Thinking Activity: The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

About Writer: Julian Barnes

Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is an English writer. Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending (2011), and three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005).

The Sense of an Ending

The novel is divided into two parts

The first part biggins in the 1960s. It begins with four intellectually arrogant school friends.
we are told about two friends out of four. The first one is Tony the narrator and the second one is a Adrain the most preciously intelligent of the four.
When they were in the last year of the school, a boy who killed himself after getting a girl pregnant.
The four friends discuss the death philosophically, they wanted to know what exactly happened.

Then Adrain joins Cambridge University. Whereas Tony takes admission in Bristol university. Tony had a girlfriend called Veronica. He spends an awkward weekend at Veronica's house. Then their relationship fails in some acrimony.

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

a. Damage : the letter written by Tony to Adrain and Veronica

b. It damages Veronica’s relation with Adrain

c. Perhaps, leads Adrain to meet Sarah Ford > their affair

d. Sarah’s pregnancy > which may have lead to Adrain Finn’s suicide!

e. The child, names Adrain is born with metal retardness > damage caused by suicide of Adrain to Sarah while she is pregnant > or her middle-aged pregnancy

f. The letter damages several lives > Veronica, Adrain, Sarah and young Adrain

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