Unreliable Memory, Unending Trauma

Julian Barnes is regarded as one of the most influential writers in Britain since 1980 s. In 2011, he won the Man Booker Prize because of the book The Sense of an Ending, which also won him the David Cohen Prize in the same year.The Sense of an Ending, a memorial book, mainly talks about the love affairs of Tony(the main character), Veronica and Adrian. The novel has two sections. The first section is Tony’s memory of his youth age and mainly talks about his relationship with Veronica and Adrian. The second section talks about Tony’s quiet life after retirement but which is disturbed by the letter of Veronica’s mother, Sarah. In this letter, Sarah devises Adrian’s letter and 500 pounds to Tony, which confuses Tony and lets Tony rediscover and reconstruct himself. In this process, Tony senses the painful trauma undergone in the past.Trauma was firstly a clinical medicine term, but now has been widely used in the cultural field. Thus, the cultural trauma theory comes into being. Trauma, a normal phenomenon in our daily life, refers to the traumatic emotion after experiencing some destructive affairs. This kind of trauma widely exists in our society and sometimes even can be used to define the nature of human and society. Trauma is an important element in The Sense of an Ending. This paper, by using the trauma theory, will conduct an analysis towards the work, and from the aspects of uncertain historical trauma, irrecoverable trauma of time, and moral perplexity, explore how Barnes artistically presents the trauma that the main characters suffered. There are many factors leading to trauma, such as the two world wars, the post-war economic recession, the loss of youth culture and so on. And the unique life experiences are also the main elements that lead to trauma. By retelling truth, Tony directly faces the trauma he suffered from as well as brought to others, and bravely throws himself into the future life. But the earlier trauma is an unending injury, Tony has no choice but spends his remaining years with an unending repentance.In The Sense of an Ending, the uncertain historical trauma, the irrecoverable trauma, and the moral perplexity are not only the major character’s individual experience, but also the real reflections of the modern people’s spiritual state. Thus, it provides a paradigm for the modern people to explore the meaning of life.