McCormack: A Hint of the

In this tale Blacker, one of the town’s A Hint of the two bakers and a self-professed “free- thinker,” attempts to persuade the ten- Eucharist: year-old Catholic boy David to , Morality, procure a consecrated Eucharistic Host—one that has, through the and Faith in “The Hint celebration of the , been of an Explanation” transformed into the body of Christ. Blacker’s interest in the wafer, he insists, will provide him with Frances McCormack the opportunity to demonstrate his own skill (“‘I can bake the things you eat just Infused as it is with spiritual and as well as any Catholic can’”)2 and to moral tensions, Graham Greene’s conduct an empirical enquiry into the writing resonates heavily with medieval doctrine of by which religious literature and particularly with the Eucharist is said to transform: “Do the moral fable favored by medieval you think if I put the two of them under preachers. These often-simple narratives a microscope, you could tell the depict typological characters who difference? … How I’d like to get one of struggle for control of their souls in a yours in my mouth—just to see … want world where they are beset by vices and to see what your God tastes like.”3 David counseled by virtues before they are procures the Host but in so doing he ultimately saved through God’s grace. desecrates it, depriving it of its sacred Greene’s narratives, while they depict purpose and altering its form. In so more complex moral dilemmas, are doing he is converted from spiritless populated by characters whose psyches enactment of religious devotion and are battlegrounds (often between their liturgical rites to a depth of faith that own divided loyalties) and by the results in him, in later years, taking holy looming threat of damnation and the orders. notable absence of God.1 This apparent Greene’s story of the sacrilegious influence of medieval typological writing misuse of a sacred object is not wholly seems nowhere more obvious than in original. Host desecration narratives “The Hint of an Explanation,” a 1948 similar to this have abounded since the short story where the motif of the soul as and were often used in an battleground is vividly drawn and where attempt to justify the persecution, faith is deepened through moral crisis. expulsion, and murder of . Yet as I will demonstrate, Greene here Folklorist Alan Dundes describes how blurs the edges of good and evil, thereby such accusations may have arisen from overturning the moral binarism of this “projective inversion”—a psychological story’s antecedents. process “in which A accuses B of carrying out an action which A really

1 Cf. Frances McCormack, “The Later Greene: which I discuss at length Greene and the From Modernist to Moralist,” Dangerous Edges medieval moral arts. of Graham Greene: Journeys with Saints and 2 Graham Greene, “The Hint of an Explanation,” Sinners, ed. Dermot Gilvary and Darren J. N. Twenty-One Stories (London: Heinemann, Middleton (New York: Continuum, 2011) in 1954), 40. 3 Ibid., 40-41.

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wishes to carry out him or herself.”4 to use the bread to disprove the doctrine Dundes explains: “It is the underlying of transubstantiation. In order to test Christian guilt for orally incorporating and undermine the Christian belief that the blood and flesh of their god, the Eucharistic bread is the body of commonly perceived as the Christ child, Christ, Jonathas and his companions which makes them project that guilt to enact a series of grisly tortures upon it, the convenient Jewish scapegoat.”5 echoing Christ’s Passion: it receives five These Host desecration myths depicted wounds; it is submerged into hot oil; it is Jews as opponents of Christianity, intent nailed to a post and then plucked down. on defilement. myths The Host bleeds throughout this process proliferated, and Jews were falsely and, finally, as it is baked in an oven, it accused of ritually murdering Christian transforms into the Christ child who children in order to consume their rebukes his assailants. Christ heals blood. In fact, stories of the murder of Jonathas, who has been wounded children and of the desecration of the during the ordeal, and the play ends Host were often linked by the trope of with a conversion and a promise of ritual consumption of bread; the blood pilgrimage.8 Although in “The Hint of an libel myths that proliferated in the Explanation” Blacker never acquires the Middle Ages generally saw a young boy consecrated host to inflict these ordeals tortured in ways that echoed Christ’s upon it, both stories (and other such Passion, killed, exsanguinated, and his analogues) have in common the blood used to make matzah for persuasion of a Christian to procure the Passover.6 communion bread, the desire to test Given Greene’s interest in medieval empirically the doctrine of drama,7 he may have taken as his transubstantiation, and a desecration inspiration one particular dramatic that either converts or deepens faith. retelling of such desecration myths—the The anti-Semitism of the possible only extant English Host Miracle Play, analogues for Greene’s story and the Ϸe Conversyon of Ser Jonathas Ϸe Jewe historical context of desecration myths by Myracle of Ϸe Blyssed Sacrament, cannot be erased, especially not for the also known as the Croxton Play of the reader who is familiar with medieval Sacrament. In this late fifteenth-century drama or with the history of persecution drama Aristorius, a Christian merchant, of the Jewish people. Blacker’s threat to procures a consecrated Eucharistic Host bleed David with his cut-throat razor for Jonathas, a Jewish man who wants echoes blood libel narratives, and

4 Alan Dundes, “The Ritual Murder or Blood https://www.publicmedievalist.com/deggendorf Libel Legend: A Study of Anti-Semitic /; See also Mark Gardner, “Facebook Deletes its Victimization through Projective Inversion,” ‘Jewish Ritual Murder’ Page—It’s the Least We Meaning of Folklore: The Analytical Essays of Can Expect,” The Jewish Chronicle, 4 January Alan Dundes, ed. Simon J. Bronner (Utah: Utah 2018, State University Press, 2007), 395. https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/fac 5 Ibid., 398. ebook-deletes-its-jewish-ritual-murder-page-it- 6 In fact, antisemitic blood libel persists in s-the-least-we-can-expect-1.451435 church art, on pilgrimage routes, and even more 7 See McCormack. broadly on social media. See, for example, 8 Croxton Play of the Sacrament, ed. John T. Richard Utz, “Deggendorf, and the Long History Sebastian, TEAMS: Middle English Texts Series of its Destructive Myth,” Race, Racism and the (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Middle Ages XXXI, The Public Medievalist, 2012).

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David’s unquestioning devotion calls to desperation—broadly symbolic of how mind that of the litel clergeon of uncomfortably divine mysteries fit into Chaucer’s Prioress’ Tale who is human hands: persecuted, in a blood ritual, for his I got up and made for the curtain piety, despite his lack of understanding to get the that I had purposely of the Alma Redemptoris that he sings. left in the . When I was there David’s faith before the desecration is I looked quickly round for a hiding- also merely performative. He tells his place and saw an old copy of the interlocutor that “it may seem odd to Universe lying on a chair. I took the you, but this was the first time that the Host from my mouth and inserted it idea of transubstantiation really lodged between two sheets—a little damp in my mind. I had learnt it all by rote; I mess of pulp. … I tried to remove the had grown up with the idea. The Mass Host, but it had stuck clammily was as lifeless to me as the sentences in between the pages and in De Bello Gallico, communion a routine desperation I tore out a piece of the like drill in the schoolyard, but here newspaper and screwing the whole suddenly I was in the presence of a man thing up, stuck it in my trouser who took it seriously, as seriously as the pocket.11 priest whom naturally one didn’t Third, unlike in the Host desecration count—it was his job.”9 myths from the Middle Ages, the Host of Greene, however, manipulates his “The Hint of an Explanation” does not analogues in a variety of ways to physically transform by, for example, distance his tale from the anti-Semitic bleeding. Nor is the Host here equated desecration myths. First, Blacker is not with Christ’s body, but it is more broadly Jewish. He is a free-thinker: a sceptic representative of a mystery of faith that who believes that religious faith should David does not fully comprehend until be empirically tested. This designation is he attempts to defile it. In this text, the ironic, as David insists that Blacker’s focus of the story is not on proving the obsession constrains, rather than doctrine of transubstantiation, or even liberates, his thinking: “Can you hate on thinking of the Eucharist in terms of something you don’t believe in? And yet Christ’s body. Rather, it is on David’s he called himself a free-thinker. What an changing attitude towards the impossible paradox, to be free and to be sacrament and on demonstrating how so obsessed. Day by day all through that faith itself is transubstantiated, with those holidays his obsession have its substance of devotion coming to grown, but he kept a grip; he bided his match its accidents of the celebration of time.”10 Second, it is not Blacker himself the liturgy. who desecrates the Host, but David. In the Croxton Play of the Unsure of how to procure the Host, and Sacrament, the torture of the Host operating without a plan, David seizes paves the way for the conversion that the opportunity when the communion results from its miracles—through which wafer is placed in his mouth. Here the Aristorius repents his sins and becomes desecration is partly accidental, and an exemplar for the audience as well as a partly borne out of confusion and sign of God’s mercy made manifest. In

9 Greene, 41. 11 Ibid., 43. 10 Ibid., 39.

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“The Hint of an Explanation,” it is David unhappiness—yes, I am sure, who is converted, as he comes to unhappiness. Was it perhaps that the meditate upon and understand the poor man was all the time seeking significance of the Eucharistic something incorruptible?”14 These sacrament. When, undressing for bed, tensions are, in fact, essential to he finds the crumpled piece of illustrating the mysteries of faith at newspaper that enfolds the sticky Host, which David attempts to hint he is “haunted by the presence of God throughout the text—mysteries that there on the chair. … I knew that this cannot be decoded by human knowledge which I had beside my bed was and experience, especially when the something of infinite value—something parameters of both are so volatile and a man would pay for with his whole mutable, filtered through narration, peace of mind.”12 The act of conversion memory, and time. is, paradoxically, through one final Greene’s own characters are not desecration as David swallows the exempt from the interpretative riddles at wafer—newspaper and all—with the help the heart of the story. For instance, of water from the ewer. The worldliness David speculates on what Blacker would of this act—the paradoxically cleansing have done with the Host after obtaining waters of the ewer and the consumption it from David (“‘I really believe,’ my of a spiritual mystery wrapped inside the companion said, ‘that he would first of materiality of the universe—intensify the all have put it under his microscope paradox of faith at the heart of the text before he did all the other things I as the reader becomes implicated into expect he had planned”),15 and he the binary encoding of good and evil, interprets Blacker’s tears as light and darkness, on which such moral disappointment in his failure to acquire fables rely and that Greene constantly the host. Yet David acknowledges the seeks to deconstruct in this text. role that his own tender age played in The story is one of tensions, his interpretations by claiming that his dualities, and contradictions, just like realizations are made despite his age— this conversion through desecration in “even as a child”16—and the reader is which David’s recognition of the earthly haunted by the unreliability of the value of the consecrated Host brings an version of the story that is told. Here, awareness of its spiritual worth. Similar David’s speculation is filtered not only tensions exist, for instance, in David’s through youthful inexperience but also insistence that Blacker is defined by his through the capriciousness of memory hatred, despite the fact that he sees in and through layers of narration in which him a “certain furtive love.”13 Blacker, a travel companion recounts a too, is depicted as torn—hopeful at conversation with a priest that draws on David’s procurement of the Eucharist, memories of his younger self and that but also disappointed by it: “When I self’s interpretation of events. As came back through the curtain carrying Coulthard notes: the cruet my eyes met Blacker’s. He gave The priest is as subjective as the me a grin of encouragement and narrator is objective, and herein lies

12 Ibid., 44. 15 Ibid., 45. 13 Ibid., 38. 16 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 43.

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the problem of a one-level description of Blacker’s hopeless tears, interpretation. The cleric not only the narrator writes that “the points tells the story, but explains its switched and we were tossed from one meaning to his fellow traveler. If the set of rails to another.”20 Brother reader accepts the priest’s Joseph, writing for The Explicator, interpretation of his childhood reads these lines as describing the experience, the story is elementary. narrator’s development in Its theme is that God sends saving understanding of the problem of evil: signs, or hints, to his chosen. These The train on which the Agnostic hints of God’s power often come in and the priest are riding is not like the form of evil which, with God’s the train in Blacker’s store, riding on help, the tempted resists and its track in circles and never reaching eventually thwarts. … However, if the a destination. The real train, passing reader chooses to interpret for through tunnels and towns, himself the meaning of the priest’s admitting and obscuring light, story (as the traveling companion, an absorbing flashes and flickers, is a agnostic, seems tacitly to do), he symbol of the journey of the mind of might arrive at an explication quite the Agnostic as it gradually admits different from that of the priest (and the flashes of truth and becomes Greene himself?).17 sufficiently educated to be switched In Greene’s retelling of the Host to a new track of thought about God desecration myth, the author takes a tale by the hint of an explanation. 21 that originates in a child’s morality fable Yet given the many hints Greene and rearranges it so that the lines makes toward the unreliability of between good and evil become less David’s narration and of the limits of clearly drawn. As “The Hint of an human understanding of divine Explanation” develops, the chiaroscuro mysteries—and given that Blacker fades into shades of grey, where Blacker doesn’t appear to be the wholly evil and is not wholly evil and where David’s irredeemable creature that David interpretation of events is unreliable at claims22—this switch of tracks should, best. “Our view is so limited,”18 the adult perhaps, be read not as a validation of David notes to his travel companion, as David’s version of events but rather a though to warn readers of the shift in perspective that challenges that unreliability of his narration before version. This seems to be confirmed by contradicting himself by authoritatively the narrator’s trite statement that “it’s presenting an interpretation of Blacker’s an interesting story”23 and that he would actions (as an attempt to “revenge have given to Blacker what he wanted. “I himself on everything he hated”).19 As suppose you think you owe a lot to David’s story concludes with a Blacker,” concludes the narrator,

17 A. R. Coulthard, “Graham Greene’s ‘The Hint 21 Brother Joseph, F.S.C., “Greene’s ‘The Hint of of an Explanation’: A Reinterpretation,” Studies an Explanation’,” The Explicator XIX (January in Short Fiction 8.4 (1971): 601-02. 1961), 3. 18 Greene, 36. 22 For more on the interpretative problems of 19 Ibid., 38. the text, see Coulthard, who notes that the text is 20 Ibid., 45. not the simple moral fable that most readers have taken “Hint” to be. 23 Greene, 46.

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reminding us of David’s subjectivity and Dr. Frances McCormack lectures in casting doubt on his version of events. English at the National University of This is a text that draws on the Ireland in Galway. She has published on typology of medieval moral didacticism a range of topics from Old English to force the reader to question the poetry to Graham Greene. Her parameters of their interpretative monograph, Chaucer and the Culture of framework. Greene seems to offer a Dissent, was published in 2007 and she clear-cut moral fable through the is currently working on a monograph on typological naming of his antagonist, by compunction in Old English poetry. She emphasising the protagonist’s youth and is co-editor of Anglo-Saxon Emotions: innocence, and in the framing of the Reading the Heart in Old English reminiscence that promises to present Language Literature and Culture (with us with a hint of the explanation of the Alice Jorgensen and Jonathan Wilcox) problem of evil. Yet he denies the same and Chaucer’s Poetry: Words, Authority in the moral ambiguity of his and Ethics (with Clíodhna Carney). She characterization by attributing sacrilege was director of the Graham Greene to innocence and through intricate International Festival in 2014. narration. While Coulthard reads the story’s shades of grey as evidence that it is “an understated satire on a proud, complacent priest who deigns to believe that God, for all his infinite mercy, would lead him into the priesthood by having him trod down a helpless, pitiable creature such as Blacker,”24 it seems, however, that it is not the priest who is held up to scrutiny but the nature of evil itself. In creating a tale that is rooted in medieval moral discourse but refuses the reader the binarism that such texts provide, Greene problematizes the tropes associated with such stories and the lessons that they have traditionally purported to teach. Here the author doesn’t provide a hint of an explanation, but rather complicates the problem of evil, leaving it as nameless and faceless as “the thing”25 that David refuses to anthropomorphise. In doing so, he reminds us that both redemption and faith can be found as readily in the shadows on the wall26 as they can elsewhere.

24 Coulthard, 60. 26 Ibid., 44. 25 Greene, 36.

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