In the novel, The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene creates a dystopia where individuals are being persecuted for their faith. Greene’s novel is an exemplary resistance piece because it shows how people have still never given up their faith even though they have been living in fear of persecution for years.
In the novel, a priest has been avoiding the police for years after a war caused an uprising against the Catholic Church and all those who refused to denounce their faith were executed. In one scene, the priest enters a town in which all the citizens are still secretly Catholic and allow him to hide out there as long as he holds mass and hears their confessions. Although it is a more quiet form of resistance, this town is still resisting the current regime because they refuse to drop their faith. One of the locals in the town asks for the father to hear their confessions immediately because “it would be a pity if the soldiers came before we had time… such a burden for poor souls, father.” Although the man knows that the soldiers could come looking for him at any moment, and execute him among the rest of the people in the town for helping hide a fugitive, he still asks the father to stay because of his faith.
Also, a young 13 year old girl, Coral, helps hide the fugitive priest. Even though her whole life has been war and devastation, she still sees hope and wants to help keep the father alive. Although she openly admits that she is not Catholic, she still wants to help the priest stay alive because she knows it’s the right thing to do. This small form of resistance against the government is very powerful because it shows that the new regime has not broken down this community of people into turning in others in order to save themselves. Instead, it has brought people together against the current regime, and by personifying this resistance through a young girl, the author accurately depicts a forceful resistance against totalitarianism.