The Power and the Glory

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1940

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Port”

Mr. Tench wanders down to the quayside to retrieve a cylinder of ether. An English expatriate, he works as a dentist in a small portside community in Mexico. He notices an enormous amount of beer being unloaded from the ship. In this Mexican state, hard spirits and wine are prohibited. Mr. Tench keeps forgetting why he came down to the docks, blaming it on the heat.

He encounters a stranger who speaks English, and they have a conversation. The stranger is looking for a man named Lopez, but Mr. Tench informs him that Lopez was shot. When Mr. Tench remarks that he’d love to have a drink, the stranger says that he has some brandy, and Mr. Tench invites him to his house. When the stranger compliments the stained-glass window, Mr. Tench says that he rescued it from the church after the authorities dismantled it. When the stranger asks about his family, Mr. Tench tells him that he hasn’t seen or spoken to his wife or children in many years. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door: A child has come asking for a doctor. The stranger knows that the child is looking for him. He leaves Mr. Tench, not without bitterness; he’d wanted to see the ship leave port.

After the stranger leaves on a mule, Mr. Tench notices that he left a book. Its cover promises a racy tale, he thinks, but when he opens it, he sees that the text is in Latin. He decides to hide it, uncertain as to what it might be. He hears the boat leave, remembering that he has forgotten his cylinder of ether. The stranger reluctantly travels onward, praying to be captured.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Capital”

The police squad members return to their barracks after curfew, and the chief informs the lieutenant that the governor is agitated about a priest who is still at large. The lieutenant believes the last one was “shot weeks ago” (21), but apparently one might be left. When he complains that without photographs, it’s hard to identify these fugitives, the chief presents him with a picture of this particular priest, taken many years ago. The lieutenant sees just another priest, though the chief says that this one speaks English, having spent time at a seminary in the US. In addition, the police are looking for a gringo: James Calver, an American bank robber who killed some people and escaped across the border.

The lieutenant walks home, thinking about how the government has finally rid the region of religion and its corruption. It bothers him that people still believe in God despite the world’s barrenness.

In a neighboring house, a mother reads to her three children. She tells the story of Juan, who is destined to be a priest and a martyr. Her oldest child, a teen boy, has grown tired of the story; he has heard it many times. He interrupts his mother to ask if Juan is really a saint, and she replies that he will be. He asks if Padre José is a martyr, and his mother forbids him to speak about this priest. The boy asks about the other priest, the one who stayed with them. His mother says that he’s different than Padre José but won’t say more. She continues the story as her daughters fall asleep.

Later, she speaks with her husband: She’s worried about their son and his probing questions. She doesn’t want the boy talking with Padre José. The husband responds that it’s all that they have left—either Padre José or the whisky priest—so under the circumstances, they must endure; otherwise, he says, they can relinquish their beliefs. The mother emphatically refuses to give up the Church.

In another house, a woman calls to her husband. Padre José dreads joining her in bed, thinking that the priests who were shot were lucky. Padre José knows he has become an object of mockery, the embodiment of sacrilege. She, on the other hand, is possessive of him, proud to be the wife of a priest.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The River”

Captain Fellows navigates his boat toward home. Another expatriate, he lives on his banana plantation with his wife and his daughter, Coral. While he’s happy by nature, his wife is a hypochondriac and is always anxious. When he arrives home, his wife tells him that Coral is outside talking to the lieutenant. She comes in and says that the lieutenant wishes to speak to him. The lieutenant asks whether Captain Fellows has seen the priest, threatening him with deportation if he doesn’t report the fugitive. When Mr. Fellows confirms that he isn’t Catholic, the lieutenant leaves, still not wholly trusting the foreigner.

When the priest arrives at his home, Fellows confronts him. The priest asks for brandy, but Fellows refuses; it, too, is against the law, and Fellows is a bit contemptuous of a man who needs liquor rather than enjoys it. Coral, however, takes pity on the priest and brings him beer and food. She asks why he hasn’t escaped, and he angrily explains that he missed the boat last month because a woman called on him. She asks him why he doesn’t simply turn himself in to the authorities. He explains that he can’t relinquish his duty in that way; he’s also afraid of the pain that will almost certainly be inflicted on him. When Coral says she doesn’t believe in God, the priest promises to pray for her. He knows he must leave this brief sanctuary now.

He comes upon a small village and is recognized almost immediately. When he asks for alcohol and food, they say they have only coffee. They show him to a small hut where he can sleep on the hard ground. However, he’s immediately awakened: The people of the village haven’t encountered a priest in five years; there are children who need baptizing and confessions to be heard. The priest tries to put them off until the morning, but it can’t wait. He’s weary and angry but agrees to hear them all.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “The Bystanders”

Mr. Tench thinks about writing a letter to his family. He considers how so many years have passed and how little things change in the portside town. He considered leaving many times, but money was an obstacle, and his work was steady. His thoughts are interrupted by a patient knocking at his door.

Padre José walks down to the cemetery. Here, he can be alone, without the mocking children and prying eyes. He stumbles across a burial, and a woman begs him to pray for her dead child. He refuses, saying it’s against the law, and is ashamed.

The mother continues reading to her children about the inevitable sainthood of young Juan. The boy, Luis, grows restless and finally denounces all of it. His mother sends him to speak with his father. His father patiently tries to explain that these stories are familiar to them and are comforting to his mother. He realizes that Luis has never known the Church and the community it once fostered. They hear soldiers marching by the house, and Luis watches them, excitement in his eyes.

Coral asks her mother about God as they’re going over her school lessons. Mrs. Fellows says that of course she believes in God; Coral isn’t convinced. She realizes, in the middle of their work, that her father hasn’t overseen the loading of the bananas for shipment. She takes charge, even though she feels some pain in her belly. When the last bunches are taken out of the barn, she sees that the priest has marked little crosses over the wall with chalk.

The chief informs the lieutenant that he’s responsible for capturing the fugitives—the whisky priest and the murderous gringo—before the rainy season. The two walk together through town; it’s a Sunday afternoon, and all the shops are closed. They pass the building for Syndicate Workers and Peasants, a former church. The chief asks how the lieutenant will proceed in his search. The lieutenant says he’ll start at the priest’s former parish. They part ways, and the lieutenant is hit by an empty soda bottle. Luis threw it at him, pretending that the lieutenant was a gringo. The lieutenant indulges the boy and allows him to look at his pistol. When Luis asks whether the lieutenant has killed anyone with the weapon, the lieutenant says, “Not yet.” He returns to the station and studies the pictures of the gringo and the priest.

Part 1 Analysis

The book begins in a small port town in Mexico, a liminal space in between the government authorities and outside influences. Ports are often notorious for their ungovernability; they’re places where illegal contraband is smuggled in (or out), and where people can slip in (or out) of the territory: As the boat leaves the shore, “the port slipped behind. When you looked back you could not have told that it had ever existed at all” (18). The port itself is provisional, a brutal mirage of thwarted possibilities. The atmosphere is ominous: Vultures hover over the town, while sharks await anything or anyone unlucky enough to be dumped into the sea. Mr. Tench himself smacks of unpleasantness, given his disdain for the heat and lecherous remarks about a young woman. Even his name, which evokes the word “stench,” suggests something of pollution or corruption, as if he were in league with the hovering vultures. He’s a foreigner, an English expatriate who can’t help but compare this place to England and looks upon the residents with mild contempt. The stranger catches his attention only because he speaks English and, more importantly, because he has brandy.

Slowly, the text reveals that the country in which Mr. Tench and the stranger reside has undergone some turmoil in recent years. When the stranger asks Mr. Tench about the man he’s looking for, Lopez, Mr. Tench says, almost casually, “Oh, they shot him weeks ago” (11). The fact that Mr. Tench is nonchalant about this incident indicates that this kind of event isn’t unusual. His evocation of the mysterious “they” obscures the identity of the government authorities who execute alleged traitors with impunity. The stranger, too, is apparently in their crosshairs. Indeed, once he takes leave of Mr. Tench, it becomes clear that the stranger is the fugitive priest for whom the police are searching, the whisky priest about whom the mother and Luis talk. Thus, the novel introduces the theme of The Power: Government Control and Religious Authority. The stranger has left behind a book, La Eterna Mártir, or The Eternal Martyr, that is a Bible in disguise. The book is both evidence of the priest’s hidden identity and a symbol of his inevitable destiny; it foreshadows the priest’s demise.

The remnants of religion are scattered throughout the port and the surrounding area. Mr. Tench acknowledges that he obtained the stained-glass pane in his office, with its “Madonna gaz[ing] out through the mosquito wire” when “they sacked the church” (13). Again, “they” are the government authorities, tasked with obliterating the Catholic church, which once held sway in the territory. The lieutenant, in particular, is eager to rid his town of what he believes is superstitious and corrupt nonsense: “It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God” (24). For him, “Life began five years ago” (25), when the religious were declared enemies of the state. The lieutenant’s secular commitment, ironically, is every bit as fervent as that of deeply held religious belief. In addition, despite the lieutenant’s dream of destruction, religion abides, and the whisky priest is proof.

However, the whisky priest harbors his own doubts, introducing the theme of The Whisky Priest: Alcohol, Duty, and Faith. While he seems chained to his duty, missing the boat to care for a sick woman and unable to rest because of the clamoring of villagers to confession, he doesn’t seem particularly dedicated to his vocation. He is, at turns, bitter and even angry at the people who appeal to his authority. Still, he won’t abandon them, which is ironic given that he himself feels abandoned. When he hears the boat sounding its siren, he feels anguish: “He knew what it meant: the ship had kept to timetable: he was abandoned” (19). While his feeling is ostensibly about the ship’s departure, its implication is much more profound: the whisky priest feels that God has abandoned him. Echoing this is the sentiment that Luis’s father expresses about the absent Church: “For us, you know, everything seems over. That book [the holy book]—it is like our childhood” (51). The Church is gone, leaving the people behind; a new generation will grow up without even a memory of such an institution. Their experience of religion will be limited to Padre José, who, in his cowardice, has agreed to marry, and the whisky priest, who questions his faith and flees for his life.

The book’s atmosphere is infused with a mixture of ennui (Mr. Tench), nihilism (the lieutenant), and fear (the whisky priest). Of his life there, Mr. Tench thinks, “The trouble was—nothing ever happened here” (46). In contrast, the lieutenant burns with the desire “to destroy everything” (25) and to build a world anew, shaped in his own image; again, in his secular passion, he ironically presents as a religious, even godlike, figure. The whisky priest fears his inevitable fate; he avoids pain at all costs, which explains his attachment to alcohol. It’s notable that the neither the whisky priest nor the lieutenant are given specific names: For each man, his “vocation”—and the religious overtones of the word are intentional—encompasses his identity.