"The Sense of an Ending"
"The Sense of an Ending" is a 2011 novel written by an English writer Julian Patrick Barnes, widely known as Julian Barners.
This blog is response to the questions asked by professor, Click Here to know more about it...
1) "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." How far can you agree with this definition of Adrian? Justify you answer with reference to your reading of ‘The Sense of an Ending’.
"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” This is a famous quote from Lagrange which Adrian referred to in Old Joe Hunt’s class. In Julian Barne’s “The Sense of an Ending” history, memory and responsibility stay at the centre of the novel these also contribute in bringing clarity into Adrian’s death as well. To the greater extend I can be agreed with Adrian’s view on history. Indeed, the history is important for knowing or to learn anything but it lacks something, we can find a lack of factual information and authenticity. As far as memory is concerned, it always seems imperfect, even no one can be sure about one’s own memory, memory is the result of certain things that have been told to us we never observed it. Along with it memory is something that can be differ from one person to another person and when it meets with ‘inadequacies of documentation’ , the outcome in form of his may differ also. In fact what Adrian said is served as backbone in the novel also. As the novel is divided in two parts, the first one is about the ‘imperfection of memory’ when tony recall his school days, and the second part is about the ‘inadequacies of documentation’ when Tony hunts for Adrian’s diary. In nutshell, history is something which couldn’t be aimed to follow blindly as it can be unreliable and untruth, but it is required to sustain past happening.
2) ‘The Sense of an Ending’ as a Postmodernist novel.
“The Sense of an Ending” is characterized under the genre of postmodernist writing. The “ Sense of an Ending” has several characteristics of postmodern text such as intertextuality, ambiguity, juxtaposition, fragmentation, discontinuity and inability to face real world problem. Though the novel has not any epigraph, the title of the novel is taken from the same name book written by Frank Kermode which is about to make a sense of the way human being try to make sense of their life. And the theme of Kermode’s book continues in Barne’s novel as Tony Webster tries to make sense of his life and his friend’s life as well. As far as narration is concerned, the novel juxtaposed the past and present of Tony Webster at certain level. Earlier he was the one who didn’t accept the relation between Veronica and Adrian as well as sent them letter written in hurtful words. But later on he felt guilty and said,
“All I could plead was that I had been its author then, but was not its author now”
From this we come to know that how the person’s mental growth occurred as well as how the past influences present of person. As well as the entire story was not chronologically told rather it was fragmented and presented in a disjointed way through stream of consciousness technique. Ambiguity is important characteristic of postmodern text, in this novel we feel the edge of ambiguity. Just for instance, in Adrian’s diary we can find that he has written,
“So, for instance, if Tony: (Barnes 81)”.
Further than this we didn’t come to know about what Adrian wrote in his diary as well as we can’t be sure whether he blamed Tony for his murder or not. Along with this novel also reveal Tony’s inability to face real world when he said,
“I’m not very interested in my school days, and don’t feel any nostalgia for them”
It symbolizes Tony’s action of escaping from reality and act of repressing his memory.
Briefly in such manners it can be characterized as post modern novel.
3)‘It is not about what we ‘do’, it is about how we ‘remember’ what we have done?’. Illustrate with reference to the novel ‘The Sense of an Ending’.
As the above mentioned quote suggested experiences of life is all about how we remember, it is upon an individual what he/she wants to remember. There are many right and wrong things we have done in our life. But when the matter comes to tell it to other what we say, is in fact the matter which we supposed to reveal, while sharing something about own self we reveal in such way that foe our some wrong doing we blame others and for good doing we appreciate our selves and as a result either we emerging out as hero in the story or victim of it. And this also happen in novel while Tonny narrating the story, at the earlier part he depicts himself as being good but later on we come to know what he actually is as well as we can see how he becomes partial in his memory while narrating story. But the end he was the one who felt remorse for whatever damage he done by writing letter to Adrian. Basically it’s all about how we narrate our story by remembering events apart from what we have actually done.
4) Was the mentally retarded middle aged ‘Adrian’, Tony’s friend who did not commit suicide and was suffering from trauma and thus gone mad, and was living with hidden identity?
I don’t think so this might have been happened. Because in the novel we don’t find any indication about it as well as Adrian’s act of giving his diary to Sarah Ford, to the mother of Veronica clearly suggested that he was quite happy with Sarah before he was dying. The reason behind his act of committing suicide was that he felt guilty for whatever he had done, this can be said because he was mentioned the same incident which had happened with his friend and he was died. In the novel it was also revealed that junior Adrian irritated with Tony’s presence, it seems that the reason behind this was perhaps that Veronica was treated him in such a way that as she wanted to keep him away from Tony and his given treatment to Adrian was responsible for it.
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