What is enduring love?

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Enduring Love is one of the best-written British books of the last decade of the twentieth century, and adapted as a film in 2005, starring Daniel Craig, Rhys Ifans and Samantha Morton. It is an exceptionally engaging story, and you cannot help but reflect on the tensions Ian McEwan sets up. The most obvious is the tension between Joe and Jed Parry. Joe is the narrator of the book, and the film is very much from his perspective as he is in every scene. Joe is an atheist - a science writer in the novel, and a biology lecturer in the film. Parry is a religious nutcase who becomes obsessed with Joe. The title is cleverly ambivalent - the story is both about how love can endure through great emotional pressure, and about how to endure an inappropriate and unwanted 'love'.

There are a couple of things going on here. One is the antipathy between religion and science, which McEwan assumes without spelling out. Parry is some kind of Christian - a weird one. The book is clear that he's far from being orthodox in his faith, and he doesn't come across in the film as being a normal Christian. He's not involved in any church but defines his Christianity for himself. He's also mentally ill. But Jed is still seen as a Christian with an obsessive love for another man. Is there perhaps a subtle implication that religious belief and mental instability are not all that far apart?

Joe, on the other hand, is a hard-nosed rationalist. When he finds himself the object of another man's obsession he must find an explanation for it. Everything must be categorised and labelled. But Joe's rationalism goes too far. As the story progresses, a seed of doubt in Joe's own sanity begins to grow. He too is obsessed. In the film, Jed says to Joe: 'I'm just trying to help you, Joe, because really you're just like me.' By this point Jed certainly doesn't seem to be any more together than Jed, perhaps less so. Joe's long-term partner Clarissa (Claire in the film) has begun to doubt him, suspecting that it's Joe who suffers from delusions, not Parry.

In the novel, Clarissa is clearly an atheist too. But she's not a cool rationalist like Joe. Rather she is very emotional. Here is another major tension that McEwan sets up: rationalism versus emotion.

Where do McEwan's sympathies lie? He's an atheist but has said that he considers issues of faith to be important for everyone. Clearly, his sympathies aren't with Jed Parry. But neither does he side decisively with Joe. The character who appears most balanced is Clarissa/Clare, valuing both rationality and emotion - though not religious belief.

Another central theme in the book is that of trust in relationships. Joe and Clarissa start with a strong love for each other. But they become alienated from each other because of several small betrayals of trust. They are aware of this erosion of trust, but neither of them can bring themselves to forgive the breaches of trust that they perceive in the other. Forgiveness is something that none of the characters easily find - yet it's so vital to love that endures.

Jean Logan, the widow of the man killed in the balloon accident, wrongly accuses her dead husband of infidelity. When she discovers the truth she is distraught that the one who could forgive her is dead. 'Who can forgive me?' she laments. Good question. She seems to feel she will never be able to find peace because her husband is no longer alive to forgive her posthumous mistrust of him. But the Bible goes way beyond the importance of people forgiving each other and being forgiven, to the offer of forgiveness from God himself.

Human beings are finite and fallible, and, according to the Bible, we are fallen too - that is, every human being is a rebel against God, and our rebellion has corrupted us. So we are far from perfect, and we let others down, we misunderstand and miscommunicate - or we fail to communicate at all because we can get so wrapped up in ourselves. And we nurse our hurts and grievances, reluctant to forgive. And the lack of forgiveness drives us even deeper into our self-centredness and self-justification. Forgiveness between people can break through that vicious circle and open up possibilities for restoring relationships and for finding some measure of peace with ourselves. Forgiveness from God brings about peace with him. Peace with others and with ourselves should flow naturally out of that. It is much easier - and even more important - to forgive when you know that you are already forgiven yourself.

At the end of Enduring Love, there is a hint that Joe and Clarissa/Claire may be able to start rebuilding their relationship. We don’t know what happens but there seems to be some forgiveness - a central element of love that endures. Perhaps there is a tacit admission in Joe's behaviour that not everything is driven by biology after all. There are other things that make us truly human. Maybe in time they will come to understand the deep wisdom in the classic description of genuine love from the Apostle Paul:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8, NIV)

Postscript

For those of you who read the book and were startled to find an appendix including a scientific paper about this very case, this too is part of McEwan's clever fiction. For a discussion of this, see my article Blurring Boundaries listed below.

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