
...

Sierra Leone – is a dangerous country but also a beautiful place
...
White people hate
Africa but Scobie loves it
...
Scobie’s guilty and it affects him
...
Being a
policeman is difficult because the natives know how to pass through the
British system by lying
...

The British characters failed to adapt to the lifestyle of the natives, therefore
they are unhappy
...
White people are happy that they bought
meat
...
Wilson will use these boys to gather information about Scobie
...

Syrian traitors such as Yusef (Muslim) and Tallit (catholic) are corrupt,
cunning, crafting and in the black market
...

Diamond smuggling was illegal since diamonds could be used to make the
war richer in weapons and other things
...

Characters:
1
...
He doesn’t have a weakness for women as something he
is interested sexually; he is attracted to Helen because he can be
responsible for her
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He considers himself to be a good man, to do the right thing according
to his religion and personal morality
...

In the novel there is the pursued (Scobie) and the pursuer, Wilson (spy)
and Scobie’s conscious
...
This is what leads him to a very tight corner
...
The worst sin for him: is damnation (losing his own
soul)
...

Scobie is incapable of getting himself out of the mess that he creates,
we sometimes wish that he uses his common sense and acts in a more
normal fashion
...

Greene tells us that Scobie is the kind of person who wants to do what
is considered right by his church but fails to do so because of his
humanity
...
We see in this novel, that Greene focuses
entirely on imperfect human material that is the only kind of person he is
interested in
...
Scobie is guilt – riven because he lost his daughter, he
genuinely loved his daughter but the fact that he wasn’t there in her last
moment of life this means that he failed her too and he didn’t help her
die in peace
...
Scobie is a
sinner, an imperfect man
...

For Greene what’s important when it comes to sin is that atonement and
redemption are possible, human beings can redeem themselves
...

Despite what the church might think about suicide, Scobie will be saved
(grace – what catholics believe in as the saving power of God) Greene
himself (typical sinner) believed in this power force which is able to save
everyone
...
Even the suicide victim will be saved, in
that he goes against what the church used to say (those who commit
suicide go to hell)
...


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Relationships:
All of them are based on pity not love and mixed up
...
Scobie feels that he is needed by others
especially those who are pathetic (pity), they will be looked after by Scobie, he
is an imitation of God
...
Both his wife and his lover end up as his
victims, he sees them as pathetic victims
...
This makes him even more entangled in this
moral dilemma
...
When he meets Helen
(someone who needs him) he makes another promise to be there for her and
he won’t abandon her
...
By the end of the novel he also pities God, in this
we see that he is guilty of the worst sin (pride – devil) the feeling of
responsibility in the novel is described as a terrible impotent feeling
...
Human
nature is not black and white but black and grey
...

In the novel we have a man Scobie, who wants to be good, perfect, wants to
do what’s right but fails because he is human
...
In the
novel Scobie compares the suffering of the two women to the suffering of
Christ
...
He realises that
they are miserable and he is trying to make them happy but he is failing
...
There is one episode where we see him pitying a
captain but this is because he had a daughter he is trying to smuggle this
letter to contact his daughter
...

Scobie mixes pity and religion; it is misinterpreting religion because he takes
these words of Christ and misuses them
...
Scobie distorts that idea and
he feels that he must personally feel responsible for all suffering
...
The church tells its flock to perform charity, Scobie
feels that this idea means that he should put other’s people salvation before
his own (when he visits the dying 6 year old, he asks for damnation)
...

Louise finds out about his cheating but doesn’t say anything, she makes him
go confess but he doesn’t do it because he says he cannot lie
...
He prefers to betray God rather than Helen
...
Scobie is
proud and makes him look at himself as a father figure and a saviour for these
people
...
He’s not
attracted to Helen and Louise sexually, he says that they are ugly, but he says
he cannot be a saviour if they are not imperfect
...

2
...
She is unhappy in her relationship
...
She is somewhat selfish in expecting
her husband to make her happy
...
She is a woman who is shaken terribly by the fact that her
daughter dies, this leaves a huge gap in her heart
...
She has a
passion for poetry excluding Wilson
...
Her husband isn’t
ambitious, therefore when her husband is not given the promotion, she
thinks that the people will now make fun of her and is unhappy that
Scobie takes it lightly
...
For this
reason people gossip about her, however Wilson falls in love with her
because he sees a woman very similar to him
...
She is also a pious woman
...
Throughout
most of the novel we rarely get to see Louise’s point of view
...
We don’t see why she reacts like
this
...


Helen: is introduced to us as an ugly young woman, ugly with
exhaustion and Scobie immediately likes her because she is someone
whom he can feel responsible for
...

She has just survived a torpedo attack; she lost her husband, and finds
herself in a strange country with a lot of weird people
...
She’s afraid of “the awful responsibility of received
sympathy”
...
Scobie and
Helen come together because they both crave security
...
Helen becomes very similar to
Louise, but whereas Louise can understand some of Scobie’s problems,
(spiritual crisis) at the same time Helen can’t do that since she is not a
catholic
...
His problems as a catholic
remain alien to her
...
It is filled with Louise’s possessions therefore it isn’t
comfortable
...


Wilson: young, immature, innocent (has just arrived; he doesn’t know
what it can change you into, no expectations of life), romantic, shy
...
He becomes very jealous which makes him
desire Scobie’s destruction
...
His job was to spy on British people living there, people who
might be betraying the British
...


Harris: been in Sierra Leone for 18 months, and hates it and the
natives
...
He wasn’t successful, couldn’t get a job and then
they were placed in these countries, they have servants, a sense of
power and for them the natives are inferiors
...
He is
a weak man, wasn’t liked by others, since he was a boy at a school
called Downham, he wasn’t popular
...


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6
...
He admires him for wanting to be a good man, but
wants Scobie’s corruption and he succeeds
...
Yusef plays an important part in the murder of Scobie’s
servant, Ali
...

“Bald pink knees”
• The names of the streets and places are named after the British “Bond
street”, “High school”
...
(it makes you feel drunk very easily)
...

• “Pallor” disgustingly white
...
This is
also shown by “his lack of interest in the schoolgirls opposite”
...
However this will change and will start
lusting woman due to his loneliness
...

• White people are living in a country which isn’t hospitable, it is not
suitable and they haven’t adapted
...

• Some towns in Africa have tin roofs; when you’re inside, it gets very hot
...
It
will be mentioned a lot, it lands on the roof and makes a noise, and the
scavenger is waiting for the white people to die
...
” He wants
to appear masculine in the eyes of the other men
...
His taste was romantic
...

He lies about not reading poetry so that he is not judged
...

• Freetown was inhabited by other inhabitants
...
This was one of the occasions, a man never
forgets, but doesn’t know it
...
The act of looking at Scobie will become a scar that will hurt
Wilson; he wants to get rid of Scobie to be with Louise
...
(this is
a rumour because Scobie seems strange to them, he considers Sierra
Leone as his home; there is something wrong with Scobie, for a white
man to sleep with a black woman – taboo)
• Harris says that the police as useless, they never manage to prosecute
anyone, the system in Freetown is corrupt, but Scobie finds it
impossible to do his job as people bribe and find their ways through
...
So that he will
close an eye for diamond-smuggling
...

He says that if he had Louise as a wife, he would cheat on her too
...

• Alcohol is an important part of their life; it is used to ignore the pain
...

People are affected by the country they live in (metaphor)
...
The natives are used to this
thing; they accept the insults (patient are the white man, doctors are the
natives)
...
Unlike other
people, for Scobie, his office is his home; he strips his life to bare necessities
...
When he arrived, he had believed in
accumulation, he had a lot of things in his office
...
He compares
his wife to handcuffs because she is a burden
...
He doesn’t see her as an adult, but as a child for whom
he is responsible for
...

Scobie doesn’t show any emotion, he wants to stay because the country is his
home
...
His wife is proud of her husband, she
won’t like to stay
...
He says that she would
have taken all the possibilities
...
” – Foreshadowing
...
His actions would
affect Louise (guilt)
...
White people find it weird
he did not try to flirt with their wives
...

Rumours are what keep the people busy
...

At the beginning of his work he took complaints very seriously, but he learned
that both tried to cheat, so there was no way to do justice
...
Other people think that blacks
are not sexually attractive, they are not desired, but this changes since they
do an impact on the white man
...

He then pities his wife
...

Louise, is miserable, she doesn’t bother to answer him
...
Under the mosquito net, he sees her like a dog or a
12




cat
...
Louise loves accumulation; the house is filled with her
possessions
...
She has a picture of her daughter who died at school in England
...
Love
for him is pity and responsibility
...

The books become mouldy after a few days if not wiped
...

Louise was under a mosquito net and calls him ‘Ticki’ which he hates
...

When he touched Louise, sweat formed because it is so hot
...
Scobie doesn’t want to retire, without his job he will
die
...
But how he doesn’t want to
settle down with her only, he loves his daughter much more than her
...

Page 16:
He explains why he is skipped, a lot of problems
...

Page 17:
Scobie never really listened to his wife, because his main preoccupation is if
his wife is happy or not
...
As long as she talked, he knew all was well it
was silence that worried him
...
He feels bound to her because
he pities her ugliness
...
He is not wanted
in the club (reserved for white people with a high rank); a club where they can
meet businessmen, same social class, exclusive
...

They said he should join another club which is less exclusive
...
He gate-crashed the
party (went to the party without being invited)
...
For her, it is important to
have friends
...
His life is dominated by anxiety
...
It is impossible to make other people happy all
the time, it is their responsibility
...
Louise is an unpleasant
character
...
He
knew she wasn’t perfect but thinks she shouldn’t be excluded
...
Scobie thinks that it is his doing, he
made her that way
...

Page 25:
• Scobie accuses him of doing illegal things for a fortune
...

• Scandalmongers are people who spread rumours
...
Living
conditions are hard
...

• They pity and love the corrupt (God and Scobie pay attention to the
sinners)
• Scobie never really punished Yusef; actually Yusef is the one who
pushes Scobie down
...

• Scobie feels that he is on the very edge of a strange place
...

• He finds a bottle with a foul smelling substance
...
Now the innocent are cursed
...

Page 30:
It is a wartime kind of situation, there are black outs so the light is switched off,
this was important because there were air raids and they would bombard the
town
...
If
anyone didn’t have these it might cost the life of others
...
He finds a rat on the rim of the bath, Louise considers this
unpleasant
...
“The smallest scratch in this country
turned green if it were neglected for an hour
...

Scobie sits down were the rat was, he considers this as home and he is not
disgusted by the rats and infections “Sitting where the rat had sat, in his own
world
...
It’s as if Wilson is speaking a foreign language
...
People stop being honest, they are corrupted by this country,
changed in the cause of a few months
...
Scobie knows the effect of the country on the people
...
In Scobie’s
eyes Wilson is still naive, fresh and very soon the country will change him
...
Scobie is compared to a compressed spring which very soon will
15




spring with energy
...
If any part of their
bodies touch, sweat forms, this shows how hot the country is
...

Scobie avoids touching his wife because it means that sweat will form
...
As soon as he wakes up,
he listens out for Louise’s breathing, he might not be attracted to her, but he
feels absolutely responsible for her
...
The people whom he feels
responsible for, he sees them as children, ugly and responsibility
...
The act of giving her comfort is the
same as taking care of a child and this is tiring him
...
It was
how he always began
...
” It
stopped being something that he enjoyed
...

Louise says that she’s miserable, that she’s depressed
...
She’s aware of the fact that people
don’t want to be her friends
...
She
suggests that Scobie retires, which makes him shiver, he wants to die while
performing his duty as a policeman
...
He doesn’t have the intention of retiring, and he
flinches
...
He doesn’t want to stop working and is terrified of spending time
with his wife alone
...
He hopes that he’ll die
before he comes to retire
...
Scobie is afraid of being an old man in the company
of his old wife doing nothing but enjoying her company
...

His life insurance can only be paid out upon his death
...
Insurance companies don’t give out the
money if the person commits suicide
...

Louise demands to find a solution and Scobie promises to do anything for her,
which is true
...
The people are not loved
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the way they want to be loved by Scobie
...
” Scobie realises that
she was asleep before he finished the sentence
...
“The load lay
beside him now, and he prepared to lift it
...
This is compared to Christ carrying the cross up the hill
...

Page 35:
Scobie went to the bank to ask for money, for a ticket to South Africa
...
Robinson is a person who is constantly worried about being
sick and he has a number of books
...
He imitates the symptoms of someone who is suffering
from heart disease
...
He feels as if Robinson has caught him doing
something which he shouldn’t have been doing
...

Page 37:
His duty is to search the Captain cabin, he feels uncomfortable because he
feels that he is that he is invading his privacy
...

He finds a letter inside, from Germany
...
In Scobie’s eyes they are similar, two
unattractive children who need his protection
...

The captain is carrying a load and it’s up to Scobie to take it up on himself
...
Scobie knows that his duty is
to take the letter and leave and report him
...
This is destructive because it stops him from ignoring people
...
The captain is just like
Louise and so Scobie pities him
...
The millstone is a biblical illusion; it is also mentioned in the Bible
...

Motif is a pattern repeated on a number of occasions which represents the
feeling of responsibility and pity that Scobie carries around with him
...
There is a parallel, Scobie carries the load of responsibility, and Christ
carries it too
...

The captain says that Scobie doesn’t have a daughter; it seemed as if he was
accusing him
...

Similarity of Scobie and the Captain is Catholicism
...
He wants him to
forgive him and so he began begging him
...
The Captain realised that
they had a lot in common, they were both Catholics and they believed in the
same things, the love of God being the most important
...

Scobie realises that the Captain genuinely loved his daughter; it is stronger,
bigger and much more lasting than the love for his wife
...

Scobie feels that he will have to do something about it; he will not have the
courage and willingness to report the Captain
...
The
unforgivable sin is suicide, Scobie genuinely believes that there is a God, that
there’s hell
...

He then burns the report and the letter because he pities the Captain
...
Pity is the destructive feeling he manifests and
leads him to corruption
...
He immediately regrets doing so; he thinks he is a fool
because his prime concern is his wife
...

He regrets going home, and he compares himself to someone who is about to
be executed
...

18




However, he knows that he will have to answer about her day, and she’ll start
telling him about how miserable she is
...
He wished to postpone
the misery until daylight when he’s at work
...
He tries to make her feel hopeful, to
make her feel better
...
She looks older, more unattractive and like an abandoned
woman
...
He gives her gin, it seems like she is a patient and he gives her
more misery
...
He regrets for not taking
the bribe from the Captain for the letter
...
In a
relationship, sometimes it is better to lie, because if you say the truth but it
would make her more miserable
...
She tells him that he takes care of her because of his
conscience, which is because he has a sense of duty
...

Scobie does his utmost to make her feel happy, but he failed
...
Their love fades at some point in time; however it
doesn’t mean that you separate
...

She tells his that she is fully dependent on Scobie, no friends, unable of being
happy on her own
...
He sees a lizard eating a moth
(symbol) – how life destroys the weak, the victims
...

Louise knows what’s going on in her husband’s mind
...
Separating will make them both happy, but
they won’t officially separate because they are Catholics
...
For them
being separate from one another, they will find peace
...
At night, he
dreams of peace and it is the only thing that he truly desires
...


19




He would have corrupted himself in order to keep the promise
...

He suspected that it would be impossible to make her happy, but he still did it
...
He tried
to give them something that they should have been able to get it for
themselves
...
Scobie knows what failure is,
what it feels like
...

Page 57:
Tallit – rival business man, Catholic
...
Father Rank says Scobie is not capable of being bribed, Scobie is an
upright man, and no one can actually corrupt him
...

Page 61:
Wilson expresses anger, and regrets it since he lost a friend
...

Page 64:
Wilson and Louise go for a walk; he tells her that Scobie only sees what he
wants to see
...
Wilson is grateful that he has been
talked to by Louise; he is falling in love with her
...
He is a young, shy, inexperienced man and he can’t
deal with women
...
Whenever a woman is
kind to him, he falls in love with her immediately
...
She knows that he hates being called Ticki
...
So Wilson says that Scobie is the enemy
...
She tells Wilson that Scobie doesn’t
love her
...
Louise has
no interest in Wilson; she doesn’t want to cheat on Scobie
...
She
rejects Wilson when he tries to kiss her again
...

Scobie showed pity towards Pemberton
...

PART THREE
Page 73
Pemberton committed suicide, it show us what Scobie thinks about suicide
which is against his religion
...
The desire for freedom and happiness is shown
...

He doesn't want to be responsible for others
...
He
wants solitude and distance from others
...

Things that disgust other people in the village, he doesn't mind
...
He wants to die and be buried there
...

Page 74:
Scobie can't sleep well because of the promise he made to Louise, he knows
that he has to keep his word, he has this problem which isn't easily resolved,
finding money
...
He feels responsible for Louise and her happiness, and he is going to
do anything to get it for her
...
He knows that trying to make
Louise and Helen happy is impossible, but in reality that happiness is
something he cannot be responsible for
...

He sets himself an impossible target, he will fail and it will push him to commit
suicide
...

Pemberton used to drink and he was very depressed
...

Father Clay says that it is terrible, he is a person who enjoys the company of
others, and Scobie compared himself to Father Clay
...

People who commit suicide were not allowed to enter the church for the
funeral
...
However it is very difficult to think of something else while
dying
...
He says that they can ask for forgiveness
...
The father is a pious man, like Louise
...
In Scobie's eyes Pemberton is fragile
...

Greene says that it is unjust that the church says that anyone who commits
suicide is going to hell
...
He deserves forgiveness, Scobie says that
Pemberton deserves it, but he doesn't because he knows
...

Scobie dreams that Pemberton and Louise are linked, he is responsible for
both of them
...
He believes
that he is someone else that he needs to save, he is a saviour
...

Whilst talking to Yusef, he sleeps; he dreams that Louise is coming towards
him happily
...

Wilson has been sent to investigate about diamond smuggling
...
Yusef offers money to Scobie to help for diamond
smuggling
...
He knows that he shouldn't associate himself with such a man, he
would be black mailed
...
Yusef wants to corrupt Scobie, he respects him a lot
...

In his dream, he thinks that he will never be able to kill himself, however he is
wrong
...
He then dreams that Louise committed suicide
...
So he offers himself in their place
...

Page 83
Scobie is a man who longs for solitude; he compares the town to a corpse
...
Wilson is too intelligent for his job
...

Louise pressures her husband to find her a passage; she is selfish and shows
us that Scobie is a very patient man
...
He now realizes that she loves him and he is
foolish, she is putting pressure on him, and he knows that she's putting her
problems on him, he does nothing about it
...
He feels that he failed his wife, as
a man and a husband
...
Gradually Scobie is
slipping, he knows that he cannot borrow money from him, and he tends to tell
her that she has to forget South Africa for a few months
...

He feels that for him to be a man he must be responsible for his wife, without
this, he feels like a failure
...
So he decides that he won't tell her that she
can't go
...
He is ready to sacrifice his soul for her; she was
actually writing a note to her friend that she cannot go to South Africa
...
Once he borrows
it, he cannot go back
...

Scobie and Louise both know that their marriage is unhappy and they decided
to stay together as marriage for the church is a sacrament, it cannot be
undone
...
He is happy that they are getting separated, putting some distance
between them
...

Scobie used a diary to fake his death
...
Yusef called in the evening and
he says that his integrity as a policeman has basically been blasted when he
borrowed money from Yusef
...
He is risking his own life, pity is the very core
...

Scobie feels responsible again for Louise
...
Not only because he is a charitable man but
because he is also a proud man
...
The girl is dying, she has lost both of her parents
and Scobie pities her
...

The other people took care of her and gave up their own little food and water
and gave it to her
...
Helen is ugly with exhaustion and
Scobie pities her, this reminds us of Louise
...
In Scobie's mind she is another ugly
child, who he feels sorry for
...
He is carrying a
load of all the misery in the hospital
...
He is the
only one who actually understands what is required from him
...


24




Scobie will act as if he's her father
...
It is something that Scobie feels but
cannot really do something about it
...
When his daughter was dying he
wasn’t there for her, he didn't want to take care of her, and do something
useful
...
He can't bare the fact that
the little girl might die before him
...
He offers god his soul for the
child
...
He sees her as a child
...

Scobie knows that Wilson is a spy
...

Scobie meets Helen, they talk she tells him about her childhood
...
He
knows that something else is going on
...
He says
that if someone would be looking at him, they would think that he is infatuated
with Helen
...
Scobie is gradually falling for her, his motive
his bound to this obsession to look after pathetic people
...
Scobie thinks that they like one
another but they can never haven anything between them since she is so
young, since they were both married and they both felt secure together, since
they both know that there will never be anything else between them but
becoming closer
...
They were
safely separated by a dead husband and a living wife
...
Him seeing her as a child is a guarantee they'll never be anything
between them
...

He talks about happiness since he is becoming closer to Helen, but the
ultimate happiness is solitude
...

Wilson accuses Scobie of receiving a bribe and these have reached the
commissioner
...
Scobie defends himself but does not come clean about
him taking money from Yusef
...
He didn't receive a bribe, he
borrowed the money
...

Scobie has lost his integrity by borrowing money from Yusef
...
He is depressed because of his pity towards Louise
...

Scobie will feel unavoidable that he can't do otherwise, he can't stop seeing
Helen, and he can't escape that particular course of events
...
He feels the same thing for borrowing the
money; he knew he had to borrow the money for Louise to make her happy
...
Scobie allowed Yusef to exploit
his weakness
...
He
says that he cannot delete certain pictures from his mind, the room in which
his daughter died, Yusef's room in which he borrowed the money, the church
that he married Louise in
...
Yusef blackmails Scobie that he will
tell the commissioner
...

He prays for Louise, that she is finally happy
...
He tells the priest that he
doesn’t know if he believes anymore, he tells him that in this country it is very
easy to lose faith since it is very difficult to believe
...

He gives Helen some stamps, and asks about her husband
...
She says that it was too easy to get over him
...
For Scobie love means that he wouldn't want his partner to
be happy
...
He doesn't
forgive Scobie; he is angry at him and hates him because he is ashamed of
having displayed his weakness
...
He looks at Scobie and
sees someone who lacks experience
...
The country changes the
character
...
Wilson was curious about
the women
...
White men also sleep with black women and so they were
just like the others
...
Their relationship is breaking down too
...
Scobie
doesn't want to pity himself
...

Helen is accusing Scobie of not treating her fairly
...
Scobie blames himself; he is guilty for
what he is doing to Louise and Helen
...
He tries to explain to her that his intentions were good
...

He says that if he had to leave, his life would be easier
...
However in trying to do so, by staying by her
side, he is only make things worse
...
He had a chance to stop meeting Helen, be loyal to his wife, but he
chooses not to do so
...

He hasn't been sleeping since he was having nightmares
...
This is bound to pride
...
Like when she was on the boat for 40 days and
nights
...
Helen has become just as his wife,
depressed, sad, and miserable
...
Once admitting into transforming them into miserable people he
wants to help them get better
...
He says he wants to help her be happy
...
This letter will be used later to blackmail Scobie by
Yusef
...
He echoes Christ's own words on the cross, he asked
god not to desert him just as Christ had asked his Father not to desert him on
the cross
...

He slips the letter under Helen's door, which is how the letter will reach Yusef,
as Wilson and Yusef both use their boys to spy on Scobie
...

Scobie meets Father Rank, and tells him that he will not be joining his wife just
as yet
...
Father
rank tells him that people go to Scobie for help; he asks him who he asks for
help
...
Scobie wonders
whether Father Rank could help him to carry the burden of others and share
his problems
...
He doesn't seem to see that as a solution because he has
already made a promise to Helen that he will look after her and he will never
leave her
...
Scobie is obtuse; he
is so determined to look after the two women that he doesn't care about what
will happen to them, irrespective of what God wants him to do
...

Wilson is trying to break Scobie down and ruin his carrier
...
Wilson sees Scobie as a trustworthy man
...
Scobie is worried about his spiritual and romantic crisis, he
thinks that just by going to church and confessing to a priest, life will be simple
again
...
What
he is doing currently is a sin in the eyes of the church
...
He says
that he can't stop himself from pitying others
...
He feels that he is being ordered to stay, to love, to
accept responsibility and to lie
...


28




"If I'm alive" foreshadows what will happen at the end
...
His dilemma can only be resolved if he was to die
...
He feels that he is doing the right thing and that God fully
understands what he is doing
...
He doesn't trust god with Helen's happiness
...

He's worried that the letter has been lost, but doesn't wasn't to show her
...

He receives a letter saying that Louise is coming back
...
He remembers his words; I'll always
be here if you need me until I'm alive
...
Scobie doesn't make a distinction between an oath in the
church when he married Louise and the other promise he makes to his
mistress
...

He has images of pathetic women who need him
...
He doesn't realize that they can cope very easily without him
...
For the church it was the unforgivable sin
...
He says, the god broke his own rules and this
makes him wonder whether Christ could actually save someone who
committed suicide
...

Scobie is determined to do anything to make the people in his life happy
...
He tells him how a man
could commit suicide and faking a heart disease - angina
...

Louise knows about Scobie's affair
...
He gives the package to the captain which consists something
illegal and provides he captain with a bribe
...
The package for Scobie represents the burden of responsibility of
others
...
Scobie is in
29




the captain's hands, he is in a very difficult position
...
The pity that he feels for others is what will
destroy him
...
He doesn't want
to help Yusef in something that goes against I own country
...
Because of this corruption, Scobie has
become the one whom people pity
...
He isn't really happy that she is back in his life
...
He wanted to greet her in
public because he doesn't want to be alone with her
...
She feels like she has to get her husband
back
...
He looks at where Helen
lives, and now that Louise is back, there is a distance between them
...
He thinks that
he is loyal to people who are victims
...
His failure in relation to his daughter has
made him over compensate for what he failed to do when she was alive
...
There is something
hanging over it
...

Pg 191
She explains to him why she came back
...
She also says that he feared
that he wouldn't be a good catholic
...
She wants to show everyone that they are still together,
and they don't have any plans to separate
...
He will have to find
a way to deal with his spiritual crisis, receiving communion, and committing a
mortal sin since he has an affair
...
He is
betraying his wife, committing a mortal sin
...


30




Scobie knows that his life is messed up
...
She has become bitter
...
So he decides to tell her that he has to go to
confession
...

Louise returns to save their marriage but Scobie decides to keep on seeing
Helen and his problems are worse now that he has to deal with spiritual crisis
since his wife wants him to confess and receive Holy Communion, which
according to the catholic faith you cannot take the Holy Communion if he is
not free of mortal sin
...
She thinks that he is using this
spiritual crisis to get rid of her
...
At the
beginning of the relationship he did not mention his faith and catholic crisis but
he mentions it now that his wife is back
...
His affair with this
woman is as significant as his marriage to Louise
...
He tells Louise that
he will do what she expects of him, confession, Holy Communion
...
She doesn't realize that in order for him to protect Louise and Helen
he will come to make the ultimate sacrifice; betraying God
...
He describes himself as a diseased
man and Louise will get this disease sooner or later because she spends time
with him
...
He hopes that she won't wake
up so that they won't go to church however she does wake up and tells him to
hurry
...
He says that he has been suffering from chest pains
...
God
is a vulnerable entity - someone whom they can hurt
...

Therefore he is in a superior position to them
...
Scobie becomes aware of a sense of exile; he realizes that his
choices and decisions, have exiled him from God's grace, love and
forgiveness
...
The entity whom he will sacrifice for them is
God
...
The sense of love is expressed towards God, whom he feels he is
distant from him
...
He abandoned God to look after Helen and Louise
...
He is frustrated that Louise is still with her husband and tells him that
she loves her husband and she came back for him
...
Louise undermines this idea of
someone dying for someone else for love
...
He really does it because it will make him
feel better about himself
...
It is play-act found only in books and films
...
As
a catholic he is fully aware of what he should do, what the catholic faith
expects of him
...
He knows that a catholic the rules are very
clear, what he should be doing
...
When he thinks about the idea of never meeting Helen again he
imagines Helen as a young girl holding the stamp album
...
He feels that he cannot break up with Helen, because if she
can live without him, he wouldn't have a goal in his life
...
He considers what would actually happen; he thinks
that she survived 40 days and night in the open sea and thinks she could
handle a heart break
...
He feels that death would tie all loose strings and it would be
the way out of this dilemma
...
He feels trapped and he sees a strange face in the mirror; his own
face
...
In his mind once more becomes
synonymous with these young children who are pathetic and fragile
...
He doesn't trust God fully to take over Helen; he is guilty of pride
...
He thinks of Father Rank
that he is a failure, he cannot help other people
...
He does not promise the father that he will not see her again
because he will
...
Now that he has resolved not to leave Louise
and Helen, he has decided to abandon God
...

Louise tells him that they are going to church
...
He is so far
on the possibility of peace that he will never be happy
...

Page 207
Scobie’s spiritual crisis is getting complicated
...
It is
better to give up Helen to be a good catholic
...
He is making a sacrifice for
others
...
He is doing it out of love
...
He tries to justify his behaviour and tells him, God is
capable of looking after himself but the two women need him
...
Without him, they
would be lost
...
The pouring of wine into the chalice is his
damnation
...

He has no choice
...
He gave up
on the idea that one day he will be given grave; his soul is damned for
eternity
...
What he is doing right now there are a lot of lies and there
is no way he is going back
...
Scobie wants to shut Louise up and not to make her suspicious he goes
to receive the Holy Communion
...


33




He does not belong there
...
He
knows that God will not do a miracle for him, God will save others
...
People believe that he has a heart disease, and not a spontaneous
act of despair
...

Page 216
Scobie tells Helen that he gave up his future by damnation
...
Helen is angry as she thinks Catholics
speak rubbish, she fails to understand that he believes this and she hurts his
pride
...
He has a powerful sense of faith
...
He tells her to look at what he has done for
her and look at it as love
...

His persistence to help them has made them even more miserable
...

He suspects that Ali is not really loyal
...
He feels lonely and he sees loneliness sit across
the table and it holds his hand
...
He says that if
you had two women you're not meant to feel lonely, and yet he was feeling
very lonely
...
No one knows that he is going
through
...
Other
men would envy him as he has a wife and a young woman, but Scobie feels
that from this complicated arrangement he isn't really getting anything out of it
...
He has exiled himself from others and grace that he has
become synonymous with his sin
...
Ali realizes that
Scobie is corrupt and decides to scold the young boy
...
He knows about Helen
and that he is corrupt
...

Page 220
He thinks that since he already sinned, he might as well keep on going
...

He is proud that he is different from everyone else
...
Despite his frustration and despair he is proud that he is able to
34




do something that others don't manage to do
...
He sins to protect her but this is ironic
because she knows the truth, what he is doing is futile
...
Scobie continues to think about Ali; Ali will be murdered
...
He tells God that all he has to do is save himself from
his acts of sin
...

They have to celebrate that they are back together and he is offered the post
of commissioner
...
He realizes that this will never happen; he will be dead long before this
happens
...
His actions are harming God
...
His
dilemma is so intense that the only man whom he could confide in is the
person who corrupted him
...

Wilson tells Scobie that he loves his wife and tells him that he doesn't know
what love is
...
He tells him that he's acting like this because of the climate
...
He threatens Scobie that he will tell Louise about Ms Rolt
...
Scobie is
reminded of himself as a younger man
...
Someone who says come corrupt
...

He asks Yusef about the diamond sent over to Scobie by one of Yusef's boy
...
This might lead not to his ruin but this might lead to the ruin of
Helen and Louise
...
He can't trust Ali
anymore, he knows too much
...
Scobie had once said that he will never turn to
Yusef for help, but now he's the only one he can trust
...
He tells him about his wife and spiritual crisis
...
Yusef offers to solve Scobie's trust
issues in relation to Ali
...
Yusef
35




can't risk being suspected of diamond smuggling, this would be the end of
him
...

Scobie always saw himself as looking after people; he never thought that
someone else would take care of him
...

Scobie wonders about the cost of it all; Yusef taking care of him
...
Ali will be
perceived as the betrayed Christ
...
His acts of damnation, regular sins have rotted him
from the inside
...

Scobie suspects that there is something wrong with Yusef's plan but he
doesn't ask about it
...
It tells Yusef that he must know
his plan but Yusef changes subject
...
Scobie is really
worried about Ali
...
He thinks of all the
things that pushed him down, they all seemed like shadows
...
They were not reality, just shadows
...

He hears a cry of pain, someone has just been killed
...
Scobie blames himself
for the murder
...
The body is compared to a broken watch
spring
...
They have cut is throat; he thinks that he
can trust him now
...
He thinks that he
has become so evil, he cannot feel any pain
...
Scobie regrets betraying God and Ali
...
He's only making his situation more difficult
...
This is motivated by the murder of Ali
...
The cheating and loyalty, the love, all of that needs to
stop
...
We see evidence that Scobie is
always ready to take responsibility for other people sadness no happiness,
36




crimes
...
She is determined to stop their affair
...
Scobie desires
peace, and this is what he's offering
...
She has turned into
Louise; she is a bitter, old woman
...
By ending his life, Helen will be able to forget him,
move on and be happy once more
...

The dead are forgotten more quickly
...
He asks God for death, he
asks for the end because he feels that by dying he will be able to save Helen
...
He is being hard on himself and compares himself
with rats and mice
...
He'd rather
continue complicating life
...

He insists that he will keep on seeing her, and she surrenders
...
He opts for something which isn't a solution, it’s the worst
thing one can do, by killing himself he thinks he can save her, but he is really
being obtuse and stubborn
...

He realizes that one effect of his behaviour was that Louise seems older
...
She wants to
try to save their relationship
...
To Scobie
it was significant
...
You can never fully understand them, even though you spend an entire
lifetime with them, you can never really know what they are thinking about
...
It's a very cynical way to look at love
...
He says why he associates love with pity, because the way he sees
people and relationships he thinks that they are curious to know more about
each other, then they realize at they can never really do so and slowly love
dies
...
His actions cannot be
understood, he describes himself as someone special
...

37




He might have reacted in a different way if he knew that his wife knows about
everything
...
He hates her for a moment because she wants him to go to
mass, which will mean damning himself even more, he hates that she insisted
for him to go to mass
...
He wants Louise to be miserable not happy and cheerful,
because he can’t pity her if she is happy
...
Therefore they need to be
pathetic, because if they aren't he would have no sense in what he does
...

He compares himself with biblical characters; the unrepented thief and the
soldier who gave Christ the vinegar because he keeps burdening Christ and
people with pain
...

He will kill himself before he is made commissioner and so his wife will be
miserable again
...
He writes that he fees pain, angina, and
people will believe that he suffers from heart disease
...
Travis subscribes evipan
and it deals with angina
...
Scobie hopes that no one will know he would commit
suicide, not only for the insurance but also for the other people (Helen and
Louise)
...

If he commits suicide it is a disturbing event for the people left behind
...
He calculates what will be a fatal dose
...
He feels exiled
...
He is
depicting himself as someone who has chosen to sacrifice himself for others
...
He compares
himself to a disease which is infecting Helen and Louise
...
He prefers to do it in a bigger and
grander manner just like Christ died on the cross
...
If
he dies, he'll be better off and happy
...
However when he did get peace, when Louise left his
38




temptation to pity others was stronger
...
He
promises God that he will be free of Scobie soon
...
However Scobie does not trust God, he tells God that he gave him
this terrible sense of responsibility therefore he has to do his role and take
care of others
...
He is special and
different from everyone else
...
He can't shift his responsibility;
he has to make sure that he does his job
...
He can easily save them by not seeing
them again, but he does not believe they will forget him if he is still alive
...
Death is the only solution
...
However he is stubborn, it is a dead lock, dilemma, he is blind to the
truth, and how he could sort out his problems
...
He remembered the
moment in which he walked in the darkness and the rain and he was happy
...
Before
he dies he remembers this kind of happiness
...

He goes to meet Helen but she is not there
...
He writes a note for her
...
He firmly believes that by committing suicide he will be
able to save Helen and Louise from himself
...

She will have other lovers, he feels that suicide is necessary because it is the
only way he can save Helen, Louise and God
...
It is a
disease that infects people
...

Louise is happy that they will live somewhere else, she is satisfied with life
...
He is tempted not to
commit suicide but he decides to kill himself anyway
...


39




Scobie believes that what he feels towards these two women is love
...
He explains what
love is to Wilson, what attracts him to the women is their failure, the growing
old, fatter and uglier
...
He cannot be saved, it
is all too late
...
Scobie decides to take it
upon himself to save others (example of hubris)
...
This was freezing-point; he had to decide what
he is going to do
...

He takes the pills, and starts losing consciousness
...
He feels
that he needs to help the person asking for help
...
The saint whose name nobody can remember is compared to Scobie
...
No one really recognizes such foolish acts
...
No autopsy was
carried out since the body starts rotting as soon as the person dies because of
the climate and Dr Trevis said that he died of angina
...
The climate can destroy the white people
...

Helen is devastated by the loss of her lover
...

She wants to be alone
...
This is Greene's way of showing that the dogma might be wrong

---