Graham Greene once announced he wrote two types of novels: Literary and Entertainments. The latter was his name for spy novels or mysteries, pleasant ways to pass some time when you want a break from the usual contemplation of the struggles of existence, not wanting to become mired in a book helping you ruminate about such matters.
To help in your book selection process, Greene’s The Ministry of Fear has a helpful subtitle: An Entertainment. When an author writes in two genres, these sorts of subtle clues are quite helpful. Wouldn’t want to pick up one of those literary books when all you wanted was to be entertained.
As an entertainment, the novel works well enough if you like the sort of spy novel with well-crafted sentences, very little gunplay, and few moments of high tension. Our protagonist, Everyman Arthur Rowe, unwittingly finds himself in the midst of a game of espionage. You can feel his bewilderment as things go from bad to worse. Not a bad story in the genre.
But, Green is a clever writer; the subtitle is itself a bit of fiction. The book starts out as a stock-in-trade spy novel. Suddenly, twenty pages before the end, Rowe and the Reader come to a startling realization.
He was bewildered: he didn’t know what to do. He was learning the lesson most people learn very young, that things never work out in the expected way. This wasn’t an exciting adventure, and he wasn’t a hero, and it was even possible that this was not a tragedy.
The book then wraps up in a nicely conventional way, so if you didn’t want to be awakened from the entertainment, it is entirely possible that a passage like that just strolled through your consciousness without disturbing the scenery. But the passage does function like that mysterious stranger in a spy story slipping a note to the protagonist (in this case the Reader) saying, “All is not what it seems.”
All by itself that warning wouldn’t tip off the game but it does prep the Reader for the last two pages of the novel. As everything is quietly returning to normal after the excitement of the story, there is a casual reference to a throwaway conversation from the middle of the book which mentioned the Ministry of Fear.
Greene was clearly having a bit of fun with title of his book. The title hands you the clue to the fact that this is the type of book Greene calls literary, while the subtitle denies that is what he has written. What is this Ministry of Fear?
“I was just reading the questions in Parliament….They suggest there’s another kind of Fifth Column. People who are blackmailed.”
“The Germans are wonderfully thorough,” Johns said. “They did that in their own country. Card-indexed all the so-called leaders, socialites, diplomats, politicians, labour leaders, priests—and then presented the ultimatum. Everything forgiven and forgotten, or the Public Prosecutor. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve done the same thing over here. They formed, you know, a kind of Ministry of Fear—with the most efficient undersecretaries.”
There you have it, the entire role of the Ministry of Fear in the novel. There isn’t an actual Ministry of Fear, there are no agents of the Ministry doing nefarious deeds which Rowe bravely uncovers. After this conversation, the whole idea vanishes. If it weren’t for the title of the book, you’d never even recall the passage.
Then it shows up again at the end:
A phrase of Johns’s came back to mind about a Ministry of Fear. He felt now that he had joined its permanent staff. But it wasn’t the small ministry to which Johns had referred, with limited aims like winning a war or changing a constitution. It was a ministry as large as life to which all who loved belonged. If one loved one feared
What is the problem? Rowe is on the verge of building a life with his newly found love. Happy ending, right? Ah, but there is a problem. Rowe, you see, has a secret. He murdered his first wife. It was a mercy killing, but he did the killing. He was tried for murder and acquitted, but the semblances of guilt remain.
Rowe has never talked about this secret with the women he loves. The problem: Rowe found out that that his new love knows that he killed his wife. And now (follow closely) he knows she knows. She has never said that she knows, so she obviously doesn’t want him to know she knows, and presumably she does not know if he knows that she knows. And (follow really closely) he does not know if she knows that he knows that she knows.
So there they are in this relationship, locked into the code of silence, never really knowing what the other one knows.
They had to tread carefully for a lifetime, never speak without thinking twice; they must watch each other like enemies because they loved each other so much. They would never know what it was not to be afraid of being found out. It occurred to him that perhaps after all one could atone even to the dead if one suffered for the living enough.
A lifetime of suffering in the hope, undoubtedly futile, of atoning for your sins. Imagine living like that. Imagine living your whole life afraid that others will discover your secret, that once discovered it will have to be discussed, and that there is no forgiveness for your sin. What would a life like that be like? The final paragraph of The Ministry of Fear:
He tried tentatively a phrase, “My dear, my dear, I am so happy,” and heard with infinite tenderness her prompt and guarded reply, “Me too.” It seem to him that after all one could exaggerate the value of happiness…
You have to admire ending the novel with an ellipses.
As an entertainment, the ending to The Ministry of Fear is merely a coda to the Story Proper. But of course, Greene wasn’t writing an entertainment. He was writing a story of the mysteries of sin and repentance and atonement. The spy story is merely the setting for this literary exploration of a problem we all face.
You have things in your life you don’t want anyone else to know. We all do. You have things you have done for which you have never forgiven yourself. We all do. You are terrified that if those things came to light, you would not be forgiven by anyone, and most importantly by those you love. Is happiness possible living a life like that?
Now it sure would be nice if there was some mechanism to permanently atone for your sins, some way to relieve yourself of guilt and the worry that others know about those things you have thought and done and left undone. But, the problem is actually even worse for those who do believe that such an atonement is real and has happened: why then do you still fear? Why is the Ministry of Fear still a very real thing in your mind?
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