Thematic Concern In the novel Sense of an ending

 Thematic Concern In  the novel Sense of an ending.

Name: Bharti Dharaiya

M.A English semester: 4

Roll no: 03

Batch: 2019 - 2021

Enrollment No: 2069108420190008

Email id: bhartidharaiya123@gmail.com

Submitted to: Smt. S. B Gardi, Department of English, MKBU

Paper no- 13. The New literature

Topic :Thematic Concern in the novel Sense of an ending.

~ About Author Julian Barnes :

       

Julian Barnes is a contemporary English writer of Postmodernism in literature. He was more famous for his prosaic style, who was born in Leister on 19 January 1946 and was educated at the city of London school and magdalen college Oxford.

~ Introduction :

The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel written by British author Julian Barnes. The book is Barnes's eleventh novel written under his own name and was released on 4 August 2011 in the United Kingdom.The Sense of an Ending was awarded the Man Booker Prize. 

           

The Sense of an Ending is about the person’s memory of youthful days. The novella is divided into two divisions. The divisions are entitled as Part 1 and Part 2. The first part begins in the 1960s. It begins with four intellectually arrogant school friends. We are told two friends out of four. The first one is Tony Webster who is the narrator of the story and the second one is Adrian the most talented and intelligent among four.

~ Themes of Sense of An Ending 

• Imperfection of Memory

• Love

• Life or Death

• Responsibility

• Connections and reflections

• An Oedipus complex

# Imperfection of Memory:

Piqueras writes that “our memories are strongly influenced by our feelings, beliefs and the knowledge obtained after living a specific experience” 

  

In The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes uses retrospective narration to evoke an unreliable protagonist and explore this concept of fallibility of memory. 

The central theme of the novel is weakness of memory. Through the narrative of Tony Webster and his search for the reason for Adrian's death tries to justify one thing that is imperfection of memory, how our partial memory misleads us! Throughout the novel, the writer tries to prove human memory and how it creates assumptions on the human mind.

As ‘The Sense of an Ending’ is a memory novel, the narrative also tries to give the effect of fragmented memory. In the first part Tony tells his story of schooldays, all the events are in order and the narrative has particular flow. But at the end of the first part the narrative moves faster like the “Time passes” section of ‘To the Lighthouse’. In only a paragraph the narrator tells about his marriage and divorce with Margaret, a story of 40 years is told in some lines only. And the second part moves so slowly that events are some but covers half a novel.

In the novel from the beginning Barnes intends to question the reliability of memory and retrospect.

Tony Webster’s initial memories and what he recalls in retrospect of the discovery he makes. It will also consider to what extent Tony engages with his own unreliability and explicitly acknowledges that memory is fallible.

The concept of blame and argue that Tony modifies his memories in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for his past. 

Intelligence Isn't Everything

As a boy, Tony was in the top of his class, grade wise. Not afraid to let people know this, he was rude and arrogant, and ended up hurting other people's feelings. Although Tony may have gone to a top college in Bristol, that doesn't mean he was "successful". Relationships had quickly come to an end, and he never married. This life may be for some people, but true success isn't just about good grades and lots of money.

# Love

In The Sense of an Ending, Tony meets Veronica, and believes that he truly loves her. However, Veronica simply does not feel the same way, and says Tony would not be the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with. Hurt by this, Tony eventually forgets Veronica for a time. Years later, Tony discovers Veronica's mother left him a grant in her will, and tries to meet with Veronica again. However, he soon discovers that things were more complicated than they seemed in the first place, and Veronica was having an affair with Tony's friend Adrian. Though many works of literature tend to show how great love can be, The Sense of an Ending shows just how much it can hurt. In the novel many characters are hurt by one or another.

# Life or Death

Many things in this novel come to a sad and unfortunate end, hence its name. Among the things that ended include Tony's relationship with Veronica, his innocence, and his best friend's life. Adrian, friends with Tony since they were young, used to criticize someone he went to highschool with for hanging himself after he found out his girlfriend was pregnant. However, a similar thing happens to Adrian later on, when he learns that Sarah is going to have a baby. Although this might have been quite embarrassing, as the relationship between the two should never have happened, nothing like that is worth giving up your life for.

# Responsibility

And why do we all make sly cuts and lie to ourselves? Because we don’t want to take responsibility for some of the things we have done. Responsibility is the other major theme in The Sense of an Ending.

“The question of responsibility: whether there’s a chain of it, or whether we draw the concept more narrowly. I’m all for drawing it narrowly,” [p104], Says Tony. It is no surprise he is: throughout the book he comes across as a coward happy for every excuse. 

But in the end he is no longer so sure about where to draw the line:

“I looked at the chain of responsibility. I saw my initials there.” [p149]

# Connections and reflections

The novel is very well constructed. I had to read it two times in a row to find many of the connections between events in the two parts of the book (and interestingly several reviews I found online did exactly the same).

The way history and responsibility come up as themes throughout the book is a first example. Another one is how Adrian’s suicide mirrors Robson’s, a student who hangs himself after impregnating a girl. Tony and his friends measure Robson’s death by philosophical and aesthetic standards and find it lacking:

“ Action has been unphilosophical, self-indulgent and inartistic : in other words, wrong. His suicide note had missed a powerful educative opportunity” [p14].

# An Oedipus complex?

While reading the book for the second time I thought I had discovered another theme that might seem a bit more far-fetched.

Tony’s quest reminds me of Oedipus and his search for the murderer of the former king. Both stories are tragic investigations into the past; in both stories there is a curse (here in the letter Tony had written to Adrian); in both cases there is a warning of impending doom (here not by the blind seer Tiresias, but by Tony’s ex-wife [p78]), both stories feature sex with ‘the mother’. And even though Tony is not Adrian’s killer, the outcome of his investigation is that he becomes aware of his own role in Adrian’s suicide.

# Eros and Thanatos:

Eros and Thanatos – Greek Myth

Eros – denotes romantic or intimate love, god of love, desire, sex.

Thanatos - In Greek mythology was demon personification of death.

Minor figure in Greek Mythology

Eros Drive for survival, life instinct, pleasure, reproduction, and basic instincts like sex hunger and thirst.  These elements are necessary to preserve life Energy created by life instinct is also known as Libido

“The drive to preserve living substances and bring them together in larger units.”  Eros is associated with behaviors that support harmony among people such as love, collaboration and cooperation.

Eros and Thanatos in The Sense of an Ending References in Text

‘Eros and Thanatos, sir.’-Adrian

Adrian-‘Sex and death,’ ‘Or love and death, if you prefer. The erotic principle, in any case, coming into conflict with the death principle. And what ensues from that conflict.(Barnes, 2011) Robson of the Science Sixth had passed away during the weekend. ‘Thanatos wins again.’

‘First-class degree, first class suicide.

# Existentialism Vs Eros and Thanatos:

The novel is open-ended about these two topics. Reason of Adrian’s suicide is not clearly given. But the facts about his life, before his death, are revealed. His philosophical, existentialist ideas suggest that he was mature and serious about his way of living. Like an existentialist, he was having anxiety and restlessness about human life. So, these facts suggest that perhaps following his existentialist mentality, he commits suicide. In their school days, one of their classmates commits suicide because he made one girl pregnant. The reference of this story strongly focuses on the ideas of Eros and Thanatos.

~ Conclusion : 

Thus, these are some important themes which reflect the life of Nigerian people and their conditions. They struggle or fight for freedom. The sense of an ending gives thematic Concern about the novel and writing style of the author.

References :

~ Bethan Mai Roper. Memory and Retrospect in Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, https://medium.com/@bethanmai/memory-and-retrospect-in-julian-barnes-the-sense-of-an-ending-b7a8c141c5c5

~ Florian Markowetz. A philosophical suicide — Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, https://scientificbsides.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/the-sense-of-an-ending/