Graham Greene recovering the religious element, the awareness of the drama of the struggle in the soul that carries the permanent consequence of salvation or damnation, and of the ultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin and divine grace, could the novel recover its dramatic power. Suffering and unhappiness are omnipresent in the world Greene depicts; and Catholicism is presented against a background of unvarying human evil, sin, and doubt. V. S. Pritchett praised Greene as the first English novelist since Henry James to present, and grapple with, the reality of evil. Greene concentrated on portraying the characters' internal lives –
Graham Greene the writing of "The End of the Affair", published in 1951, when the affair came to an end. Greene had left his family in 1947, but in accordance with Catholic teaching, Vivien refused to grant him a divorce, and they remained married until Greene's death in 1991. Greene had also had several other affairs and sexual encounters during their marriage, and in later years Vivien remarked, "With hindsight, he was a person who should never have married." He had remained estranged from his wife and children, and remarked in his later years, "I think my books are my children." Greene