The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Published 1951 · 192 pages · 61,419 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Literary Fiction, Catholic Fiction, Romance
How hard is The End of the Affair to read?
The End of the Affair scores 75 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Greene's prose employs a precise and often formal vocabulary, including words like 'ignoble,' 'milieu,' 'fanlight,' 'hypotaxis,' and 'portico.' While generally accessible, the language is elevated beyond typical contemporary fiction, placing it above 'The Great Gatsby' but well below works with extensive jargon or invented words.
- Sentence structure: 68 out of 100
- The novel features moderately long sentences, frequently employing complex subordinate clauses and parenthetical asides that reflect the narrator's introspective style. While not reaching the extreme lengths of Faulkner or James, the syntax demands careful attention, making it more challenging than 'The Great Gatsby' but less so than '2666'.
- Abstraction: 70 out of 100
- Beyond its narrative of a love affair, the book delves deeply into philosophical and theological questions concerning love, hate, God, and human nature. Maurice and Sarah's internal monologues and dialogues with characters like Richard Smythe frequently shift from concrete events to abstract existential and religious debates, akin to the philosophical drama in 'Brothers Karamazov'.
- Information density: 65 out of 100
- The text is rich with psychological detail, internal conflict, and thematic resonance, requiring sustained attention to grasp the layers of meaning. Greene's use of an unreliable narrator and the constant interplay between past and present events create a dense reading experience, comparable to 'Lolita' in its texture and demands on the reader.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Maurice Bendrix explicitly frames his narrative as a 'record of hate,' yet his obsessive recollections and emotional turmoil force the reader to infer a profound, enduring love. The later inclusion of Sarah's diary provides a radically different, internal perspective on the same events, requiring constant re-evaluation of Maurice's self-deceiving account and demanding significant reader inference to piece together the emotional truth.
- Symbolic density: 85 out of 100
- The text is rich with recurring motifs that carry deep thematic weight beyond their literal presence, such as the 'desert' representing spiritual emptiness, the 'squeaking stair' symbolizing the fragility of secret love, and the V1 bombs mirroring internal chaos. These symbols are integral to understanding the characters' psychological and spiritual struggles, particularly Sarah's journey towards faith and Maurice's resistance.
- Ironic distance: 82 out of 100
- Maurice's narration is imbued with a pervasive, often bitter irony, as he claims objectivity while being deeply consumed by jealousy and self-pity. The gap between his stated intentions (e.g., wanting to hurt Sarah) and the underlying pain he experiences creates a strong ironic tension. This is amplified by the dramatic irony of Sarah's diary, which reveals truths Maurice is unwilling or unable to fully grasp, forcing the reader to read against his biased perspective.
- Resolution withholding: 78 out of 100
- While Sarah's death provides a definitive plot point, the novel deliberately withholds clear resolution on the central thematic questions of love, hate, God, and the nature of faith. Maurice's spiritual journey remains profoundly ambiguous, and the narrative explicitly denies a tidy ending, stating 'nothing in life now ever seems to end,' leaving the reader to grapple with the enduring uncertainties.
- Structural complexity: 75 out of 100
- The narrative employs a non-linear structure, shifting between Maurice's present narration, his extensive flashbacks to the affair's beginning and end, and the embedded, contrasting perspective of Sarah's diary entries. This fragmented chronology and the interplay of multiple, often contradictory, viewpoints require the reader to actively construct the story's timeline and reconcile differing accounts.
How The End of the Affair is regarded
The End of the Affair holds a literary regard score of 78 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.