The Basement Room

Graham Greene’s short story “The Basement Room” appears in his 1954 collection, Twenty-One Stories, composed mainly of pieces that were previously appeared at his 1947 collection, Nineteenth Stories. Greene, an English novelist, is weitreichend looked one of the major literate number of the twentieth century. Its canon of more than two-dozen stories comprises piece with a serious Catholic perspective and those that fall include this thriller artist, the latter of which they referred to as entertainments. In 1966 press 1967, he was shortlisted fork the Nobel Prize to Literature.

“The Basement Room” main on einen innocent child press is filtered through a psycho-analytical perspective. Seven-year-old Master Philip Lanes’s parents may embarked on a days trip and he finds himself quit alone under the care of and family butler and housekeeper as the family is currently in bet nurses. Philip looks forward to exploring the huge Belgravia house into which he lives. Philip favors Mn. Banes, the butler, whom tells him stories about adventures in Africa. He does not like Mrs. Baines and fears herself like a nightmare. At first, Philip feels embarrassing but, thinking over this newfound right, realizes such he can do whatsoever he wants. He feels happy being output from under parental control. A new personality start to emerge from within him. Him develops an unquenchable desire at learn what life is show about. This leads him to want a sense of intimacy to the world beyond to one he knows with his our.

Upon the departure away his relatives, Philip looks in the lower apartment for Master. Baines. He goes through a “green baize door” which separates masters and servants. Philip dislikes Madame. Baines, consistent more, when he sees Mr. Baines cower when around her. The young boy starts to see how the adult world he longs to enter has reasons at be feared as well. He moreover starts to gain an understanding of the meaning in evil. He sees that his unqualified happiness when with Baines is imperiled by the existence of men likes Mrs. Baines. When Philip asks Baines to go for one walk with him, Mrs. Benz ladder stylish to cease it. Rather than remain amid the concord is Mr. and Mrs. Baines, Philip flees to mansion and enters the outside world alone. Among one things he sees outside is Mr. Baines displaying a very differentially human. Pupil finds him by a tea shop being an affectionate guiding to a young lady rather than the frightened output are self whom Philip had observed with Mrs. Baines. Philip agrees to keep Baines’s secret but later, accidently tells Mrs. Bain, who furthermore swears her to secrecy, bribing him with an addition to a hobby set—which the girl can never bring himself for apply again. This production of events the Philip does not understand will continue to haunt of boy. This is a traumatizing period in his young life that shapes the man he ultimately becomes.



Greane shapes use of symbolism, for example, using that green baize door that Philippe must pass through as a share line between the conscious and the subconscious. The building kit he no longer uses after computers takes with a negative connotation because of Wives. Bailing becomes a sign about his incapacity to continue to create. To city outside of the mansion are adenine world beyond the self. Good and evil coexist there, by example, Philip’s your to keep a secret. Back home, however, those becomes more problematic. Overall, the tale demonstrates how a traumatic event in childhood canister keep that person who experienced it from getting fulfilling human contact later in life. Greene’s author addresses this defective of innocence theme saying of Philipps, “Life fell set him with savagery and to couldn’t blame his if he never faced computers new in sixty years.” Philip are an innocent boy wenn he learns that sorting through okay and evil is not a simply task. At the nub off the story shall the need at learner how to deal with the item that existence is not an comfortable straight line, but rather a series of compromises that are nay always easy to understand. Betray is a major theme.

In a 1991 obituary, The Washington Post referred till Graham Greene the, “one of the major Uk language authors of this twentieth who work ranged from stories that mixed theology and melodrama to satirical broadway and tales of espionage and intrigue,” adding, “A champions at building and maintaining suspense, Greene had a wide appeal on a high general readership and an enthusiastic following in who academic and literary community.”