504 Haley, Alex, and Malcolm X
is a remarkable judge of character, viscerally perceiv-
ing her husband’s emotional dryness and intellectu-
ally unraveling Wilson’s fundamental dishonesty.
She imagines that only a whole nation can satisfy
her want, and thus goads her husband to send her
to South Africa.
Louise’s case highlights the fact that, ultimately,
each character’s response to suffering is inadequate.
Each seeks a superficial remedy, whereas suffering is
a condition of existence. This discrepancy between
the scope of the problem and the manner of coping
is nowhere more evident than in the novel’s pro-
tagonist, Henry Scobie. His stoic devotion to duty
and justice above all else empowers him to repress
his own hurt, but then his wife, Louise (and later,
his mistress, Helen Rolt) becomes for him nothing
more than the voice of his own inner pain. For this
reason, he thinks he can get rid of his suffering by
getting rid of her. His actions and his daydreams are
both reflective of this mentality. In contrast to Lou-
ise, Scobie views emotional isolation as a solution to
suffering. For him, the problem is larger than even
a country. It is the world, before which he stands
isolated and weary.
Since the heart that is the heart of the matter
is geographical as well as psychological, the West
African natives are also native to suffering. For them,
suffering is just the medium in which they operate. It
is not something to be coped with or striven against.
Scobie sees this fundamental difference between the
colonists and the natives, and for him it is the prin-
cipal appeal of his assignment. He reflects: “Nobody
here could talk about a heaven on earth . . . on this
side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the mean-
ness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up.
Here you could love human beings nearly as God
loved them, knowing the worst.” Succinctly and
concisely, Greene’s prose accomplishes a devastating
critique of Western civilization, for here it appears to
be nothing more than an accretion of inadequate and
essentially self-deceptive coping mechanisms. The
suffering abides, only in disguised form. Western
man, then, is alienated from his own condition in a
way that the native is not. Ironically, it is this alien-
ation that enables his image of himself as a savior of
the native, or even, more modestly, as a counselor.
Though a detective, Scobie seems engaged in some-
thing more like social work, and it is telling in this
regard that he is often slow to realize how shrewdly
the natives deceive the colonial authorities.
However ideal the natives might appear to
Scobie, the novel ultimately does not endorse their
casual acceptance of suffering. Instead, it is Louise
Scobie who finds the right balance. There is a world
of difference between the Louise who returns from
South Africa and the Louise who left, perhaps
because upon learning of Henry’s infidelity, she
reorients herself from reliance on her husband to
reliance on the Catholic Church. She returns, then,
not as Scobie’s savior but as his ally, encouraging
him to attend mass and confession and showing
a merciful tolerance of his human failings. Louise
seems especially forgiving as contrasted to Scobie’s
self-damnation or to the lovesick accusations of the
diabolical Wilson. Their loathing is part and parcel
of their suffering, which comes from seeking to be
God (as savior on Scobie’s hand, and as judge on
Wilson’s) rather than submitting to Him.
Scott DanielHaLEy, aLEx, anD maLCoLm x
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
Malcolm X’s autobiography describes a life of multi-
ple transformations, figurative deaths, and rebirths,
which give his story a mythic quality. Born Malcolm
Little in Nebraska, Malcolm and his family moved
to Michigan after his birth. The murder of his father
led to the dissolution of his family. After time in a
detention home, Malcolm moved to Roxbury, Mas-
sachusetts with his half-sister, Ella, where the evolu-
tion of his identity was set in motion.
With Shorty as his mentor, Malcolm conked his
hair, donned a zoot suit, and metamorphosed into
Red. In Harlem, under the tutelage of West Indian
Archie, Malcolm developed into Detroit Red, a
prominent member of a criminal syndicate. His stint
in prison led him to Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of
Islam, within which he became Minister Malcolm
X. After his fallout with the Nation, Malcolm made
his pilgrimage to Mecca and returned El-Hajj
Malik El-Shabazz.
These name-changes represent fundamental
shifts in Malcolm’s worldview. Much of his story’s