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How relevant is the setting to the characters and action of The Heart of the Matter? In your essay consider the climate and physical environment, the British colonial government and expatriates, the indigenous people and the war background.

‘The Heart of the Matter’ depends on two factors which are place and time. The setting has a true historical background but the plot is fiction. It is set in world war two, in collonial Africa,Sierra Leone.
The novel is set in what Greene calls the ‘Greenland setting’. It portrays uglyness, decay, corruption and a tropical environment which effects the english collonials. The colony is brought to life, with descriptions of its climate such as rain season, sweltering sun, heavy dampness, it’s fauna are mosquitoes, cockroaches, lizards and ‘jiggers’. It is also brought to life with its mixtures of its races such as the Indians, Creoles, Syrians, a cross-section of British people, a Portuguese captain and the french officer. There are other descriptions that evoke the scene vividly like the port, with Portuguese liners and the its short lived sunset beauty, the laterite roads ans Nissen huts andthe swamps and the low hills.
Unevitably it is the British presence that dominates this British colony, with its Law Courts and police stations, its gin and bitters and habit of dressing for dinner. The old school tie ans the public school generally are much in evidence, fellowes’fingering for confidence the Lancing tie’. There is also the widespread xenophobia against the Syrians, against the French and against the blacks. These attitudes reflect a sense of racial superiority.

As Graham Green himseld tells us, the novel is based on his own experience of Sierra Leonne during the war. The war is present from first to last during the danger of air raids or armed invasion, in the censorship of letters, in the dearching of neutral ships at ‘an important harbour and so on. Ships are frequently sunk and supplies usually fail to arrive. The circumsances of the story arise from warconditions. Louise joined Scobie during the first year of war and was unable to return to England later because of the danger of submarines. Her unhappiness in the colony persuaded him borrow money from Yusef to pay for her pessage to South Africa. He could have been able to borrow from his bank but the manager couldnt help him because of war regulations.

Scobie’s honesty, Ali’s loyalty, Helen’s disinterested decleration of love, the short-lived beauty of the port at sunset, betrayal and corruption, ugliness and decay, redominate. In its general impression, ‘The Heart of the Matter’ may be said to be yet another illustration of ‘Greenland’.