Page 51 - 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. 51
Fiction and Eschatology: The Politics of Fear in Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending 51
cause of his premature death. The reason for his suicide is rather trivial,
but it well reflects the heterochrony of life in the 1960s, which will later
be insisted on by the narrator—Robson’s girlfriend got pregnant, and he
hanged himself in the attic. A cold analysis of this event by our quartet
of friends leads to important questions they can pose about themselves.
There is an undeniable fact: this uninteresting and unrespectable Rob-
son not only had a girlfriend, unlike them but also slept with her. They
are cursing and wondering: “Fucking bastard! Why him and not us?”
(Barnes 2011, 15). Robson was located in the kind of people produced by
the middle class, and this species should not be anything superior in re-
lation to a kind that thinks it is above others, and to which the narra-
tor and his friends belong. In the world in which boys grow up, there is
something that belongs to the tacit, but essentially present knowledge:
“the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always re-
mained implicit” (Barnes 2011, 8). Immature and selfish thinking about
Robson’s suicide, far from any understanding of causes and consequenc-
es, are typical of youth, but also for the class affiliation of the characters.
But this remains a serious problem: Barnes deals with the mistakes all of
us make when understanding what is happening around us—until it be-
comes too late.
Thanks to the theme of sexuality and death (Eros and Thanatos), Life
came in among friends, they really needed to start to live despite the para-
lyzing fear that “Life would not turn out to be like Literature” (Barnes
2011, 15), especially when viewed through the fate of their parents, whose
place is definitely not inside the works of literature. This confuses us at
first, but the novel implies that Tony Webster, who, despite his great ex-
pectations, would ultimately become similar to his parents, could only
enter the novel when he came out of the Life. What are those impor-
tant things in Life that have not yet happened in the lives of these British
youngsters who unreasonably and naively think that Life has not yet be-
gun? It seems the list is too familiar and close to us and, if we put aside the
ironic addition of the owl as the figure of wisdom and mature science, the
list supports the equal distribution of kinds of people and their expecta-
tions within a broad civilization circle to which we belong:
love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good
and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice,
revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual
against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn
owls (Barnes 2011, 15).
cause of his premature death. The reason for his suicide is rather trivial,
but it well reflects the heterochrony of life in the 1960s, which will later
be insisted on by the narrator—Robson’s girlfriend got pregnant, and he
hanged himself in the attic. A cold analysis of this event by our quartet
of friends leads to important questions they can pose about themselves.
There is an undeniable fact: this uninteresting and unrespectable Rob-
son not only had a girlfriend, unlike them but also slept with her. They
are cursing and wondering: “Fucking bastard! Why him and not us?”
(Barnes 2011, 15). Robson was located in the kind of people produced by
the middle class, and this species should not be anything superior in re-
lation to a kind that thinks it is above others, and to which the narra-
tor and his friends belong. In the world in which boys grow up, there is
something that belongs to the tacit, but essentially present knowledge:
“the genteel social Darwinism of the English middle classes always re-
mained implicit” (Barnes 2011, 8). Immature and selfish thinking about
Robson’s suicide, far from any understanding of causes and consequenc-
es, are typical of youth, but also for the class affiliation of the characters.
But this remains a serious problem: Barnes deals with the mistakes all of
us make when understanding what is happening around us—until it be-
comes too late.
Thanks to the theme of sexuality and death (Eros and Thanatos), Life
came in among friends, they really needed to start to live despite the para-
lyzing fear that “Life would not turn out to be like Literature” (Barnes
2011, 15), especially when viewed through the fate of their parents, whose
place is definitely not inside the works of literature. This confuses us at
first, but the novel implies that Tony Webster, who, despite his great ex-
pectations, would ultimately become similar to his parents, could only
enter the novel when he came out of the Life. What are those impor-
tant things in Life that have not yet happened in the lives of these British
youngsters who unreasonably and naively think that Life has not yet be-
gun? It seems the list is too familiar and close to us and, if we put aside the
ironic addition of the owl as the figure of wisdom and mature science, the
list supports the equal distribution of kinds of people and their expecta-
tions within a broad civilization circle to which we belong:
love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good
and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice,
revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual
against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn
owls (Barnes 2011, 15).
