Assignment on The Sense of an Ending

Name :- Rajdip.P.Gohel

Roll. No:- 27

Paper No:- 13- The New Literature

Class:- M.A Sem - 4

Topic:- Eros, Thanatos and Existential Progression in Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending

Enrolment No:- 2069108420190017

College:- Smt.S.B.Gardi Department Of English

Email Id:- Grajdip5@gmail.com

Submitted:- Department Of English M.K.University, Bhavnagar

Introduction:

"History is the certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation."                    

Our memories remain incomplete, flawed, and disjointed. Questions remain unasked, and obviously unanswered; all our lives. We live our lives, and die, oblivious of the deficits. Seldom do we bother to look back and fill up or even recognize the gaps. At least not until some events or occurrences force us to; when we begin to search for an answer to the doubts and uncertainties, and for an opportunity to be at peace with our lives. However, rarely does a comfortable conclusion emerge and the answers we seek often continue to evade us.

The way we look at life changes, as we change ourselves. Passing through the doldrums of teen years, we arrive at adulthood. We mature, forget; and then at the end sit back, reconstruct, and contemplate. We look back through the glasses of our accumulated experiences and correct ourselves. Going through numerous corrections, what remains with us is what we want us to remember, the way we want things to be. This retrospection, rather introspection is the projection of "us" through ourselves! This reconstruction is inherently faulty. Hence, we are left with questions, all sorts of them. They plague us after we think we have cleared past such things, and it is then that we search for an ending. The facts we unearth, from under an accumulation of years of our lives, do not fit into our picture of the life we believe we have had. The memory, thus, appears to be too frail and impressionable. It seems to be inherently unreliable, in being colored by our apperceptions rather than being an objective record of the events.

This notion of the unreliability of memory is the key theme in Julian Barnes's "The sense of an ending." It deals with the way we live lives; hiding hurt, pain, and guilt under the cloak of a false sense of complacency. The question that is posed in this book, is: How do we deal with ourselves when we find us to be the most unreliable narrator of our own life-someone who not only creates a false impression on the world but also deludes himself?

Eros, Thanatos and Existential Progression:

Barnes is an English writer of distinguished talent. His three novels: Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005) were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Finally, the novel, The Sense of an Ending, bagged the prestigious literary award in 2011. Along with these outstanding novels, Barnes has to his credit collection of essays and short stories. His crime fiction is written under the pseudonym of ‘Dan Kavanagh’. He has been honoured with the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His works also include a translation of Alphonse Daudet’s In the Land of Life and Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art. On 25th January 2011, the French President appointed Barnes to the rank of Officer in the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur acknowledging his love of France and portrayal of French culture in his writings. The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes’ eleventh novel is a highly acclaimed novel. Apart from having won the Man Booker Prize, the novel had also won the David Cohen Prize for literature in 2011 and Europese Literatuurprijs. Barnes’s writings deal with various thematic aspects of love, truth, history, and reality. The title, “The Sense of an Ending” is borrowed from Sir John Frank Kermode’s work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the theory of Fiction, published in 1967. The title justifies the essence of the novel. It refers to ‘apocalypticism’ signifying the end of the meaningless existence in this universe. As reported by Tim Masters, Entertainment and Arts Correspondent, BBC News about Chairwoman, ex-MI5 boss, Dame Stella Rimington’s observation on Barnes’ novels as, “the makings of a classic of English Literature”. Further, she designated the novel, The Sense of an Ending as, “exquisitely written, subtly plotted and reveals new depths with each reading”. The novel is divided into two parts, covering the life story of the narrator-protagonist, Tony Webster. The narrative focuses on the intricate details of the complex situations and circumstances of the lives of the characters. The novel is a memoir and highlights the narrator’s quest to find meaning in the meaningless past events and identify their consequential results in the present. Barnes’ novels have always been the exemplifications of existentialism and alienation. Existentialism is by far trying to find meaning in the meaningless existence. Alienation and existentialism have always been popular subjects of discussion in the literature. To understand ‘alienation’ in modern literature, it is important to understand the meaning and depth of the philosophy and its portrayal in the works of literature. The two philosophers, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche had inspired the 20th Century existentialism. To quote Edmund Fuller, “man suffers not only from war, persecution, famine, and ruin; but from inner problems….a conviction of isolation, randomness, meaninglessness in his way of existence”. The transcendental meaning of “The Sense of an Ending” is deep and embedded with existentialism and absurdism. Absurdism to speak as a philosophy has originated out of the fundamental discord between an individual’s quest for meaning and identity in the meaninglessness of the Universe. Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending reflects the absurdism at its existential height. The absurdism of the characters and their relentless search for happiness and meaning in their lives appear from the formless chaos of the Universe. There is a very close relationship of alienation, absurdism, and existentialism to that of ‘death’; and with the philosophy of ‘death’, the philosophy of ‘love’ co-exists. ‘Love’ and ‘death’ are “the two elemental forces of human existence” (Süskind 2006). Julian Barnes’s novels had been ‘chronicles’ of existentialism with the philosophy of ‘death’ being his prime objective. ‘Death’ is a fascinating fact for Barnes as he highlights the mechanism of the psychology of ‘death’ on the people and how they deal with it. ‘Death’ is an insoluble question and is at the core of existence in this Universe. It is destructive as well as constructive in nature (Wenquen 2015). The enigma of ‘death’ drive is both a return to nothingness and a force of destruction (Kahn 2016). The Sense of an Ending is yet another novel justifying the rational decisions taken by the man in this irrational and meaningless world. In this acclaimed novel, with the death-instinct or ‘Thanatos’, Barnes had intersected Sigmund Freud’s idea of life-instinct, ‘Eros’ or ‘love’ to build the plot and draw the canvas of his novel. The novel strikes a balance between the two great biological instincts– ‘Eros’ and ‘Thanatos’ and the psychological mechanism of the philosophy of existentialism.

In the second part of The Sense of an Ending, Tony recounts how his life gets challenged with the surface of a ‘will’ from his ex-girlfriend Veronica’s mother, Mrs. Sarah Ford whom he had met 40 years ago. He had always desired his life to be simple and without any trouble, “had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded”. Tony’s life gets disturbed as he receives the information that Mrs. Ford had bequeathed him 500 pounds and a ‘diary’ which the ‘will’ declares was of Adrian. In her ‘will’, Veronica’s mother had passed the diary as a ‘legacy’ on to Tony but which Veronica is reluctant to hand over to him. In order to get the possession of the diary, Tony reluctantly had to connect with Veronica with whom he had broken up years earlier while the pain remained. Tony’s efforts to get the diary from Veronica is the beginning of the second part of the novel. The connectivity in the two parts of the narrative is well-scripted and interestingly drawn by Barnes. The flashback technique unleashes the doors of the past incidences. The novel is a quest for ‘truth’ making the past responsible for the present. ‘Remorse’ is the key word which builds up the foundation of the narrative. The revelation that the diary is in Veronica’s possession complicates the later developments of the story and brings to light the erratic relationships of the characters and series of unwanted happenings. The past revealed is one shrouded in shame, mystery, and silence. The disclosure of the ‘real reason’ of Adrian’s suicide is shocking, disapproving and is rather unexpected. It’s possibly the reason for Veronica’s reluctance to hand over the ‘diary’ to Tony. Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending reflects the philosophy of existentialism and Sigmund Freud’s theories of instincts: ‘Eros’ and ‘Thanatos’. As the story proceeds, the characters are introduced to us by Tony Webster. Tony’s burden of guilt increases slowly as he rewinds his memory. His rewinding of the past to search for the reasons and the bases of the present situations and circumstances is a purgation and going through a process of cleansing his guilt and sins. Tony’s search for the reason for Adrian’s suicide pushes the story forward as the complexities of the lives of the different characters of this novel unfold layer by layer. Of the four friends of his school days, Adrian Finn was the most intellectual one and his nature was poles apart from the group of three members he was involved with. Adrian was, in fact, very different from the whole lot of students. Even the teachers admired him and “were interested in him” than the others. Tony remembers him as the one who “kept his eyes down and his mind to himself”. The group members rebelliously believed that the ‘social construct’ is at a ‘flaw’. They hated their parents while Adrian didn’t. Instead, he lived by his principles. He was a product of a broken home still he believed in living by the societal standards of living. Adrian loved ‘life’, its ways and purpose. He had a fascination for Albert Camus and his philosophies. Adrian was the philosopher of the group and a guide upon whom Tony and the other boys depended. In the course of life, when Adrian commits suicide, Tony and his friends are left wondering the reason for the extreme step. Adrian’s love of Camus is paradoxical to his suicide. This enigmatic setup is built by Barnes to emphasize the absurd elements and the philosophy of existentialism in the

Conclusion:

“In the sense of death, it is not the Ultimate act of human freedom, but the renunciation of human freedom” (Foley 2008). As Tony Webster recollects, “It had seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person’s right: a logical act when faced with terminal illness or senility; …. ”. Adrian’s suicide is designated by Tony as a superior act over the inferior meaningless existence of life.

Work Cited:

·         Mitra S, Nizamie S H, Kavoor AR. Book review: The sense of an ending. Indian J Soc Psychiatry 2015;31:78-9

·         Wenquen, W.Q. “On the Motif of Death in Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending. Canadian Social Science, 11(3), 87-95, 2015. Web. 13 March 2018.

·         Patrick, Süskind. On Love and Death. Trans. Anthea Bell. New York: The Overlook Press, 2006.

·         Kahn, Susan. “Eros and Thanatos: A Psychoanalytic Examination of Death in the Context of Working Life.” Management Forum. Wroclaw: Publishing House of Wroclaw University of Economics, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2016.