Here i am sharing my presentation on Paper no : 13 The New Literature .

1. Major Themes in The Sense of an Ending
Name : Mansi Parmar
Roll No : 15
M A , Sem 4
Paper No : 13 , New Literature
Email Id : mansibaparmar212@gmail.com
Submitted to : Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University

2.  Julian Patrick Barnes is born
in19 January 1946.
 He is an English writer.
 He is contemporary English
writer of Postmodernism in
literature.
 He has written crime fiction
under the pseudonym Dan
Kavanagh.
Introduction of Author

3.  In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of
essays and short stories.
 Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for his book The
Sense of an Ending in 2011.
Conti…

4. His Works :-
Talking it over
The Lemon table
Nothing to be frightened of
Flaubert’s Parrot
 Levels of Life
 England England
The sense of an Ending

5. Major Themes
Weakness of memory and aging
 Memory v/s History
 Eros and Thanatos
 Existentialism
 Suicide / Death
 Class conflict

6. Minor Themes
 Meditation and ageing
 Mystery and search for solution reasons
 Oedipus complex
 Personal past

7. Weakness of memory and aging
 The central theme of this Novel.
 Narrative also try to give effect of fragment memory.
 Through the narrative of the Tony Webster and his
search for reason of Adrian’s death tries to justify this
theme.
 Throughout the novel, writer tries to prove human
memory and how it creates assumption on human mind.
 In the first part Tony tells his story of schooldays, all the
events are in order and narrative has particular flow.

8.  In first part the narrator tells the story of 40 years ago .
Second section is much important because in which Tony
narrates the event of his past with different dimension and
which are not so important according to his memory.
“Well, in one sense, I can’t know what it is that I don’t
know that’s philosophically self-evident”.
- By Adrian Finn
Conti...

9. Memory v/s History.
 Unreliability of history is a One of the central ideas of the
novel .
 “history is that certainty produced at the point where
the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of
documentation”.
If human memory is partial than one cannot rely history or
documentation done by man with his partial memory.
Adrian with example of Robson, very beautifully describes
history as unreliable and not truth.

10.  The novel also focuses on objectiveness of historian.
Because, one cannot be objective, as he cannot come out
from his personal assumption and cast of mind though he
want to be.
Conti...

11. Eros and Thanatos
 Eros and Thanatos means “sex and death”.
Eros is erotic love
Thanatos is death
 Freud gave the theory that the duality of human nature
emerged from two basic instincts- Eros and Thanatos.
Eros is the drive of life, love, creativity and sexuality, self
satisfaction, and species preservation.
Thanatos is Greek word, means death, it is drives of
aggression, sadism, destruction, violence and death.
 The theme of Eros and Thanatos ran simultaneously in
the case of Robinson and Adrian.

12. Conti...
 “Thanatos weans again” Adrian spoke about Robson’s
case.
 Adrian who is more intelligent, mature, serious became
victim of the same thing and in his case also Thanatos
weans.

13. Existentialism
 The well known ideas of Albert Camus are shown in the
novel .
 As Camus says that suicide was only true philosophical
question .
 With the Adrian’s philosophical ideas , the novel
represents existentialist ideas.
 Adrian, as existentialist, commits suicide in very young
age. Even his way of killing himself is very significant in
philosophical sense.
 He did not kill himself with out of mind but at very
conscious mental state, he planned and performed.

14. Suicide / Death
 This theme plays very strong role in the entire novel and
being a central theme of the novel.
 There are four specific deaths that each have an impact
on the novel.
 The death of Robson and Adrian Finn center around the
sub theme of suicide and the value of human life.
 While the death of Mr. and Mrs. Ford have larger effects
on the plot, especially regarding the will of Mrs. Sarah Ford.

15. In this novel a young boy called Robson commits suicide in
the school. After few years Adrian kills himself.
 Robson committed suicide after his girlfriend became
pregnant
 Adrian had Committed
suicide by cutting his wrist
in water bath .
Conti...

16. Class conflict
Class conflict was another important theme in this novel.
 This theme come in the novel through the character of
Veronica and Tony Webster.
Veronica was awkward girl so she was a misfit in her
family, too self-conscious to dance in public.
Tony once spent a weekend at Veronica’s family home.At
that time he had felt uncomfortable, socially inferior, and he
was hardly surprised when the enigmatic Veronica took up
more prestigious Adrian.
She was class conscious. She choose the batter option.

17. This way class conflict is also one of the theme in this
novel.
Conti…