A Region of the Mind

Abstract

Greene is proud of his allegiances. It can seem that his credo is the opposite of E. M. Forster’s ‘I do not believe in Belief’.¹⁰⁴ But he believes, rather, in questioning belief from inside, and in knowing the worst about humanity before choosing an allegiance. Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, which shows how far Europeans have forgotten or deceived themselves about the ‘abomination’ which lies beneath the surface of civilisation, is a story to keep in mind when reading Greene. He is not polemical in the sense of being a Catholic novelist or a novelist of the Left. His novels are not intended to persuade us to become Catholics or Socialists, but to show why their author believes that the most drastic actions of Catholics and Communists are preferable — in Doctor Magiot’s words at the end of The Comedians — to the indifference of an established society. The innocents who ought to know better, the successful and the complacent, the uninvolved comedians of his books, may be believers — Pyle dies for democracy and Rycker thinks himself a good Catholic — but because they are blind to the real world, which appals and dizzies the characters who see it honestly, their allegiances are worthless.