The Extended Allegory in The Power and the Glory Graham Greene put together The Power and the Glory from his personal memoirs in 1940 after a three-year trip to Mexico. Drawing from his observations of a small town torn between the secular government's anti-religious laws and the people's religious beliefs, Greene created the story of a Catholic priest chased by the police to illustrate the adversarial relationship between church and state. Green 2-4). Greene used his experiences in Mexico to create an extended allegory that illustrates the conflict between the two worldviews and, in turn, reveals his values ​​and philosophy. Drawing from his experience in Mexico, Greene developed a "whiskey priest", a character introduced to Greene by a friend in Mexico in the story of a drunken priest who baptized a child with the wrong name, to embody the religious worldview. The priest, who remains nameless throughout the novel to emphasize his allegorical role, is less an individual than a symbol of the "Church [and] of the cumulative wisdom of the past, in short, of Western humanism" (DeVitis 89). The priest, on the other hand, is seen as a traitor to the State and its religion. The last Catholic priest in a secular Mexican state, his photograph hangs next to that of a notorious American gangster on the wall of the police office. The priest's tendency to gin, cowardice and his moral weakness make him a traitor to his faith and his religious order. On the allegorical level of the novel, the priest's escape from the police is seen as an "escape from God" and from becoming a saint (DeVitis 90). Refusing to accept his fate of being captured by the police and becoming......a middle of paper......ce in heaven" (Hynes 67). Only after the priest's execution is the lieutenant forced to realize his own emptiness and Greene reveals his religious compassion. Although often criticized for being "primarily Roman Catholic," The Power and the Glory masterfully illustrates the intense conflict between secular and religious worldviews (Hynes 70 by developing complex allegorical characters, Graham Greene) achieves an almost mythical quality. Works Cited: Allot, Kenneth and Miriam Farris, The Art of Graham Greene New York: Russell & Russell, 1951. DeVitis, AA, Graham Greene New York: Twayne Publishers, 1964. Greene, Graham, The Power and the Glory New York: The Viking Press, 1940. Hynes, Samuel ed., Graham Greene: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973.