The Heart of the Matter
by Graham Greene
- 12 Members Following
Follow a topic to see new activity, such as homework help questions and answers, in your personal feed on the homepage.
Navigate
See Also
- Graham Greene (Critical Survey of Drama, Second Revised Edition)
- Graham Greene (Critical Survey of Mystery & Detective Fiction, Revised Edition)
- Graham Greene (Cyclopedia of World Authors, Fourth Revised Edition)
- Graham Greene (Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century)
- Graham Greene (Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition)
- Graham Greene (Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Graham Greene
- First Published: 1948
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Setting: British West Africa
- Characters: Major Scobie, Mrs. Scobie, Mrs. Rolt, Wilson, Yusef
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Novel
- Subjects: Africa or Africans, Colonialism, Suicide, Murder or homicide, World War II, Guilt, England or English people, Honesty, Adultery, Good and evil, Catholics or Catholic Church, Civil service
- Locales: Africa
The Story:
Major Scobie is chief of police in a British West African district. Over the past fifteen years, he has built up a reputation for honesty, but he learns that, in spite of his labors, he is to be passed over for the district commissionership in favor of a younger man. Those fifteen long years now seem to him to have been too long and filled with too much work. Worse than his own disappointment is the disappointment of his wife. Mrs. Scobie needs the encouragement that a rise in official position would have given her to compensate for the loss of her only child some...
(The entire page is 3091 words.)
Want to read the whole thing?
Subscribe now to read the rest of this article. Plus, get access to:
- 30,000+ literature study guides
- Critical essays on more than 30,000 works of literature from Salem on Literature (exclusive to eNotes)
- An unparalleled literary criticism section. 40,000 full-length or excerpted essays.
- Content from leading academic publishers, all easily citable with our "Cite this page" button.
- 100% satisfaction guarantee READ MORE
