Saturday, 24 April 2021

The Sense of an Ending (Thinking Activity)


Hello friends,


I’m just thinking of a thing that has influenced a life. If I talk personally, books have played very important part. The Sense of an Ending has terribly influenced me. There is a whole new level of slightly more complicated knowledge, a new chapter to my own book of learning. Probably I have to confess that literature hasn’t shaped me but it has reshaped me!


Listen this explanation from Ruchi Joshi's video and her learning outcome on 'The Sense of an Ending'.




It’s characters are as catchy as a glue stick, even if I try to remove- it can’t. It can never be removed as sometimes directly or sometimes indirectly, I’m the character of Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending. If it seems exaggerated, it's a truth and I think this is the only truth of each human being (I would love to imitate the words of Tony as he quotes ‘I called up the only Veronica in my address book).

This is perhaps totally clashing with what I was believing throughout the last decade of my life. Earlier I used to believe what was said in history. With the passing of time I intensified my critical skill and started to believe in ‘not to believe even on what I see, listen and have learnt. Not to believe the surface and try to ponder deep down because this is what needs to be but reading of this text my province and my strong concern of knowing collapse and it thrills me till

the date. 

Earlier I was of the opinion that there are no truths and lies but different truths or let me say three truths but I found an excellent abstraction that ‘Who has told the story even they must not be represented as liars but as survivors’!


Before I’d rounded off my reading of this novella, I was hankering to read Adrian’s diary and still, of course! I don’t want to be one of those secret spoilers and so I won’t ponder anything on that point to decrease your charm and glamour to read but probably I need to quote the words of ‘Daily Telegraph’ for the novella, ‘I would urge you to read and reread - The Sense of an ending’ and want to read Adrian’s diary again and again’. Adrian’s diary is one of those life’s strengths I want to reach yet I must not reach. The question remains still in front of the eyes and behind the mind,

‘What if I don’t even urge to read Adrian’s diary?’ ‘I know that, I know very well that I can never be even the shadow of Adrian but what if I become Tony?' Equally as the text even I have to wait for the unrest, great unrest and for the responsibility. Tony has everything in his life like comfort, retirement , marriage, children or we may say that we'll settle in life. Then the question arises Why at the sense of his end he thinks about his past?


Why ?
Is there any purpose ?
Why does he recall everything in his 60s?

Things don’t get settled down here but this leads us to think that Tony is a kind of character who keeps on swinging from his words or speaks a lie? At some of the extent Tony is honest to me, more honest to me or let me say, is he really a liar or unreliable? Because not to believe or say Tony’s unreliability has made patches on my mind that I wont be able to trust even Adrian.


Thus, without the character of Tony, I would remain just with the critical thinking that History is the lies of victor but the way it is revealed made a greater impact that without that I’ll certainly remain in the perfect frame of imperfection, yet I know what I don’t know and my journey is towards to be the honest to myself that ‘I must not know, what I don’t know’!


Thank you







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