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The End of the Affair | Introduction

Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affair was first published in 1951 in England. The events of the novel concern an adulterous affair in England during World War II. With the war and the affair over, Maurice Bendrix seeks an explanation of why his lover, Sarah Miles, broke off their relationship so suddenly. Greene's contemporaries could relate to the setting of the story, as the war was fresh in their memories and they were living in the same postwar period as the characters. Within this setting, Greene explores themes of love and hate, faithfulness, and the presence of the divine in human lives. Critics have been generally positive in their reviews and analyses of the novel, and readers have embraced it for more than fifty years. One of Greene's early admirers was William Faulkner.

Critics consider The End of the Affair the last in Greene's Catholic tetralogy. In the first three books of the four, Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, and The Heart of the Matter, Greene depicts God as a source of grace in people's spiritual lives, but in The End of the Affair, Greene presents a more active, involved God who is a force in people's earthly lives (performing miracles through Sarah, for example). All four novels address the ideas of mortal sin and redemption. To many critics, The End of the Affair is the most obviously Catholic of Greene's novels, due in large part to the apparent sainthood of the heroine, whose death is followed by a series of miracles.

The End of the Affair Summary

Books 1-2
As The End of the Affair opens, the narrator, Maurice Bendrix (called simply "Bendrix" by his friends) explains that he is a writer and thus is in control of the story he is about to tell. Although it is a true story, he determines how much of it he will tell—at what point he will begin his tale and at what point he will end it. He begins with the night he encounters Henry Miles, the husband of a woman with whom Bendrix had an affair in the recent past. Henry has no idea that Bendrix was once involved with his wife. The two men go to a bar to get out of the rain, and Henry reveals that he thinks Sarah (his wife) is seeing another man. Pretending to be a friend to Henry, Bendrix offers to secure a private investigator to find out the truth. In reality, Bendrix is jealous and wants to know for his own reasons if Sarah is seeing someone. Bendrix's affair with Sarah ended suddenly, and he is tormented by the breakup and longs to know why she ended the relationship. When Bendrix is talking to Henry, he mentions that a demon encourages him to be deceptive and false in pretending to be Henry's friend so that he can find out about Sarah. At various points throughout the novel, Bendrix mentions this demon, which represents his hate and selfishness.

Henry decides against hiring an investigator, but Bendrix does so anyway. A man named Mr. Parkis is assigned to the case. Parkis follows Sarah and reports back to Bendrix on what he sees, which is very little. When Henry finds out that Bendrix has hired a detective, he guesses that Bendrix's interest in Sarah means that they were once involved with each other. Bendrix admits this, and the two men talk calmly about it.

Parkis finds that Sarah has been visiting a man named Richard Smythe, so Bendrix creates a ruse in order to visit him. Smythe, a man with "livid spots" on the... » Complete The End of the Affair Summary