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The Heart of the Matter (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

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The Heart of the Matter is not a mystery, a high-octane adventure, nor does it center on an extraordinary event. Rather it is a story of one man whose faith and character is put to the ultimate test. That man is Henry Scobie.

Henry Scobie is a British assistant police comissioner stationed in a West African coastal town during World War II. Scobie is a devout catholic who is unhappily married but feels obligated to fulfill his wife Louise's needs and make her happy. An honest man, Scobie has remained faithful to his wife in their fifteen years of marriage and has upheld his duties as an officer of the law. But when Louise decides to get away for a while because she does not like the town they are in, Scobie's beliefs and convictions get challenged and he fails to measure up to the man he thought he was. He winds up falling in love with a nineteen-year old girl and during the affair he feels torn over his desire to be with her yet continue to keep his wife happy and to honor God. At the same time his work also suffers, as he begins to do business with some unscrupulous characters. His good reputation and sense of self-worth deteriorates day by day. Distraught and at the end of his rope, Scobie takes extreme measures to overcome his conflicts and the story wraps up with a shocking conclusion that leaves the reader with plenty to ponder.

At times the plot moved slowly, however, Greene did a fabulous job at capturing the ambiguity of the human condition and providing insight into the inner demons that plague us all. Many of Greene's famous quotes came from this book, including my favorite, "Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil--or else an absoulute ignorance." I think William Golding said it best when he stated, "Graham Greene will be read and remembered as the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety."

The Heart of the Matter, as do many of Greene's novels, considers the questions of faith, good and evil from a Catholic point of view. Greene, a convert to Catholisism himself, imbues the character of Major Scobie with a fierce sense of justice, duty and responsibility. He is alone as an honest man in the less than honest world of the Ivory Coast during the early days of the Second World War. As the assistant comissioner of police, he sifts evidence and weighs the scales of justice carfully, but as with all of Greene's protagonist he suffers from a fatal flaw, his relationships with women.

His duty towards a wife he no longer loves forces him into a compromising position with a well know Syrian moneylender in order to fulfill her wish to be sent away from the colony. Falling in love with a newly-widowed woman thirty years his junior and the affair that follows plunges him into further turmoil, worsened by the return of his wife.

Throughout, Scobie fails to resolve his love and duty towards the two women. In seeking to place their happiness above his own, and please them both, he damns himself before his maker, and falls ever deeper into the tangle of lies in which he finds himself.

Greene's protagonist arouses pathos in the reader, as we watch an essentially good man ground down by conflicting emotions and responsibilities. Simple solutions seem outside Scobie's ken, and no amount of wishing can prevent the end towards which he rushes headlong.

If you have never read any of Graham Greene's fantastic novels, may I suggest that you make "The Heart of the Matter" your first, it won't be your last.

This is a sad book. We watch the decline of a good man trapped in an impossible spiritual impasse.

The book lays out, in lucid prose, all the fine moral lines faced by those with faith. Not only are we treated to the Catholic guilt of Scobie, who commits moral sins out of the need to help others, but we are shown the hypocrisy of his "good" Catholic wife--who follows all the rules but loves no one but herself.

Pay special attention to the reactions of all the characters to Scobie's final action. They reveal all the complexity of the issues involved and all the blindness produced by human limitations. A terrific book that will leave you thinking, whether you're religious or not.

This novel is a brilliant masterpiece which speaks directly to the reader's heart.

The writing is of such finesse and the plot so powerful that you won't be able to put down the book until you find out how Major Scobie "resolves his problems" in the end (his problems centre on how to ensure his wife's, his mistress's AND [even] God's happiness even if it means he has to pay the ultimate price for it).

The novel will evoke every kinds of feelings in the reader. I know I felt love, tenderness, sadness, sometimes impatience but always PITY for Major Scobie, a deeply religious man who is merciful, responsible and kind towards everyone else but whom nobody really cares about, what more pities. Even though "everyone" claims to love Scobie or to value his friendship, they are actually selfish, ordinary people who have their own hidden agenda (even if they don't realize it) and want something or other from Scobie. All these "demands" weigh the poor man down so badly that in the end, he is driven to commit the final act of damnation so that (or so he thinks) the ones he loves will be free of him and they will no longer be unhappy.

It's truly wonderful and fulfilling to read a novel which offers such a great insight into the mind's psychology and the human heart. I've been a fan of Greene's works since I read "The End of the Affair" which I loved dearly.

I believe that one doesn't have to be a Catholic to appreciate and understand the novel, despite its heavy references to the religion (eg. about sins, confession, communion, repentence, etc).

I can't praise this novel highly enough! Just pick it up! It may even transform some of your views on life (for the better). If not, at the very least it'll transform you instantly into a Graham Greene fan (that is, if you aren't one already)!

"The Heart of the Matter" is the story of Major Scobie, a relatively high-ranking policeman struggling vainly for advancement in a small coastal African town. He remains with a wife he doesn't really love out of an extreme sense of duty and loyalty. For those familiar with Greene's "The End of the Affair," it is almost as though Greene took Henry Miles, the cuckold who remains married to Sarah because it is comfortable, and made him the protagonist of a novel.

Scobie, a converted Catholic, seems to take his religious convictions more seriously than his wife, who is more concerned with appearances and the way the socialites in town regard her. In this small coastal town, the attention she pays to her public standing quickly appears as it is, rudely farcical.

Trying to separate himself from his wife, Scobie strikes up a tenuous relationship with Yusef, a suspected Syrian smuggler. When she leaves for a vacation, Scobie falls for Helen Rolt, a young widow. Herein, the main action of the novel begins, as Scobie finds himself forced to reconcile his dead love for his wife with his affections for Helen, his career, and his relationship to Yusef, all within the context of his Catholic faith. A truly amazing work. I am convinced that Graham Greene simply did not know how to write a bad novel.

"The Heart of the Matter" is the sad story of a man tormented by an inability to live up to the dictates of his religion. Deputy Police Commissioner Scobie begins the book as a rare subject, an English colonial policeman in Africa not on the take. He is cursed, however, with a wife who constantly, if not always overtly, reminds him that the life he has provided for them is beneath her. Louise Scobie is one of those Catholics of the mid-twentieth century that believes things like missing mass on Sunday is a mortal sin, but unfortunately can't bring herself to "avoid superbia" as the nuns used to admonish schoolchildren in the fifties and sixties. In other words, Louise is a snob. When it's announced that her husband won't be promoted when the commissioner retires she simply can't deal with the shame of it.

Most of Scobie's capacity for love died several years earlier at a boarding school in England when their nine-year-old daughter was taken by a sudden illness--the difficulty of communication and the fact of World War II prevented him from even attending the funeral--and the third person narrator notes how he retreated into his job, but "[t]he less he needed Louise the more he felt responsible for her happiness." Louise does see Scobie's struggles, even gently accusing him of wishing she were dead. He responds, as he always does, that her happiness is his priority, and promises to find a way to pay for her passage to South Africa, where she'll be able to be with friends and without the ignominy of not being the new commissioner's wife. The only way to find the money is to borrow it from a well known but smooth Syrian crime boss who likes Scobie because he can trust him to be incorruptible.

Crossing the proprietary line of borrowing the money flows into crossing the mortal sin line as Scobie takes up with a much younger woman. While he grows to love Helen, whom he meets in a hospital while she recovers from nearly dying in a shipwreck, he cannot love what he sees himself becoming. Scobie's struggles with despair are moving and genuine, even as the reader perhaps wishes Scobie were just a little bit smarter than he is. If he were of course, he wouldn't be Scobie, never able to attain his desired simple life where he can do his job and feel loved and loving, redeemed and free.

Greene's narrator is sympathetic and not particularly judgmental. The style is clean and direct and the book is well organized. I won't necessarily rush out and read another book by Greene, as it's time I avoided reminding myself of the Church-inflicted and self-inflicted moral tortures that Catholics put themselves through. He's a fine writer, though, and "The Heart of the Matter" is a fine book.

I thought this was an incredibly well written story of a man having to come to grasp with his faith and real life issues. Greene was very vivid in his description of the helplessness felt by Scobie, who represents everyman and can be identified today with other people in a dead end job and loveless marriage. While Scobie was flawed, Greene did a fine job of making him to be someone you could feel for, flaws and all. As a Catholic, I could understand the struggles to live one's life in line with Church rules, but I do not have quite the titanic struggle Scobie had. Book was very thought provoking and interesting.

This is the first Graham Greene book that I have read, and it definitely will not be my last. The Heart of the Matter is the tragic story of being the ultimate martyr. Scobie, who is the protagonist, has an overwhelming sense of duty to everyone but himself. Set in a claustrophobic African city Scobie's honesty and sense of justice seems to bring out the worst in everyone else. He is often accused of sleeping with the locals or taking bribes from the Syrians, all of which is not true. His largest responsibilty is his wife, Louise who he feels unhappiness is his own fault and therefore must fix it by sending her to South Africa. In order to do that he has to borrow money from a well known diamond smuggler Yusef. Throw into the mix a jealous letter censor named Wilson who is in love with Louise. Not to mention his lover Helen who has her own needs and demands.

Many comparisons are drawn between Scobie and Christ in terms of sacrifice. The only difference is no one asked for Scobie's sacrafices and they provide for his unnecessary demise. While the book is heartbreaking in its failed human relations it is also beautiful and filled with insight into human greed, lust, jealousy and regret.

Graham Greene - The Heart of the Matter

This book is a great example of why I enjoy reading novels.

For my money Graham Greene is one of the greatest novelists ever to have walked the Earth and one of only a few who actually matters. If you have never read a Graham Greene novel then you are missing out on something special and this would be a good place to begin - but then all of his novels are very good.

It's no simple story - although it can be read as one. Scobie is the Deputy Police Commissioner of a West African state during the second world war. He has just been overlooked for promotion but couldn't really care less. His wife Louise, on the other hand, is shamed and having grown tired of the place, wants to spend some time in South Africa. Unable to afford the cost of the journey, the previously incorruptible Scobie borrows money from a local moneylender and well-known local bad guy. Having made one bad choice, Scobie goes one better by beginning a relationship with a much younger woman. From here Scobie's life spirals out of control and as a devout Catholic he quickly becomes overwhelmed by the sins he has committed and he struggles hugely with his intense guilt.

Just under the surface of this fascinating story is commentary on themes such as faith, love, the shallowness of human relationships and deceit. Perhaps at the heart of the matter is the fallibility of humans and their relationships with others.

Greene's novels linger with you long after you have put them down. They have substance. They have the power to affect and move you and I find myself pondering them long after I have put them down.

Green is simply a brilliant story teller and an outstanding author. And this is a tragic, engrossing and moving novel. Highly, highly recommended.

After I read this book, I kept thinking about Scobie and his struggles with his faith or lack of it. When I was reading the novel, I didn't appreciate it as much as I do now. The complexities of his relationship with his wife, his job, and his faith have kept me thinking of different scenarios, things he could have done. Perhaps what I like best about Graham Greene's writing is that he doesn't dictate your feelings. You are free to make your own judgments of the characters. In fact it is very easy to argue one way or another about what the characters believed because he doesn't spell it out for you as if you were a child. By not overwriting the characters there is some mystery, as in real life. Can you ever truly know another person wholly? Also recommended: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, which is even more complex and mysterious.