Committing one mortal sin after having already committed a first can’t make things any worse.So there are the bones of the story. Scobie decides that since he is damned already, he will remove himself from the situation by committing suicide, which he does. Now he is in trouble: He can’t leave his wife, he can’t give up Helen, he can’t go to confession because he can’t decide to repent, he can’t refuse his wife’s request that they go to Mass together, he can’t refuse communion, so he thereby damns himself for knowingly receiving communion in a state of sinfulness. A decisive turn in the plot occurs when Louise decides to come back. She goes to live somewhere else for a time, during which Scobie forms a love relationship with Helen, a younger woman who has been rescued from a sunken ship. Both he and his wife, Louise, attend Mass regularly, but she is not happy, particularly when Scobie is passed over for promotion. I have just finished reading ‘The Heart of the Matter’. Having a lot of Graham Greene books around in the Church’s bookstall, and knowing that he has been called a ‘Catholic’ author has prompted me to read some more Greene.
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