The Heart of the Matter
Critique • Quotes
First editionFirst publication
1948
Literature form
Novel
Genres
Literary
Writing language
English
Author's country
England
Length
Approx. 88,000 words
Sorry about how life has gone
By rights, there should be little interest remaining in Graham Greene's 1948 story of a white colonialist policeman, wracked with guilt over his lapsed Catholicism, corruption, career failures and duplicitous relationships.
The Heart of the Matter was a massive hit when it came out and has remained high on lists of the great novels of the twentieth century. But how well can all this self-absorbed agonizing possibly still hold up now?
Surprisingly well, actually. Now, maybe it doesn't hit home as incisively as it did some years ago. Certainly not as well as some of Greene's later more politically and socially aware novels, whose issues resonate still. Today reading The Heart of the Matter it's hard to take very seriously the arguments of central character Henry Scobie with a god he only partly believes in and his struggles to weigh eternal life or damnation against happiness in this earthly life.
It's also difficult to ignore that the narrative is concerned almost entirely with the small white ruling colony in the unnamed West African country (taken to be British Sierra Leone). The only non-Anglo character to get much attention is Yusef, a Syrian smuggler and criminal boss, who blackmails Scobie. When Ali, a native who has served Scobie for fifteen years, is killed at some point we don't know him or his relationship with Scobie enough to feel much about it, except to add it to the list of things Scobie can feel guilty about.
Stabs of reality
Yet, The Heart of the Matter is still a powerful novel, saved by great writing and by a great understanding of—it's unavoidable—the human heart.
Page after page of insights into thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Mostly of a contrarian nature, such as when he explains why a cold heart should be valued higher than a warm one. No greeting card aphorisms, nothing inspirational, but concise stabs that take us aback, thinking, "Right, forget all that other crap, this is the real-world stuff." Not always healthy or even correct, but containing enough truth to draw you into the main character's bleak outlook.
Graham's writing at this period, with its flawed characters in futile quests for peace and its creation of atmospheric settings in exotic locales, almost bordering on claustrophobia, is reminiscent of Joseph Conrad's work a generation earlier, though without Conrad's genius for style and narrative structure.
In The Heart of the Matter, as in his other novels, Graham is a more straightforward writer, with an understated, seemingly easy-going style, despite all the moral heavy-going moral. It's common to miss entirely a story turning point as it slides by, only to catch you up later when you realize something significant has changed. The narrative moves along in a relaxed third-person voice that lets the main character slip back and forth between exposition and observation, and occasionally to give up the floor to other characters—especially to great effect at the beginning and end of the novel, before and after Scobie's story.
Even through Scobie's eyes though, it's apparent there are no truly all-good or evil people. This may be one of the man's great weaknesses: if he doesn't really love anyone (see the last lines), it's also true he doesn't really hate anyone either. He understands—or wilfully misunderstands may be closer to the truth—even those who are antagonistic him.
Closer to the heart
At his core he's one of the cold-hearted people but not exactly psychopathic, as he has something like pity for everyone and everything, almost indiscriminately.
If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to pity even the planets? If one reached what they called the heart of the matter?
Admittedly, the story does plod occasionally, such as when Scobie's loving wife returns from abroad and he agonizes over how to balance his life between her and his unfortunate mistress whom he feels sorry for.
Of course, he brings God and eternity and the local priest into it—and, frankly, it's hard to care about all that in the context of his shoddy dilemmas. Just make a decision and stick to it, you want to shout at this shoddy Hamlet.
But once he does settle on a course of action, albeit one of the worst possible choices, the winding down of his story—and his life—is tensely, inexorably and beautifully written. Only to be undercut by a postscript of sorts from others' perspectives, mocking his utter, final failure.
Which may finally get to the heart of what this novel's about.
— Eric
Critique • Quotes
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