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Graham Greene is the kind of writer whose novels and short stories are influenced by his own experiences in life. He does not write directly about his life but his attitude to the phenomena of the world and the things that happen to him can be felt in the ways he makes his stories. The role of childhood experiences, the unpleasant side of life and escapism are important aspects in Greene's life. This essay will examine how and why he deals with them in his works too.

The bad experiences that Greene has during his childhood influence his later life to a great extent. He cannot get rid of the idea that one's personality is determined by the age of 16 and the early negative experiences have special effects on one's whole life. This kind of mentality is due to the fact that as a student he does not live at home but in a dormitory. This means that he has to leave his loving mother with whom he is in a close relationship and that he has to get used to the hostile atmosphere of the dormitory. He has to accept conditions he can hardly bear : he has to adapt to others and has no private life. In addition the headmaster of the school he attends is his father so all the students pick on him, they enjoy ridiculing him. But this is not Greene's fault: he is only the victim of the conditions. What makes it even worse is that their house is on the doorstep of the dormitory and there is a door connecting the two buildings but he is never allowed to open that door and retreat to home. This door appears in some of his books and is called the 'green baize door'. In one of his stories he writes about a madhouse where this door is between the wards and the cell: it connects the world where the mad are 'happy' to live and the world they detest and are afraid of.

Greene's early bad experiences have such a great effect on him that he writes about the importance and influence of childhood in many of his stories. In the 'Innocent' the narrator, who is an adult, tries to compensate for his childhood: as a child he was truly in love with a girl but the affair was 'innocent' because there could be no physical satisfaction, which made him suffer a lot. Therefore now he tries to live a life that is exactly the opposite of his childhood life: it is full of sexual satisfaction, he has as many experiences as possible and has no emotions just plays around with girls. In the 'Shocking Accident' Greene also suggests that one cannot escape from the effects of bad experiences: all the people to whom the main character Jerome tells the story of his father's death laugh-his father died because a pig fell out from a balcony and hit him while walking in the street. For the naive and inexperienced child the main negative experience is not the casualty but people's reactions to the story: when they laugh he is struck by the real world. From then on he developes different methods of telling the story to avoid having the same humiliating experience and qualifies people according to the ways they react: he would not marry a girl who laughed at his story.

Greene's experiences make him obsessed with the dark side of life: his pessimism roots in his childhood because he cannot live the kind of life he wants to live and he can only feel the hostility and spitefulness of people. His pessimism is always there in his stories as a general atmosphere or background. In 'The Destructors' for instance little children deliberately and without any reason destroy someone's house and they laugh at the man's tragedy. So in this story Greene draws attention to the fact that the world is full of hostility, it cannot be changed because evil is in human nature itself, it is even in children and that is the biggest problem. 'The Man Who Stole The Eiffel Tower', which is another short story, also shows Greene's pessimistic point of view: by the fact that in the story someone steals the Tower without anyone noticing it the writer concentrates on the superficiality and indifference of 20th century people.

Apart from his childhood experiences World War II and other events that claimed the death of many people also contribute to Greene's pessimism and focusing on the dark side of life only. He is so concerned about war and terrorism that he even makes some historical references in his stories and in this way he draws attention to the danger and existence of violence in the world. In 'An Old Man's Memory' for example the Channel Tunnel is destroyed by terrorists and Greene refers to actual events that happened in his own life: he mentions the so-called Lockurbie-disaster and another plane destruction when the Americans exploded a plane over the USA because its pilot refused to identify himself and the US thought they were Iranians or spies - in reality they were civilians. The fact that in Greene's life there are so many bloody incidents claiming a lot of victims makes him even more pessimistic and he cannot help concentrating on the unpleasant side of life in his works.

His pessimism is made even stronger by the dehumanisation that he can feel around him as an adult. In his despair he tries to escape from the world he does not like and to create another one where he can find no aggression, no low moral standards and no humiliating effects. First he tries to escape by reading and then later by writing. His escapism can even be detected in the stories themselves: for example in 'The Lottery Ticket' the main character goes on a holiday because he wants to escape from where he lives, he wants to be alone so that he can be happy about coming back. However he finally escapes from where he escaped to.

Considering all these facts one can conclude that Greene's background influences his works. His negative childhood experiences determine his later life to the effect that he becomes a pessimist. His mentality can be felt in his stories because he always focuses on the dark side of life. In other words: what happens to Greene in his life indirectly appears in his works too.