The End Of The Affair

“To me comfort is like the wrong memory at the wrong place or time: if one is lonely one prefers discomfort.”

Bendrix’s acerbic personality is evident from the opening pages of The End of the Affair. Lines such as the one quoted above demonstrate how obsessed his is with the memory of Sarah and their love affair, as well as how miserable he has become after the affair ended. The use of a more formal, literary tone—an emphasis on indefinite pronouns and colons at the expense of commas—highlights Bendrix’s credentials as a writer, while adding a touch more credibility to his self-diagnosis of his miserable state. The audience learns that this is a man wrapped up in misery, a misery which he describes in the most vaunted possible terms.

“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.”

Given the living arrangements which Henry and Bendrix eventually find for themselves, the early descriptions of Henry in the text are telling. Bendrix is a writer motivated by his own emotions. He describes relationships with people in terms of love and hate, always opting for the strongest possible emotive states. But his treatment of Henry is different and in a way, almost more damning. Henry is not a threat to Bendrix, so the terms of description are banal and boring. Henry is almost furniture, background decoration which emboldens Bendrix’s love affair with Sarah.