Life Choices in Effect--Forever

Everybody chooses to live their lives ,and believe in what they truly believe is right, and these choices can affect their lives forever. This reflects every character in the novel, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. In every place in this novel you find a character who chose to live their lives differently for certain reasons. Some may have taken the right direction for them and some may not have taken it for their sake, but possibly for somebody else's sake. What are you really living life for and who are you living it for? These really are the eternal questions in life that we must sometime or another answer.

Many people live their lives never really thinking anything of it, only ever thinking: this is life, it will go on and someday I will die. There are only that few selective people who take life into meaning. This is real life, I should try and live every day to the fullest because strange things happen, and I could be here one second and gone the next. Life doesn't go on forever or eternity. It will end someday and I hope that, that someday is no time soon. I shall do what I have to, but enjoy life. God put us on this earth for a reason and we should enjoy it while it lasts. Some of the characters in The Power and Glory, think of this stuff and others do not. Some believe in parts of this and some don't believe in any and are like the people who take life as an advantage, they don't understand that’s it’s a privilege to live on this planet we call earth and they, like said before; should live as if they would die the next day--to the fullest.

The whiskey priest is one of those people who lives his life for somebody else's sake. He takes life seriously and truly believes he is doing everything he can for the people that he is living his life for. That person that he is living his life for: God. Someone who put him on this earth to make something of himself, instead of doing something bad that could have effects on him, or people around him. He is a priest--someone who is supposed to be serving good duties to his community and country and the people all around him. Not the case in this novel; he is on the run the entire book. Priests' are not allowed in the country, Mexico, that they live in. They are not good people and are being chased and killed by the government so that they will not exist anymore. The government does not think that there should be anymore priests so that everybody can believe in what the government wants you to believe in. They don't want you to believe something else so you don't go against them, which is why they don't want any more priests so they can make people believe in something that really matters to them.

Why does he choose to live his life for somebody else than if he is continuously on the run? The Whiskey Priest lives his life for the one and only God. He knows that according to the law, everything he does is wrong. He is doing something against the government for God. The Priest knows that his duty on the Earth was to tell people and let them pray for the good things on earth. Help them in time of need and do whatever they need for God--the person he is living his life for.

There are more than just the Whiskey Priest who lives their way a certain way and wondering what they are really living their life for and this person is the mestizo. This man--the mestizo, he lives his life like a dog. He is really a dread to society and doesn't do anything good for the country or anyone else. He lives for nobody and doesn't stand for anything. Judas--he is just like him in the bible. Somebody who is no good and goes against somebody who he says he believes in and trades them in so that they can get something from it just like Judas did with Jesus; when Judas went against Jesus. Which would be when the mestizo told the Whiskey Priest that he was a good Catholic but then turned him in for good for himself. Somebody like the mestizo is worthless and no good so he answer to life is he is not living his life for nobody and nothing.

Someone who lives his life going by orders every day. Doing things that may be wrong but has to do them for his for job is the way that the Lieutenant lives his life. He does things that he knows is wrong every day but has to do it because he works for the government and that is that he is paid to do. He never admits in the novel that a man like him; someone who has bad effects on the community and does things just because he is told to; is wrong or in his case does something wrong. The lieutenant is the one looking for the Whiskey Priest the entire novel to kill him and vanish him from earth itself. In the end though, the lieutenant doesn't really know his answer to life's existential questions but others do. He doesn't really understand that he is living his life for the government. Doing everything that they want him to do by giving him orders that he must follow. He never takes time for himself and can't in the way he is living so his answer to life would be. He is living his life for the government and living to follow their orders.

The lieutenant chooses to live his life like that, the Mestizo chooses to live his life like a dog being a dread to society, and the Whiskey Priest chooses to live his life for God, knowing that what he does is against the law. Everybody lives their lives for a certain way and for certain people sometimes. On the run or chasing someone, living on the road or living your life constantly wondering what it would be like if you didn’t take this route when you chose what life style you were going to live. Everybody in the novel and the entire world choose to live their lives a certain way and those choices can affect their lives forever.