he believes that circumstances and life events consign him to a hard fate.

I am just trying to find a companion in this region of lies. Is the next stage the stage of corrupting others?

Although a Catholic, he is at once hopelessly drawn to his God and indifferently careless of his sins towards that God. Scobie's pity for both his wife, Louise, and his mistress, Helen, leads him to a dysfunctional and co-dependent existence. When he commits suicide, he rationalizes that both would be better served by his death.

Scobie does not love his wife, but refuses to admit it. He feels a deep responsibility for her happiness and does all he can to accommodate her wishes. When she finds out that her husband has been passed over for promotion, she is furious and very disappointed. Louise tells Scobie that she will never be able to show her face at the Club again, but Scobie assures her that it is not as bad as all that. Later, when Louise demands that they leave the West African colony, Scobie borrows the money from Yusuf, a Syrian merchant, putting himself at risk of being discovered in league with the Syrians. He is willing to do what it takes if only his wife would be happy. Ironically, it is his pity and sense of responsibility which actuates his intellectual dishonesty towards himself, his God, his wife and his mistress. He thinks pity is enough to compel him to be a dependable policeman and husband, but pity proves a miserable life compass; here is a man who knows his Catholic prayers, but cannot quite bring himself to submit to the moral statutes of that faith. He can't bring himself to give up his mistress, nor can he bring himself to be honest with his wife.

But if he went out of church now, he knew that there would be only one thing left to do to follow Father Rank's advice, to settle his affairs, to desert, to come back in a few days' time and take God with a clear conscience and a knowledge that he had pushed innocence back where it properly belonged under the Atlantic surge.

So, pity is at once Scobie's greatest strength and his greatest weakness. He wants to stop giving pain, but doesn't know how to do that anymore. He is remorseful that he may have been responsible for his servant Ali's death, and soon realizes that trust may be an unwilling casualty of deceit.

"I don't know how," Scobie said. "I've lost the trick of trust."

O God, he thought, I've killed you: you've served me all these years and I've killed you at the end of them.

Scobie's one major weakness is that he does not trust the God he serves. This factor alone has influenced all his interactions with everyone else. He tells God:

No. I don't trust you. I love you, but I've never trusted you. If you made me, you made this feeling of responsibility that I've always carried about like a sack of bricks.

Your mileage may vary as to your thoughts regarding Scobie's strengths and weaknesses, but I hope what I have written gives some food for thought. Thanks for the question.

Scobie's relationship with sin is a particularly difficult one. Throughout the novel, he commits transgressions large and small against himself, his loved ones, and the Catholic church; worse, Scobie's sins all seem to inspire him to commit more acts of sin. Even the act of confession becomes another opportunity to do wrong when Scobie finds himself unable to repent for his affair with Helen. As well, his adulterous relationship with Helen leads to a disturbing pattern of lies. This kind of soul-endangering cycle repeats itself over and over until Scobie commits suicide, a sin widely considered among Catholics as a "mortal" sin because it violates the love Catholics expect the faithful to have for themselves and for others.

Scobie's choices to attend church and to go to confession exemplify some ways in which he attempts to adhere to his faith, but his intermittent commitment to a Catholic life mean he is what is sometimes called a "cafeteria Catholic." This kind of Catholic does not commit fully to being a Catholic; rather, cafeteria Catholics pick and choose how and when they want to live like Catholics, which could be considered a sinful approach to living in and of itself.

Major Scobie in The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene commits several deeds that would be considered sins by the Roman Catholic Church. The first act of his that is technically a sin is usury, in borrowing money from Yousef. Although the Roman Catholic Church no longer considers all lending for interest a form of usury, having gradually softened its stance about lending for interest in the sixteenth century, the sort of extortionate lending practiced by Yousef is still condemned by canon law.

The next major sin Scobie commits is adultery, when, despite being married, he falls in love with Helen Rolt. This leads to the next sin. He does go to confession, but because he refuses to promise to stop seeing Helen, he is refused absolution. Despite this, he commits his next sin of taking communion despite being in a state of sin. Next, he commits suicide, which is also a sin.

For type of Catholicism, Scobie seems to be in the English tradition of liberal Catholicism, which was typified by more thought about theology and less strict ritualism than forms of Roman Catholicism practiced in Italy and Spain. However, he is a layperson, not a theologian, and even if he reflects on religious matters, and appears top practice a form of casuistry, he isn't really affiliated with any particular school of theological thought.