‘The End of the Party’ by Graham Green
The End of the Party by Graham Green is the story of Peter Morton and his twin brother, Francis. Peter “was the elder, by a matter of minutes, and that brief extra interval of light, while his brother still struggled in pain and darkness, had given him self-reliance and an instinct of protection towards the other who was afraid of many things.” And one of the things Francis dreaded the most was darkness.
The night before January the fifth, when Mrs Henne-Falcon was giving her children’s party, Francis had a nightmare, anticipating the horrors he would have to go through later that day when he was to play hide and seek in the dark. Just before the party Francis “felt ill, a sick empty sensation in his stomach and a rapidly beating heart, but he knew the cause was only fear, fear of the party, fear of being made to hide by himself in the dark, unaccompanied by Peter and with no night-light to make a blessed breach.”
What happened at the party and how everything went terribly wrong rests with the reader to find out by him/herself.
Graham Green was a British novelist, playwright, journalist and short story writer who was born in 1904. He died in 1991.
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