The Power and the Glory

Throughout the novel, the text plays with the idea of martyrdom itself. For example, the prose both condemns and redeems the whisky priest at various points. The priest adamantly denies his merit, though the text frequently compares him to Christ. In several moments in the novel, the people themselves—the impoverished believers for whom the whisky priest performs Mass—function as symbolic martyrs. Even the married priest, Padre José, as well as the doomed American fugitive, could conceivably be considered martyrs of a kind. In the novel’s bleak and unforgiving world, all characters have a chance for redemption.

The nameless, faceless people who populate the novel are themselves victims of powers and forces they can’t confront or control. Even the lieutenant, despite his rejection of religion, wants to save them, in his secular way. Without the Church, he believes, they’ll be free of superstition and empowered to organize their own lives, without the emotional and financial extortion of the Church. More directly, the whisky priest witnesses their sacrifices for the sake of his own embittered life, as he admits in his prayers: “These people are martyrs—protecting me with their own lives. They deserve a martyr to care for them—not a man like me” (95). He agonizes over whether to escape to another state, where religion is freely practiced, or to turn himself in, denying the people the succor of religion entirely. Often, the priest himself doesn’t get to decide. When he’s in prison, the opportunity for the others to reap the financial reward associated with turning him in doesn’t sufficiently motivate them to do so: “It seemed to him a damnable mockery that they should sacrifice themselves for a whisky priest with a bastard child” (135). They’re martyrs to their beliefs and to what they consider justice.

In a significantly different way, the married priest, Padre José, can be considered a martyr. After all, he sacrifices the core tenets of his beliefs to save his own life, which the Church considers sacred. On one hand, Padre José’s actions can be seen as solely self-serving; on the other hand, the unjust nature of the government’s power doesn’t justify self-sacrifice. He clearly considers himself a martyr (which perhaps disqualifies him for the honor), as he tells Luis: “He told me he was more a martyr than the rest” (27). Living a life consumed by humiliation and self-recrimination, Padre José has become a mockery of a priest; this mortification either condemns him as a coward or redeems him as a sacrificial martyr to the greater cause. Even the lieutenant would use him as an example: “That, of course, was the best solution of all, to leave the living witness to the weakness of their faith” (25). Another interpretation of this public demonstration, counter to the lieutenant’s interpretation, is akin to a crucified man hanging in the public square as a warning to others. This ironically reveals the weakness of the government’s position and strengthens the stance of those who are martyred to a fundamentally immoral cause.

The American fugitive provides another narrative of martyrdom. He’s hunted by the authorities like an animal (though his criminal actions validate the hunt), and he’s used as a pawn in the more urgent search for the treasonous priest. Once the priest arrives to hear his confession, the man instead expends his dying words on urging the priest to flee: “You got to beat it, father” (187), he says, and offers the priest his gun. The fugitive realizes that the priest was lured there under false pretenses, and he claims he was unaware that his request for the priest was a trap. His attempts to save the priest rather than himself are, in a sense, a final act of redemption, if not martyrdom. The whisky priest himself, in praying over the dying man’s body, struggles to find the words: “He felt sadness and longing at the vaguest idea of a life he couldn’t lead himself…words like peace, glory, love” (189). The priest and the gringo aren’t too different, both criminals and fugitives: Thus, if the whisky priest can be a martyr, so can the fugitive.

The verdict on the whisky priest swings as if on a pendulum, from condemnation to redemption and back again. When he returns to the village where he fathered a daughter, he notes that her mother is “proud of having been the priest’s woman” (68), whereas he must bear the burden of the sin: “He alone carried a wound, as though a whole world had died” (68). This wound signifies that he bears a stigmata, like Christ, as he yearns to save the child and walks alone as a condemned man. The mother accuses him of wanting to be a martyr: “Suppose you die. You’ll be a martyr, won’t you? What kind of martyr do you think you’ll be? It’s enough to make people mock” (79). He’s at once declared a martyr and denied the possibility of living up to the standard. In contrast, when he meets the mestizo, the whisky priest thinks that “[h]e was in the presence of Judas” (91). This implicitly makes him a Christ figure. In addition, Padre José turns him away when he seeks sanctuary from the police, shouting, “I don’t want martyrs here” (118). However, after he’s arrested, the whisky priest repeatedly denies this status: “My children, you must never think the holy martyrs are like me. […] I am a whisky priest” (127). Even when he admits that he has fathered a child, however, the other prisoners don’t betray him; to them, he deserves a chance for redemption. When the lieutenant suggests that the whisky priest will be a martyr, which is ironic given the lieutenant’s atheist leanings, the whisky priest disregards the suggestion, saying, “Martyrs are not like me” (196). However, his protests only fuel the feeling that he is, despite his flaws, or because of them, a martyr.

In his final thoughts, the whisky priest considers himself useless, his life an exercise in futility: “He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted—to be a saint” (210), which he clearly wasn’t. However, he’s wrong about his uselessness. His death reverberates throughout the community, profoundly impacting those whose lives he touched: The lieutenant feels empty, devoid of purpose, once the priest is in custody; the Fellowses abandon their plantation, remembering Coral’s friendship with the priest; Mr. Tench decides to leave, presumably to return home to his family, after witnessing the execution. Finally, the devout mother who has been reading spiritual stories to her children declares that the whisky priest “was one of the martyrs of the Church” (219). Her son, Luis, believes her and welcomes the new priest into their home.