A Study Guide for Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781535837224

Book preview

14

The Heart of the Matter

Graham Greene

1948

Introduction

The Heart of the Matter, first published in 1948, is a novel by British author Graham Greene. Considered by many critics to be a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature, the novel is set in an unnamed British colonial outpost in West Africa during World War II. The setting is based on Greene's experience as a British intelligence agent in Sierra Leone during the war, although he insisted that the novel's setting is fictional and that his characters are not to be identified with anyone he encountered there.

The Heart of the Matter encompasses a wide range of concerns: war, espionage, love, adultery, pity, and betrayal. The enigmatic protagonist, Major Henry Scobie, is a deputy police commissioner responsible for security in the colony. He is also a Catholic who faces a life-altering moral crisis that arises from his relationships with his unhappy wife, Louise, and his mistress, Helen. Scobie commits acts that leave him deeply ashamed. His adultery and ultimate fate, as well as the visit of one of the characters to a brothel, might render The Heart of the Matter suitable primarily for more mature readers.

The novel became an international best seller. Within three years it sold nearly three hundred thousand copies in Great Britain, and it won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. The novel, however, was controversial, for many readers concluded that its moral vision conflicted with the teachings of the Catholic Church, and for a time it was actually banned in Catholic Ireland.

The Heart of the Matter is available online at the Internet Archive website at http://archive.org/stream/heartofthematter031009mbp/heartofthematter031009mbp_djvu.txt.

Author Biography

Henry Graham Greene (who never used his actual first name) was born on October 2, 1904, in Berkhamsted, a historic town in Hertford-shire, England. He was one of six children born to Charles Henry Greene, a housemaster and senior teacher at Berkhamsted School, and Marion R. Greene, a first cousin to nineteenth-century author Robert Louis Stevenson. Greene had a troubled childhood: he was bullied at school, he tried to commit suicide, he ran away from home, and at age fifteen, he was taken to London for psychotherapy. In London, he developed a love of writing and literature after his therapist introduced him to a literary set that included poems by Walter de la Mare. In London, he met the poet Ezra Pound and novelist Gertrude Stein, who became mentors.

After graduating from high school in 1922, Greene enrolled in Balliol College at Oxford University, where he dabbled briefly in Communist politics. During his college years, he frequently suffered from bouts of depression, and he associated little