Thinking Activity : Sense of an Ending

 Hello readers!

                              Here I am going to wrote about the famous novel The sense of an Ending is written by Julian Barnes. This blog is my academic task given by Dr Dilip barad sir from Department of English Bhavnagar University. Click here

   1. How do we understand the concept of suicide with reference to your reading of literature ranging from Renaissance play Hamlet, 20th century Existentialist philosophy and this 21st century novel Sense of an Ending?

Ans :-  "Once suicide was accepted as a common fact of society not as a noble Roman alternative, nor as the mortal sin it had been in the Middle Ages, nor as a special cause to be pleaded or warned against but simply as something people did, often and without much hesitation, like committing adultery, then it automatically became a common property of art" - Duaz 1971

                 People have different concept about suicide, rational thinkers like literary writers look suicide as an art and religious people look as a sin. Suicide is very interesting element in literature, for other people like doctors and businessman suicide is like failure of life and escaping from terrible experiences. While for literary writers suicide is Philosophical answer of life. If we see the Saussure's sign, signifier and signified then we come to know that it is all about language which create different meaning of death and suicide. 

            Suicide is beyond the death, it is transcendental idea of writers. From the age of enlightenment the idea of suicide came into the canon of literary work. There are many suicidal events in the work of William Shakespeare, for instance 'Hamlet' in which Prince Hamlet's soliloquy "To be or not to be" was very significant about suicide. He did not committed suicide because he had faith in the divinity but somehow Hamlet also thought about philosophical answer of the life. In twentieth Century After the world wars and scientific theories cause of spiritual degradation in people's life.

                     In addition, theory of Existentialism asked the question about existence and meaning of life. Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, the theorists of Existentialism gave the philosophical idea of suicide and said that suicide is beyond the death, it is not about failure in the life and escaping but it is all about transcendental idea of death, meaninglessness of life and absurdism. Further, in 21st century's 'Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes also have two episodes of suicide. There are two characters who committed suicide but it is not reliable facts that why they done suicide because it is said by other people, so we can say that Adrian's suicide is somehow seems philosophical but not reliable. However, psychologists say that it is all about Thanatos and Eros which are drive us into the life and death. 

2. How do you understand memory and history with reference to your reading of this novel

Ans :- At the end we come to know that memory has record something which is good or which we think it's a good and its preserved by us and when we think it's good about us then we preserve but one more thing is that memory is not perfect memory is in perfect so we cannot rely on some of the thing is perfectly clear in our mind in our memory also but something is not clear and after letter on its mixing so we cannot rely that what exactly happened in past

Same way we find in history that history is written by historian and its base on the someone's memory and its deal with the evidence but we can find that history is always problematic just because whenever that accident or event happened at that time how we remember then give interpretation or language used its depend upon that if that accident or event is good for us then we preserve different way but when that event or accident husband memory then we will do different kind of interpretation.