Eros, Dios, and the End of the Affair

I am a 19 year old freshman at Moody Bible institute in Chicago. I am studying communications with a video emphsis. This is my paper. The structure and form are pathetic, but the substance is quite significant.

Eros, Dios, and the End of the Affair

By
Luke Ewing

Research Writing
CPO 576
03.07.2006

"Love doesn 't end. Just because we don 't see each other…" "Doesn 't it?"
"…people go on loving God all their lives, don 't they, without seeing Him?"
"That 's not our kind of love."
"I sometimes don 't believe there 's any other kind." (Greene 5) Graham Greene uses his novel The End of the Affair to show that erotic love is truly the strongest human expression of the innate desire for God. Greene uses the fictionalized tale of his own real life affair with the beautiful Catherine Walston to examine the relationship of hate to love, of physical to spiritual, of holy to tainted, and of erotic love to divine love.
A moderately popular novelist, Greene 's central protagonist, Bendrix, tells the woeful tale of his ultimately doomed love affair with Sarah Miles, the beautiful wife of civil servant Henry Miles. In a series of flash backs, Greene reveals the unlikely birth, anemic but passionate life, and abrupt death of this fling. It 's final demise arrives when Sarah finds her lover trapped beneath a door after a bomb lands nearby, and thinking Bendrix dead, she makes a pact with God that if God will spare Bendrix 's life, she would walk away from him forever. Remarkably Bendrix is unharmed and their affair is abruptly over.
Bendrix then embarks on a journey of investigation, searching his lover out, even hiring a private detective to discover Sarah 's secrets, to discover who it was that lured her away from him. Bendrix is certain that Sarah has a new lover, and that she is still playing around on her husband Henry. The thought of her in another 's arms drives Bendrix mad. In his pursuit, Bendrix unearths the trail of a wild lover wooing Sarah, but it is no man. It is none other than the being whom Bendrix has spent his life hating and fearing and loving and denying the existence of: God.
Graham Greene 's books have always been a reflection of his life. Greene himself stated with perfect irony, "novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction" (Escape 95). The truth in Greene 's life that drove him to write The End of the Affair was his passionate affair with Catherine Walston, the wife of one of the wealthiest men in England, Henry Walston (Books). It is this love affair, or its termination, which evoked Catherine 's love affair with God, which Greene saw as very similar to her affair with him, and in which Greene saw the truths expressed in his novel The End of the Affair.
It was from the Catholic Church that Greene first began to seek the truths that later appeared so prominently in his works. Greene had actually been a Roman Catholic since 1926. He explained his desire to convert by saying "‘I had to find a religion…to measure my evil against '" (Books). However, in spite of his conversion, Greene despised the title "Catholic writer", one bestowed upon him by numerous literary critics (American Society). Greene did not see himself as one who wrote about religion, but rather as one who wrote about life, of which religion and spirituality were a large part.
In the following year, Greene also Married Vivien Dayrell-Browning (Wikipedia). He was an awful father and Husband however, and the marriage eventually dissolved, leading into Greene 's long stretch of affairs with high class, prestigious women, and promiscuous relations with numerous prostitutes. Though still a confessing Catholic, Greene by no means agreed with the Catholic Church on many of it 's doctrines and dogmas. He lived quite as he wished with little or no regard for moral boundaries. However this did not stop him from pondering humanity, spirituality, and ultimately God and His role in the lives of men and women (Books).
It was in 1946, after nineteen years of marriage to Vivien, that Greene left her and his two children of twelve and fifteen for Catherine Walston, though he remained legally married to Vivien. Walston herself remained married to Henry and the mother to six children in spite of conducting her affair with Greene in full knowledge of her family (American Society).
Walston was herself a Catholic convert, as well as a stunning beauty. She was a dozen years Greene 's junior, as well as being Greene 's goddaughter. They actually met when Walston, having just converted to Roman Catholicism, asked Greene to be her godfather. During the course of their affair, Greene attempted to rationalize the immorality, even going so far as to "get confirmation from some priests that it was all right to go to confession again, even knowing that he would immediately return to the illicit liaison" (American Society).
In spite of his longings for God and his pondering of the supernatural and divine, "Greene 's earlier sense of the acute tension between earthly and heavenly impulses gradually slid into a more lax form of Catholicism better suited to his own personal lifestyle" (American Society).
But this story of longing and passion was much longer in the making than Greene 's decade long affair with Walston. Greene was a very troubled youth who even attempted suicide as a teenager (American Society). Greene seemed quite preoccupied with, if not troubled by the concept of grace, and God pursuing sinners. This is evident in his novel The Heart of the Matter, penned in 1948. George Orwell attacked Greene 's portrayal of the "sanctified sinner" in this novel by saying in a literary critique of the work, "‘He appears to share the idea, which has been floating around ever since Baudelaire, that there is something rather distingué in being damned; Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only '" (Books).
In this case, Greene explores the idea of a Holy God relentlessly seeking two blatant and active sinners, even in the face of their immorality. "…this sets off a titanic tug-of-war in several characters ' souls about the relative claims of human and divine love" (American Society). In his critical essay, "Religious Aspects in the Novels of Graham Greene," A.A. DeVitis states, "Greene creates a situation in which God becomes the lover of the heroine, Sarah Miles…he develops the theme that human love, even abandonment to passion, is an index to divine love"(DeVitis 51-52).
Greene goes to great lengths to set up the parallel, to emphasize the similarities between Sarah 's affair with Bendrix, and her subsequent affair with God. For example, some of the passages, particularly those found by Bendrix in Sarah 's journal could have been true of either Bendrix or God (Gregor 117).
‘I have no need to write to you or talk to you, you know everything before I can speak, but when one loves, one feels the need to use the same old ways one has always used. I know I am only beginning to love, but already I want to abandon everything, everything but you… ' (Greene 53) Also when Bendrix is observing her demeanor during his affair with her, the referenced affair could almost be interchangeable (Gregor 117).
She had no doubts, the moment only mattered. Eternity is said not to be an extension of time, but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space. (Greene 51)
In short, Greene saw the two as not only alike, but inextricably linked. Greene found that through his affair with Walston, namely through the ending of it, someone else was seeking him, the same someone who had lured his lover away from him. Greene, through Bendrix 's narrative, indicates that God uses pain to draw people to himself. Sarah states in her journal that when she was kissing the deformity on Smythe, "I am kissing pain, and pain belongs to you as happiness never does" (Greene 188). Bendrix comments "happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity" (Greene 190).
Here Greene presents the idea that God has conquered suffering, and uses it liberally to seduce his creations into loving him. It is through happiness that God takes people 's identities, their self-reliance, to replace them with his identity (Gregor 118).
Another one of the aspects of spirituality examined in The End of the Affair is that of its connection to the physical. Greene does this primarily through a transformation in the thought process of Sarah as recorded in her journal (Cunningham 211).
When I came in and sat down and looked around I realized it was a Roman church, full of plaster statues, and bad art, and realistic art. I hated the statues, the crucifix, all the emphasis on the human body. I was trying to escape from the human body and all it needed. I thought I could believe in some kind of a God that bore no relation to ourselves, something vague, amorphous, cosmic…like a powerful vapor…one day I too would become part of that vapor—I would escape myself forever. (Greene 109)
Then Sarah 's perspective begins to change, she begins to understand physicality and its relationship to divinity. Her pondering brings her horror. "…They believed in the resurrection of the body, the body I wanted destroyed for ever. I had done so much injury with this body" (Greene 109).
Sarah 's own body was tainted in her own site. She despised it and feared its resurrection from the grave. However then she begins to think about other bodies. "I thought, instead of my own body, of Maurice 's…I thought of a new scar on his shoulder…and so I thought, do I want that body to be a vapor (mine yes, but his?)" (Greene 110). This train of thought brings her to the inevitable question, if she were a vapor, could but Bendrix a physical being, could a vapor love a body? "Then I began to want my body that I hated, but only because it could love that scar" (Greene 110).
This line of thinking then brings her full circle (Cunningham 210).
Dear God, I had said. I should have said, Dear Vapor. I said I hate you, but can one hate a vapor?…I thought, sometimes I 've hated Maurice, but would I really have hated him if I hadn 't loved him too? Oh God, if I could really hate you, what would that mean? (Greene 111-112)
Then, in defiance of her husband, of all that was reasonable, that was detached, and that insisted on the gap between the physical and the spiritual, Sarah dipped her fingers in the "holy water" and made a cross on her forehead (Greene 112). Faith, according to Greene, must embrace the material reality in which we live in order to have any substance at all. It is because of this deeply rooted connection that Greene articulates the undeniable connection between physical love and spiritual love, between erotic love, and divine love. (Cunningham 213) It is at this point that Bendrix begins to realize that his sexual longing for Sarah is in part indicative of his spiritual and physical longing for a holy God. The two are intertwined and inseparable. Bendrix 's longing for fulfillment was the design of the God who now pursued him (Cunningham 214). However it is also clear that the fulfillment of the ultimate longing for God through an intimate knowing of God, does not negate the desire and need for purely human love. Sarah says to God after turning from Bendrix to him,
I just want (Maurice) like I used to in the old days…I 'm tired and I don 't want any more pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want your pain, but I don 't want it now. Please take it away for a while and give it me another time. (Greene 151-152)
It isn 't that Greene is saying divine love is the solution over human love, but rather that love of any kind is the same love, and that that love feeds on itself, increasing the hunger for more love. Love of God enhances the love of humans and vice versa, the longing for God being the core love around which all other loves spiral. The longings indicated are the proof that the love resulting is the purpose behind the longing (Hurismmootil). However to indicate this longing exists is not enough (Sharrock 159). Greene proceeds paint God as the irrepressible, irresistible lover, against which no man can compete. Bendrix feels a great sense of relief when he realizes that his lover has not fallen for another man, but in fact made a pact with God. "He feels confident that he can compete against a God in which he does not believe" (Sharrock 158). However when he goes to persuade her to return to him and to forget her foolish vow to what he considers a non-existent being, she escapes from him and flees to a church. Bendrix follows her and has his final conversation with her, failing again to persuade her to return to him (Sharrock 159). It is here that God removes Sarah from Bendrix forever by taking her life. It is clear that God will not allow Bendrix to win Sarah back. In fact not only has God won Sarah to himself, away from Bendrix, and then taken her to be with him, he has used her to lure Bendrix in to himself as well, a final irony which is not lost on Greene 's bitter Bendrix (Sharrock 158). It is clear that Greene paints God as both an earnest pursuer and a jealous lover. But even more than that, Greene illustrates the sovereign hand of God, moving unrelentingly to bring about his own purposes in the lives of his creations, something that incurs a tone of bitterness in Bendrix. God 's hold on Sarah 's will was stronger than all the reason Smythe could muster, and all the passion that Bendrix had to offer. God 's hand cannot be put aside, he will not be turned away, he cannot be refused or resisted by those whom he chooses to have love him (Sharrock 160). And for this, Bendrix hates God. He states it ironically: I said to God, so that 's it. I begin to believe in you, and if I believe in you, I shall hate you. I have free will to break my promise, haven 't I? But I haven 't the power to gain anything from breaking it. You let me telephone, but then you close the door in my face. You let me sin, but then you take away the fruits of my sin. You let me try to escape with D., but then you don 't let me enjoy it. You make me drive love out, then you say "There 's no lust for you either." What do you expect me to do now God? Where do I go from here? (Greene 122)
Again here, Bendrix asserts his frustration with God 's control and his methodically funneling Bendrix toward himself. But also he brings up the idea of hating God again. Earlier he spoke of hating God, even though he didn 't believe in him. Obviously on a deeper level he did believe in God for one cannot hate that which one truly does not believe exists. But here Bendrix is shown as not only believing in God 's existence, but also as, on a deeper level, loving God, as well as hating him. It is mentioned over and over throughout the book that in order for anyone to really hate a person, they must also love them. Just as Sarah is only capable of hating Bendrix because she also loves him, Bendrix has to only be capable of hating God because he also loves him. This realization actually fuels the bitterness in Bendrix because he comes to realize that not only has this God stolen his lover away from him, but he too loves that God, almost against his will (Hurismmootil).
It has been said of Greene by the American Society of Authors and Writers, "His heroes eventually are forced to face their shortcomings and arrive at salvation only after a long period of suffering and soul-searching agony" (American Society). Both Bendrix and Sarah experience just that. At the end of the road, they come to the final discovery:
Did I ever love Maurice as much before I loved You? Or was it really You I loved all the time? Did I touch you when I touched him? Could I have touched You if I hadn 't touched him first? Touched him, as I never touched Henry, anybody? And he loved me and touched me as he never did any other woman. But was it me he loved, or You? For her hated in me the things You hate. He was on Your side all the time without knowing it…he gave me so much love, and I gave him so much love that soon there wasn 't anything left when we 'd finished but You…You were there, teaching us to squander, like You taught the rich man, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You. (Greene 150-151).
God used Bendrix and Sarah 's sin to drain them of their love, to make a place for himself. God took the unholy, the tainted, the wrong, the sinful, and used it to pour his holy love into their hearts. Love for him, a better love for each other, and for Henry. His love multiplied, bringing fulfillment to the empty places.
What Bendrix had seen as a desire for a woman, what Sarah had seen as a desire for a man, God had designed to be a longing for real love, a desire for the divine. In this way, all longing, but particularly erotic longing, are really the indication of a deeper longing for a richer love. Sources Cited
Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1951.

Greene, Graham. Ways of Escape. London: Simon and Schuster 1980.

"(Henry) Graham Greene (1904-1991).". 2002. Books and Writers. .

Hurismmootil, K.C. Joseph, and S.J. Heaven and Hell on Earth: An Appreciation of Five Novels of Graham Greene. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1982.

Devitis, A.A. "Religious Aspects of Graham Greene 's Novels." The Shapeless God: Essays on Modern Fiction. Ed. Mooney, J. Harry; Staley, F. Thomas. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968.

Cunningham, S. David. Reading Is Believing. Grand Rapids Michigan: Brazos Press, 2002.

Gregor, Ian. "The End of the Affair." Graham Green: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Hynes, Samuel. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: The Prentice-Hall Inc., 1973.

Sharrock, Roger. Saints, Sinners, and Comedians: The Novels of Graham Greene. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.

"Graham Greene." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. March 2, 2006

"It Happened in History." The American Society of Authors and Writers. 2006. < http://amsaw.org/amsaw-ithappenedinhistory-100203-greene.html>

Cited: Greene, Graham. The End of the Affair. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1951. "(Henry) Graham Greene (1904-1991).". 2002. Books and Writers. . Hurismmootil, K.C. Joseph, and S.J. Heaven and Hell on Earth: An Appreciation of Five Novels of Graham Greene. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1982. Devitis, A.A. "Religious Aspects of Graham Greene 's Novels." The Shapeless God: Essays on Modern Fiction. Ed. Mooney, J. Harry; Staley, F. Thomas. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968. Cunningham, S. David. Reading Is Believing. Grand Rapids Michigan: Brazos Press, 2002. Gregor, Ian. "The End of the Affair." Graham Green: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Hynes, Samuel. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: The Prentice-Hall Inc., 1973. Sharrock, Roger. Saints, Sinners, and Comedians: The Novels of Graham Greene. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. "Graham Greene." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. March 2, 2006 "It Happened in History." The American Society of Authors and Writers