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The search for dwelling and its relationship to journeying and wandering in the novels of Graham Greene
Abstract
This reading of five of Graham Greene's novels employs the language of Bernd Jager and others in arguing against the popular notion that Greene's characters are on a journey. Most of his characters are merely wandering aimlessly in the world, representing no one. According to the ancient mythology which informs our notions of journeying and dwelling as opposed to wandering, the journeyer represents some childhood dwelling which gives him or her identity. Grounded in the gods, the parents raise the journeyer whom they present to the community at the appointed time. Through various rights of passage, depending on the community in question, the community together with the parents and in front of the gods send the journeyer into the world. The journeyer, then, represents the community as he or she travels into the world in search of the gods, an oracle, or some transcendent experience. After the goal has been achieved, the exhausted journeyer must return to the community and build his or her own dwelling so that the dwelling-journeying-dwelling cycle can continue. I have discussed the parental aspect in two of Greene's novels, focusing on the father in The Honorary Consul and the mother in Travels with My Aunt. I then discuss the Church in The Power and the Glory which for Greene is the ideal community. I follow this with a reading of The Human Factor, addressing Greene's skepticism toward those who would have political bureaucracies serve as grounds of dwelling. Finally, I examine the difficulty of attempting to make oneself the ground of dwelling in A Burnt-Out Case.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature
Recommended Citation
Hill, William Thomas, "The search for dwelling and its relationship to journeying and wandering in the novels of Graham Greene" (1993). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9412209.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9412209