Plunging deeper into sin and official corruption in The Heart of the Matter

Moving deeper into The Heart of the Matter (Graham Greene, 1943) we see the protagonist, Scobie (he is a high-ranking police officer, not the Commissioner, as I incorrectly stated yesterday) now desperate to figure a way to ease his wife's depression - a hopeless task, I would say, as she seems to have a completely morose view of life and a horrible self-image, and it has nothing to do w/ where they live - borrows money from the Syrian "merchant" (aka, diamond smuggler) Yusef to pay for his wife's passage to South Africa. Doing this changes the stakes: Now Scobie is indebted to a known smuggler who can pressure him in untold ways and obviously jeopardize his police career or even push Scobie into illegal transactions. Moreover, with wife Louise now out of the picture Scobie has to deal w/ Wilson, the newly arrived British official whom Scobie, oddly enough, had encouraged to begin an affair w/ Louise. Now Wilson is depressed that Louise, whom he believes he loves, has departed - and this is a problem because Wilson learns (from Yusef) that in fact Wilson has been sent to the colony under a ruse - he's not a clerk or engineer but his role is to investigate the diamond smuggling (particularly important because industrial diamonds are valuable in wartime - setting is 1942). So we'll watch the inevitable decline of Scobie into illegality and immorality - unless he rises up and opposes the forces of evil. It's important that Scobie, like Greene, is a practicing (if not always devout) Catholic, and his confrontation w/ all of the dark forces - smugglers, German soldiers (haven't seen any yet), infidelity, government corruption - will be a struggle for his soul. We see this in the strange episode in which Scobie goes to an outpost - Bamba - to investigate and report on the suicide of the young police commander, whom he learns was indebted to Yusef - a foreshadowing of what may happen to Scobie, though Scobie believes that suicide would endanger his soul for eternity - a price he won't pay. But will he get sucked into Scobie's orbit, and how will he protest or resist? 


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