《The End of the Affair》读后感摘抄

《The End of the Affair》是一本由Graham Greene著作，Penguin Classics出版的Paperback图书，本书定价：USD 17.00，页数：192，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《The End of the Affair》读后感(一)：On End of the Affair

严格来说，不应该说读过，而是听过。

除了那套被我弃听三次才最终听完的TTC课程The Tools of Thinking外，这本是我迄今听过最难的了。生词、复杂句式、不断虚拟、正常语速，还有Colin Firth精彩的模仿、有意的含混、句尾的轻音还有英式那极常见但被他发挥得淋漓尽致的拐三拐，都加大了本书的难度。跑步时常常一次次的慢下来，低着头，右手放在左手臂上调节回放，听不懂，再回放......

同时，这也是我迄今听过文笔最好的一本。那点烂俗的外遇情节，竟被他写得如此沉重和纠结。后半部分听Sarah的日记，把我压抑的喘不上气。Colin Firth的声音真的太、太、太好听了，太好听了！！！爱死这声音了！

《The End of the Affair》读后感(二)：会被遗忘的作品

故事和语言都比较一般，人物的塑造很苍白，难以引起共鸣。

但是，一定会有读者喜欢它，因为它执着地在讲述一种情感——嫉妒。

我宁愿活在嫉妒带给我的痛苦中，也不要和解。

我要时时刻刻地想念你，拒绝遗忘。

引一段书的结尾：

O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever.

当然，讲深了说，这个故事可能也在用私人化的经验抗拒（二战）集体化的经验，写私人空间抵挡公众空间的侵袭，但这一方面，它做得很失败。将战争作为大背景置于小说中，笔墨却集中于个体的情感，这样的作品太多了。其中，写得比较出彩的有两部：杜拉斯的《广岛之恋》和张爱玲的《倾城之恋》。

这也是为什么我给二星的原因。很蹩脚。

《The End of the Affair》读后感(三)：Authenticity: Struggle or Submission

Does existence precede essence or essence precedes existence？ To some extent, it is the problem just the cat or the lumpy mattress. Maybe most people could not tell it on their first reaction. However, the answer, which has been subconsciously admitted for most of them, determines their values about destiny and whether they believe in existentialism or not.

From the perspective of existentialists, existence precedes essence, which means that human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. In the book The End of the Affair, we could find some element of existentialism and the trace of struggle from the character—Sarah, which shows us a female figure who suffered from a sequence of entanglement and emotional agony through her life. Throughout the story, we could find Sarah was never a woman who was willing to submit to her destiny. And based on this, we could use the concept of existentialism—authenticity—to analyze the process of her emotional fluctuation and ceaseless struggle to her fate. And more specifically, we will divide the process into two stages—‘An individual finding authentic faith’ and ‘Struggling to fate and becoming true to herself ’.

First, what does authenticity mean in existentialists’ eyes？ According to Kierkegaard, authenticity is reliant on an individual finding authentic faith and becoming true to oneself. In Sarah’s diary, after she made a contract with God, she appeared to be enormously torn and confused whether to find authentic faith and pursued her own love and freedom from the bottom of her heart. She even had a great try to give Henry the letter and hence leave him. To this extent, authenticity was fit with the spirit of Sarah’s resistance and struggle to her fate.

Nietzsche, an existentialism philosopher, pointed out his view about authenticity: ’An authentic man should elevate himself over others in order to transcend the limits of conventional morality in an attempt to decide for oneself about good and evil, without regard for the virtues on account of which we hold our grandfathers in esteem.’ In Book Three, Part III, when guests gathered in Henry’s home having dinner, a man with the spots was still attacking Christianity whereas nobody was caring. However, after undergoing the night with Bendrix and the contract with God, Sarah was in such a state of obsession: ‘If only he could convince me that you don’t have to keep a promise to someone you don’t believe in.’ She appeared to be really torn and confused, and became doubted about the religiously constructed principles and whether she should be limited to human virtues—keeping the promise with her God. Then, Sarah met Dunstan, Henry’s chief, and associated his appearance with destiny: ‘All he would do, I thought, was smile: he wouldn't be cross or indifferent -he would accept it as something that human beings did.’ Would Sarah also accept her own fate like Dunstan or just refuse to submit to that？ I suppose at that time Sarah was exceedingly helpless and meanwhile was worried that the inauthenticity and inactivation of heart would make her gradually submit to her fate and hence precipitate her into big emotional abyss. If she acted just as Dunstan, who seemed to lose his courage to struggle, and convinced herself that some form of determinism is true, she would lose the chance to pursue her own happiness. Nonetheless, she was not a person with obedient thought.

With everything going on and the continuously aggravating feeling of miss and agony, Sarah had an increasingly faith of authenticity. The extrusive performance was her challenge to God. After knowing Bendrix had had another girl as his new lover, Sarah was almost broken down, and she began to hate God and challenge the opinion of the existence of God. She recalled the story she ever learned in school: When King Henry II saw his birthplace burnt by his enemies, he swore to God: ‘Because you have robbed me of the town I love most, the place where I was born and bred, I will rob You of that which You love most in me.’ Since God had robbed her of all her happiness and made her drive love out, she never wanted to stay at the mercy of God and believe in him. She swore like the King, ‘Tell me that, God, and I’ll set about robbing you of it for ever.’ In existentialism, only reject the role of religion and believe in atheism can one be truly authentic. However, from Book Five, Part IV, we can know that Sarah was a Catholic with her mother when she was just a child, which doomed Sarah to be stuck in the swamp of theism through her life. Though she complained about the injustice of destiny and what God had treated her, she could not thoroughly get rid of the regulation of religion. Hence, even though she tried to became authentic and follow her heart with her utmost courage, she still could not completely discard the phantom of the God in her mind.

Sartre, another existentialism philosopher, described himself philosophical viewpoints, namely, the theory of free choice. What Sarah would do in her next stage of struggling to her fate was just fit for his theory. In Book Three, Part VI, Sarah had a growing feeling of being tired with Henry in such a dull life, without the companion of Bendrix. She wrote: ‘I don't fear poverty. Sometimes it's easier to cut your coat to fit the cloth than lie on the bed you've made’. She started thought about her prospective future, in which she would make a living with Bendrix and help each other in any trouble. It indicated a great leap of Sarah from confusing about destiny to possessing an active choice in the quest for authentic faith. She started believing in finding truth without the use of virtues and one’s free choice for his/her own happiness is really important. She wrote: ‘I thought, how happy I can make him and how easily. I longed again to see him laugh with happiness. ’ It seemed that she could easily derive freedom of her heart and make her own life without external pressure. So in the next step, she planned to give Henry the letter and leave him. She would ‘pack the large blue suitcase and the small brown one’, and ‘take enough clothes for a month’s holiday’ to leave the man who could not bring her real happiness. If she succeeded, she would receive her final happiness and be a true existentialist. However, later in action to left a letter and leave Henry to fulfill her desire, she was touched by Henry’s tear. She wrote: ’It would have been better for both of us if I’d left him years ago, but I can’t hit him when he’s there and now he’ll always be there because I’ve seen what his misery looks like.’ Sarah was too kind to leave Henry. And when she made that decision not to leave Henry, she couldn’t bear to be with him any more. From the bottom of her heart, she was reluctant to make this choice. Maybe it was another reason—kindness, that made Sarah could not make her free choice in the end. She was tremendously hesitating, which determined that she finally submitted to her destiny and all her struggle and attempt was in vain.

Throughout the whole fiction, we could see the mood of Sarah was in a high disturbance and her struggle was full of twists and turns. From the perspective of existentialists, Sarah actually did a good job to pursue freedom and her happiness. Nevertheless, to some degree, we could only call her a half-existentialist. According to the analysis above, we found two critical points that leaded Sarah to failure in her way to fight for future. One is that she was a real Catholic when she was a child. The seed of belief in religion produced a big phantom of inauthenticity for her. Even when she tried to stick to herself, she still worried about the punishment from God. So she could never break loose from the bondage of religion. Another one that caused the bad ending is her nature of kindness and hesitation. Nietzsche once supposed that ‘One must avoid herding animal morality if he is to find authenticity’. She was always hesitated between the gulf of morality and freedom. And the kindness made she put others’ feeling before her own pursuit. In the end, which was the trigger that blocked Sarah’s way to freedom and made her submit to her destiny and hence ‘end the affair’？ I suppose the two factors given before were a real point.