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Henry Miles
Richard Smythe is an atheist who regularly goes to a public park to speak to passersby about the nonexistence of God and passes out cards with his sister, Miss Smythe, inviting people to talk privately with him in his apartment. Sarah hears him talk one day and feels bad for him because everyone throws his cards away. She keeps a card and later decides to go talk to him, hoping that if he talks her out of believing in God, then she can break her promise to God not to be with Bendrix anymore. Sarah starts going to Smythe’s house regularly, but instead of convincing her that God doesn’t exist, he accidentally makes her believe in God even more. At their final meeting, Sarah tells Smythe that she comes to listen him just because she likes him and he proposes marriage, which she refuses. Smythe also has a peculiar set of spots on one of his cheeks, and he very self-consciously tries to hide that cheek when talking to people. After Sarah’s death, the spots miraculously disappear and Smythe tries to tell Bendrix that it was a miracle, but Bendrix refuses to admit it’s more than a coincidence. It would seem that Smythe, like Bendrix, begins believing in God after Sarah’s death.
Richard Smythe Quotes in The End of the Affair
The The End of the Affair quotes below are all either spoken by Richard Smythe or refer to Richard Smythe. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 5, Chapter 1
Quotes
I though, I’ve got to be careful. I mustn’t be like Richard Smythe, I mustn’t hate, for if I were really to hate I would believe, and if I were to believe, what a triumph for You and her. This is to play act, talking about revenge and jealousy: it’s just something to fill the brain with, so that I can forget the absoluteness of her death. […] She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
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‘Oh, she doesn’t belong to anybody now,’ he said, and suddenly I saw her for what she was—a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint’s her bones could be divided up—if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon, so why shouldn’t everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.
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Richard Smythe Quotes in The End of the Affair
The The End of the Affair quotes below are all either spoken by Richard Smythe or refer to Richard Smythe. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 5, Chapter 1
Quotes
I though, I’ve got to be careful. I mustn’t be like Richard Smythe, I mustn’t hate, for if I were really to hate I would believe, and if I were to believe, what a triumph for You and her. This is to play act, talking about revenge and jealousy: it’s just something to fill the brain with, so that I can forget the absoluteness of her death. […] She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
‘Oh, she doesn’t belong to anybody now,’ he said, and suddenly I saw her for what she was—a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint’s her bones could be divided up—if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon, so why shouldn’t everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.
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