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

by Graham Greene (Author)
Key Phrases: money spider, walking cases, transport park, Major Scobie, Father Rank, Colonial Secretary (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"No serious writer of this century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination as did Graham Greene".

-- TIME

Review
"A superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy."
—New York Times

“Greene had the sharpest eyes for trouble, the finest nose for human weaknesses, and was pitilessly honest in his observations . . . For experience of a whole century he was the man within.”
—Norman Sherry, Independent --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (October 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140283323
• ISBN-13: 978-0140283327
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #224,002 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

77 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Indulgence Leads to Demise.....A Thoughtful Read, January 24, 2001

By	Christine Lynn Jones (Missoula, Montana) - See all my reviews

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."

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars variations on the themes of love, faith and despair, August 22, 2000

By	Alan Brown (Ottawa, Canada) - See all my reviews

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.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Catholic guilt among other things, November 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Heart of the Matter (Twentieth Century Classics) (Paperback)

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.