Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The End of the Affair, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Hatred
Faith, Acceptance, and the Divine
Jealousy and Passion
Adultery, Deception, and Honesty
Summary
Analysis
Bendrix sits at the café table rereading the same page of the newspaper and refuses to look up at the door, which would “betray a foolish expectation.” Bendrix says it is his “bad luck” that Sarah comes in and sees him just as he is looking at his watch. Sarah apologizes and explains that the bus she took got caught in traffic. When Bendrix tells her that it’s faster to take the subway, she abruptly tells him that she didn’t care about getting there fast.
Bendrix once again turns to subterfuge to hide his anxiety and excitement to see Sarah again. If he keeps looking at the door, then it will betray how anxious he is to see her walk in. When Sarah catches him looking at his watch, Bendrix feels as if he showed his excitement to see her, which prevents him from punishing her with his indifference.
Themes
Bendrix thinks about how Sarah has “often disconcerted [him] by the truth.” He thinks about times in their relationship when he had tried “to get her to say more than the truth” and promise their “affair would never end,” even though he just wanted to reject her promises himself. Sarah had never engaged in “that game of make-believe” and would instead assure him that she had never loved a man as much as him and never would again. Bendrix thinks to himself that even though Sarah didn’t realize she was doing it, she also played make-believe.
Not only does Bendrix try to manipulate the situation with Sarah in the present, but he reveals that he has a history of trying to manipulate her by tricking her into making false promises. This would give Bendrix the benefit of being able to tell the truth: their relationship will end, and it’s not forever. The one type of “make-believe” Sarah does play, according to Bendrix, is when she’d tell him that she would never love anyone as much as she loved him. Bendrix sees this as a delusion on Sarah’s part, since he suspects that she’s having another affair.
Themes
Sarah sits down and tells Bendrix that she made a reservation at Rules, where they used to go to lunch together. Bendrix believes they must look tense, because he notices that they’ve caught the attention of a man sitting with a young boy in the café. Bendrix tells Sarah that they can go there for lunch. Sarah says she’s never been back to Rule’s, but Bendrix says he goes there several times a week. When Sarah stands up and suggests they go, she has a coughing fit that concerns Bendrix, but she assures him that nothing is wrong.
Bendrix once again tries to downplay his feelings and Sarah’s importance by saying that he goes to the restaurant they used to frequent together all the time. By saying this, he hopes to convey to Sarah that he hasn’t changed one aspect of his life since she left, which would mean that she was never a very important part of it.
Themes
When they arrive at Rules, the waiter greets Sarah and Bendrix and observes that he hasn’t seen either of them in “a very long time,” which makes Bendrix regret telling Sarah that he still spends a lot of time there. After eating their lunch, Sarah tells Bendrix that she is worried about Henry and asks Bendrix to check on him from time to time because he’s lonely. Bendrix asks Sarah how Henry is lonely with her and she reminds him that Henry’s “never really noticed [her]. Not for years.”
By saying Henry “hasn’t really noticed [her]” in a long time, Sarah means that she and Henry do not have a very active sex life together. Henry, unlike Bendrix and Sarah herself, is passionless; he doesn’t feel sexual desire for Sarah, or if he does, he doesn’t show it.
Themes
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Sarah asks Bendrix if he’s working on another book and tells him that she didn’t like his last one very much. Bendrix notes that it has been difficult to write anything since the end of the war. Sarah tells him she had been afraid he would publish the book she “hated,” and he assures her that writing a whole book is “too hard work for a revenge.”
The book Sarah hated is the one Bendrix was writing during the beginning of their affair. Sarah was worried Bendrix would publish it because she knew that Bendrix had been using Henry as a model for a ridiculous character. Sarah believes this would have been particularly cruel and that Bendrix might have done it for revenge to hurt her after their relationship ended.
Themes
Bendrix pays the bill and they walk out of the restaurant. Bendrix stops by a grating where he and Sarah shared their first kiss years before, so they can say their goodbyes. Bendrix moves toward Sarah and says her name, but just then she has another serious coughing fit. Bendrix, “with bitterness,” tells her that she needs to do something about her cough, but she tells him it’s only a cough and says goodbye.
Bendrix is clearly hoping to recreate their first kiss, which hearkens back to his previous thought that he might have woken up some dormant feelings in Sarah after seeing her for the first time in nearly two years. When Sarah starts coughing, Bendrix suspects that she did it on purpose to avoid kissing him, hence his “bitterness” towards her about it.
Themes
