The Power and the Glory

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1940

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4 Summary

Mr. and Mrs. Fellows are leaving Mexico, staying in a hotel and waiting for a boat. Mrs. Fellows, as usual, is ill with a headache. She chastises him for being so quiet lately. They don’t speak of what happened back at the banana station. Mr. Fellows tries to tell his wife that he won’t leave, that she should go without him, but she refuses to listen. He notes that a priest will be shot today and wonders whether it’s the alcoholic priest whom Coral befriended.

Mr. Tench is at work on the chief’s teeth. He notices a commotion outside the window, and the chief mentions that someone is being shot for treason. When Mr. Tench catches a glimpse of the prisoner, he realizes that it’s the stranger with whom he shared some brandy a while back. He’s stunned: He’d even spoken of his children with the man. He decides that he must leave, this time for good.

The mother finishes reading the story about Padre Juan’s martyrdom to her children. Juan cries out in glory to Christ as he’s shot to death; he dies with a beatific smile on his face. The mother tells the children that one of the soldiers collected the martyr’s blood on a handkerchief and cut the relic into strips to be distributed among the faithful. Luis asks his mother if the priest who was shot today is a martyr. Despite her earlier dismissal of the whisky priest, she affirms that he is. In addition, she suggests that they might be able to buy relics from his death. Luis goes out onto the patio, thinking that all his heroes, including the whisky priest, are dead. He sees the lieutenant walk by and spits at his revolver.

Luis finally sleeps, dreaming that the whisky priest has returned. He sees the man wink and is startled awake by a knock at the door. It’s another stranger, a priest. Before the priest can say his name, Luis bends to kiss his hand.

Part 4 Analysis

In the wake of the priest’s death, all the “Bystanders” (title of Part 1, Chapter 4) take stock. The Fellowses endure in silence and guilt after the death of their daughter, Coral, whose name they no longer speak. While her death is never explicitly detailed, the parents clearly blame each other for their sorrow: “You don’t mind […] running away and leaving her,” the husband angrily tells his wife. She’s determined to leave Mexico, while he doesn’t want to depend on her family’s charity or leave his daughter’s remains behind. Mrs. Fellows responds, “It wasn’t my fault. If you’d been at home…” (213). Neither accusation can alleviate their pain, though the death of the priest to whom Coral showed mercy illuminates her legacy. If he, ultimately, is a martyr, so is their daughter, by association, alluding to the theme of The Glory: Martyrs and Saints.

Mr. Tench decides that he must leave the place upon the death of the priest: “This was like seeing a neighbor shot” (216). It’s not merely that Mr. Tench feels threatened because if a someone like a neighbor can be shot, so can anyone; his awareness of death is heightened. With one shot, the priest turns into “a routine heap beside the wall—something unimportant which had to be cleared away” (216). Mr. Tench feels strangely “deserted” (217) by the man’s death. On one hand, the observation that the priest’s body is “unimportant” indicates that he was, as he himself thought at the end, useless. On the other hand, Mr. Tench’s strong feeling that he’s now alone indicates that the priest’s presence was significant after all.

The mother relaying the story of Juan sees the makings of a saint, in retrospect. She insists that he’s a martyr, like the fictional Juan, and shushes her daughter when the girl remembers that the priest “had a funny smell” (219). Now that the whisky priest is dead, the “whisky” part of his moniker—his earthly sins and failures—don’t matter as much. Her son, Luis, appears finally to be convinced too. His admiration for the soldiers and the lieutenant has faded in the face of their persecution. They’ve stolen his heroes, and he now reviles their instruments of power, as evident in his spitting on the butt of the lieutenant’s gun.

The appearance of another priest at the door signifies nothing short of resurrection. In Luis’s dream, the whisky priest winks at him; the implication is that the priest knows his death isn’t in vain, at last. He’s in on the spiritual conspiracy: No matter how many nameless priests are gunned down by the authorities, there will be more to replace them. Ultimately, as the Bible claims, the power and the glory are both with God.