Volume 25, Number 9 · June 1, 1978
Greene's Castle
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
The Human Factor
by Graham Greene
Simon and Schuster, 347 pp., $9.95
The central theme of The Human Factor is sacrificial love; this is the most Christian of Mr. Greene's major novels since The Heart of the Matter. The police officer, Scobie, the hero of The Heart of the Matter, was driven on by 'pity' to courses which involved betrayal of professional trust, some degree of complicity in murder, a sacrilegious communion (Scobie was a Catholic), and the ruin of many lives including his own. In The Human Factor the intelligence officer Castle is driven on by love—explicitly distinguished from pity—to courses which involve betrayal of professional trust, unintentional precipitation of murder, the shooting of his beloved son's pet dog, defection to the Soviet Union and thereby the enforced break-up of a loving family, the ruin of Castle together with those whom he loved, and for whom he made his destructive sacrifices.
Review, 3018 words
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