Thinking Activity: Sense of an Ending

Thinking Activity: Sense of an Ending

Hello regards !

Here is my task/activity given by Dilip Barad sir head of the  English  Department  MKBU.

# Brief Biography of Julian Barnes :

Julian Barnes studied modern languages at Oxford before going on to work for the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1977, he began reviewing books for the New Statesman and New Review magazines, and later became a television critic. He published his first novel, Moreland, in 1980, but his first major critical success was the 1984 novel Flaubert’s Parrot, in which he explored his protagonist’s obsession with certain features of the life of 19th-century French writer Gustave Flaubert

Que : Explain how through the memory of Tony Webster, Julian Barnes justifies the universal truth that ‘one cannot know what one does not know’.

This novel is based on the memory of the writer (narrator). That is how the narrator recalls his past (memory) and that creates a sequence of accidents and that makes a twist in the story. 

This novel is mainly centered on the characteristics of 21st century writing. The Sense of an Ending is about "memory and time”. The book opens with a short list of memories. That memory is a part of the narrator's past experience. 

As a memory played vital role in the developing of plot, Julian Barnes here justifies the Universal Truth that “One cannot know what he does not know” – with the reference of Tony Webster that he never understand the words of Veronica, When Tony asked Veronica bout the Money at that time she replied with very tragic answer “Blood Money”.  When Tony asked about other things at that time Veronica also replied with unaccepted answer: -

"You still don't get it, you never did, and you never will. So stop even tring."

Tony does not understand that what's happened because of imperfection and weakness of memory, we cannot reach to reality as we have an assumption that whatever our memory suggests is only reality. Tony did not get sense about many things, about young Adrian because his memory tells him one thing that Adrian has relationship with Veronica. Having this memory, he is in assumption that, young Adrian may is Veronica and Adrian’s son. He even doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, means he cannot bring himself out of his memory and cannot have view that, perhaps Adrian had relationship with other.

" What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.”

# A General critique of the novel :

After being short-listed for three times, finally Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending brought the 

2011 Man Booker Prize in his hands. The Sense of an Ending is Barnes’ eleventh novel, released on August 4, 2011.

The novel has been divided into two parts, both parts are narrated by the main protagonist Tony Webster. The first part of the novel begins in the 1960s with four friends. Tony is the main narrator, Adrian is the most intelligent of the four. At the end of their school days, Robson at the same school hang himself 

after getting a girl pregnant. All four friends discuss the philosophical difficulties of knowing what exactly happened. Adrian and Tony depart from each other by going to Cambridge University and Bristol University. Tony gets Veronica as Girlfriend. Adrian commit suicide. Tony has nothing in 40 years. Veronica's mother has two letters which reveal the secret of the novel. 

The novel The Sense of an Ending to be a bundle of mysteries in itself, the novel is all about self-deception. The writing is beautiful and beyond words and the philosophy which is expressed well in the novel. This novel is a mystery of memory and missed opportunity, as Tony. he novel, The Sense of and Ending is a title which begins with the readers’ eyes that the narrator Tony is into the middle age, he is again thinking things over and over. There is a “Ending” that can be taken to be death itself or the way various things turn out, because the sense of an ending is both, death and of the fact that life is less and less in his character.

Reference : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uwIxo_pdhY6b_nXeCGFbJLeFH0xj5HHIiEJIHPVuaS8/edit?usp=drivesdk

Thank you….