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Graham Greene Anniversary 2: The End of the Affair
1.35k
‘This is a record of hate far more than of love.‘ So muses our narrator, as he begins to relate the story of how he came to be conversing, one rain-soaked evening on the Common, with the husband of his former lover. Maurice Bendrix is a man in hate, and there in the rain we are gathered into his loneliness to begin a journey which draws us into the depths of love, jealousy, and desire. a journey which forces us to question with our narrator that much pondered theme of Greene’s work; what is it that makes us human?
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Following the novel’s multilayered and fractured nature, we dance back and forth in time as Bendrix relates the events of the passionate affair and its mysterious ending. On gaining possession of Sarah’s diary through his private snoop, he finds the reason why it abruptly ended, but his confusion is only exacerbated as we too are invited, to read her journey of the last few years. ‘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 God to love.‘ Dismissing the reasons for Sarah’s abandonment of him, Bendrix sets out to reunite the pair. They begin again, but the affair is short-lived and brought to a tragic close. In the emotional debris that remains, hatred starts to give way to hope and to love, but love of a different kind. One starts to question who in this novel is really being pursued, and by whom?
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