The Power and the Glory illustrates the ways in which fiercely adopting a certain worldview can ultimately keep people from seeing things clearly. The lieutenant, who spends much of the novel hunting down the whisky priest, has an underlying ideological hatred for Christianity that drives his actions. Because of his experiences with the church as a child, which were largely negative, he turned his back on it altogether rather than adopting a nuanced opinion on what it might offer. As such, when the Red Shirts rose to power, the lieutenant was happy to join their ranks because they were the ideological antagonist to Christianity. The lieutenant’s allegiance to the Red Shirts and hatred of Christianity blind him to his immoral behavior, as he will stop at nothing to get his hands on the whisky priest. In the lieutenant’s mind, the whisky priest is a corrupting force who will give Mexico back to the Catholic Church, which he thinks is exploitative and wicked. However, in his attempt to capture the whisky priest, the lieutenant engages in behavior that he knows is not right. He tortures and kills people to get at the priest, only to find that his methods are useless and that he has created unnecessary suffering in the world. To make matters worse, when the lieutenant finally gets his hands on the whisky priest, he finds a flawed human being like himself, for whom he has great empathy even though they do not share a worldview. At this point, the lieutenant realizes the error of his ways, as capturing the priest brings him feelings of despair rather than satisfaction. Through the lieutenant’s journey, then, the novel demonstrates the danger of allowing reactionary ideologies to become one’s sole motivating force, as morality and principle are often sacrificed in favor of exterminating one’s enemies.
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Ideology and Reactionary Ideas Quotes in The Power and the Glory
“The lieutenant said suddenly: “I will tell you what I'd do. I would take a man from every village in the state as a hostage. If the villagers didn't report the man when he came, the hostages would be shot-and then we'd take more.”
“A lot of them would die, of course.”
“Wouldn't it be worth it?" the lieutenant said with a kind of exultation. "To be rid of those people forever.”
“You know," the chief said, "you've got something there.”
He stood with his hand on his holster and watched the brown intent patient eyes: it was for these he was fighting. He would eliminate from their childhood everything which had made him miserable, all that was poor, superstitious, and corrupt. They deserved nothing less than the truth-a vacant universe and a cooling world, the right to be happy in any way they chose. He was quite prepared to make a massacre for their sakes-first the Church and then the foreigner and then the politician-even his own chief would one day have to go. He wanted to begin the world again with them, in a desert.
How often the priest had heard the same confession—Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization—it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.
“He doesn't really matter, but the Governor's found there's still a priest, and you know what he feels about that. If it was me, I'd let the poor devil alone. He'd starve or die of fever or give up. He can't be doing any good—or any harm. Why, nobody even noticed he was about till a few months ago.”
“You had no money for your fine?” […]
“No.”
“How will you live?”
“Some work perhaps...”
“You are getting too old for work.” He put his hand suddenly in his pocket and pulled out a five-peso piece. “There,” he said. “Get out of here, and don't let me see your face again. Mind that.”
The priest held the coin in his fist-the price of a Mass. He said with astonishment: “You're a good man.”
The lieutenant rode for a little while in silence: they came to the cemetery, full of chipped angels, and passed the great portico with its black letters: Silencio. He said: “All right. You can have him.” He wouldn't look at the cemetery as they went by-there was the wall where the prisoners were shot. The road went steeply down-hill towards the river: on the right, where the cathedral had been, the iron swings stood empty in the hot afternoon. There was a sense of desolation everywhere, more of it than in the mountains because a lot of life had once existed here. The lieutenant thought: No pulse, no breath, no heart-beat, but it's still life-we've only got to find a name for it. A small boy watched them pass: he called out to the lieutenant: “Lieutenant, have you got him?” and the lieutenant dimly remembered the face—one day in the plaza—a broken bottle, and he tried to smile back, an odd sour grimace, without triumph or hope. One had to begin again with that.
The crash of the rifles shook Mr. Tench: they seemed to vibrate inside his own guts; he felt rather sick and shut his eyes. Then there was a single shot, and opening his eyes again he saw the officer stuffing his gun back into his holster, and the little man was a routine heap beside the wall-something unimportant which had to be cleared away. Two knock-kneed men approached quickly. This was an arena, and there was the bull dead, and there was nothing more to wait for any longer.
