Fidelity and morality in The Heart of the Matter

I guess one of the "lessons" in Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter is: Don't write stuff down! Even more so in our digital age. All the problems besetting the two main (male) characters in the novel derive from their propensity to express their thoughts and feelings in writing. Take Wilson, the guy sent to the British colony in W. Africa, who falls in love with the wife of the police major, Louise Scobie. And for some nutty reason he feels compelled to write a (bad) poem about his yearning for her and to submit it to an alumni magazine with the stupid dedication: To L.S. And of course his nosy roommate (they share an apartment duplex, 2 br + sitting room) reads the poem and figures things out. Then, Scobie himself, the true protagonist of the novel: As his wife, Louise, has moved off to South Africa, where she waits for Scobie to return from the police force and join her, he gets involved in an affair with a recently widowed woman, Helen, who is about 30 years younger than he; they have a spat, and he writes her a note saying in effect that he will always love her and so on, and slips the note under her door. Mistake! As we know from the first pages of this novel, everyone's watching everyone in this community - and when Scobie goes to see Helen the next day it becomes clear she never received the note. Where did it go? Later, we learn that one of the servant "boys" had snitched it and given it to his boss, the diamond smuggler Yusef - who now has leverage to bribe Scobie to help with this smuggling enterprise. Scobie professes to be a devout Catholic and a moral stalwart, but by the end of section 2 of the novel he faces a # of dilemmas: fidelity to his wife (she is now en route back to the colony) or commitment to his pledge never to desert Helen? The rule of the church or of his own moral code? He feels himself sliding down a slope has he does a smuggling "errand" for Yusef, but he rationalizes that he has no choice. (Of course he has a choice, if he's willing to let Louise know all.) It's a novel about a man who thinks of himself as a paragon of morality but who is corrupted - by the forces around him, by his own bad decisions, and by his personal weaknesses. A lot of foreboding regarding Helen, particularly in the long dinner-party scene when the discussion turns to the police officer who committed suicide and then to the various ways in which one could carry through that act. Helen was disturbed, but attentive. 


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