In The Power and the Glory, alcohol symbolizes the complexity of the whisky priest’s vocation as a Catholic priest. The whisky priest is a vessel for God according to his belief system—but, of course, he is also a human being and therefore inherently flawed and prone to behavior that Catholic doctrine considers sinful. Alcohol represents this duality because it is, like the priest himself, holy in some contexts and sinful in others. In Catholicism, priests use wine in the Eucharist (a sacrament commemorating the biblical Last Supper) to represent the blood of Jesus Christ. As such, it is considered sacred: when the whisky priest uses it in a religious setting, he is performing virtuous acts in the name of God. Drunkenness, however, is considered a mortal sin in Catholicism, and the whisky priest (hence his name) is addicted to alcohol. Wherever he goes, he seeks out what booze he can find and drinks it to drown his sorrows. In these instances, he is not a tool for God but rather a flawed man giving into his self-destructive impulses. In this way, alcohol both reflects and perpetuates the whisky’s priest’s inner conflict between holiness and sin.
Alcohol Quotes in The Power and the Glory
“He sipped at it. It was like an indulgence. He said: "You remember this place before—before the Red Shirts came?”
“I suppose I do.”
“How happy it was then.”
“Was it? I didn't notice.”
"They had at any rate—God.”
“There's no difference in the teeth,” Mr. Tench said. He gave himself some more of the stranger's brandy. “It was always an awful place. Lonely. My God. People at home would have said romance. I thought: five years here, and then I'll go. There was plenty of work. Gold teeth. But then the peso dropped. And now I can't get out. One day I will.”
Far back inside the darkness the mules plodded on. The effect of the brandy had long ago worn off, and the man bore in his brain along the marshy tract-which, when the rains came, would be quite impassable-the sound of the General Obregon's siren. He knew what it meant: the ship had kept to time-table: he was abandoned. He felt an unwilling hatred of the child ahead of him and the sick woman-he was unworthy of what he carried. A smell of damp came up all round him; it was as if this part of the world had never been dried in the flame when the world was sent spinning off into space: it had absorbed only the mist and cloud of those awful spaces. He began to pray, bouncing up and down to the lurching, slithering mules stride, with his brandied tongue: “Let me be caught soon…Let me be caught.”
“I'm breaking the law enough for you as it is,” Captain Fellows said. He strode out of the barn, feeling twice the size, leaving the small bowed figure in the darkness among the bananas. Coral locked the door and followed him. "What a religion!" Captain Fellows said. “Begging for brandy. Shameless.”
They toasted each other, all three sitting on the bed-the beggar drank brandy. The Governor's cousin said: “I'm proud of this wine. It's good wine. The best California.” The beggar winked and motioned and the man in drill said: “One more glass, your Excellency—or I can recommend this brandy.”
“In the lamplight Padre José’s face wore an expression of hatred. He said: "Why come to me? Why should you think? I'll call the police if you don't go. You know what sort of a man I am.”
He pleaded gently: “You're a good man, José. I've always known that.”
But what good could he do now? They had him on the run: he dared not enter a village in case somebody else should pay with his life: perhaps a man who was in mortal sin and unrepentant: it was impossible to say what souls might not be lost simply because he was obstinate and proud and wouldn't admit defeat. He couldn't even say Mass any longer—he had no wine. It had all gone down the dry gullet of the Chief of Police. It was appallingly complicated. He was still afraid of death; he would be more afraid of death yet when the morning came, but it was beginning to attract him by its simplicity.
The brandy was musty on the tongue with his own corruption. God might forgive cowardice and passion, but was it possible to forgive the habit of piety? He remembered the woman in the prison and how impossible it had been to shake her complacency: it seemed to him that he was another of the same kind. He drank the brandy down like damnation: men like the half-caste could be saved: salvation could strike like lightning at the evil heart, but the habit of piety excluded everything but the evening prayer and the Guild meeting and the feel of humble lips on your gloved hand.
He could hear the half-caste panting after him: his wind was bad: they had probably let him have far too much beer in the capital, and the priest thought, with an odd touch of contemptuous affection, of how much had happened to them both since that first encounter in a village of which he didn't even know the name: the half-caste lying there in the hot noonday rocking his hammock with one naked yellow toe. If he had been asleep at that moment, this wouldn't have happened. It was really shocking bad luck for the poor devil that he was to be burdened with a sin of such magnitude.
Alcohol Symbol Timeline in The Power and the Glory
