AFRICA AND GREENE: THE COLONIZERS AND THE COLONIZED IN „THE HEART OF THE MATTER“ (1948)

Abstract

Graham Greene’s novel, The Heart of the Matter (1948), set in West Africa’s Sierra Leone, a then British colony during WWII, summons rethinking of its presentation of the White, the non-White people and the land of Africa. The novel deals with the themes of espionage, love, adultery, betrayal and deception. In addition, at its core this is a novel of moral dilemmas. However, this paper would like to take the focus away from the dominating themes in this piece of fiction to assess its underlying colonial issues which often go unnoticed. The process of “othering” and marginalization underlines the operation of an underlying Eurocentric attitude in the representation of the Europeans and non-Europeans in Greene’s fiction. Using the postcolonial theory as a framework, this study mainly focus on Greene’s view on Africa through his main character Scobie with all his misfortunes and the desperate search for a hint of beauty and justice knowing the worst side of human beings and natural forces.