Richard Smythe
A public atheist whom Sarah visits because she hopes disbelief can free her.
To make suffering intelligible without God and persuade others that religion is unnecessary.
The book
At a glance
- Atheist writer and speaker
- Sarah Miles
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeSmythe writes and speaks publicly against religion. Sarah seeks him for reasoned disbelief, not romance.
A facial condition makes him self-conscious and becomes part of Bendrix's crude effort to reduce him to a visible mark.
He offers Sarah a language for rejecting God, but her questions expose the emotional limits of a purely intellectual answer.
How the book draws them
- Argumentative poiseHe is practiced in defending atheism.
- Marked faceHis condition shapes encounters without defining him.
- Public workHis disbelief is organized argument.
- Mistaken rivalBendrix reads Sarah's visits as sexual.
- Intellectual confidenceHe begins with a system for interpreting pain.
- Certainty unsettledSarah's death complicates that confidence.
His facial condition disappears after Sarah prayed for him. Greene's revision makes the event less unequivocally miraculous.
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