End of the Affair - Greene vs Hollywood Anonymous College

What we watch on screen in the course of a film is the culmination of the skills of artists: writers, directors, animators, actors. When a book is made into a film, screenwriters may use aspects of literary design, which have the ability to alter the themes of the original text for dramatic effect, or viewer satisfaction. The End of the Affair (1999) is a prime example of how easily this can be done by using changes in point of view and narrative configuration when moving from novel to film. The screenwriter (Neil Jordan) simplifies Greene’s original story about the conflict between religious and human love, resulting in a more basic love story.

Graham Greene wrote The End of the Affair in the first person, from the point of view of Maurice Bendrix, an up-and-coming writer during the Second World War in England. It is implied that Greene based the character of Maurice Bendrix on himself, expressing anger and bitterness for his own lover through his writing. In the novel, Bendrix is presented as jealous and stubborn, and he seems to be cursed with an eternal, incurable frustration. In the second paragraph of Chapter 1, Greene uses the word “hate” seven times as an almost-warning to the reader about the nature of his book. This...