Greene uses a number of techniques in this novel that are particularly appropriate for its religious theme. For example, the priest is literally "called back" three times when he is on the verge of escaping, each time to administer the sacraments to a dying person.

Repetition of plot motif is common to all mythologies, and the calling three times is particularly appropriate to the Christian theme of the novel (God calls Samuel four times, Peter denies Christ three times, and, most appropriate of all for this particular novel, at the end of Saint John's Gospel, Christ tells Peter three times that, if he truly loves Him, he should feed his sheep).

Greene, usually a master of suspense, uses the self-consciously mythic quality of the story to create irony. The reader, as well as the priest, knows that the mestizo has to betray the priest, so that the priest...