Learning Outcome: The Sense Of An Ending
Julian Barnes' The Sense Of an Ending is a novel that makes you reflect on history, philosophy, memory, and above all, yourself. It is about the 'end of any likelihood of change'. All of us encounter situations where we regret doing something and try to overcome that regret by one or the other way. But, what if overcoming was not possible? Tony Webster is stuck in this kind of a situation. A state where neither can he undo what he did, nor can he mend the damage. But, then again, is it just Tony's fault for what happened with Veronica, Sarah and Adrian?
What kind of sense do we get when we are about to get to the end of our lives? How do we understand our past selves? And in that case, how much do we remember our past? These are some of the many existential questions the novel seems to reflect on. After I finished reading the novel I was left with so many questions. It's not just about 'to be or not to be'. It is about whether we can justify our being the way we are.
I loved the following lines:
1) "What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realized? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, there was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to being hurt -- and inflicted for precisely that reason."
Reason: These lines indicate the vain attempts at being on the safe side; which all of us try to do very often in our lives. Barnes seems to point out that such efforts of being on the safe side are actually ways of escaping the harsh realities and responsibilities of life. Struggle is a reality, all of us, at some point of time wish to escape. But then is it actually possible to do so?
2) "What you end up remembering, isn't always the same as what you have witnessed."
Reason: Memory is a subjective matter. It keeps on changing with time. We remember things which we want to remember: and that too in the way we want them to be remembered. This is why one can never rely on memories to justify an event. Because as the quote suggests 'it isn't always the same as what you have witnessed,'
The following presentation contains my reflections on certain aspects of the novel.
What kind of sense do we get when we are about to get to the end of our lives? How do we understand our past selves? And in that case, how much do we remember our past? These are some of the many existential questions the novel seems to reflect on. After I finished reading the novel I was left with so many questions. It's not just about 'to be or not to be'. It is about whether we can justify our being the way we are.
I loved the following lines:
1) "What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realized? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, there was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to being hurt -- and inflicted for precisely that reason."
Reason: These lines indicate the vain attempts at being on the safe side; which all of us try to do very often in our lives. Barnes seems to point out that such efforts of being on the safe side are actually ways of escaping the harsh realities and responsibilities of life. Struggle is a reality, all of us, at some point of time wish to escape. But then is it actually possible to do so?
2) "What you end up remembering, isn't always the same as what you have witnessed."
Reason: Memory is a subjective matter. It keeps on changing with time. We remember things which we want to remember: and that too in the way we want them to be remembered. This is why one can never rely on memories to justify an event. Because as the quote suggests 'it isn't always the same as what you have witnessed,'
The following presentation contains my reflections on certain aspects of the novel.
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