On The Colonial And Anti-Colonial Senses In The Heart Of The Matter

Graham Greene has always been regarded as a Catholic novelist, many scholars and critics have studied his masterpiece—The Heart of the Matter from the perspective of religion. Famous critic David Lodge points out that it is also an important novel on imperialism. However, this novel has been largely ignored in the light of postcolonialism. Through close reading, the author of the present paper discovers that Greene's sense of colonialism is deeply reflected in The Heart of the Matter, meanwhile, his sense of anti-colonialism can also be found in the text.Through the application of the postcolonial theory, more specifically, Said's postcolonial theory and Spivak's perspectives, this thesis attempts to analyze the colonial discourse in The Heart of the Matter. On the one hand, the portrait of the bloody natural condition, the disordered social environment, the marginalized female and the religious "other" is deeply influenced by the Orientalism which is based on the binary opposition—the Orient is seedy and barbarian but the Occident is advanced and civilized. On the other hand, as a humanist, Greene is opposed to imperialism. Foucault's theory on panopticon is employed to analyze the spying among people in the colony, which results in the distrust among people and the alienation of human nature. Unwilling to be an obedient tool of the Empire State machinery, the protagonist Scobie becomes a victim of the colonialism. The background of colonialism makes the friendship between the colonizers and the colonized impossible; what's more, the basic trust does not exist among people. However, as a bourgeois intellectual Greene can not get rid of the deep influence of the Euro-centrism, that is his limitation. Greene's dual cultural identity makes two voices in The Heart of the Matter. Graham Greene has always been regarded as a Catholic novelist, many scholars and critics have studied his masterpiece—The Heart of the Matter from the perspective of religion. Famous critic David Lodge points out that it is also an important novel on imperialism. However, this novel has been largely ignored in the light of postcolonialism. Through close reading, the author of the present paper discovers that Greene's sense of colonialism is deeply reflected in The Heart of the Matter, meanwhile, his sense of anti-colonialism can also be found in the text.Through the application of the postcolonial theory, more specifically, Said's postcolonial theory and Spivak's perspectives, this thesis attempts to analyze the colonial discourse in The Heart of the Matter. On the one hand, the portrait of the bloody natural condition, the disordered social environment, the marginalized female and the religious "other" is deeply influenced by the Orientalism which is based on the binary opposition—the Orient is seedy and barbarian but the Occident is advanced and civilized. On the other hand, as a humanist, Greene is opposed to imperialism. Foucault's theory on panopticon is employed to analyze the spying among people in the colony, which results in the distrust among people and the alienation of human nature. Unwilling to be an obedient tool of the Empire State machinery, the protagonist Scobie becomes a victim of the colonialism. The background of colonialism makes the friendship between the colonizers and the colonized impossible; what's more, the basic trust does not exist among people.However, as a bourgeois intellectual Greene can not get rid of the deep influence of the Euro-centrism, that is his limitation. Greene's dual cultural identity makes two voices in The Heart of the Matter.