Hello...
Here I am going to wrote about the famous novel The sense of an Ending is written by Julian Barnes. This blog is my academic task given by Dr Dilip barad sir from Department of English Bhavnagar University.
The Sense of an Ending is, a novel written by Famous British author Julian Barnes. This is Eleventh novel of writer. This novel was released on 4th August 2011 in the United Kingdom. This novel is based on memory of writer (narrator). That how narrator recalls his past (memory) and that create a sequence of accident and that makes a twist in the story. Thus the novel based on Memory of narrator. This novel won MAN BOOKER PRIZE AWARD on 18 October 2011. And also announced The Sense of an Ending had been nominated in the Best Novel category at the 2011 Costa Book Awards.
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 magladen college Oxford.
Story of The Novel
Story of the novel is narrated by a retired man named Tony Webster. Tony recalls his memory of past about his clique and their friend Adrian Finn. They all have took vow to remain friends for life time. As time passes they become far from each other. At the age of sixty tony recalls his memory of school days. And the memory played vital role to develop the plot. And then story has different ending just like no ending.
The novel is divided into two parts, entitled "One" and "Two", Bothe part of the story is narrated by Tony Webster, when he is retired and living alone.
The first part begins in the 1960s with four intellectually arrogant school friends, of whom two feature in the remainder of the story: Tony, the narrator, and Adrian, the most precociously intelligent of the four. Towards the end of their school days another boy (Robson) at the school hangs himself, apparently after getting a girl pregnant. The four friends discuss the philosophical difficulty of knowing exactly what happened. Adrian goes to Cambridge University and Tony to Bristol University.
Tony acquires a girlfriend, Veronica, at whose family home he spends an awkward weekend. Their relationship fails in some acrimony. In his final year at university Tony receives a letter from Adrian informing him that he is going out with Veronica. Tony replies to the letter. Some months later he is told that Adrian has committed suicide, leaving a note addressed to the coroner saying that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine the nature of their life, and may then choose to renounce it. Tony admires the reasoning. He briefly recounts the following uneventful forty years of his life until his sixties.
The second part of the novel – which is twice as long as the first, – begins, with the arrival of a lawyer's letter informing him that Veronica's mother has bequeathed him £500 and two documents. These lead him to re-establish contact with Veronica and after a number of meetings with her, to re-evaluate the story he has narrated in the first part. And at the end of second part tony comes to know about himself, but he cannot see the Veronica and her vision of living a life.
After reading this novel the understanding related to history and memory both have changed. I used to think about memory that it will at some extent forgotten but never distorted. After reading this novel I really feel that we also have those distorted memory, which we want to store as something which has actually not taken place. By doing that we are cheating our selves and others also. So memory and history both are connected. History is written from memory.
Now we have seen in this novel how distorted memory can be stored by individual. If historians takes their statements in to consideration, we can not trust history either. In novel Tony says history is not lies of victors or self delusion of defeated, history is the memory of survivors. It is told by them who has not gone for fight from either side and they have survived. They don’t even have first hand experiences of the things. So these people will remember history in different way. We can not trust them without any evidence. So we should not trust anything without evidence, not the person and not even the history.
The journey from Renaissance play to the 21st century novel was very interesting. Suicide is very ambiguous topic. Mostly people think suicide has something bad. Our law also consider as crime. When Hamlet thinks, “To be or, not to be” he concludes that it is untraveled land from where no ones return, and they don’t know also what suffering they have to go through. So living current life is better then suicide. Existentialism says, life is meaningless but ending life is not the solution. So keep on living and try to find meaning in your life. Now here in this novel “The Sense of an Ending” Adrian says that life is a gift which no one has asked for and now if person thinks to return it they have right to do that. Adrian has lived his life at fullest capacity. He knows what he was doing in his life. He knows how he wants to live and he also knows how he wants to die.
So in this novel suicide has not been seen as something bad or crime. It is kind of wish or right which every person has. After living your life as one wants and after getting satisfaction in life one can go for suicide. This is what my concept of suicide is now. Whatever might be the reason people have committed suicide innumerable times. But the problem is society has always seen this as something negative. Why society thinks that one should keep on living, even if they had lived enough or they no more feel life worthy of living. May be because society is made up of coward people. People who shows their slightest wound to the hundreds of people and will consider cowards to those who have guts and strength to kill them selves. Of one think logically, will definitely find problem in understanding the rules of society. May be because the rules are created for Mass and not for Individuals.
How do we understand the concept of suicide with reference to your reading of literature ranging from Renaissance play Hamlet, 20th century Existentialist philosophy and this 21st century novel Sense of an Ending?
Answer :-
People have different concept about suicide, rational thinkers like literary writers look suicide as an art and religious people look as a sin. Suicide is very interesting element in literature, for other people like doctors and businessman suicide is like failure of life and escaping from terrible experiences. While for literary writers suicide is Philosophical answer of life. If we see the Saussure's sign, signifier and signified then we come to know that it is all about language which create different meaning of death and suicide.
So far as my understanding is concerned in other words title of the novel can also be interpreted or if we look in depth of the novel then it can also be said that the end is not the ending of tony but rather it is taking new shape or reaching to the new understanding and newer perspective in self not outside. In this novel there are ending of two lives such as Robson and Adrian as they commit suicide but in the first part He ends his life after getting a girl pregnant therefore his friends feel jealousy for him
So Tony Webster says about his friend, who committed suicide when they were at university.
At the end of the book, Tony feels even more guilt about sending his hateful letter to Adrian as he imagines that his letter could have practically driven Adrian into the arms of Veronica’s mother setting off the chain of events that lead to Adrian’s suicide. You might think that Tony is being overly hard on himself because who would take a letter of passionate anger so seriously? However, there are some reasons to think that the letter could have really had a significant impact. First, Tony wrote a quick card to Adrian when he received Adrian’s letter and didn’t write his really nasty letter until weeks later after he had a lot of time to think it over so Adrian may have thought that the letter was not just written in a time of extreme emotion.
