The Role of memory in The Sense of an Ending

Name: Maru Janak JRoll No:20

Paper:13 (New Literature)M.A: Sem-4

Email:marujanak17@gmail.comSubmitted To: Smt.S.B. Gardi Department of English M.K.

Bhavnagar University

The Sense of an Ending is, a novel written by Famous British author Julian Barnes.

This novel was released on 4th August 2011 in the United Kingdom.

The Sense of an Ending is a Grey,Grim, Near-Perfect Novella.

Introduction

About Memory Memory connected to mind. It means something about experiences of past or recalling the past. It is positive or negative. Perspective of narrator. We can’t relied in it totally because it is the experience of narrator and so may be it is constructed also. The Sense of an Ending is the story of one man coming to terms with the mutable past. In this novel Tony Webster is the narrator, 60 years old fellow recalls his memories.

Event

Time

Memory

“Memory is a mirror of Human Being”

School Days Three Friends of Tony- Colin, Alex and Adrian Finn. Class of History: Teacher of History asked questions about Henry Eighth, Characteristics of the age, First World War etc. Symbol of Watch: It is the symbol of their bond, they used to wear watches with the face on the inside of the wrist. Class of English: Teacher of English Phil Dixon- a young master just down from Cambridge.

Continue… But Tony Webster can’t understand poem and he thinks that it is about barn owl. Sports: Three of them considered school sports crypto-fascist plan fro repressing their sex-drive, Adrian joined the fencing club and did the high jump. School situated at Central London, description of their lifestyle in London Idea of Parenthood: How parents behave with adolescence children? Colin’s mother referred Tony as his ‘dark angel’ Parents doubt their adolescent friendship, and thinks that it is homosexual relationship.

Suicide of Robson

He was in Science Sixth. Rumor spread that Robson had got his girlfriend pregnant, hanged himself in the attic, and not been found for two days. Idea of Virginity Eros & Thanatos- Adrian connected before the day’s first lesson. ‘Thanatos wins again.’

‘Camus said that suicide was the only true philosophical question.’

Conclusion of Suicide: Arithmetical sense of the term- increase of one in the human population.

Tony’s affair with Veronica Veronica Mary Elizabeth Ford was reading Spanish, she liked poetry, father was a civil servant. He remembered that his bookshelves were more successful with Veronica than his record collection. Veronica shelves-held a lot of poetry, in volume and pamphlet form: Eliot, Auden, MacNeice, Stevie Smith, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes. He measure her personality to see books- they seemed to be an organic continuation of her mind and personality.

So many times Veronica argued with Tony. When he remember Phil Dixon and Ted Hughes at that time she replied that, ‘Poets don’t run out of material the way novelist.’

He remembered that she was five months older than him and sometimes made it feel like five years. He never asker her whether she is virgin or not.

Letter from Mrs. Sarah Ford to Tony Webster

Letter was brief, she wrote in the letter that,

“ She was sorry to hear we had broken up, and sure I would find someone more suitable. But she didn’t appear to mean this in the sense that I was a scoundrel who deserved someone of equally low moral character. Rather, she implied the opposite: that I was well out of things, and she hoped for me.”

Tony preserved this letter for proof.

The top one contained a brief note from Alex. ‘Dear Tony’, it read, Adrian died. He killed himself. To avoid engaging with this line of theory, I opened Alex’s second letter. He said that Adrian had done it very efficiently, and left a full account of his reasons. ‘Let’s meet and talk. Bar at the Charing X Hotel? Phone me. Alex.’ In the letter he wrote that “He cut his wrists in the bath.”

Letter from Alex to Tony

Thank you