El poder y la gloria

The Power and the Glory

Marcelo Hernández Uscanga
966645
Literature and Society
November 23rd 2008

The Meaning of Alcohol and Drugs for Greene, Lowry and Kerouac
Alcohol has been widely consumed since prehistoric time by people around the world, as a component of the standard diet, for hygienic or medical reasons, for its relaxant and euphoric effects, for recreational purposes, forartistic inspiration, as aphrodisiacs, and for other reasons. Some drinks have been invested with symbolic or religious significance suggesting the mystical use of alcohol, for example by Greco-Roman religion in the ecstatic rituals of Dionysus, in the Christian Eucharist and on the Jewish Shabbat and festivals.
Before we start to compare why does the alcohol is important for the novels andpoems of Greene, Lowry, Kerouac and Burroughs, we must know the setting of all the pieces. The Power and the Glory is a novel that narrates the story of a Catholic priest in the state of Tabasco, Mexico during the 1930’s, a time when the Mexican government, still effectively controlled by Plutarco Elías Calles, strove to suppress the Catholic Church. This stage of Mexican history was called theCristeros War. In June 1926, he signed the "Law for Reforming the Penal Code". This provided specific penalties for priests and individuals who violated the provisions of the 1917 Constitution, for example using catholic garments outside Church buildings, earned a fine of 500 pesos, a priest who criticized the government could be imprisoned for five years. Calles seized church property, expelledall foreign priests, and closed the monasteries, convents and religious schools.
In the Chapter V of Under the Volcano, Lowry portrays the hangover of the Consul after night drinking tequila. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the city of Cuernavaca. On the other hand in the poems of Lowry from A thunder beyond the Popocateptl, are lyrics based on theMexican landscape and society.

Tristessa is a novel written by Jack Kerouac hosted in Mexico City. It is based on his relationship with a Mexican named Esperanza, and in the main part of the novel is a conflict between the pain as a necessary thing to develop in this life or a normal life with all commodities and privileges.
In The Power and the Glory the priest recurs to alcoholthroughout this novel. Alcohol becomes a symbol with two very different meanings. On the one hand, it represents weakness and the humanity. This holy man is also human that has mistakes and vices. In this case the priest develops a need for alcohol. He could use the alcohol as a way to endure this difficult situation of being chased and still have to give hope to the society. The authorities'attempts to rid the state of alcohol are a manifestation of the impossible desire to purge the world of all human weakness and create a perfect community. On the other hand, alcohol is an integral part of the Catholic mass. The wine becomes the blood of Christ. As we see throughout the book, the sacred and the profane are often portrayed like opposites but part of the same situation. I think we canrelate the small town in which all these events occurred and all the complications that meant being a priest in these times with the alcohol. Imagine how hard it was to be the last priest in a small town in the middle of the jungle. This little town was a prison. In one side we have the swamp and the jungle and in the other side the river and the sharks, there was no escape from this almostGod-forgotten place. This village represents the people that stop believing in Catholicism. No matter in which direction they go they were condemned to be prisoners because they don’t have the religion that gave them that sense of community and belonging. Religion for all Mexicans is very important, no matter if we believe in God or in Jesus or in Jehovah, all Mexicans believe in the Guadalupe’s Virgin....