Compare and contrast ways in which David Guterson and Grahame Greene present painful conflict in love relationships that cross boundaries within Snow falling on Cedars and The End of the Affair

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 “Here’s much to-do with hate, but more with love” (Romeo). Compare and contrast ways in which David Guterson and Grahame Greene present painful conflict in love relationships that cross boundaries within “Snow falling on Cedars” and “The End of the Affair”

Caroline Finnerty    

Guterson and Greene profoundly scrutinize how love and hate entangle within their characters of Ishmael and Bendrix. The painful aftermath ensuing the death of a passionate love affair leads to an apt account of internally conflicting emotions and the blurry line separating them - as Bendrix comments:

hatred seems to operate the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions”

A pivotal issue for both Guterson and Greene is the way in which conflict of emotions and relationships affect men and women differently. Both authors use the male characters to depict a selfish love centred on desire and romantic ideals. Ishmael is portrayed as naive and childlike in his blind dreams:

“Love is the strongest thing in the world you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we’re safe from it all.”

He chooses to ignore the problems arising both from the war and Pearl Harbour and the culture of their people. The Japanese and Americans were enemies in the war, who would have objected to the romance. Dissimilarly, Bendrix is perceptive of the cruelty of the world. He becomes obsessed by the idea that Sarah will eventually end the affair, returning to her safe marriage, to the extent that he “hated her because I wished to think she didn’t love me” and subconsciously attempted to push her away. Both writers depict the women as self less and aware of their real responsibilities and restrictions in life. Whilst the men blame culture and religion, the women turn to it in the hope for more than just a self focussed existence.

Laura Kryhoski comments:

“For Sarah, love is physically fatal, for Bendrix, it becomes a “record of hate.”

Yet this seems to over simplify the varying approaches to love the characters hold. For despite claiming regularly that the text is a “record of hate” Bendrix retracts this statement retrospectively:

When I began to write I said this was a story of hatred, but I am not convinced. Perhaps my hatred is really as deficient as my love.”.

One difference in the two women, however, is the role of influences in enforcing this selflessness. Hatsue is indoctrinated from a young age by her teacher Mrs Shigemura, who tells her to keep avoid the Americans and to “marry a boy of your own kind”. She does not choose her path but instead is bound to it. Sarah, on the other hand, turns to religion of her own accord when she is void of any other hope:

“I love him and I’ll do anything if you’ll make him alive, I said very slowly, I’ll give him up for ever only let him be alive with a chance,”

It is not until later that Sarah receives outside influence to remain on the path from the Catholic Church.

No, no, no, he said, I couldn’t marry you, I couldn’t go on seeing you, not if I was going to be a Catholic.”

This contrast in the way the two women are affected demonstrates the different settings in which they live. Although both books are set in the Second World War, Hatsue is directly affected by it and must follow the rules in order to maintain her culture whilst Sarah is amongst the women in England gaining independence through the war and the freedom it offered. Both authors display negative aspects in their male characters yet the true negativity lies with the women, both responsible for ending the relationship and causing the men pain. The influence of religion and culture used here, by  Guterson and Greene to end the romances, could represent how propriety complicates life, and relate directly to the war in which race and religion were instrumental features.

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Both writers experiment in time, focussing especially on how, despite popular theory, it does not heal old wounds. Neither novel follows the classic chronological structure. Cedars moves flawlessly between present and past with the aid of character testimonies in court and private memories of Hatsue and Ishmael.  This gives the novel a court-like structure, offering a courtroom drama genre, with the writing repeatable returning to the trial, using it as a point for focalisation. This style might mirror the restrictions of society on Ishmael and Hatsue’s relationship, which confine them as they try to break out of conventionality. The idea ...

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