The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Published 1951 · 192 pages · 62,642 words · about 8 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 77 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.

Where The End of the Affair sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (114 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, The End of the Affair scores 66 out of 100. A second mythos, tragedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.3. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
Henry was important, but important rather as an elephant is important, from the size of his department; there are some kinds of importance that remain hopelessly damned to unseriousness.
Symbol: Formal
Only the old Victorian stained glass above the door had stood firm.
Mythos: Tragic Pathos (Irony phase 4) (irony iv)
O God, You’ve done enough, You’ve robbed me of enough, I’m too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever.
Genre: Confession + Novel
So this is a record of hate far more than of love, and if I come to say anything in favour of Henry and Sarah I can be trusted

Where the story of The End of the Affair takes place

  • London, 1939-1946 (1939 to 1946), the main setting
  • Clapham Common and wartime London, 1939-1946 (1939 to 1946)

5 things that are true of The End of the Affair, with the passage for each

  1. The frame story begins on a wet January night in 1946 on Clapham Common.

    that black wet January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain

  2. The detective agency charges three guineas a day plus expenses.

    And when we came to the charges, Mr Savage was surprisingly moderate: three guineas a day, and expenses

  3. The lovers use the word 'onions' as a code for their love and for the act itself.

    Love became ‘onions’, even the act itself ‘onions’.

  4. The V1 blast knocks out two of Maurice's teeth.

    The fist that fitted into my cheek was the china handle of the door, and it had knocked out a couple of my teeth.

  5. Sarah's mother had her secretly baptized a Catholic when she was a little over two.

    Sarah was just over two.

Scenes in The End of the Affair that Frye would name

35 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Confession, untitled
So this is a record of hate far more than of love, and if I come to say anything in favour of Henry and Sarah I can be trusted The opening announces the introverted, self-scrutinising autobiographical register.
Anagnorisis, untitled
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. Reading Sarah's diary reverses Maurice's whole understanding of her and of the affair.
Pathos, untitled
An awful thing’s happened. You ought to know. Sarah’s dead. The announcement of Sarah's death, the sacrificial scene of the book.
Agon, untitled
That you were her pimp. You pimped for me and you pimped for them, and now you are pimping for the latest one. Open verbal combat between the two men in Victoria Gardens.
Anagnorisis, untitled
I’ve caught belief like a disease. I’ve fallen into belief like I fell in love. Sarah's last letter discloses the conversion that explains her renunciation.
Agon, untitled
I’m not in pain, I’m in hate. I hate Sarah because she was a whore, I hate Henry because she stuck to him Maurice's contest with Father Crompton and with God by proxy erupts at dinner.

Books that share these scenes with The End of the Affair

About the author

Graham Greene