The Sense of an Ending : Thinking Activity

Damage’ recurs as a motif in the novel. Whom do you think is ‘damaged’ and who is the ‘damager’?

The novel Sense of Ending by Julian Barnes is an excellent example of psychological thriller where Memory, Time, and History are recurrent themes. These three concepts are also interrelated. When we see Memory we also see time when it is experienced and While retrospecting those memories at different times we reconstruct different memories of the same memory. 

Understanding Human mind is a mammoth task. Human mind is very complex and it cannot be understood easily. Because as a person we ourselves are even not able to understand our own mind. Because we experience the incident in a different way and store that particular incident according to our convenience. Julian Barnes also says...

 "What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed."

So, what we collect in our mind in the form of Memory is not trustworthy at all. The story Sense of an Ending is narrated by Tony Webster in the first person narrative by retrospecting his past memories. The narrator or we can say the protagonist is totally unreliable because he himself doubts his own memories now and then. The very first line says…

"I remember, in no particular order"

So, the narrator himself denies the certainty of his own truths. Another theme which highlighted from the above statement is non-linearity of time. What we remember in our mind is not always stored in a perfect order. The same happens with history also. So, The narrator recollects some of the memories from the past. But whether these memories are real, factual, happened at static time or not we don't know. So, Memories do not follow a proper linear timeline. They delve into the past, present or future at the same time. So, we create our own personal time which is completely different from the physical status of time. 

So, This idea of personal time is related to Henri Bergson's concept of psychological time. Which says that we create our own time in the memories and remember that time according to our convenience. So, the below given lines from the text present the idea of non-linearity of time...

We live in time—it holds us and moulds us—but I’ve never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock.

So, to understand This manipulation of factual physical time into our Internalised time into our memories, creation of different memories from what we have witnessed and reconstruction of memories can be understood by digging deep into the traumatic experience witnessed by characters in their past lives. So,The past traumatic experience of the characters can be helped here to understand who is damaged by whom and who is the actual Damager.

Before that let's see what Tony thinks about damage and how different people react towards damage. And how our reaction towards damage leads to our behaviour towards others. Here are some of Tony's conclusions narrated in the story…

I certainly believe we all suffer damage, one way or another.

And then there is the question, on which so much depends, of how we react to the damage: Whether we admit it or repress it, and how this affects our dealings with others. 

• Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; 
• Some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; 
• Then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.

Who is Damaged?

How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted?

The question asked by Tony Webster suggests that some damage is already done. But the Damager and Damaged people by repressing those emotions choose to remain in blindspot and this is more dangerous than anything. So, This is statement by Tony also indicates that damage has already been performed by somebody but we don't know about that.

Is Veronica Damaged?

First character which seems damaged here is Veronica, who time and again described by Tony Webster has suffered some deep trauma in her childhood environment which has damaged her deeply. And according to Tony because of that she is not ready to make a physical relationship with Tony Webster. In the words of Tony Webster…

I also advised him to be prudent, because in my opinion Veronica had suffered damage a long way

back.

Tony didn't have any clear evidence of imposing his damage theory. But still from the conversation with Sarah Ford Tony assumes that Veronica had gone through some traumatic experience and this trauma holds back Veronica to have a physical relationship with Tony Webster.

Is Tony Webster Damaged?

Another character which can be seen as damaged as the narrator is Tony Webster himself. The ill-treatment of the Ford family with Tony Webster also damaged his own identity. He himself feels inferior to Fords. 

What did I mean by “damage”? It was only a guess; I didn’t have any real evidence. But whenever I looked back on that unhappy weekend, I realised that it hadn’t been just a matter of a rather naïve young man finding himself ill at ease among a posher and more socially skilled family. That was going on too, of course. But I could sense a complicity between Veronica and her heavy-footed, heavy-handed father, who treated me as substandard.

Here, he refers to those weekends as unhappy which clearly shows his internal damage by living with High class Ford family. And this consequently leads towards his break up with Veronica. But the prevalence of deep damage came out when he was writing letters to Veronica and Adrian.

Tony can be seen as damaged in another way as well. As a young man he has repressed some of his memories. Among them one is a reply letter written by him to Veronica and Adrian where he describes Veronica as Damaged. After writing this letter in his anger he might be damaged internally that he shouldn't write that letter. And in order to come out from this guilt he consciously forgot those memories which have damaged him.

Another glimpse of Tony's damage can be clearly seen in his narration where he once says that...

You might even ask me to apply my “theory” to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness. I’m not sure I could answer this, to be honest.

His denial towards answering this question whether he is damaged or not can be seen in terms of his damage. Because people who repress their damage often do not like to speak about what damage was done to them. And from this statement we also came to know that this damage is also affecting the truthfulness of his past memories. So, we can't trust whatever narrated by Tony Webster is hundred percent true.

Is Sarah Ford Damaged?

Another character which is seen as damaged is Sarah Ford. Throughout the novel we see a very less description of the character of Sarah Ford. Though we are not able to get an overall idea regarding the exact nature of Sarah Ford's character. Still, we find that Sarah Ford is a suppressed voice in her family. She is not much more respectable in her family. And she spends most of her time in the kitchen preparing food. 

Her Relationship with Adrian can also be seen as a deep failure in her marriage life with Veronica's father. She is also going through some damage and traumatic experience which leads her to make a relationship with her daughter's boyfriend. Her relationship with Veronica is also not good. One of Equations from the page of Adrain's Diary also says that there is a conflict between Veronica and her mother. Equation is something like this…

b = s - v (x/+) a1

This equation can be read with reference to the dame of Sarah Ford. The negative sign between S and V indicates that Sarah Ford doesn't have a good relationship with Veronica. And This negative relationship between daughter and mother leads mother to seduced her daughter's boyfriend and make relationship with Adrian. So, In this manner we can also read Sarah Ford's character as damaged.

Letter as Damager

The story is so complex and ambiguous that we can't even boldly say who is actually damaged and who is the actual Damager. If we suppose the letter as Damager then we can justify this statement as follows..

• The letter written by Tony to Adrain and Veronica which he first referred to as a normal letter turns out to be a letter written in anger on which Tony rejects his authorship as well can be considered as Damager.
• Firstly It damages Veronica’s relation with Adrain because in letter Tony clearly suggests that your relationship will not sustain longer because Veronica is damaged inside. The below given lines are from a letter which suggests that Veronica is damaged a way back in her life.

"Even her own mother warned me against her. If I were you, I’d check things out with Mum—ask her about damage a long way back."

• This letter also leads Adrian to concern Veronica's mother and they consequently fall in affair and Sarah becomes pregnant by Adrian's son.
• Though the reason by Adrain's death is not so much clearer but still there are possibility that Sarah's pregnancy might lead him to commit suicide.
• And last the Child Adrian born with mental retardness can be seen in terms of Sarah's old age pregnancy or might be shock of Adrain's death.

In this way if we consider the letter as Damager then it can be concluded that the letter is responsible for the damage many lives including Veronica, Adrian, Sarah Ford and Young Adrian.

So, To conclude it can be said that Tony Webster by remembering his fast memory tried to impose his theory of damage on Sarah Ford and Veronica Ford. But his own damage done by Ford's family remains totally absent in his narrative. When he reconstructs his memory, remember it as Veronica is at fault because she is damaged.

Citation

• Barnes, Julian. The Sense of an Ending. Vintage, 2011.
• Mohan, Aparna. The Non-Linearity of Time, Memory and History in Julian Barnes’ the Sense of an Ending. Quest Journals, 27 Dec. 2018.