Thinking Activity: Sense of an Ending
1) How do you understand memory and history with reference to your reading of the Novel.
One morning Tony Webster receives a letter explaining that he has been left the diary of his closest friend from school, Adrian, who committed suicide when they were at university. The diary has been left to him by the mother of Tony’s first college girlfriend, Veronica. Tony never gets to read the diary because Veronica refuses to give it up. But the bequest causes him to reconnect with Veronica, and as he speaks to her, he starts to reconsider his vision of their past.
We all have our own narratives of life. You have a “version” of that life that is a story you tell to yourself and others, about what your life has been. But it is only that, a story, and it is just one version of a possible number of stories. Tony realises that the version of his life that he has told himself is based on a recollection of an event that is inherently wrong. He comes to realise that the distortion of memory can change anything and everything that he had believed true for so long.
We all have our own narratives of life. You have a “version” of that life that is a story you tell to yourself and others, about what your life has been. But it is only that, a story, and it is just one version of a possible number of stories. Tony realises that the version of his life that he has told himself is based on a recollection of an event that is inherently wrong. He comes to realise that the distortion of memory can change anything and everything that he had believed true for so long.
2) How do you understand the concept of suicide with reference to your reading of literature ranging from Renaissance play Hamlet, 20th century. Existentialist philosophy and this 21st century novel The Sense of an Ending?
We have seen that Hamlet is deeply concerned with two broadly existential issues: consciousness and authenticity. Shakespeare's explorations of these philosophically rich ideas play a vital part in generating the energy and intensity of the play.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare suggests that in order to understand freedom. We must confront the realities of death and human attitude. From the outset of the play, Hamlet contemplates the meaning of suicide.
His father's unexpected death and his mother's swift marriage have led him to think about self-slaughter. Death is never far from his mind. It filtrates his language and imagery.
Hamlet has fear of God that why he doesn't commit suicide. In existentialism we see suicide as an escapism, one should take responsibilities on their own.
Sense of an Ending:
We doesn't find a proof, so we can't rely on what Tony says, But we find another perspective which tells, that if you thinks you lived life then suicide happily.
We have seen that Hamlet is deeply concerned with two broadly existential issues: consciousness and authenticity. Shakespeare's explorations of these philosophically rich ideas play a vital part in generating the energy and intensity of the play.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare suggests that in order to understand freedom. We must confront the realities of death and human attitude. From the outset of the play, Hamlet contemplates the meaning of suicide.
His father's unexpected death and his mother's swift marriage have led him to think about self-slaughter. Death is never far from his mind. It filtrates his language and imagery.
Hamlet has fear of God that why he doesn't commit suicide. In existentialism we see suicide as an escapism, one should take responsibilities on their own.
Sense of an Ending:
We doesn't find a proof, so we can't rely on what Tony says, But we find another perspective which tells, that if you thinks you lived life then suicide happily.
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