![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Greene’s paradoxical treatment of his major themes within a theological perspective is best evident in “The Hint of an Explanation.” The story develops in the form of a conversation between the narrator, an agnostic, and another passenger, a Roman Catholic, while the two are riding on a train in England. Indeed, in Greene’s world the worst sin is a presumed innocence which masks a corrosive egotism that effectively cuts human beings off from their fellow creatures and from God. As a thinker and as a fiction writer Greene was a master of paradox, creating a world of moral and theological mystery in which ignobility and failure may often be the road to salvation. Yet their flawed humanity is not presented and then judged from the standpoint of any simplistic orthodoxy. For Greene’s heroes and heroines there is no escape they fall by virtue of their very humanity. As a result of this vision, the central action in Greene’s fictional world is invariably betrayal-the Judas complex-betrayal of one’s fellow human beings, of one’s self, or of one’s God. ![]()
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