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The Sense of an Ending
Presented by
Poojaba Jadeja
Drashti Mehta
Gayatri Goswami
Bharat Bhammar
Hitesh Paramar
Key Facts• FULL TITLE · The Sense of an Ending
• AUTHOR · Julian Barnes
• TYPE OF WORK · Novel
• GENRE · Literary fiction, Psychological Thriller,
Memory novel
• LANGUAGE · English
• TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · 1960s suburban London,
England, Present
• DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION · August 4, 2011
• PUBLISHER · Jonathan Cape (UK) Knopf (US)
• NARRATOR · Tony Webster
• POINT OF VIEW · First Person Point of View
• TONE · Enigmatic, Mysterious, Ambiguous , Lyrical
• TENSE · Past, Present
• SETTING (PLACE) · England
• PROTAGONIST . Tony Webster
• MAJOR CONFLICT · Webster’s divorce with Veronica and the latter’s remarriage with his friend, search for the reason of Adrian’s Suicide
• RISING ACTION . Three school friends, one of whom is Tony Webster is joined by a fourth, Adrian Finn, much cleverer than other group members
• CLIMAX . Tony learns that Adrian commits suicide
• FALLING ACTION · Webster re-established contact with Veronica to re-evaluate the past
• THEMES Meditation on ageing, Class Conflict, Inconsistencies between Shared Histories / memories, Conflict between Eros and Thanatos- sex and death
• MOTIFS · Repetition, Regret, Suicide, Damage, Blood Money
Characters of the “Sense of an Ending”
-Gayatri Goswami
Tony Webster • Tony is the narrator of the novel.
• Tony 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.
• Tony attended school in the 1960s, and many of his memories centre on him and his friends grappling with the new sexual freedoms.
• In second part of the novel he re-evaluates the first part of his novel.
• Tony Webster receives some amount and document from his ex-girl friend’s mother, he re-established contact with Veronica and tries to solve the puzzling questions.
• After meeting Veronica Ford and Tony evaluates his first narrated story.
• Tony 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 truly happened.
• Tony’s Webster in the novel narration can be called unreliable.
• Tony is a type member of the British midd-middle class ,A baby beamer , educated at a solid ,undistinguished school , than Bristol for university rather than Oxbridge , followed by a steady career in a non creative corner of the arts
• Tony concedes that part one is made up of his imperfect shabby memories which even as he writes he realizes are inaccurate.
• He’s had career and a single marriage, a calm divorce
• Tony certainly never tried to hurt anybody
• Tony memory though , is imperfect
• Tony doesn't get much closer to understanding than the rule he applies to love in old age once bitten ,twice bitten”
• Though the narration of the sense of an ending , its protagonist Tony Webster teaches himself set of 1 lessons about the erratic itineraries
• Tony had a reasonably good relationship with veronica
• Tony still doesn’t understand veronica
• Tony Webster , that consolation comes formed the sense of life lived it not thrillingly , than at least without blame .
Veronica Mary Elizabeth Ford
• She is spiky and enigmatic ex-girlfriend of Tony. Her character is very complicated.
• Her behavior in her own house seemed mysterious. Later on she dated with Adrian who was Tonys 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.
• Her father was civil servant .
• About the character of Veronica five foot two with rounded , muscular calves, mid-brown hair to her shoulder ,blue-grey eyes behind blue-framed spectacles and quick at without smile .
• Veronica who spent her younger life competing with her mother Sarah who has a unhealthy jealousy toward her daughter had made Veronica a shy , complex person which Tony saw as paranoid and 'bitchy'.
• veronica Mother' would not be happy with Veronica closeness with Tony Webster .
• Veronica’s mother Sara Ford does not have a healthy relation with her daughter
• veronicas family like that , alcoholic father ,lustful mother , a complex sister and a brother who doesn’t call his mother ,mother
• Veronica wasn’t very different from other
• Tony original relationship with veronica
• Tony still doesn’t understand veronica
Adrian Finn • Adrian is describe to be a quite an intelligent man and always
thinking ahead of him
• Adrian coming from a dysfunctional family , where his mother left his father clearly have some 'mummy issues' and as we read in the part 1 is a hyper sensitive man
• Even though he was really happy with Sarah, creating another life due to his weakness and lust made him guilty and he saw the responsibilities ahead him due to his mistake.
• Adrian was a little more serious than the others .
• certainly more intelligent but they swore to stay friends forever
• Adrian Finn evaluated things philophically.
• He is a tall shy boy
• He dated with his best friend’s ex-girlfriend Veronica.
• Who initially kept his eyes down and his mind to himself
• This was long before the term single-parent family ,come into use ; back than it was a broken home and Adrian was the only person we knew who come from one
• certainly more intelligent but they swore to stay friends forever
• Adrian life took at urn into tragedy
•Veronica and Adrian were seriously in love but Sarah managed to seduce Adrian and Adrian enjoyed his relationship with Sarah even though he also still loved Veronica
•Adrian allowed himself to be absorbed into out group without acknowledging that it was something he sought
•His diary was in possession of Sarah Ford Veronica’s mother.
•Adrian did suicide for which he gave philosophical reason.
Sarah Ford • Sarah ford the mother of Veronica ford .
• Indirectly lead Adrian to have a more meanful or more important relationship with Sara which lead to the formation of a baby.
• Sara who has a unhealthy relationship with Veronica.
• Sarah Ford jealousy of her daughter relationship with Tony Webster
• Sarah Ford to have a more manful , passionate relationship with Adrian that lead to the formation of a another life , a baby.
• When Sarah Ford died that time she gave 500 pounds to Tony ‘s in her will and gave her personal dairy
Margret
• Margret Tony’s Webster ex-wife
Susie
Eleanor Marriott
• Eleanor Marriott is solicitor
• Tony Webster and Margret’s daughter
T . J. Gunnell
• In the novel T .J . Gunnell was lawyer
Old Joe Hunt
• Old Joe Hunt is History teacher
Phil Dixon
• Phil Diction English teacher
Colin and Alex
• school friends of Tony and Adrian’s
Jack
•• Jack is Veronica Brother
The Sense of an Ending isnarrated by a retiredman named tonyWebster
who recalls how he andhis clique met AdrianFinn at school andvowed to remain friendsfor life
When the past catchesup with Tony, he reflectson the paths he and hisfriends have taken.
The novella is divided into two divisions
“The thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine the nature of their life and may then choose to renounce it”
The second part of the novel is twice as long as the first part
Second
This forced Tony to re-established contact with Veronica and after a number of meetings with her, to re-evaluate the story he has narrated in the first part
remember his school
days, college days
and his break up
with Veronica as he himself
choose peaceful
life
He was married second time
(once he took
divorce)
He has a
daughter and a son-in –law
Tony tries to know
why Veronica’s mother left
documents and money for him
He remembers how Adrian asks his
permission for dating
Veronica
He remembers
how he answered him
to consult her mother
We are not
answered but to
solve our curiosity
we have to join the
clues cleverly
given by the
author
He doesn’t
remember
anything
that we
can rely
Tony
meditates
on aging
Title of The Sense of an Ending
-Bharat Bhammar
“The stories we tell about ourselves serve as consolatory
structure, falsifying origins and ends to the grant order
and meaning to the which has none”
-Frank Kermode
About novel
Title invites multiple interpretations
Purposeful ambiguity
Typical of Barne’s lucid but multi-layered
Corrosive relationship with veronica
Ambiguity of Title
Plot
Fine Book
Skillfully plotted
Boldly conceived
Questions of ageing and memory
Realistic condition
Borrowed Title
Frank Kermode’s work is also entitled as
“Studies in the theory in the fiction.” (1967)
No Beginning and no End
Imperfection of MEMORY
• Narration
• Tony’s memory
• Fragmentation
• Search for ‘sense’
• Unreliable narration
Memory Vs History
• Unreliability of history
• “ History is that certainty produced at
the point where the imperfections of
memory meet the inadequacies of
documentation.”
Eros and Thanatos
• Sex and death
• Robson’s suicide
• Adrian’s relationship
• Adrian’s suicide
• “Thanatos weans again”
Existentialism
• Adrian’s character
• Camus’ philosophy
• Concept of memory
• Suicide
• Existentialism Vs Eros and
Thanatos
Minor Themes
• Class conflict
• Meditation and ageing
• Memory and despair
• Mystery and search for solution/reasons
• Oedipus complex
• Personal past
Quotes on Memory• “Well, in one sense, I can’t know what it is that I don’t know.
That’s philosophically Self-evident.” -By Adrian Finn
• “What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what
you have witnessed.” - Tony Webster
• “How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we
adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the
fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us
that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about
our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
By Tony Webster (narrator)
• “We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance,
that memory equals events plus time. But it’s all much odder
than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d
forgotten?
• “…But of course, my desire to ascribe responsibility might be more a reflection of my own cast of mind than a fair analysis of what happened. 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.”
• “History isn’t the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.”
• “The history that happens underneath our noses ought to be the clearest, and yet it’s the most deliquescent. We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn’t it? But if we can’t understand time, can’t grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history—even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it?”
• “We live with such easy assumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we’d forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it’s not convenient—it’s not useful—to believe this; it doesn’t help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.”
History, Memory Vs History
Existentialist ideas in the novel
Time• “Another detail I remember: the three of us, as a symbol
of our bond, used to wear our watches with the face on the inside of the wrist. It was an affectation, of course, but perhaps something more. It made time feel like a personal, even a secret, thing.” –Narrator
• “How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
• “…this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.”
Symbols and Motifs in ‘The Sense of an Ending’
-Hitesh Parmar
Symbols
A mark or character used as a conventionalrepresentation of an object, function, orprocess, e.g. the letter or letters standing fora chemical element or a character inmusical notation.
A thing that represents or stands for something else,especially a material object representingsomething abstract.
FruitcakeChipsDiary
Symbols in Sense of an Ending
Diary
Tony Webster narrator.
Adrian Finn– Wrote Diary.
Story is in Flashback memory.
It symbolizes documentation.
Chips
It is a symbol in the story.
This symbol recurrently appears in the last few pages.
Fruitcake
It was a "slightly odd thing", he cautiously admits,to pretend to his ex-wife when they first metthat Veronica had never existed (and thenlater give such a one - sided account of herthat she's known within their marriage as"The Fruitcake")..
Ref.http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/26/sense-ending-julian-barnes-review1
Motifs
A recurring element that createsrecognizable patterns in folklore andfolk-art traditions.
A repeated theme or pattern.
Motifs in The Sense of an
Ending
Repetition
Regret
Suicide
Suicide
Robson Adrian
Regret
“I don’t envy Adrian his death, but I envy him the clarity of his life”.
Tony felt regret many time.
Repetition
Unrest
Damage (Tony’s letter damages)
You don’t understand anything (Veronica told to Tony)
BibliographyWikipedia contributors."The Sense of an Ending." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 3 Oct. 2014. Web. 28 Nov.
2014.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_an_Ending
Information of the novel from Wikipediahttp://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/15657664-the-sense-of-an-endingQuotes from the texts are explained.http://andrewblackman.net/2012/05/the-sense-of-an-ending-explained/Ending of the novel is explained by Andrew Blackmanhttp://www.julianbarnes.com/bib/senseofanending.htmlInformation about Interview with Julian Barnes and book summary.http://www.amazon.in/The-Sense-Ending-Julian-Barnes-ebook/dp/B005E87GLYDifferent reviews from magazines and News Papers.http://litlove.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/the-nonsense-of-an-ending/Information about this booker prize winning novella and basic question is about, “What happened there?”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/books/review/the-sense-of-an-ending-by-julian-barnes-book-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0About this book by Julian Barnes and English man’s emotion, and about his style.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-clothier/book-review-the-sense-of-_b_3017437.htmlThis is about the book and the role of Memory.
