Narrative Interpretation of Conflict between Love and Religion in The End of the Affair

Abstract

The End of the Affair is one of Graham Greene’s masterpieces. It mainly describes the romance between the hero Maurice and the civil servant Henry's wife Sarah in the context of the Blitzkrieg. Through three narrative perspectives, the author presents the different opinions of the hero and heroine and the heroine’s husband on religion and love.The previous scholars’ research on this text mainly lies in the direct analysis of the religious concept embodied in the text. On this basis, this paper analyzes the book’s special narrative techniques in presenting the theme of the novel, combined with each person’s language and psychological description, to reveal the conflict between love and religion. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the basic narrative theory. The second part analyzes the main figures’ views of love and religion from the perspective of narrative. The third part analyzes the conflicts between love and religion. The fourth part explains the function of narrative methods adopted in the paper to present the theme.

No matter whether the first or the third-person narrative has its own advantages, this is also an innovation point in this thesis. In addition, the paper still has significance for the study of literary works by combining narrative techniques with the theme of the novel. It is hoped that the study will lead to the conclusion that the first-person narrative perspective will help increase the reliability of the story and help launch the theme.

Key words: Graham Greene; love; religion; narration