Taking Reader Responsibility for the Other in Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending Anonymous College

In Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending, the question of responsibility is one that deeply troubles Tony; it is one that drives him to investigate into the truth of past events, which comes up against his own alleged memory of them. Yet, at the end of the novel, the illumination of certain facts does not provide him much closure, only a nagging sense of responsibility and unrest. Through his text, Barnes engages notions of historical and personal responsibility, as well as the limits of responsibility for the other. Critics such as Greaney, Holmes and Lopez-Deflory have discussed Barnes' distinctive style and his use of narrative to emphasize the unreliability of personal memory, as well as the meaning-making function of narratives in fiction. Essentially, contemporary criticism of the novel tends to a discussion of Barnes' use of narrative and style but has yet to address the notion of responsibility, despite its prominence within the novel. Hence, this essay would first explicate on Emmanuel Levinas' responsibility for the other, before proceeding to examine the novel's treatment of responsibility. Indeed, Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending is a text that calls for the reader to assume the Levinasian conception of...