Narrative Strategies In The Sense Of An Ending

Julian Barnes(1946-),known as the “The British literary giants” with Martin Amis and Ian Mc Ewan,has been a representative writer in the contemporary English literary world since 1980 s.His masterpiece The Sense of an Ending continues his usual postmodern styles,weaving all kinds of facts,fiction,and memory together,telling the story of the protagonist Tony’s pursuit of self through the memory of narration.This thesis applies the text reading method and the method of analysis to study The sense of an Ending by using the theories of narratology.The novel highlights the characteristics of postmodern narrative,expressed in narrative voices,narrative perspectives,and narrative structure.First of all,from the perspective of narrative voices,this thesis mainly analyzes the two voices: the open narrator’s voice and the absent narrators’ voices.The open narrator refers to the old Tony’s subjective narration;the absent narrators refer to the two letters written by the young Tony and Adrian as well as the diary left by Adrian.The multiple narrative voices reproduce the personal history of the protagonist Tony,reflecting the influence of subjectivity on memory and history.Secondly,the thesis analyzes the text through the changeable narrative perspectives,interpreting the extensive use of the first-person perspective and the shift of perspective in the text.Tony’s first-person retrospective reflects two different perspectives: one is the current memory of the past of the “narrator”,and the other is the“narrator”’s current experience of the past.A small number of the shifts of perspectives in the novel are quietly hidden in the story,neither breaking the reality of the story nor changing the overall form of the novel.On the one hand,the unstable perspective shows arbitrariness and uncertainty of postmodern novels;on the other hand,the novel obviously reflects Barnes’ s superb writing skills.Finally,from the perspective of narrative structure,this thesis discusses the digressions,repeating narrative structure,and the suspended ending in the novel.Such seemingly fragmented,divisive and digressive narrative structure makes The Sense of an Ending present a self-deconstructing style and create a postmodern context for thedevelopment of the novel.At the same time,the thesis expresses that life is limited but the meaning of life is unlimited.After analyzing the narrative strategies of The Sense of an Ending,the thesis argues that Barnes presents a masterpiece of post-modern spiritual quality to us and shows his concern for humanity in the post-modern context.The identity dilemma of old Tony is an epitome of contemporary society.The thesis aims to advocate that people in modern society should keep introspecting and refreshing our cognition of self,others and the world.