Heaven remains firmly on the other side of death while Sierra Leone was fallen, inadequate, imperfect, but which Scobie loved anyway because it was so honest and without pretense.Īgainst the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast. Scobie thus loves Sierra Leone for what it is in all its fallen-ness and mean-ness and imperfection. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you didn’t love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed.
Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, while on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Why do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn’t had time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Keywords: Greene, Pity, Responsibility, Sin, Adultery, Suicide
Research scholar, National University of SingaporeĪbstract: It is thus because Scobie has a conscience that he experiences despair because he knows the gravity of his sin unlike the evil man who is without conscience and always has the hope that sin has no consequence, it is Scobie’s conscience as a man of faith that convinces him of his damnation because of his acute sense of guilt from sinning while the evil man is always convinced of his flawlessness and never experiences any sense of failure because he does not have a moral bearing or ideals which he holds dear to him or a capacity for something greater, so it is Scobie’s goodwill and conscience which damns him and convinces him that his adultery will never be absolved by God.
0 kommentar(er)
