Graham Greene manages to evoke a complete mental image in few words, saying so much with so little. The threat of religious persecution that hangs over the story is one such example. The unnamed priest, for all of his faults, only seeks the freedom to practice his religion and procure a bottle of wine for his Holy Mass services. But the Priest falls narrowly shy of his mark because the others in Tabasco band together to deny him that freedom.
As the Priest sits idly on a bench in the city plaza, the scene in front of his eyes strikes quite the contrast. Noticing a group of policemen en route to their headquarters, the Priest notices two seemingly-innocuous aspects of their journey that speak to the threat that looms over his head in a city that has banned Catholicism. “A squad of armed police went by to their quarters walking out of step, carrying their rifles anyhow.” (106) Greene creates an inherent break in the notion of police with his phrasing. By allowing the policemen to carry their rifles in plain sight, Greene creates the impression that the police rule in Tabasco. Rather than maintaining order, the role of the police as far as Greene is concerned is to suppress and stoke fear. Greene furthers this idea by having the police walking out of step to their destination. The notion of police as a public safety entity is nonexistent in Greene’s novel and “walking out of step” serves as an allusion to the corruption. For a regimented unit to carelessly walk holding a rifle drips with irresponsibility.
The ever-present deterrence by the Tabasco community in allowing the Priest a simple bottle of wine shows the efforts to suppress religion – “Never mind that. Wine or nothing. Quince wine? No, no, French wine.” (110) Efforts from the Priest to take wine home – to his literal home rather than Greene’s concept of “home” in the novel as anywhere with four walls to lie your head for a spell – go unrewarded as the townsfolk, on the surface, take him to be a drunk. In the same vein, the Priest’s care to not reveal his purpose for needing wine is telling. Were free religion an accepted societal concept in Tabasco, the Priest could likely scrounge a bottle of wine without much undue stress but he is forced to skirt a dangerous line as an enemy of the people. The idea calls to mind the Soviet concept of holding two opposing views in your mind simultaneously, popularized by George Orwell as doublethink. The Priest is forced to strike a delicate chord – press to obtain his preferred wine for a complete service and risk the vitriol and pain of Tabasco or go without.