The Role of Religion in the Everyday Life of an Average Person

The Role of Religion in the Everyday Life of an Average Person

(based on “Doctor Fischer of Geneva, or the Bomb Party” by Graham Greene) 
 

“Oh, I don’t think for a moment I believe in him any more

than I believe in the devil, but I have always found theology

an amusing intellectual game”

Dr. Fischer

      In my opinion these words of Dr. Fisher pretty much sum up the author’s position on the topic of the role of religion in our everyday life.  I may be mistaken because of the fact that this very statement corresponds to my own views much, but that’s what it feels like after having read the book.

      Firstly, it’s worth doing a little research into Graham Greene’s personal beliefs.  According to the biographers, in the very beginning of his writing career he wasn’t a devoted believer, although religion was always a very important theme in his works.  He converted to Catholicism after falling in love with his future wife as it was almost required by her.  Later he came to expressing great agreement with the faith, but still had trouble reconciling the mathematical logic of his mind with the superstition and mystery of the Church. He often called himself “a catholic agnostic”.  In his autobiography he wrote, “If I were ever to be convinced in even the remote possibility of a supreme, omnipotent and omniscient power I realized that nothing afterwards could seem impossible”.  I think the book we have finished reading illustrates Greene’s profound ambivalence about religion quite well.

     Graham Greene, intentionally or not, states the question of the necessity to believe in some supernatural being and gives some pros and cons on this matter. 

We can see religious motifs combined with different ideas: hope, forgiveness, hatred, revenge, power and one’s obsession with the lack of meaning in his life.

      So, first of all, religion may play an important role in one’s life by giving him hope and some reason to live in case of lack of one.  A prayer for a believer means a hope for salvation, simplier – for help.  Greene illustrates it with an episode when the Divisionnaire full of pitiful fear of “the Bomb”, with Jones thinking: “Perhaps he was praying - after all I had seen him at the midnight Mass, he might well be a believer, perhaps he was saying to God, 'Please, gentle Jesus, blow him up.' I would probably have made much the same prayer - ' Let this be the end ' - if I had believed, and didn't I have at least a half-belief, or why was it that as long as I held the cracker in my hand I felt the closeness of Anna-Luise? Anna-Luise was dead. She could only continue to exist somewhere if God existed”.  This passage perfectly features the idea of faith giving hope.

      Then Greene introduces the theme of forgiveness and revenge by the example of Dr. Fischer’s relationship with his wife, now dead and also of Jones.  Religion can give one an important ability to forgive.  Dr. Fischer is portrayed in this novel as evil itself, as an antagonist of religious virtue; therefore, he cannot forgive his wife for the fact that she preferred a low clerk’s company to his and ends up seeking revenge and despising the whole world.  Greene exaggerates his character by his line about taking revenge on God by hurting his sons.  This idea is later originally supported by Steiner, saying that’s it’s never too late to spit at God Almighty, because “he made us what we are”.

      On the other hand, the theme of forgiveness and revenge is embodied in Jones’ character.  He cannot forgive Fischer first of all for his inhuman indifference and apathy towards his daughter.  He hates Dr. Fischer, but he doesn’t really search for an opportunity to take revenge since he doesn’t really think Fischer is worth it, being a deeply, lamentably unhappy man.

      There’re more examples, even or concealed, of the role of religion in the life of an average person in this book, but they don’t state the fact, that this role is important, and important for everyone.  As I came to understand, Greene portrays religion as some consolatory factor, giving people conciliation with different life hardships, like death, cruelty or desolation.  And I think, in this case, religion is the easiest way to get over those hardships, it gives a person someone to be grateful to, someone to blame, someone to ask for help and someone to ask for an answer without much thinking.  But it’s a very personal thing, and Graham Greene seems to try to get this message across.  Also, to speak of personality, Greene doesn’t subscribe to an organised religion, presenting it as more of a tradition, like a “Christmas habit like our tree”, quoting Jones.

      As mentioned in his biography, Greene was often criticised for giving a very dark, religiously unorthodox portrait of our life — in his works, evil is present to the degree that the characters’ struggle to avoid sinful conduct is doomed to failure.  The end of the book doesn’t contradict this fact: Jones loses hope and the tiny bit of faith: “Only if 1 had believed in a God could I have dreamt that the two of us would ever have that our Ie plus long. It was as though my small half-belief had somehow shrivelled with the sight of Doctor Fischer's body. Evil was as dead as a dog and why should goodness have more immortality than evil?”