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A review by msand3
A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene
4.0
"A man with little faith doesn't feel the temporary loss of it." That line could sum up much of Greene’s work, and is equally true of those who have strong faith and those who have none at all.
As with a great deal of Greene’s fiction, I found this novel to be quite apt for the events happening in my life. A burnt-out case in one who is cured, but whose scars and mutilations make it impossible to leave the convalescent home to reintegrate into the world. Being at home and isolated for the last year during the global pandemic, I find myself wondering how it will be possible to go on as normal (or whatever constitutes such) once this is all over. We are all burnt-out cases, waiting for the cure, but then faced with the burden of continuing to live with our various scars and mutilations. All that can sustain us is faith or a vocation (Greene uses that word often in the novel, to mean that which we are compelled to do as life’s work, even as it runs us down). Both faith and vocation can die -- just like love, which has qualities of both. (“A vocation is an act of love,” Greene writes.) When we lose one, it’s a struggle; when we lose all three, we must merely try to survive. And yet that survival doesn’t necessarily make us stronger. It only makes us like the leper who is a burnt-out case: cured, but only now faced with the reality of living with the deformations. The psychological scars can be more debilitating than the physical ones. Only after surviving does the suffering really begin.
Despite sounding bleak, the novel is strangely comforting, as we recognize that we are all burnt-out cases in one form or another, or at one time or another. It just so happens that many of us are entering such a time as we try to emerge from a pandemic.
As with a great deal of Greene’s fiction, I found this novel to be quite apt for the events happening in my life. A burnt-out case in one who is cured, but whose scars and mutilations make it impossible to leave the convalescent home to reintegrate into the world. Being at home and isolated for the last year during the global pandemic, I find myself wondering how it will be possible to go on as normal (or whatever constitutes such) once this is all over. We are all burnt-out cases, waiting for the cure, but then faced with the burden of continuing to live with our various scars and mutilations. All that can sustain us is faith or a vocation (Greene uses that word often in the novel, to mean that which we are compelled to do as life’s work, even as it runs us down). Both faith and vocation can die -- just like love, which has qualities of both. (“A vocation is an act of love,” Greene writes.) When we lose one, it’s a struggle; when we lose all three, we must merely try to survive. And yet that survival doesn’t necessarily make us stronger. It only makes us like the leper who is a burnt-out case: cured, but only now faced with the reality of living with the deformations. The psychological scars can be more debilitating than the physical ones. Only after surviving does the suffering really begin.
Despite sounding bleak, the novel is strangely comforting, as we recognize that we are all burnt-out cases in one form or another, or at one time or another. It just so happens that many of us are entering such a time as we try to emerge from a pandemic.