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• Valentina Barone

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THE SENSE OF AN ENDING PLOT The novel is divided into two parts, entitled "One" and "Two", both of which are 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 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. At this point Tony's narration of 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. PART 2 Forty years later, as we learn in Part 2, new memories begin to emerge in Tony’s mind of other episodes with Veronica that he has forgotten for decades. One of these memories is of Veronica, who never danced, appearing in his room and dancing with him to 45s played on his record player. He also revisits a memory he described earlier of witnessing the reversal of the Thames with a group of friends in the middle of the night. He suddenly recalls that Veronica was there as well, and that when the rest of the group ran off with torches (flashlights) to watch the reversal, he stayed behind on a blanket with Veronica. And finally, he recalls new details of his weekend visit with the Ford family. He remembers that Veronica walked him to his room on the second night of his visit, leaned him against the door,

kissed him on the mouth, and whispered into his ear, “Sleep the sleep of the wicked.” VERONICA'S MOTHER Veronica’s mother does not have a healthy relationship with her daughter. She is either jealous of her daughter or resents her daughter and either consciously or unconsciously wants to hurt her emotionally. It’s not all that uncommon for a mother to resent her daughter or to be overly competitive with her. When a daughter matures into a woman and has all the advantages of youthful beauty, a mother can’t avoid facing the fact that she herself is aging and her own beauty is on the decline. While most women would be happy for their daughter to be found beautiful, others could become subject to extreme jealousy. They could also be subject to insecurity if they think that their daughter might be stealing all the affection of their husband. I think Sara, either consciously or unconsciously wants to sabotage Veronica’s relationship and she wants to prove she is still a desirable woman with the ability to attract a younger man. This explains her strange remark out of the blue to Tony, "Don't let Veronica get away with too much" and explains her extra friendliness to Tony. And of course this also explains her affair with Adrian. EXPLANATIONS Written from the vantage point of old age, which, it is hinted, are most likely the winter years of the life of Tony Webster, Barnes’s first-person narrator, the short, crisp, precise novel at first fools you into thinking that it’s a meditation on ageing and mortality and the treacherous domain of memory. The title itself, a nod to Frank Kermode’s dense critical work, published in 1967, on how fiction attempts to give form to the flux that is time, is more deceptive than it appears. Three friends at school allow the newcomer Adrian to become part of their group. Adrian, they discover, has a sharper mind than theirs and has that quality so utterly rare among the English, of being serious about serious things, although the core of this serious new friend seems to be unknowable and unreachable. After school, Tony goes to university in Bristol and Adrian to Cambridge. At Bristol, Tony has a brief and relationship – although non-relationship would be a more accurate term – with Veronica, who, shortly after their acrimonious breakup, starts going out with Adrian, a fact Tony only discovers when Adrian writes to him to ask him for permission to do so. Tony writes him a facetious card to the effect of ‘Be my guest’ and, later, a more considered, serious letter. He spends a year travelling in the USA then returns home to the news of Adrian’s suicide. From this point onwards Barnes masterfully compresses the events in Tony’s life that are not relevant to this particular story –

steady job; marriage to Margaret; birth of daughter, Susie; divorce; retirement – to two pages then moves on to Part Two, where the long shadow of the past with Veronica and Adrian falls over Tony’s life again. A bequest of £500 and some ‘documents’ from the recently-deceased Sarah Ford, Veronica’s mother, whom Tony had met only once, on a weekend visit to Veronica’s family in the brief period they were seeing each other in university, reawakens the past and Tony’s curiosity, not least because the ‘document’, which Tony discovers from the solicitor is Adrian’s diary, has been withheld by Veronica. He doggedly pursues Veronica, whom he hasn’t seen since they split up, into giving them to him. The tension is ratcheted up. Why does Veronica give him only one page of Adrian’s diary? The page contains some pretty dodgy cod-philosophising, arranged like the propositions of a tract on logic to fool readers into thinking that they’re getting Wittgenstein redux. A later elucidation of the symbols used in the page serves only to highlight, unintentionally, the "anticlimax" involved in applying analytical philosophy to the events of a private life but more on this later. Then there is Veronica, already an intensely annoying creature (and surely the character whose actions are the least credible), who does not help her cause, nor Tony’s, by repeatedly stating that he doesn’t get things, that he never did. To substantiate this, she gives him a copy of the serious letter he wrote to Adrian and Veronica shortly after finding out that they were going out. The letter, of which Tony has no memory, comes as a jet of cold water between his eyes. It is cruel and petty, and Tony, thinking that this is what drove Adrian over the edge, is afflicted by severe remorse. Another round of determined pursual of the remarkably unyielding Veronica follows, this time to apologise and try to make amends. Nested disclosures follow and I’m going to reveal them because the final twist in the book is the weakest and its great defect. A laconic Veronica, refusing to offer Tony any explanations before, during or afterwards, takes Tony to see a group of what he assumes are care-in-the-community people – people with severe learning difficulties – on a pub outing. One of them, a goofy-looking man of forty but with the mental age of a child, seems especially pleased to see Veronica and calls her Mary. Tony’s persistent questions about who they are, why Veronica has brought him to watch them from her parked car, why the man called her Mary, what their condition is, are all met with steely silence and, finally, ejection from the car. Tony, determined to find out the truth, follows the group on their next expedition to the pub and talks to their carer. Understanding finally dawns on him: the man who called Veronica Mary is Adrian and Veronica’s son. This causes him much anguish as one of the things he had written in that savage letter was, ‘Part of me hopes you have a child, because I’m a great believer in time’s revenge. But revenge must be on the right people, i.e. you two. … So I don’t wish you that. It would be unjust to inflict on some innocent foetus the prospect of discovering that it was the fruit of your

loins, if you’ll excuse the poeticism.’ Be careful of what you wish for, they say; seeing his imprecation embodied like this curdles something in Tony. He writes a heartfelt letter of apology to Veronica again only to be told, yet again, that he still doesn’t get it. So the earlier twist wasn’t the last one, there’s a final turn still to come. In a chance encounter at the same pub some months later, Tony has another conversation with a carer who is minding the same group. It emerges that the disabled man is not Veronica’s son but Adrian’s son with her mother, Sarah. Like pieces in a giant puzzle, everything begins to fall into place for Tony: the goofy man’s condition; the cryptic remarks of Veronica and her taciturnity; Adrian’s suicide; that page from his diary; Sarah Ford's bequest to Tony, which Veronica had called ‘blood money’. ANALYSIS Main Characters The number of characters are not many in this complex novel but the relationship of the characters are quit complicated in the way they behave in the novel. Tony Webster Tony is the narrator of the novel. He is retired arts administrator and lives alone. Tony is at the centre of the novel around whom the other characters are revealed. Tony’s life is stormed with many memories of his past 40 years. In second part of the novel he re-evaluates the first part of his novel. When he receives some amount and document from his ex-girl friend’s mother, he reestablished contact with Veronica and tries to solve the puzzling questions. After meeting Veronica Tony evaluates his first narrated story. He makes some conscious observations about class, sex, repression and intellectuality. Tony, when narrated, had a daughter and grand-children. One cannot completely trust his memory because at the age of sixty all events of past cannot be recalled as what truely happened. Tony’s narration can be called unreliable. Veronica Ford She is spiky and enigmatic ex-girlfriend of Tony. Her character is very complicated. Her behaviour in her own house seemed mysterious. Later on she dated with Adrian who was Tony's intelligent friend. In the second part Tony tried hard to get some clues from Veronica about Adrian’s diary in possession of Sarah Ford. She knew everything but did not revel anything. One can praise her unselfish act of taking care of mentally retarded Jr. Adrian. Adrian Finn

He was the brightest student. He was an intellectual man. He evaluated things philosophically. He dated with his best friend’s ex-girlfriend Veronica. His diary was in possession of Sarah Ford Veronica’s mother. It is possible that Tony’s letter inspired him to meet Sarah so in his last days, as Sarah wrote, he was very happy. There is possibility of his relationship with Sarah as Jr Adrian looked like senior one and Jr Adrian was believed to be Sarah’s brother. Adrian did suicide for which he gave philosophical reason. Now. After seeing the main characters and their unsolved mysteries lets think about the main themes in the novel. The novel has themes like weakness of Memory Aging, suicide, Eros Thanatos, class conflict. Weakness of Memory and Ageing In youth it is difficult to recall all the events of childhood same way old age is the age when memory gets faded. Weak or lighter. A person doesn’t remember all the events in detail. Why did Veronica’s mother have Adrian’s diary? Why did she want Tony and no one else to have it? Tony finds mining his memory to find answers surrounding Adrian’s suicide. His search literally reveals the weakness of memory as corroboration. “ I don’t envy Adrian his death, but envy him the clarity of his life,” Tony muses in old age. “ When you are in your twenties you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.” Barnes provides only physical details. Hard facts couldn’t come out from his mind. Adrian reveal memory to be a fractious and fictious. Tony says later in life. “All my conclusions are reversible.” One can not rely on the Past memories as it comes in fragments. The narrator has always made that same reasonable assumption, but act of revisiting his past in later life challenges his care beliefs about causation, responsibility and the very chain of events that make up his sense of self. “ We talk about our memories, but should perhaps talk more about our forgetting, even if that is a more difficult or logically impossible-feat.” Barnes is brutally incisive on the diminishment of age: now that the sense of his own ending is coming into focus, Tony apprehends that “ the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss”, that he has already experienced the first death: that of the possibility of change. Like everyone, Tony has carried his youth inside him into adulthood, fixed in vivid memory. The advocate’s letter informing him that, 40 years on, he has been left Adrian’s diary in a will, that sets Tony to examining what he thinks his life

has been. With its various patterns and repetitions, scrutinising its own workings from every possible angle, the novella becomes a highly wrought meditation on ageing, memory and regret. It seems as if Barnes— “ Wants to tell all stories, in all their contrariness, contradiction and irresolvability.” Memory that is individual, accounts for who we are and what we have become. Early memory is particularly valuable, though it can be misconstrued. Its influence can persist throughout adult life, though what is cause and what effect may be difficult to judge. In ‘The Sense of an ending, Julian Barnes tracks the origin of one particular memory through a long and apparently uneventful life towards an explanation that leaves traces of unease. Suicide Man, who is an intellectual person thinks of suicide due to his own philosophical thinking. We find many famous people all over the world end their life in suicide. In this novel a young boy called Robson commits suicide in the school. After few years Adrian kills himself. The reason of Adrian’s death is not known. Adrian’s death lead the narrator to mine his past. But Tony’s memory, the way it is revealed doesn’t solve the mystery. There are many clues that helps us to conclude but doesn’t lead to on conclusion. Many questions are unanswered behind the second suicide whereas the first suicide was committed after making a girl pregnant. Adrian Was an intellectual genius who went to one of the best universities. He dated his friends ex-girl friend Veronica but his diary was with her mother and the documents sent by Sarah to Tony said that he was very happy in his last days. Also Jr. Adrian, a mentally retarded person, who resembled Adrian’s appearance was taken care by Veronica. Jr. Adrian was her brother. Thus, the clues lead us to think about Adrian-Sarah relationship which might be one of the reason’s of Adrian’s suicide. Eros and Thanatos Eros is erotic love and Thanatos is death. Freud gave the theory that the duality of human nature emerged from two basic instincts- Eros and Thanatos. Freud saw an instinct for life, love and sexuality in Eros. In Thanatos, he saw the instinct of death and aggression. The first leads to the reproduction of the species and the other toward its own destruction. The theme of Eros and Thanatos ran simultaneously in the case of Robinson and Adrian. Here, it should be kept in mind that Thanatos also means death as a personification or as a philosophical notion. Class Conflict

Adrian was smarter than Tony. Veronica was an awkward girl. She was a misfit in her family. She was self-conscious to dance in public. She felt humiliated. Tony once spent a weekend at Veronica’s family home. At the time he had felt uncomfortable, Socially inferior, and he was hardly surprised when the enigmatic Veronica took up with more prestigious Adrian. She was class conscious. She choose the better option. This way class conflict is also one of the themes in The Sense of an Ending. I have discussed some of the main themes of this novel. Barnes’ prose is elegant, witty and playful. He can be associated with the post-modern writers. He chose an unreliable narrator. He wrote with self-conscious linguistic style, an intertextual blending of different narrative forms –which serve to foreground the process of literary creation, the gap between experience and language, and the subjectivity of truth and reality. Barnes fiction is also based on psychological realism and his themes are serious, poignant and heart-felt. He frequently addresses the nature of love, particularly its dark side, exploring humankinds capacity for jealousy, obsession and infidelity, alongside the perennial quest for authentic love. Barnes does not come out and tie everything together. The reader is left to go back through the events and dialogues in order to resolve the mysteries. Regarding passages and many will went to completely reread the novel. Any way the novel has an outstanding qualities that make us ponder.