Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The End of the Affair:
1. Graham Greene tells his story through flashbacks. Why might he have used this plot technique? What does it lend to the story that otherwise might not be achieved through a straightforward timeline?
2. How would you describe Maurice Bendrix? Is he a sympathetic character? What about Sarah Miles? How would you describe her character? Is she sympathetic?
3. Why do the two fall in love? What is the nature of their affair? Is it sexual passion...is it simply wanting something forbidden or unattainable? Or is their relationship based on something more? What is each searching for?
4. Author Graham Greene plums the nature of human love in this novel. How does he present its complexities and its contradictions? How is it possible to both love and hate someone at the same time? Why are we willing to hurt those we love?
5. Follow-up to Question #4: In what way is Greene suggesting that human love mirrors divine love in this novel? How are the two connected?
6. Sarah makes a bargain with God, a God she's not sure she actually believes in. Why then does she continue to hold to her bargain if she is so skeptical? Did your feelings change toward Sarah when you understood her reasons for breaking off the affair? Or do you find her bargain admirable...or shallow and self-serving?
7. What happens to Sarah as she listens to atheist Richard Smythe denounce religion on the common and when he lectures her on the falsity of religious doctrines? Why do his atheistic arguments, which she tries to accept, have the opposite effect on her? What is at work? Is it simply reverse psychology? Or something else? What makes Sarah come to think of Richard as a believer—rather than the atheist he professes to be?
8. What is the spiritual journey that Sarah ultimately makes as she reaches the close of her life?
9. Talk about the arguments Bendix has with God toward the end of the novel. How does he move from disbelief to belief? How would you desdribe the nature of his faith...has he reached a final acceptance of God?
10. What, does Graham seem to be saying in this novel about the need for divine love? Why isn't human love adequate for our needs?
11. What feelings did you experience at the end of the novel?
12. Has reading this book in any way altered—or affirmed—your own beliefs? Has the book enlightened you...or not particularly?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
top of page (summary)