Caritas

Abstract

The final chapter of this book sets out to explore the potential fulfillment of the commitment acquired by the Greenean hero as a permanent integration into a community of destiny. The initial expression of such commitment, as analyzed in Chapter 5, is the act of compassion to others experienced as a turning point in the character’s trajectory. The possibility of maintaining such commitment on a continuous basis is shaped in many of Greene’s novels through the recurrent pattern of ethical action, failed integration into a community, and sacrifice. These are the narrative elements addressed in this chapter, and gathered under the category of caritas. This is a term that Greene never used in his novels, but it brings together two aspects which in Greene’s fictional universe are combined: the ideas of love and charity. Both Frances McCormack and Cates Baldridge have used this expression in their analysis of the representation of different forms of love in Greene’s fiction. In opposition to eros, Baldridge uses the term caritas to refer to “that love whose human objects are broader and whose motives are (perhaps somewhat) purer than those of eros, and that according to Greene can harness even our hatred to higher purposes” (111). Similarly, McCormack follows St. Augustine in order to distinguish between caritas and cupiditas (275). For characters in novels like The Comedians and The Honorary Consul, Baldridge argues, caritas appears as an alternative to human love — eros in his terminology — characterized by a greater tendency to “exhaustion, hypocrisy and self-delusion” (111).