30 pages • 1 hour read
The Sense of an Ending
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Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The narrator, Tony Webster, a retired man in his 60s, reflects on his past. Introspective and nostalgic, he is prone to reminiscing about his youth, his first love, Veronica Ford, and his enigmatic and intellectually gifted schoolmate Adrian.
Tony recounts his youth in the 1960s, particularly his friendship with Adrian and their school experiences. Tony is an average student, while Adrian stands out as brilliant and philosophical. Their friend group includes Colin and Alex, who are less academically inclined.
During their school years, Veronica joins their group, and Tony becomes infatuated with her. They begin dating. He visits her upper-middle-class family, finding her brother, Jack, judgmental of his lower-middle-class status. When Veronica eventually starts a relationship with Adrian, Tony feels slighted and rejected.
After finishing school, the friends go their separate ways. Tony attends university while Adrian goes to Cambridge. Tony and Veronica break up. Down the line, Adrian sends Tony a letter saying that he is dating Veronica, and asking if Tony is okay with it. Tony sends back a cavalier postcard. He then sends a letter advising Adrian that he should be “prudent” because Veronica has “damage.” After losing touch with Adrian and Veronica, Tony becomes romantically involved with another woman, Margaret.
Eventually, Tony receives a letter from Adrian, revealing that he and Veronica have broken up. She is now dating Tony's former friend Colin. Tony feels somewhat responsible because of his nasty letter about Veronica.
Adrian later tells Tony that Veronica is pregnant, but they plan to have an abortion, as she believes the child to be Colin's. Tony feels conflicted and guilty about the situation but remains detached from it all until he receives a letter from Alex, reporting that Adrian has killed himself. Now Tony wonders whether his letter played a role in Adrian’s decision to end his life.
Eventually, Tony marries Margaret. She is as conventional as he is, and they lead a mundane life. They have a daughter, Susie.
Many years pass, and the novel jumps to Tony’s current life. He and Margaret have divorced. Susie lives in the United States and barely keeps in touch with him. He says: “I survived,” implying that his life story is over (56). In fact, his existence is just about to get interesting.
Chapter 1 Analysis
This chapter depicts three phases of Tony’s life: childhood, young adulthood, and middle age. Like many modern and postmodern novels, The Sense of an Ending focuses on the protagonist’s interiority. The narrative begins in a reflective mode, with Tony musing on The Fallibility of Memory and the process of storytelling. By his own reckoning, Tony is a mild-mannered, passive person, in contrast with the more vibrant characters around him. His narration, which imposes a structure on his memories, reflects a desire for order and stability.
As Tony revisits the events that shaped his life, the mood is contemplative, poignant, and wistful. The quaintness and familiarity of the small English town, where Tony’s adolescent years unfold, underscore the nostalgic feel. There is a sense of longing and regret, foreshadowing the unresolved issues Tony must later confront.
Tony is an unreliable narrator, and the characters are fleshed out through the distorting prism of his memories. To him, Adrian is brilliant and deep, Veronica is unpredictable and elusive, and Veronica’s brother, Jack, is aggressive and confrontational. Adrian looms large in the narrative, even in absence, as Tony grapples with the impact of their friendship. Barnes’s exploration of memory and its subjective nature emerges as Tony reflects on how his recollections may differ from reality, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of the fallibility of memory.
As Tony matures into adulthood, the prose remains introspective but takes on a more somber and philosophical tone. Tony pieces together the events leading up to Adrian’s tragic fate, and his curiosity drives him into historical and psychic detective work. The weight of his memories makes him melancholy.
The setting shifts between the past and the present as Tony recalls his interactions with Adrian. By alternating between different time periods, Tony blurs the lines between memory and reality.
At the end of the chapter, Tony takes a more factual, almost reportorial tone. At times he seems to describe not his own life but that of a stranger. In a sense, he is a stranger to himself—as he is about to learn, his sense of self is defined by beliefs about others that are not true.
Tony’s philosophical reflections about his school days are a defense or distancing mechanism against the pain of daily experience. In one of these meditations, he ruminates: “History isn’t the lies of the victors […]. I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated” (56). This attitude of assured pontification sets up Tony for a fall in Chapter 2 as he confronts The Impact of the Past and Accountability and the true history of events, which turns out to be far more complicated than what he remembered.
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