55 pages • 1 hour read
Graham GreeneThe End Of The Affair
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Maurice Bendrix
The narrator and ostensible protagonist of The End of the Affair is Maurice Bendrix, known to most people as Bendrix. Greene writes the book from Bendrix’s own perspective, as though it were Bendrix himself who was writing and documenting his experiences with Sarah. As such, the narration is very often subjective, and Bendrix’s own opinions and interpretations color the events. In some respects, he is an unreliable narrator, though he has few qualms about revealing his negative character traits to the audience. Bendrix is not a wholly sympathetic character, but his willingness to reveal unlikable traits makes him more trustworthy.
For the most part, Bendrix is a man consumed by negative emotions. When he begins to the text, he is wracked with loathing for Sarah. He introduces himself to the audience in such terms, revealing, “I hated Henry—I hated his wife Sarah too” (4), and making no effort to downplay the strength of this emotion. Additionally, he experiences jealousy, self-pity, bitterness, and an almost-permanent sense of self-loathing, added to an intellectual arrogance and a large ego. This combination often leads to Bendrix misjudging other people or misinterpreting their actions, particularly in relation to religion.
Bendrix is a confirmed atheist who dogmatically refuses to entertain the existence of God. Once Bendrix begins to read Sarah’s diary and learns about her interest in religion, he blames this belief for the death of his relationship. Without believing in God, he comes to loathe the idea of religion as much as he loathed Sarah. By the end of the book, he admits, “I'm sick with life, I'm rotten with health. If I begin to love God, I can't just die” (99), as the specter of Sarah’s religion haunts him as much as the memory of her as a person. Her belief in a higher power broke up their relationship, and without ever believing in God, Bendrix is able to fixate his blame on religion as the force which is keeping him from being loved.
This kind of acerbic personality is one of Bendrix’s defining traits. When they first meet, Sarah tells Bendrix he seems “to dislike a lot of people” (14), and this is evidenced throughout the book. Bendrix changes his opinions of people but usually defaults back to the negative. Parkis, Savage, and Smythe all arouse his interest at one point or another, but Bendrix quickly finds himself bored or distrustful of them.
To some extent, Bendrix seems aware of his unlikable personality. He writes that “it’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love” (48). His interest in Sarah stems, in part, from her brutal honesty with him. She talks to him as though he is “a human being to her and not a writer” (80), but he still quarrels and fights with her frequently, even when they are together. He details all these incidents, revealing to the reader how deeply unlikable he is, though maintains his honesty throughout. Coupled with his insights into the human psyche, his humor, and his eventual friendship with Henry, Bendrix becomes something of a sympathetic and almost likeable character.
Sarah Miles
Sarah Miles is Bendrix’s lover, who conducts their affair under the nose of her husband, Henry. She is introduced by Bendrix’s narration through her actions, rather than her physical appearance, as Bendrix admits, “I have never been able to describe even my fictitious characters except by their actions” (10). In Sarah’s case, her actions typically involve illicit love affairs and being hated from a distance by Bendrix.
There are two distinct versions of Sarah present in the text. The first of these is portrayed in the opening two books, where Sarah as a person is largely absent from the text but dominates the story, nonetheless. In these moments, Bendrix conveys his obsession with Sarah, and she is less a character and more a reference point for Bendrix himself. Before she appears in the book, Bendrix has already discussed how much he hates her and how much more he might appreciate her husband if she were dead. When she does appear for the first time, Sarah enters the room while Bendrix and Henry plot about her in secret. She is disarmed, stunned to see her former lover talking to her husband. The audience enjoys Bendrix’s perspective, fully aware of what has already transpired before she arrived. As such, she appears naïve and unaware, a result of Bendrix’s own perspective being shared with the audience.
The second version of Sarah arrives when she is given her own voice. Although Bendrix is written as the book’s writer, he relinquishes control of the narrative for a series of chapters, in which Sarah’s diary is made available to the audience. In these moments, Sarah becomes a much more realized and complex character. Readers see scenes like her initial introduction from a new perspective. Whereas she may have seemed naïve previously, Sarah enters the house and feels a sudden rush of emotion. She is no longer “an indeterminate figure turning in the dripping macintosh” (10), but has begun to envisage herself as “an offering” (60), her dialogue with God adding additional weigh and importance to the sudden appearance of Bendrix. She has been bargaining for a chance to see him again and then he appears; the conspiratorial elements of the meeting fall away in Sarah’s perspective and her meeting with Bendrix becomes emblematic of the constant tension inside her. While Bendrix’s perspective denies Sarah this emotional depth, her own diary allows the reader to understand Sarah from an entirely different perspective.
This tension between the different versions of Sarah comes to define her character. The initial introduction by Bendrix—which portrays Sarah as a hated cheating wife—contrasts with the woman who is madly in love but unable to be with the man she loves, due to a pact made with a God in which she does not wholly believe. It is only when she is able to step out of Bendrix’s narrative shadow and seize control of her own narrative that the reader is able to understand the complexities of Sarah’s situation. But it is her inability to resolve this internal tension which eventually leads to her death. Although the diary allows her to make herself understood to the reader, she is unable to wrestle back control of her own faith and as a result, she dies.
Sarah’s tragic death is meek and away from the authorial perspective; though it is alluded to with constant coughing fits, her death is not shown to the reader. Similarly, her body lies in the guest bedroom and Bendrix refuses to look at it. Sarah’s death, much like her life, becomes a point against which Bendrix (and the book as a whole) defines itself. She is unable to take full agency over her life, dominated by Bendrix (from a narrative perspective), love (from an emotional perspective), and God (from a religious perspective). As such, Sarah Miles is one of the few truly tragic figures in the text.
Henry Miles
Of the three main characters, Henry Miles is perhaps the most sympathetic and the one who suffers most from Bendrix’s narrative subjectivity. He is portrayed as almost a caricature of a civil servant: a humble, decent man who fails to stand up for himself at the most trying times in his life, beset by empty beliefs in the structure of society and its social norms. Part of this characterization stems from the fact that Bendrix originally intended to write a novel about a civil servant and used Sarah to help him piece together the various parts of Henry’s life. He asks her a string of questions—including “What time did Henry have breakfast? […] Did he go to the office by tube, bus or taxi? Did he bring his work home at night? Did he have a briefcase with the royal arms on it?” (5)—using the mundane features of Henry’s routine to create a mundane character. The irony of this interrogation is that, by the end of the novel, Bendrix lives with Henry and gets to learn all of these tiny details for himself, firsthand. Thus, as the living arrangements of the characters change, Bendrix’s view of Henry softens and the two become friends. The humble, mundane civil servant remains, but Bendrix no longer hates Henry and writes about him in more glowing terms.
Henry’s defining traits are his innocence and his naivety. Bendrix repeatedly notes throughout the novel that he is far from the first of Sarah’s lovers and he is not the last. Henry, however, seems to be oblivious to all the infidelity in his relationship, even when Sarah is cheating on him with his neighbors and colleagues. When Bendrix finally tells him that he and Sarah were lovers, Henry does not react with anger. Instead, it is as though the truth about his life has finally come into focus. He seems almost embarrassed, rather than furious. He does not lash out at Sarah or Bendrix but instead resolves to try and make his marriage work.
This is partly due to the unique nature of his marriage to Sarah. By the time of her death, their marriage is a sexless friendship, a social bond formed from convenience. Sarah loves Henry, but not in a romantic way. She does not want to see him hurt and the thought of leaving him fills her with dread. When she does decide to leave, she finds her opportunity squandered by Henry’s health. A slight headache on his part stirs a concern in her which dictates the course of her life. Henry is a pathetic figure in the classical sense. In a novel where many of the characters are unsympathetic, he is mired in his own pathos. Sarah and Bendrix both pity Henry, as does Parkis.
By the end of the novel, however, Henry has regained some agency over his life. He invites Bendrix to live with him, replicating the social bond he had with Sarah. Like his marriage, the relationship with Bendrix is sexless and platonic. It is convenient and he confesses that he looks forward to “these evening walks of ours” (104). Henry finds some redemption, finding a minor silver lining in the death of his wife. Although Sarah is gone, he has found a new relationship with Henry which provides many of the same benefits. By the end of the book, Henry has come to terms with the reality of the world around him. He is no longer being cheated on by his wife, and he no longer lives in fear or timid suspicion. He has a friend and a routine, which seems to be all that he requires.
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By Graham Greene
