The Priest

The unnamed priest in Henry's unit is the butt of all jokes by the others, but Henry, though he is not religious, treats him kindly. They have several deep discussions, and the priest encourages Henry to find love and be happy.

The priest has described the way each Priest has to be – a kind, sweet, young man who provides spiritual guidance to the few soldiers interested in it. Even after being a reason for jokes, the priest responds with good-natured understanding. Through Henry’s conversations with him regarding the war, the novel challenges abstract ideas like glory, honor, and sacredness.

But, there is one curious question – why doesn’t the priest get a name? Why don’t we know anything about the place where he was born, his family, relatives? Can we say that his character is the one, who represents the role of the Priest like a role, not a person? We mean that the Priest is used just to show the qualities the last has to have, to describe his mission in this world.

Also, we can say one interesting fact. While you were reading a text didn’t you mention that we don’t know a full version of Frederic’s confession? And that is exactly the fact we wanted to highlight. This is a place where we understand for sure that the Priest plays a role of the Priest, not the person, and as we all know, Priests can’t tell about confessions of people, that is why we don’t know Frederic’s one.

That is why we can summarize the Priest’s character as completely good and reliable. Also, we can say that they Priest plays a very important role in the dynamics of the whole text.