Page 53 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 53
Fiction and Eschatology: The Politics of Fear in Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending 53
self-defense mechanisms to alleviate, and perhaps completely avoid en-
counter (or collision) with the real world and its complex changes. He
only maintains a relationship with his ex-wife—she is his only friend and
helps him to cope with the memories of his teenage days. Why would
someone care about the events that happened more than forty years ago?
The answer is simple: because life stories involve more and more dying,
and Tony does not become any younger. On the one hand, Tony is won-
dering where the end really is and when it will arrive: whether with the
arrival of death, or much earlier, at those moments-cuts when we face the
inevitability of a petrified existence, that is, when we accept the fact that
we cannot change anything in our lives. On the other hand, the past is
not dead, and perhaps it is not even the past, because it could determine
us as long as we are alive.
Though dead, Adrian Finn, the most fascinating of four friends, now
enters the main story and controls the fate and self-interpretation of the
narrator. Tony Webster is our contemporary Ishmael: he often speaks of
himself as the survivor, and survivors, as we all know, must tell the sto-
ry. Although much has already been said in the first part of the novel, the
reader gets the impression that the story begins only with the second part,
because everything we know, everything that is the usual cognitive role
of fiction, is now challenged with the new insights into the life that Web-
ster gets through the complex set of circumstances and different forms of
the ending. In fact, Barnes’ story becomes a form of Vergangenheitsbewäl-
tigung, done here quite unusually on the neutral ground of remember-
ing of an average subject without deeper historical experience, and which
is reflected in the identification with moments when (moral) decisions
could have been made but were not. Tony Webster implicitly asks himself
many questions: Did he like Veronica? (During their relationship, he was
very reserved.) What happened to an energetic and anarchic boy who was
striving for knowledge and sexual experiences? (He has become a lonely
person, deprived of intimacy.) What happened to expectations that life
would be filled with passion, danger, enthusiasm, and despair? (These ex-
pectations died.) What happened to his friend Adrian Finn, who fasci-
nated all of them with his cleverness and peculiarity in his youth? (He
committed suicide.) However, suicide is not only the end of life but also
a warning to life. Tony Webster is intelligent enough to address the sys-
tem: ‘He took his own life’, but also aware that Finn “also took charge of
his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then
out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done
self-defense mechanisms to alleviate, and perhaps completely avoid en-
counter (or collision) with the real world and its complex changes. He
only maintains a relationship with his ex-wife—she is his only friend and
helps him to cope with the memories of his teenage days. Why would
someone care about the events that happened more than forty years ago?
The answer is simple: because life stories involve more and more dying,
and Tony does not become any younger. On the one hand, Tony is won-
dering where the end really is and when it will arrive: whether with the
arrival of death, or much earlier, at those moments-cuts when we face the
inevitability of a petrified existence, that is, when we accept the fact that
we cannot change anything in our lives. On the other hand, the past is
not dead, and perhaps it is not even the past, because it could determine
us as long as we are alive.
Though dead, Adrian Finn, the most fascinating of four friends, now
enters the main story and controls the fate and self-interpretation of the
narrator. Tony Webster is our contemporary Ishmael: he often speaks of
himself as the survivor, and survivors, as we all know, must tell the sto-
ry. Although much has already been said in the first part of the novel, the
reader gets the impression that the story begins only with the second part,
because everything we know, everything that is the usual cognitive role
of fiction, is now challenged with the new insights into the life that Web-
ster gets through the complex set of circumstances and different forms of
the ending. In fact, Barnes’ story becomes a form of Vergangenheitsbewäl-
tigung, done here quite unusually on the neutral ground of remember-
ing of an average subject without deeper historical experience, and which
is reflected in the identification with moments when (moral) decisions
could have been made but were not. Tony Webster implicitly asks himself
many questions: Did he like Veronica? (During their relationship, he was
very reserved.) What happened to an energetic and anarchic boy who was
striving for knowledge and sexual experiences? (He has become a lonely
person, deprived of intimacy.) What happened to expectations that life
would be filled with passion, danger, enthusiasm, and despair? (These ex-
pectations died.) What happened to his friend Adrian Finn, who fasci-
nated all of them with his cleverness and peculiarity in his youth? (He
committed suicide.) However, suicide is not only the end of life but also
a warning to life. Tony Webster is intelligent enough to address the sys-
tem: ‘He took his own life’, but also aware that Finn “also took charge of
his own life, he took command of it, he took it in his hands—and then
out of them. How few of us—we that remain—can say that we have done
