Graham Greene's Fatherly Heroes

Graham Greene creates a special world in his novels which critics named as 'Greeneland'. This is a Godforsaken world, full of squalor, decay, torpid days and humid nights. In this world, there is a serial of people who function as the father figures. They feel pity for others and assume the true responsibility of fatherhood to those who are spiritually orphaned. I named these people 'Fatherly Heroes', who include the whisky-priest, Scobie, and Fowler. When they meet those spiritually orphaned who are suffering from death and pain, they will feel pity for them by instinct, and want to protect and redeem them. At the same time, they also doubt if God were exists in this world.This dissertation will review the complicated relationship between God, children and 'Fatherly Heroes'. And then, when I dig and conclude their common track of act, I find that when Graham Greene was shaping 'Fatherly Heroes', he has assimilated and reconstructed the plot pattern of Greek tragedy. With the similitude and difference both exist in these two type of literature, an emphasize the importance of human act will nevertheless in the Graham Greene's works.