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 sleeps on the sofa in Henry’s house the night after Sarah‘s death. Over a bottle of whisky, Bendrix asks Henry to tell him what happened to Sarah. Henry explains that the night after he and Bendrix ran into each other on the Common (about four weeks prior) Sarah developed a cold but refused to see a doctor. Then, about a week prior, Sarah went out into the rain and came back completely soaked through and running a high fever. Henry called a doctor, but the doctor told Henry that he should have called a week ago—the cold had infected Sarah’s lungs and it was too late to save her. In his thoughts, Bendrix tells God, “I hate You if you exist.”
Henry’s revelation that Sarah’s illness took a turn for the worse after she ran out into the rain a week before—which was when Bendrix chased Sarah to the church—adds a new layer to Bendrix’s despair after her death. As the reason that Sarah left her house that day, Bendrix was the indirect cause of Sarah’s death, which presumably might not have happened if Bendrix had respected her wish not to go to her house.
Themes
Henry tells Bendrix that he doesn’t know how to handle the practical matters of a death; what to do with Sarah’s clothes, her makeup, and other items. When Bendrix reaches for another glass of whisky, Henry tells him there is plenty because Sarah had found a new source. This makes them both fall silent and Bendrix again addresses God in his thoughts: “why did You have to do this to us?” Bendrix asks Henry about Sarah’s funeral and Henry tells him that he is confused about what to do because Sarah “kept on asking for a priest” in her final hours. Henry said he is “worried,” but plans on having Sarah cremated.
Coincidentally, Bendrix is talking to God right now in much the same way Sarah talked to God in the first weeks and months after she left Bendrix. Like Sarah, Bendrix expresses hatred and blames God even though, at this time, he is not willing to admit to himself that he believes in God. Henry uses the same term to describe his fear that Sarah had become religious (“worried”) as he did earlier to describe his fear that she was having an affair. This could mean that what Henry really feared, in both cases, was the implication that there were things about Sarah he neither knew nor understood even after over a decade of marriage; for Henry, this would further highlight that he had failed Sarah as a husband.
Themes
Bendrix assures Henry that Sarah only mentioned a priest because she was delirious with fever, but Henry tells him that Sarah had been so strange before her death that she “may have become a Catholic” unbeknownst to either of them. Bendrix tells Henry that Sarah didn’t believe in God any more than they do. In his thoughts, however, Bendrix says that he “wanted her burnt up” so he’d be able to challenge God to resurrect her. He notes that his jealousy hasn’t diminished with Sarah’s death, but that he views it as her running away with another lover. Henry interrupts Bendrix’s thoughts to ask if he’s sure Sarah wasn’t a Catholic. Bendrix answers in the affirmative, but in his mind Bendrix warns himself not to hate like Richard Smythe, because if he “were really to hate [he] would believe.”
Bendrix views Sarah’s death as just another separation. Just as with their first separation, Bendrix looks for someone to blame—someone who must have taken Sarah from him because it is inconceivable that she may have left him of her own volition—and this time the only one he can blame is God. Just as Bendrix felt he was in a competition with Sarah’s possible lover, now he feels that he is in a competition for possession of Sarah with God. To that end, Henry wants Sarah’s body burned because then God won’t be able to possess that through resurrection as well. However, while Bendrix was willing to hate Sarah’s possible human lover, he must be careful now, because hatred implies belief and Bendrix is not ready to admit belief in God.
Themes
Henry asks Bendrix to stay the night as a favor to Henry and Bendrix agrees. When Henry leaves the room to get Bendrix some blankets and pajamas, Bendrix looks around the room. He notices a rock that he and Sarah found on an excursion once and a wooden rabbit that he purchased for her. When Henry comes back, he tells Bendrix to go ahead and take anything he wants because Sarah didn’t leave a will. Bendrix tells Henry that that is kind of him, and Henry replies that he is “grateful […] to anybody who loved her.”
When Bendrix went to Sarah and Henry’s house on the night Henry told Bendrix that he was worried about Sarah, Bendrix noted that their home held no indications of sentiment or personal taste. However, this passage makes it clear that Sarah did keep sentimental items that reminded her of Bendrix, highlighting the fact that he was an important part of her life.
Themes
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The next morning Bendrix wakes up before Henry. A maid brings Bendrix some breakfast and while he eats, he thinks about how he needs to “begin again” and fall in love, but he is ultimately unable to convince himself that he is capable of falling in love with anyone else. While Bendrix eats, Richard Smythe is shown into the room. When Richard says that he’s come to offer help to Henry, Bendrix coldly replies that most people would write a card. Richard asks Bendrix about the funeral and then reveals that Sarah would have wanted a Catholic ceremony—she wrote to him several days before saying she was beginning the process of conversion. In despair, Bendrix wonders how much more there is to learn about Sarah.
As Bendrix is prevented with more and more evidence of Sarah’s faith, he is confronted with the fact that he did not know her as well as he thought. Bendrix fears learning more about Sarah because he does not want to face the fact that he didn’t truly understand her, and that there were other people who understood her better—especially if those other people are men.
Themes
Richard asks to see Sarah’s body, so Bendrix points him in the direction of the spare bedroom, where Sarah’s body remains. After spending some time in Sarah’s room, Richard asks Bendrix to “Let her have her Catholic funeral” because she wanted it. Richard explains that he knows Henry has a lot of respect for Bendrix and would give Sarah a Catholic funeral if he suggested it, which sends Bendrix into a hysterical laughing fit. Richard angrily prepares to leave, but Bendrix gets up and explains that he was just rattled. Bendrix sees that Richard has a lock of Sarah’s hair in his hand and asks about it. Richard explains that Sarah “doesn’t belong to anybody now,” which makes Bendrix realize that Sarah has become “a piece of refuse” and that he had been a “fool” to believe he could own her.
When Sarah was alive, Bendrix believed that possession of her body was the most important thing—if he possessed her body, he also possessed Sarah as a person (meaning her personality, heart, and mind). However, in death Bendrix realizes how little ownership of her body ultimately meant because all the things that made Sarah herself could not be owned. They were not material things that could be touched, but intangible qualities. This hearkens back to Sarah’s journal, where she wondered whether she’d rather believe in material God or a God that was a “vapour.”
Themes
Richard asks Bendrix if he knows that Sarah wrote to him. This makes Bendrix remember, with sadness, that she never so much as called him. Richard tells Bendrix that in her letter, Sarah asked him to pray for her, so he did. Bendrix tells Richard that it doesn’t “seem right” that he prayed to someone he didn’t believe in. Bendrix walks out of the house with Richard and goes back to his own apartment.
Bendrix outwardly claims that prayers to a force one doesn’t believe in are wrong, but inwardly he has already shown himself guilty of this because he has addressed God more than once since Sarah’s death. This illustrates how hypocritical Bendrix is in the denial of his belief in God.
Themes
In his apartment building, Bendrix observes that the only thing that remains unchanged from 1944 is the stained glass window. In a narrated aside, Bendrix writes that Sarah really believed that “the end” began when she found Bendrix trapped under the door. He, however, believes the end began much earlier because there were fewer phone calls and far more arguments between them. Furthermore, Bendrix believes that if the bomb had hit his apartment a year earlier, then Sarah would have done everything she could to get the door off him instead of praying to God. Bendrix claims that we “delude ourselves into a belief in God” when we “get to the end of human beings.”
To Bendrix, Sarah’s decision not to do everything in her physical power to lift the door off of him was a tacit admission on her part that she was ready to be done with him—and what could have made that easier than if he were dead? Bendrix sees prayer as futile, so in his opinion, by praying Sarah was actually giving up on him.
Themes
Back in his narrative, Bendrix wonders what he did to Sarah that she would pray for him to have a second chance at life, which is now “odourless, antiseptic” and “empty.” Bendrix blames Sarah for this “as though her prayers had really worked.” Back in his apartment, Bendrix sees that a letter from Sarah has been placed on his desk in his absence
Even though Bendrix claims not to believe in the power of prayer, it is convenient to be able to blame Sarah for his current unhappiness by believing that her prayers caused it. In this way, Bendrix avoids having to take responsibility for his role in his own unhappiness.
Themes
In the letter, Sarah writes that she was not going to run away with Bendrix and that she “can’t” see him again. She writes about going to see a priest to ask if she could divorce Henry, become a Catholic, and marry Bendrix. The priest, however, told her that she had to stay married, so Sarah walked out. Sarah says that God has more mercy than priests, but that his mercy “sometimes looks like punishment.” Sarah asserts that she believes in God and “the whole bag of tricks” and that she has no strength left to fight either her belief or her love anymore. In the letter’s closing lines, Sarah writes that Bendrix paved the way for her belief by removing her “lies and self-deceptions.” Sarah ends the letter by saying she hopes God won’t keep her alive any longer.
Sarah says she “can’t” see Bendrix again. In this instance, “can’t” implies two things: first, that Sarah is morally bound by her vow not to see him; second, that she doesn’t have the strength to fight her feelings for Bendrix anymore. Sarah’s description of how God’s blessings or mercy can look like punishments highlights one of the most important lessons she learned on her spiritual journey: that there is no way for mere human beings to understand God’s actions, but just because something feels like a punishment doesn’t mean that it actually is; one might actually find that the punishments are blessings in disguise.
Themes
