The Ethics Of Memory And Self-Awakening In The Sense Of An Ending

Julian Barnes(1946—),a postmodernist literary writer,has published thirteen novels,three collections of short stories,and five essays.He has won many literary awards,including Maugham Award,the Prix Femina Etranger,and the David Cohen Prize for Literature.He has been nominated for the Booker Prize,which is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland,four times and finally won the prize for his novel The Sense of an Ending in 2011.He can be seen as one of the most famous contemporary English novelists.Since its publication,The Sense of an Ending has attracted the attention of critics.Its clever plots and writing techniques have received broad discussion.It also includes the thinking about the fictitiousness of memory and self-recognition,which deepens the theme and consolidates Barnes’ status and his value in English literature.Scholars at home and abroad have made a lot of studies on Barnes and the novel.Many scholars use postmodernist theories,such as New Historicism,to analyze the image of the protagonist.There are also studies on the themes of love,death,morality,etc.Some scholars pay attention to the remembrance in the novel but primarily focus on the memory content.In contrast,few scholars focus on the act of memory in constructing characters and its ethical meanings.Based on the study and theory of memory,this paper tries to study how memory builds characters and the ethical factors behind it and explore whether the protagonist Tony Webster can achieve self-awareness and reconcile with his victims.The first chapter of this paper introduces Julian Barnes’ life,his principal works,honors,and goes through domestic and abroad research results of Barnes’s works,especially about The Sense of an Ending.It will include the relevant theories of memory,the research purpose,and the thesis outline.The second chapter analyzes how the protagonist,Tony Webster,deploys narrative skills to make him more authoritative in narration to construct an idealized memory.Tony attempts to construct himself as a moral witness to avoid the responsibility he should have taken and avoid being blamed ethically.Still,with the emergence of contradictory descriptions of the same event,the protagonist’s manipulation and fabrication of memory are shaken,so is his identity as a moral witness.The third chapter focuses on the impact of violence caused by Tony’s biased remembrance,resulting in the denying,marginalizing,and silencing the other two major characters.The fourth chapter analyzes Tony’s reflections upon and atonement for his mistakes after he has retrieved the lost "truth" and repressed memory.He finally achieved reconciliation with the victims and realized self-awakening after accepting the true "self" By exploring the ethics of memory in the novel,this paper notices Barnes’thoughts on memory in his works and his humanistic concern for contemporary human beings who have lost themselves morally and ethically.