The New Literature Assignment

Name: Ruchita Kankrecha 

Semester: 4

Paper No: New Literature 

Topic: Various Interpretations

Department of English 

Enrollment No: 2069108420190024

In the novel we can find assumptions and assumptions can create the plot or the characters or situations. When assumptions change, story changes and your Mindset changes when you come across reality or fact.  In the novel, we can see the character of Tony Webster who created his own story through his assumptions. 

"The more you learn, the less you fear. 'learn' not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life."

             (The sense of an ending - page 82)

The Sense of an Ending is a novel by Julian Barnes.The Sense of an Ending was awarded the Man Booker Prize. In the novel, there were following major characters. 

1. Tony Webster

2. Adrian Finn

3. Veronica Ford

4. Mrs. Sarah Ford

5. Jack Ford

6. Margaret

7. Susie

8. Robson

Click here to read the summary of the text. 

“I remember, in no particular order:

- a shiny inner wrist;

- steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;

- gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of a tall house;

- a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeams;

- another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;

- bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door. This last isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.”

These are the starting lines of the novel. 

Tony Webster is the narrator of the story and he is at the centre of the novel around which the other characters are revealed. This is also known as memory novel. In the novel, Tony recalls how he and his other two friends, Alex and Colin, meet Adrian Finn at the school and also vowed to remain friends for life time. The first part begins in the 1960s. Adrian is the second most important character in the novel. According to me, Adrian's character is more interesting than Tony. Adrian is a true philosopher. After school, Tony takes admission in Bristol University and Adrian takes admission in Cambridge University. Tony had one girlfriend named Veronica. Tony receives some documents and an amount from Mrs Sarah Ford who is Veronica's mother. After that Tony tries to contact Veronica because he wants to know the truth. Veronica is ex-girlfriend of Tony and her character is very complicated. Margaret is Tony's ex-wife and Susie is his daughter. 

Theme :

Following are the main themes of the novel.

1. Love

2. Class conflict

3. Life or death

4. Sex

5. Memory, truth, guilt

When we read the novel, we come to know that Tony Webster constructs personal narrative in The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. In the novel, there is ‘chain of responsibilities’ that led to the tragedy. Tony’s relationship with his school friend Adrian Finn, with his girlfriend Veronica Mary Elizabeth Ford, with Veronica’s mother Mrs.Sarah ford, all are linked. Veronica had begun a relationship with Tony but it failed. Veronica’s character is different from other characters. She is more sophisticated, independent, self-centered, Class-conscious, and manipulative. Adrian’s character is an interesting one. He may teach you how to study. He is a more intellectual and true philosopher, Rational rather than emotional thinker, more confident, self-conscious, and most importantly, his personality is very attractive. Adrian won a scholarship to cambridge and studied philosophy.  

“I looked at the chain of responsibility. I saw my initial in there. I remembered that in my ugly letter I had urged Adrian to consult Veronica’s mother. I replayed the words that would forever haunt me. As would Adrian’s unfinished sentence, “So, for instance, if Tony…”

These lines are the centre of the novel. When Veronica and Tony met, at that time Tony told Veronica to give him Adrian’s diary but Veronica said that she Burt it. But she gives one page. Margaret always says to Tony what you expect From the Adrian’s diary. The novel opens at the point Tony attempts to form a meaningful account out of memories, and the list includes snapshots from those memories which surface at the first instant. This is a modest proclamation of Tony as the narrator: “If I can’t be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the impressions those facts left. That’s the best I can manage “.Tony acts as an unreliable narrator who is highly self-conscious of his own unreliability. When you think you know everything, first you have to think what you don’t know. He is well aware that being witness to certain events does not qualify one as reliable. In Hutcheon’s words,

“The interaction of the historiography and the metafictional foregrounds the rejection of the claims of both ‘authentic’ representation and ‘inauthentic’ copy alike”.

What is narrated by Tony himself is his own history, to which he is the most important eye-witness; it is again Tony who denies the reader the comfort of authentic representation. History may be “the lies of the victor” or “the self-delusions of the defeated,” as well. For Tony’s enigmatic and philosopher-type friend Adrian, 

“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation “

When you narrate your own story, you may represent the things which are good for you or you think you can tell others. Why do you choose some incidents that are good for you? Because according to you, what others think about you is more important than what you think about yourself. In the novel, there is one quote by Tony and through this quote he talks about the central problem of the history. 

“That’s one of the central problems of history, isn’t it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

Should We Think emotionally? It can be assumed that when you think emotionally, your thoughts are subjective not objective. When I read "The sense of an ending", I am attached to Tony Webster. So I have to think rationally rather than emotionally. When you think emotionally you are subjective about that character. 

Tony’s superficial analysis of Adrian’s suicide and his subsequent disappearance   can be related to a wider sense of uncertainty that Tony associates with the history of his early life.  Tony reflects back on this life as a disjuncture develops between personal memories of growing up in the 1960 and a collective, national memory of the period as an iconic cultural emblem. Tony on his temporal disorientation asks himself ‘wasn’t this the Sixties?’ This historical uncertainty in the moments of boys’ youth is expressed too in Veronica and Tony’s sex life. As we know that Novel is divided into two parts and when Tony becomes mature that is in the second part and he looks at life very differently as compared to what he used to when he was in his college. But when looking at that character of Adrian, he is more mature in his school days. With the time all the characters' motifs changed. Now the characters were the same and playing the role in the same way. Motifs have not changed but their perspectives have changed of the person who is looking at all the characters around him. 

You always look at people how you want to look at them and otherwise you created your own story and move on. In the Novel we can see the character of Tony Webster who created his own story. He assumed that Adrian has affair with Veronica and in the pub he said Terry that Adrian is veronica’s son which he not supports to be. He is actually brother. So, it can be said that when you look at one character with two different angles your mindset towards this particular changes differently. Is he her brother or son, it is not important but your perspective towards the character is important and that is an issue of concern. The question is that Should Tony be guilty? According to me, no he should not. Why? When he writes a letter to Adrian, he says to meet Veronica’s Mother because he believes that Veronica is not mentally stable. But, Tony’s suggestion to meet Sarah Ford wasn’t meant for Adrian to establish a relationship with her. He just suggested to consult her regarding Veronica. 

So Julian Barnes tries to tell you that what you think is not always what is. There is always the other side which fails to look into because we are convinced about what is. 

What is Unrest? You only have unrest in your mind when you are not sure about what is happening, otherwise you are at peace. Tony is at unrest because what he thought and what is there is difference and that is unrest that he has to go through. When someone tells you to write something without telling you what to write. When we read the first page of the novel, we come to know that Tony has fragments of all the characters that are in his life. So you will have images in your mind of various kinds and you try to join these images which would become your memory because your images are your memories. In your memory, there are good and Worst things in your mind.  Everything that comes across your life, you have an impact in your life. You start in a certain way you also end in a certain way but that ending is an outcome of what happens within that frame. 

Conclusion: 

The text invites the reader to have a varied range of interpretations. Every reading of the text provides newer interpretations.  

Works Cited

Barnes, Julian. The Sense Of An Ending. Jonathan Cape and Alfred Knopf, 2011. March 2020.

Callus, Ivan. "“There is great unrest”: Some Reflections on Emotion and Memory in Julian Barnes’s Nothing to Be Frightened Of and The Sense Of An Ending." Prague Journal Of English Studies 1.1 (2012): 16. web. March 2020.

Taniyan, Baysar. "Denying the Narrator: Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending." English Studies: New Perspectives. Ed. Mehmet Ali Çelikel and Baysar Taniyan. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. 16. web. March 2020.