The Broken Image

A world without God just simply cannot exist. Just as Satan would cease to exist without God’s existent (without any good there would be nothing left to pervert) in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, what will happen to the Lieutenant now that he has defeated his enemy? I keep going back to chapter 2 of part 2 and the discourse that takes place between the Governor’s cousin and the jefe. Their conversation keeps coming back to the ideas of the origin of life and the mysteries unknown; “words like ‘mystery’ and ‘soul’ and ‘the source of life’ came in over and over again, as they sat on the bed talking, with nothing to do and nothing to believe and nowhere better to go” (114). In their greatest attempts to rid the country of Christian doctrine, these very men find themselves pondering the very questions Christian doctrine exists to answer. This gives credence to the idea that man has an innate desire to know his Maker, to know his origin.

The priest had just a few pages earlier in the book begun to understand why this desire existed; “But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery – that we were made in God’s image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge” (101). Man was made in the image of God unlike any other created being. Thus the reason the gentlemen continue to ask such questions; they too were made in the image of God, even though the image is broken from the fatal act of sin.

As for the Lieutenant, he had every right to be disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. However, his hatred grew to an insane obsession. At the end of the book he appears to feel some sense of loss after killing the last priest; there are no more. That had been his goal and now that it is fulfilled he must find new meaning to life. No doubt he will face still the questions that the priest would have like to have answered for him. But, as long as there is still another priest, the Lieutenant will not consider his origin or his Maker, but will find his meaning in unknowingly killing the image of God.