The Capital

In Chapter two of The Power and the Glory, I got confused because at frist I thought that Mr. Tench was going to be the main character, but when I strated chapter two, I realized I was mistaken.

In this chapter, we can see the persecution against priest, and the resentment against church and priests. "And the priest came around with the collecting bag taking their centavos, abusing them for their small conforting sins, and sacrificing nothing at all in return, except a little sexual indulgance." Pg 22- 23. In this quotation , we are able to see the resentment of the people towards catholic religion, and specially the church. The people, argue by saying that people are giving their miserable centavos, and recieving nothing for exchange. The chief and the liuteunant, are persecuting priests, and the chief says that he is going to go make civil man hostages, and kill them, if no one reports the priest in town. "The lieutenant said suddenly, I will tell you what i´de do. I would take a man from every village of the state as a hostage. If the villagers didn´t report the man, when he came, the hostage would be shot, and then we´d take another one." Pg 24. People are descharging their rage and resentment towards the priests.

In my opinion, resentment generates ignorance in a way, because when people have any type of rage against something, in the majority of the cases, people just think and feel that way. But people with knowledge, will generally argue, and give some reasons, questioning further. People in this town just have resentment and think the way of fighting against religion, is by oppression and persecution, generating more violence, instead of making an intelligent statement, that make people think and question religion.

Im not understandin the motive of the book, i´m confused by the fact that they changed theme and character suddenly from one chapter to another. The only connection I was able to see was the "Juan", the boy that went asking for help to Mr Tench and The Stranger. He went to ask them to help his mom which was very sick, but in chapter 2 we see that Juan was killed by believing in religion.