| The Sense of an Ending,brief but masterful,is the winner of 2011 Man Booker Prize.The review of abroad and domestic studies reveals that the current research is focused on themes,narration skills and the ethical study,which are mostly on the unreliable narrator-Tony.The aim of this thesis is to provide an analysis of three characters in Julian Barnes’ s The Sense of an Ending in light of subject formation as described by Lacanian psychoanalysis.As a bridge between Freudian and postmodern psychoanalysis,Lacan is a famous psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.Lacan sets a framework which consists of three systems,the Imaginary,the Symbolic and the Real,involving three major structures that control the psychology of the subjects.There are three psychotic subjects in The Sense of an Ending:Sarah,who is detained in the Imaginary Order,Tony,who is split at the joint of the Imaginary Order and the Symbolic Order and Adrian,who is decomposed in the Symbolic Order,revealing the author’s reflection on the troubled formation of subjects in contemporary Britain.The body of the thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter,analyzing Sarah,an alienated subject trapped in the Imaginary Order,is subdivided into three parts.The first part,by analyzing Sarah’s behavior and letters,explores her chaotic spiritual world:she is a narcissistic woman who takes her daughter as an imaginary competitor and dissociates herself from social ethics.The second part applies Lacan’ s theories to interpret the fact that she is the slave of her mirror image to reveal Sarah’s alienation.The third part explores the reasons for Sarah’s alienation,which are caused by a dyadic relationship between Sarah and her daughter and the failure of the Other’s interference as the change of the women’s social roles after the Second World War.The second chapter analyzes Tony,the split subject at the joint of the Imaginary Order and the Symbolic Order.This chapter is subdivided into three parts.In the first part,with the disclosure of his repressed memories and the display of three peripeteias,Tony’s banality of evil gradually emerges.The second part applies Lacan’s theory to decode Tony’s aggressivity.Tony,who has entered into the symbolic world,experiences the conflict between social order and self-preservation.Adrian,as the symbol of symbolic language(The Other),intrudes into Tony.His repressed memory and his aggressivity on Adrian are rooted in his split subjectivity.The third part explores the root of Tony’s split:The transition from the Imaginary order to the Symbolic order is a process of struggle between his ideal-ego and ego-ideal,which causes his split.His ideal-ego is the projection of mirror imago(the other),and Adrian intrudes into Tony as his ego-ideal.However,his ego-ideal fails to remold his ideal-ego and the rest of his life depends on his imagination.The third chapter analyzes the decomposed subject in the symbolic world,Adrian.The first part analyzes the death of Adrian.As a Camus-ist,Adrian is determined to revolt on the absurdity of existence with reason.But at last he chooses to suicide.The second part applies Lacan’s theory to disclose the reason of Adrian’s suicide:he breaks the law in the Symbolic Order,which strips his socialized and moral coat,and his suicide symbolizes the decomposition of the subject.The third part explores the root reason of Adrian’s decomposition in the Symbolic Order:Although Adrian intends to substitute his desire for his mother with the Other,the underlying desire for mother hidden in the deep unconscious makes him be trapped in Oedipus dilemma;The Other,the irresistible power of the primordial law in the Symbolic order,which leads to his decomposition.In the light of Lacan’s theories of subjectivity,Sarah’s misrecognition,Tony’s split and Adrian’s mental collapse are typical symptoms of the tension between the pursuit for an autonomous self and the constructive social forces.Barnes laments that the survival of an individual is in a dilemma,and he thinks it is the author’s duty to explore the meaning of life.It cannot be reached without reconsidering the relationship between the self and the other/Other.It is suggested that if a misguided subject can acknowledge the significance of the Other as his existential guidance and value the dialogue between them in the process of forming the subject,he will lead a somehow authentic living.Barnes offers a hope to form a respected subject that would reconcile with others and past self so that the network of the Symbolic Order would be structured around reconcilable subjects. |
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