Graham Greene’s first novel, The Man Within, involves multiple personality, judging by his biography, Paris Review interview, and the text

As discussed in a previous post, biographers report that Greene had more than one personality, including a named alternate personality, Hilary Trench. This post is about how the author’s multiple personality is reflected in his first novel, The Man Within (1).

In Greene’s 1953 Paris Review interview (available online), he says that his first three novels “were influenced by Stevenson and Conrad.” I assume that he is referring to the Stevenson who wrote Jekyll and Hyde and the Conrad who wrote “The Secret Sharer.” (The latter is discussed in a past post.)

Throughout The Man Within, the protagonist, Francis Andrews, is said to have more than one “self,” and, in that sense, to be more than one “person.”

“But here his other self took a hand. He was, he knew, embarrassingly made up of two persons, the sentimental, bullying, desiring child and another more stern critic…Always while one part of him spoke, another part stood on one side and wondered, ‘Is this I who am speaking? Can I really exist like this? It’s easy for you to laugh,’ he said bitterly. But am I really bitter, the other part wondered. Am I play acting still? And if I am play acting, is it I who act or another who pulls the strings?” (1, p. 16).

He speaks of “his second self” and “that other self” and “his two selves” (1, pp. 72-73).

And he is not just speaking metaphorically, either in terms of the parent-adult-child metaphor of Transactional Analysis or the superego, ego, and id metaphor of Freudian psychoanalysis. No, his subjective experience is much more concrete than that. It is more like being “possessed.” For example, he speaks of “…this other inhabitant of his body…” (1, p. 36).

Indeed, by the end of the novel, the character goes further than Stevenson and Conrad envisioned: He speaks of being inhabited by six personalities:

“It is as though,” Andrews said slowly, “there were about six different people inside me. They all urge different things. I don’t know which is myself” (1, p. 193).

So when you put together Greene’s biography, his interview, and the text, it is clear that multiple personality is a major theme.

1. Graham Greene. The Man Within. New York, Viking Press, 1929/1981.