‘The Heart of the Matter’ Underscores the Pridefulness in Pity
A review of ‘The Heart of the Matter’ by Graham Greene.
G. K. Chesterton, author of Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, said that he became a Catholic so he could have his sins forgiven. But for that to happen, we must first accept that we have done something wrong in the first place. We must always wish to repent. For Henry Scobie, the protagonist of The Heart of the Matter, some sins are too awful to be absolved. Forgiveness, and repentance, are neither here nor there. His sins must simply be endured.
Scobie is in charge of local security in an unnamed British colony in Africa. At the opening of the story, he has just lost out on a promotion, and this deepens the unhappiness of his wife Louise, who finds it hard to make friends. Like Scobie, she is a devout Catholic; and Scobie, though he has not loved her for years, feels responsible for her gloom. Catherine, their only child, died in England some years before, though neither wants to mention it. A train of events soon send Scobie headlong into moral crisis, and a cast of supporting characters, including a local crook, a police officer with a taste for poetry, and a Portuguese ship’s captain, create the conditions in which his moral character is constantly called into question. At every turn, his instinct is to bend or break the rules in the high cause of what he thinks is compassion. But these acts cause problems down the line.
Scobie’s his instinct is to bend or break the rules in the high cause of what he thinks is compassion.
One of the central themes of Green’s book, which is set in the Second World War, is the subtle difference between pity and compassion. Scobie’s clumsy attempts to alleviate the pain he perceives others to be feeling invariably makes matters worse for everyone, himself included. Rather than ‘suffer with’ others—to identify with them, to be with them in their suffering—he believes he has the means to ‘fix’ their suffering for them. His pity is rooted in pride, something revealed in his belief that he is ‘too sinful’ to be absolved, and thus has special knowledge of God. There is always an undercurrent of condescension in Scobie’s pity. ‘If one knew … the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? If one reached what they called the heart of the matter?’ he muses. For Scobie, there is no feeling; there is only thinking. His pity involves a judgment, not empathy. And in his need to rescue and protect he plays the role of saviour—ultimately, to validate himself.
There is always an undercurrent of condescension in Scobie’s pity.
Preserving and playing up this distinction is the technical problem that The Heart of the Matter poses to its author. We are inclined to see those who intervene for the betterment of others to be virtuous; and we seldom make a distinction between pity and compassion in how we talk. Greene shows us that all ‘good’ that is done for self-serving reasons, even if those are as bland as having to do with our need to feel affirmed, is not just morally empty, and not just likely to be futile, but potentially harmful. For only good done for its own sake has any moral value, and we would be wiser, Greene seems to suggest, to get our own house in order—to take care of those close to us—before we venture to solve the problems of strangers.
We may be tempted to connect Scobie’s need to ‘save’ others with his perceived failure to ‘save’ his daughter. We might also be tempted to understand his fifteen years of colonial service has having given him a sense of superiority over and responsibility for others—something George Orwell noted as a feature of the imperial life. The least we can say with certainty is that Major Henry Scobie really makes an awful mess of things, and that this, and the moral turmoil it inexorably creates within him, is rendered very beautifully by Greene.
