Penning the Police/Policing the Pen: The Case of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter

Abstract

Graham Greene's description of his conflicting intentions regarding structure and content of The Heart of Matter reveals quandary of combining two novels into one. In his introduction to 1971 edition he writes: Two very different novels began on same balcony with same character, and I had to choose which to write. One was novel I wrote; other was to have been an entertainment. I had long been haunted by possibility of a crime story in which criminal was known to reader, but detective was carefully hidden, disguised by false clues which would lead reader astray until climax. The story was to be told from point of view of criminal, and detective would necessarily be some kind of undercover agent.... When I left Wilson on balcony and joined Scobie I plumped for novel. (xiii) But as in Brighton Rock ostensible shedding of one form for another - replacement of a thriller with a serious novel(1) - only succeeds in stripping away surface trappings of an ordinary suspense or detective story, such as focus on a crime and a subsequent investigation and pursuit, for novel still resembles a thriller in its growing atmosphere of spying and suspicion, trust and distrust, centered on Scobie's attempts to hide his adultery and reconcile his desire to remain uncompromised with his dealings with Syrian trader, Yusef. Scobie traces his affection for West Africa to his sense that nature hasn't had time to disguise itself.... Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing worst: you didn't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed (31). Despite his love for this lack of artifice, however, Scobie too will become an inhabitant of country of lies; his increasing need to hide his actions is directly proportionate to breakdown of his ability to trust anyone or believe in anything: seemed to Scobie one of qualities of deceit that you lost sense of trust. If I can lie and betray, so can others (269). It is this special quality of distrust that is core landscape of novel, and though it is a topography which is displayed in other Greene works, here it finds its most emblematic representation.(2) The figure of a police officer becoming a symbol of dishonesty or questionable ethics is part of a larger pattern in Greene's writing of subverting role of forces of detection, be they officials of police or private investigators. This subversion can take form of implied incompetence, as with Mather in A Gun for Sale and Rennit in The Ministry of Fear, or it can be a questioning of moral authority, as with Ida in Brighton Rock or lieutenant in The Power and Glory. The Heart of Matter, while it suggests Scobie's commitment to his job, also immediately challenges his efficacy and policing power. Scobie is quite self-conscious about what his work entails, and he believes that it is a vocation requiring perceptiveness and a strong sense of justice; asked by Helen Rolt how he knows about her stamp album, he replies, |That's my job. a policeman' (159), and in his dialogue with God he states, I'm not a policeman for nothing - responsible for order, for seeing is done (305). Maria Couto asserts that the novel does not explore ineffectiveness of [Scobie's] role as arbiter of justice (80), but I would argue that Greene does indicate, on a number of occasions, Scobie's weaknesses in that area; years of being a police officer in far reaches of Africa have left Scobie with a sense of his own deep limitations, especially in mediating local housing disputes: At beginning of his service Scobie had flung himself into these investigations; he had found himself over and over in position of a partisan, supporting as he believed poor and innocent tenant against wealthy and guilty house-owner. …