The Power and the Glory

From the very beginning of the novel, it’s abundantly clear that the whisky priest is condemned to his fate: He’ll be pursued and captured, executed and martyred, supporting the theme of The Glory: Martyrs and Saints. The book opens with this motif, in an epigraph from John Dryden: “Th’ inclosure narrow’d; the sagacious power / Of hounds and death drew nearer every hour.” This foreshadows the whisky priest’s final hours, as he’s hunted by the hounds of government authority and drawn inexorably toward death. The other characters, too, are caught in this web, as implicated in the clash between the government and the Church, or the lieutenant and the whisky priest. For example, Mr. Tench makes the priest’s acquaintance because “fate had struck” (12). He was destined to become a dentist in exile in Mexico.

In addition, Mr. Tench sees the whisky priest with predestined certainty: “[D]eath was in his carious mouth already” (14), and the priest knows even then that he’ll miss the boat out of the port: “I shall miss it,” he tells Mr. Tench. “I am meant to miss it” (17). He can’t escape his destiny.