“Plot is not the main point; characters and life are Barnes’ Focus”
Name: Jayati
Thakar
Paper no: 13-
The New
Roll. No. 30
Assignment
Topic: “Plot is not the main point; characters and life are Barnes’ Focus”
Submitted to: S.
B. Gardi Department of English, M. K. Bhavnagar University.
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Introduction to Author:
Julian Patrick Barnes born on 19th
of January; is an English writer. Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for his book ‘The Sense of an Ending’ in
2011,
very recently. And three of his books had been shortlisted for the Booker
Prize: Flaubert’s Parrot (1984),
England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005). He
has also written Crime Fiction
under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. In addition to novel, Barnes has published
collections of essays and short stories.
His honours also include the Somerset
Maugham Award and the Geoffrey
Faber Memorial Prize. (htt17)
Introduction to the Text, “Sense
of an Ending”
The novel is
divided into two parts, entitled as “One” and “Two”, both of which are narrated
by (60 years old) Tony Webster when he is retired and living alone. The whole
narrative is a quest in past, which is roughly recalled by Tony. It is also
known for its tragic investigation in past. It is withal genre under
“Psychoanalytic Thriller”.
The first part
begins in the 1960s with four intellectually arrogant school friends, of whom
two feature in the remainder of the story: Tony, the narrator, and Adrian, the
most precociously intelligent of the four. This part mostly deals with their
schooling days. Towards the end of their school days another boy named Robson
committed suicide while hanging himself, apparently after getting his
girlfriend pregnant. The four friends discuss the philosophical difficulty of
knowing exactly what happened. (htt18) The four friends
depart then and forget this incident and join different universities. Adrian
goes to Cambridge and Tony to Bristol University. There tony start dating a
girl called Veronica Ford. After they broke up, one day Tony got a letter from
Adrian that he has been dating Veronica since they broke up. Then one sudden
day after his return arrival from six month at U.S.A., Tony received one urgent
letter from Alex declaring that Adrian had committed suicide. These remains the
most prominent incident of part one. Then the part two is twice longer than the
one come back to the present where Tony entails the letter sent by Sarah Ford
(Veronica’s Mother) and she bequeathed 500 ponds to Tony and two documents.
These lead him to re- establish his contact with Veronica and after a number of
meeting he re-evaluates the story he narrated in the past.
“Plot is not the main point;
characters and life are Barnes’ Focus.”
Before I jump to my subject I
would rather like to put forth the idea of ‘Plot’ in traditional contexts given
by Aristotle in his ‘Poetics’.
Aristotle goes on to discuss the
structure of the ideal tragic plot and spends several chapters on its
requirements. He says that the plot must be a complete whole – with a definite
beginning, middle, and end- and its length should be such that the spectators
can comprehend without difficulty both its separated its parts and its overall
unity. Moreover, the plot requires a single central theme in the protagonist’s
fortunes, with emphasis on the dramatic causation and probably of the events. (htt15)
While come down
to the modern era, the technique of telling/narrating the story has took other
folds. In modern and post-modern era we find most admired style of narration is
“Flesh- back” technique, which challenges the traditional pattern of narration.
Where the order (Beginning, Medieval, and End) has been dismissed here. It
starts from somever middle and sometimes it begun from the end and ends at the
medieval or begginning. More many ways
modern pentameters have challenged the old one.
Up till now we came across the
simple narrative techniques. And the Narrator always remains mouth piece of an
author. A narrator builds faithful relation between author and readers. But
here Julian Barnes introduces us to a totally different style of narration;
where for readers it is difficult to rely on the narrator. In this text Barnes introduces his readers to the completely new technique of narration; which called “Unreliable Narration”/
“Unreliable Narrator”. Where the
narration takes place in history of Tony Webster. Who starts recalling his
school days and then university days with addressing that,
“I remember it,
in no particular order...” Thus it from the first creates constant dilemma
among readers about his reliability. (htt19)
“...turn briefly to a few incidents that
have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed
into certainty. If i can’t be sure of the actual events any more, I can at
least be true to the impressions those facts left. That’s the best I can
manage.”
It has the most
vary point is that there is no chronological order in events. On this ground
many critics have claims that the novel is plotless or has loosely/poorly
constructed plot; then it would be
injustice to Barnes. Because it has beginning, middle and the end. Barnes
able to pull readers towards climax and the effect of peripateia and
anagnorisis leads to the catastrophe. (htt20)
In general
definition of these three words: ‘Peripateteia’, ‘Anagnorisis’, and
‘Catastrophe’.
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary:
‘Anagnorisis’ =
the point in the plot especially of a tragedy at which the protagonist recognises his or her or some other character’s true identity or discovers the
true nature of his or her own situation = ‘Rising action’.
‘Peripateia’ = a
sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation especially in a
literary work = Climax.
‘Catastrophe’ =
a terrible disaster = ‘Falling action’.
Where we find
these in the text?
We can define
them as:
The suicide of Adrian can be taken as ‘the Rising action or Anagnorisis’. From where the real
quest began. Then the letter from Mrs. Sarah Ford and 500 pounds to Tony leads
to climax. The ‘Climax or Peripatiea’;
here we can say is the 40 years old mentally retarded Man exactly looks
like Adrian, when he appears in the text. The last and finally ‘the Falling
action or Catastrophe’ can be consider when Tony comes to know about the fact
of 40 years mentally retarded Adrian (junior); to whom he thought as the son of
Veronica and Adrian is not such, because Veronica is his sister. This can
really be the disastrous to Tony, where he find him guilty too. Actually this
son was born mentally ill because of the mother’s convincing fetus above forty (creates disorder in new born child). His mother was non other than Sarah Ford,
who initiated the physical relation with her daughter’s boyfriend. And Tony
thinks it happened because of him; while
he had suggested Adrian to meet Sarah Ford before get into the relationship
with Veronica and he fell into love with her. The mystery of Adrian's suicide
is also now divulged that his suicide was a philosophical death; where could not
bear that a woman at the age of his mum conceiving his child in her womb, and he
commites suicide. Tony found himself guilty and considers his letter to Adrian
as a curse.
And yet, the
telling of life, the history, the memory seen through a particular character is
very important in this novel. (htt20)
Meanwhile, we
find that in between Barnes' tries to bring some minute narration of trivial incident like, Robson’s suicide, most
common incidents like, Old Joe Hunt, history lectures, shiner wrist
watch, Camus’ philosophy of suicide, Eros and Thanatos, etc. But these all at
the wider point connect down to the Adrian’s personality as a scholarly guy and
his reason to commit suicide. All these incidents make whole picture of the
text as a ‘psychological thriller fiction.’
Camus’ Philosophy of Suicide:
“Suicide was the only true philosophical
question.”
“..He had explain his reasoning: that life
is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a
philosophical duty to examine both the nature of lofe and the conditions it
comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce this gift no one ask
for, it is a moral and human duty to act on the consequences of their decision.”
And this
connects with Adrian’s decision to suicide when he left a note addressed to the
coroner saying that the free person has a philosophical duty to examine the
nature of their life and may then choose to renounce it.
And at the last
we find that all those trivia were seems to postpone the truth desperately by
the narrator. At the end we also finds that Tony’s narration fails at major
extents.
“History isn’t the lies of the victors...
It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious
nor defeated.”
Unreliability of
the memory plays a vital role in this novel. Moreover Tony refers to old
history classes time and again; at a time it seems for no use; which later
connects to Tony and his till then narration. Withal he says,
“History is that certainty produced at
the point ehre the imperfection of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”
“What you End up
remembering isn’t always the same as you have witnessed.”- Tony Webster (htt21)
Through out the
text, whatever Tony narrates, at last it can be easily falsified because of his
irresponsible attitude, he as man of free will bothers for nothing withal he
has inadequate documents; which creates no sense at all and also hangs the
reality in between. And whatever he narrates from his memory was half truth, we
can say. Because, he can not get the simple thing. As Veronica used to say,
“You still don’t get it. You never did, and you
never will. So stop even trying.”
This can also be
taken as Tony’s “take the things easy” kind of attitude keeps the readers to
become more curious for that thing particularly. Simultaneously, the plot seem
to suffer because of the narrator’s meditating memory and nostalgic hindsight
on past life.
At last i would
like to conclude my topic to connect it with Samuel Beckett's quote in below
image,
In
that case it is the shape what matters to Julian Barnes. The shape of narration
is left the most effective impact on reader’s mind. No doubt it requires a
twice or thrice reading, but it every time develops the sense of the reader.
Thank You...
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Works Cited
<https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/agamemnon-the-choephori-and-the-eumenides/critical-essay/aristotle-on-tragedy
>.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barnes >.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sense_of_an_Ending
>.
<http://jaytithakar.blogspot.in/2017/03/the-sense-of-ending.html
>.
<http://dilipbarad.blogspot.in/2014/02/the-sense-of-ending-julian-barnes.html
>.
<https://www.slideshare.net/JaytiThakar94/the-sense-of-an-ending-by-julian-barnes>.
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