The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

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1) How do you understand memory and history with reference to your reading of this novel.

After reading this novel the understanding related to history and memory both have changed. I used to think about memory that it will at some extent forgotten but never distorted. After reading this novel I really feel that we also have those distorted memory, which we want to store as something which has actually not taken place. By doing that we are cheating our selves and others also. So memory and history both are connected. History is written from memory. Now we have seen in this novel how distorted memory can be stored by individual. If historians takes their statements in to consideration, we can not trust history either. In novel Tony says history is not lies of victors or self delusion of defeated, history is the memory of survivors. It is told by them who has not gone for fight from either side and they have survived. They don’t even have first hand experiences of the things. So these people will remember history in different way. We can not trust them without any evidence. So we should not trust anything without evidence, not the person and not even the history.

2) How do you understand the concept of suicide with reference to your reading of literature ranging from Renaissance play Hamlet, 20th century Existentialist philosophy and this 21st century novel The Sense of an Ending?

 The journey from Renaissance play to the 21st century novel was very interesting. Suicide is very ambiguous topic. Mostly people think suicide has something bad. Our law also consider as crime. When Hamlet thinks, “To be or, not to be” he concludes that it is untraveled land from where no ones return, and they don’t know also what suffering they have to go through. So living current life is better then suicide. Existentialism says, life is meaningless but ending life is not the solution. So keep on living and try to find meaning in your life. Now here in this novel “The Sense of an Ending” Adrian says that life is a gift which no one has asked for and now if person thinks to return it they have right to do that. Adrian has lived his life at fullest capacity. He knows what he was doing in his life. He knows how he wants to live and he also knows how he wants to die. So in this novel suicide has not been seen as something bad or crime. It is kind of wish or right which every person has. After living your life as one wants and after getting satisfaction in life one can go for suicide. This is what my concept of suicit be the reason people have committed suicide innumerable times. But the problem is society has always seen this as something negative. Why society thinks that one should keep on living, even if they had lived enough or they no more feel life worthy of living. May be because society is made up of coward people. People who shows their slightest wound to the hundreds of people and will consider cowards to those who have guts and strength to kill them selves. Of one think logically, will definitely find problem in understanding the rules of society. May be because the rules are created for Mass and not for Individuals.

Thank you.