Monday, April 26, 2010

A Priest Can Have a Family, But Only a Family With God

Author's Note: The Power and the Glory - discussion about the priest's inappropriate relationship and strange daughter


The typical priest is married to the church, so devoted to their religion and beliefs and convictions, and has no family except the family of himself with the Lord. For a priest to have a relationship outside of the church is not only frowned upon, but forbidden. The irony in the novel The Power and the Glory is so strong that this priest—one with no recognized name symbolizing nothingness—is an alcoholic attempting to feel nothing in his life who breaks the regulation a priest should have by having a short association with a woman named Maria. The outcome of this wasn’t just failure for the priest to obey rules, but along with their relationship arrived a baby. Due to the conspicuous fact that this was wrong behavior for a priest, the priest left Maria alone with a baby to raise on her own.

Years later, the priest encountered his daughter and Maria to find his daughter, Brigida , had no value to her life. Children should obtain innocence, however, Brigida ironically seemed so stoic and adult like. She doesn’t get along with other children because she grew up so quickly and her family wasn’t traditional with a mother and a father. With her dark, twisted personality, you wouldn’t expect her to save her father from being caught by the police and being arrested, yet she manages to accomplish that in this novel as well. The priest’s convictions, unfortunately, were not the same as Maria’s, leaving Brigida suffering from being an outcast, a nobody, nothing.

4 comments:

  1. Leah this is really good! Your last sentence was really strong and ended the response perfectly. I like how you brought up how Maria and the priest's convictions were not the same and had a lot of supporting sentences to back up that thought. Great job! :)

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  2. Leah, this is a really good response. I think that the first couple sentences and last couple sentences were amazing. Also your text evidence I thought was really good. Maybe next time try to put some more of your vocab words in your writing though. Overall, you did really good. Nice Job!

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  3. Sorry, I just saw that you did put some of your vocab words in the writing so I guess there's nothing wrong with this piece.

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  4. Awesome job Leah! I loved reading this.. You had a ton of amazing points in this. Like Morgan said, your last few sentences were fantastic! Also, the way the you talked about the priest and the way he should act was great. I just want to read it over and over. Great job Leah, you should be really proud of how you write:)

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