Postmoderní technika v románu Vědomí konce Juliana Barnese – anglicky

THE USE OF POSTMODERN TECHNIQUE IN JULIAN BARNES’S NOVEL

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

„History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

Julian Barnes is a contemporary postmodern writer. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford and started his career first as a journalist. He is sometimes called the chameleon of British literature for his ability to play with prose not giving the reader a clearly understandable explanation at the very beginning. This is also the case of his latest novel The Sense of an Ending (2011) which was awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize for best fiction of 2011. The novel, whose title itself is based on the work of Frank Kermode, who studied the phenomenon of human perception of time, works a lot with concepts of memory and history. In fact, these two concepts, closely related, permit Barnes to use the postmodern technique of building a slightly confusing narrative. In my essay, I would like to discuss the use of this technique in the novel in order to give a clearly understandable explanation of the story.

The narrative itself is divided into two parts – the 1960s and the present. In the first part we meet the narrator TONY WEBSTER as a young schoolboy who is part of a class clique: Adrian, Tony, Colin, and Alex. Adrian is considered the smartest by everyone. He has a natural talent for philosophy and wins a scholarship to study Moral Sciences at Cambridge University. Tony, who is less smart than Adrian and often looks up to him, is accepted at Bristol University to read History. They swear to become friends forever. However, their friendship is broken when Tony discovers that Adrian started to date his ex-girlfriend Veronica.

Full of anger, bitterness and despise Tony writes a resentful letter to Adrian where he explains him the moral corruptness of the girl as well as her conduct towards himself, which was slightly arrogant and sometimes very mysterious. He also gives him the advice to consult Veronica’s real character. In fact, this decision turns out to be not a very fortunate one leading Adrian to rather a tragic ending. When Tony learns of his friend’s betrayal, he decides to forget this chapter of his life, deletes Veronica and Adrian from his life and moves on. However, later on when Tony learns of Adrian’s suicide, he is crushed. He wants to find out the circumstances of this unhappy event, because he feels that he might be partly responsible for the death of his friend. This is the end of the first part of the story.

In the second part we meet Tony as an old retired man. In the meantime, he got married, had a daughter and a career, leading a contented, but, according to him, not a very exciting life. When Veronica’s mother bequeathes him 500 pounds, he is forced to reflect on his past again. He decides to see Veronica again. She is rather reluctant to talk to him and during all the meetings she is as mysterious as she used to be when they were going out together. However, it seems that she wants Tony to understand something very important. This situation becomes clear only after a second reading of the novel when Tony meets a boy named Adrian of whom he presumes being Veronica’s son for his striking resemblance to Adrian. This information becomes clear only after at least second reading of the novel. In fact, Adrian is not Veronica’s son, but her brother since Veronica’s mother has had an affair with Adrian just shortly before Adrian’s suicide. This is the big revelation that was hidden in the structure of the narrative. What Barnes suggests us by using this technique is to proceed in reading like an archaeologist working on an excavation site, looking for artefacts and putting them together. This is also the reason why he discusses the concepts of history and memory so often during the novel. I think that the novel The Sense of an Ending can be rightly considered one of the masterpieces of English literature.