Summary
Narrated in the past tense by the novel’s protagonist, Tony Webster, The Sense of an Ending opens with Tony recalling several seemingly disconnected images. A shiny inner wrist, steam rising from a frying pan in a sink, sperm washed down a drain, a flashlight-lit river rushing upstream, another river agitated by wind, and cold bathwater behind a locked door. Tony comments that he never saw the bathwater, but that what we remember isn’t necessarily what we have seen.
Tony comments that he has never understood time very well. Everyday, ordinary time supposedly ticks by on clocks, but it can be sped up or slowed by emotions. He has no nostalgia for his schooldays, but “school is where it all began,” so he must return to some loose memories that time has transformed into facts.
Tony reflects on how, in the 1960s, he befriended Adrian Finn when the latter joined their central-London boys’ high school. Adrian impresses teachers and students with his intellect, and Adrian becomes part of Tony, Alex, and Colin’s clique. The boys wear their wristwatches with the face on the inside of the wrist—an attention-grabbing choice that makes time feel like a personal or secret thing. Adrian doesn’t do the same though.
While Tony and his friends treat academics, sports, music, and middle-class culture with scorn and a sense of personal superiority, Adrian is an impressive student who rarely joins in when the others complain. Adrian’s parents are divorced—he comes from a “broken home”—and yet he has no “existential rage.” He disappoints the others by saying he loves his mother and respects his father. As the boys wait to be released from the “holding pen” of school, they are hungry for books and sex. They have strong opinions on philosophy and politics. They are anarchistic and meritocratic. Their parents worry about the other boys’ influence on each other. They believe they have a far better grasp on life than their “compromised elders.”
One day in history class, their professor, Old Joe Hunt, starts a discussion about ascribing responsibility for the outbreak of WWI. Can it be put to the man who shot Franz Ferdinand or was the man’s action the result of an accumulation of historical forces? Adrian, when called on, says, “I can’t know what it is that I don’t know. That’s philosophically self-evident.”
Going on, Adrian says ascribing responsibility is a cop-out, because one either blames an individual to exculpate everyone else or blames a historical process to exonerate individuals. He argues that the desire to ascribe responsibility is more of a reflection of a historian’s state of mind than a fair analysis of what happened. He concludes: “That’s one of the central problems of history, isn’t it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.” In response, Old Joe Hunt suggests Adrian should take over the class when he retires in five years.
One morning the school headmaster announces that Robson, a boy in the same Sixth Form year, is dead. Tony and his friends later hear rumors that Robson hanged himself after learning he had impregnated someone. Adrian says Albert Camus said that suicide was the only true philosophical question—the fundamental question on which all others depend. They discuss the matter further, but can only conclude they are disappointed that all Robson said in his suicide note was, “Sorry, Mum.” They are also envious of Robson for living a life worthy of a novel. The only other person remotely novel-worthy is Adrian, who has no satisfying answers to questions about why his parents split up.
During their final history class of the year, Joe Hunt asks for definitions of history. Adrian says, “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation,” a quote from Patrick Lagrange. Adrian’s example is Robson’s suicide: a recent historical event that would be difficult to retell accurately because it lacks documentation and depends on rumor and first-person accounts that will be lost in time. The teacher suggests there may be diaries, a coroner’s report, letters. Adrian says nothing can make up for the absence of Robson’s testimony. The teacher says historians need to treat a participant’s own explanation of events with a certain skepticism. Tony comments that this is merely his best memory of their exchange.
Upon graduation, Tony attends Bristol University, and Adrian wins a scholarship to Cambridge. The four boys promise to stay friends for life. They stay in touch through witty letters and postcards. Each boy wants Adrian’s approval most, but Tony’s dependence on Adrian loses prominence when he begins dating Veronica Mary Elizabeth Ford. She is short and has blue eyes and matching blue-framed glasses. She disapproves of his music collection and claims to never dance. Tony has had some formative sexual experiences with other girls by now, but Veronica declines his requests for “full sex.” He assumes that the trade-off for no sex is that she won’t ask him where the relationship is heading. He also assumes she is a virgin, but never asks.
One weekend, he goes to stay with Veronica’s family in Kent. Veronica’s father teases him about the size of his only suitcase. Tony feels he is being treated as “lower-class scum.” Tony is so anxious he spends the weekend constipated. He perceives that Veronica withdraws into her family and joins them in examining Tony. When he comes down for breakfast, the others are out for a walk and only Veronica’s mother is home. She cooks eggs and tells Tony, “Don’t let Veronica get away with too much.” The statement throws him off. She won’t explain what she means. After plating the eggs, she throws the hot pan in the sink while laughing. Veronica treats Tony with more affection for the rest of the weekend. He feels somewhat more accepted by the others too. When Tony comments that he likes Veronica’s mother, Veronica’s father jokes that it sounds like he and Veronica both have competition.
Analysis
The list of images at the opening of The Sense of an Ending establishes the novel’s thematic concern with the fluid nature of memory. With no fixed shape in his mind, memories are available to Tony in the fragments whose significance will become clear as Tony builds around the fragments to construct his narrative. In admitting that the last image of cold bathwater was not something he ever saw, Tony emphasizes how some of the strongest memories are things that might have been imagined in the first place.
Accompanying the theme of memory’s mutability is the theme of time—particularly the highly personal relationship each person has to it. Time is difficult for Tony to grasp despite the fact that it is the invisible force that shapes much of reality. In his commentary on time, Tony introduces an idea that he will build on at the end of the first part of the book: While there is one type of objective time measured on clocks, there is also another variety of time—personal time. As Tony says, this personal time is influenced by changes in a person’s emotional state, speeding up and slowing down according to internal physiological changes induced by pain or pleasure.
Having introduced the book’s two most important themes, Tony moves back in his memory to his high school days in 1960s London, when he met Adrian Finn. Adrian is unlike his other friends in that he doesn’t defy authority figures with humorous responses. Instead, Adrian provides complicated philosophical answers to teachers’ questions, impressing everyone around him. Adrian also maintains an enigmatic air as he refuses to indulge his friends’ requests for gossip about his parents' divorce. He also doesn’t invert his wristwatch like the others do. With this behavior, Adrian establishes a subtle distance between himself and the clique, prompting Tony, Alex, and Colin to seek his approval.
With Robson’s sudden death, Barnes introduces the major theme of suicide. With only a brief suicide note and no information to go on aside from gossip, Tony and his friends speculate about Robson’s motivations for hanging himself. Hungry for lives more dramatic than their own comfortable middle-class existences, Tony and his friends have a seemingly absurd envy of Robson for having done something worthy “of Literature.” In history class, Adrian boldly uses the lack of definite information around Robson’s death as an example of how history itself is inherently built on assumptions, bias, and misinformation as much as credible sources—an idea that Tony will apply to his own flawed memory at the end of the novel.
Tony’s life becomes more exciting when he begins dating seriously for the first time while a student at Bristol University. While it is his first adult relationship, Tony nonetheless brings a hormone-driven adolescent attitude to matters of sex, finding his advances turned down by Veronica’s reluctance to go all the way with him. Rather than communicate their feelings directly, the young couple both assume they are in agreement about where the relationship is going. But this reticence, which is another of the book’s major themes, is sure to result in conflict.
Tony’s tendency to see himself as a victim of Veronica and her family is on full show as he recounts his trip to Veronica’s family home in Kent. He perceives every joke and comment and glance directed at him as slights and insults, becoming so uncomfortable that he is constipated the entire weekend. The theme of reticence arises again when Tony speaks with Veronica’s mother in the kitchen and she warns him to not let Veronica get away with too much. Rather than elaborate on the statement, she laughingly tosses a frying pan in the sink as though assumed to meddle in her daughter’s relationship.
