The Ending of 'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes: What the Hell Just Happened?

SPOILER ALERT!!!  This is not a review and if you have not read this book (you really should btw) the following will entirely ruin the novel for you.

So I was assigned this book for a course - truly enjoyed the read and pretty much accepted what I was told by the narrator and walked away satisfied for the most part. During the following class meeting, there was a heated debate concerning who were the actual parents of young Adrian.  Knowing I had a final paper to write on the novel (or novella, apparently there's a heated debate over this) I thought it wise to give the book a second read.

For some reason I read it backwards ten-page chunks at a time.  If you never have done this I highly recommend.  Taken out of the context of the plot, passages read entirely differently.  Anyway, without looking for it I came upon a curious theory which soon snowballed leading to more and more unexpected and shocking discoveries.  For a few days there I became obsessed. I read and reread only to read again.  I recited lines of the  book in casual conversation and even quoted the novel while texting.  My paperback copy now looks like a kids coloring book with every page scrawled upon.  Yeah, I was a crazy person for a minute there.

I went to the internet to find others with a similar theory to the one I was so committed to and couldn't find a single word about it.  I guess that's why I'm placing it here.  Hopefully someone's google search leads them here and wishes to engage in a discussion.  Whether they agree or disagree matters little.  To be honest, in my fantasy-world I hope for someone to come upon this and take this theory further by reconstructing - piecing together the details of the murder and who was involved.  Yep I said it, there's murder in this seemingly crime-free book.  So if someone could put that together for me I'd really fucking appreciate it... it's definitely time for me to move on. Speaking of moving on, there's my rickshaw--must dash.

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Julian Barnes' novel, The Sense of an Ending, is a rich, multi-layered text that begs its audience for multiple readings.  In stark contrast with the title, the narrative's actual ending leaves its reader with many unanswered questions.  Readers of Barnes' work become consumed with questions regarding young Adrian's paternity and/or maternity.  They spend their second read combing the pages for clues, highlighting sections pertaining to memory sure that it is here that their dim-witted and forgetful narrator, Tony, has failed them leaving it up to them to piece together the real story.  What never crosses this reader's mind is that these motifs regarding memory and young Adrian's parentage have been carefully laid out by Barnes (via Tony) in a purposefully confusing manner. This all serves as a distraction from what is really happening in the novel.  The truth that these writerly tools of distraction mask is that Tony Webster is anything but the absent-minded dolt that he appears to be. Instead, the narrator is a calculating and intentionally manipulative storyteller.  Barnes has his main character present himself to the reader as someone he is not. In fact, Barnes has carefully constructed a sociopath who throughout The Sense of an Ending, carefully works to deflect his reader from uncovering his secret: the fact that he has committed a horrific crime.

This is not to say the prevalent theme of how history is told: what it is that we remember; why and how, is not important.  Indeed, it is, but once Barnes' buried secret is uncovered, the theme is transformed and serves an entirely alternate purpose.  The best way to see Barnes subversively at work is to follow how an imaginary reader (such as myself) may hypothetically encounter and uncover this mystery once he or she has abandoned searching for what they think they know to be happening in the novel.

          

Casting away a focus on memory, coded sexuality and the epic display and possible implications of the importance in witnessing a river reversing its flow, one becomes mildly aware that at times it seems the narrator is addressing them directly. Barnes utilizes Tony to teach his implied reader how to correctly read his words. The authoritative “you” is detected early on during a second read, and once illuminated, appears with great frequency.  Once this is established, the fact that the narrator addresses his reader directly, it seems other passages devoid of the word “you,” too, could be read as a direct address -- one almost in code.  These passages reveal hints on how the narration should be read.  

For instance, when Veronica’s brother asks not to be outed for providing Tony with Veronica's email, the narrator states, “I use a certain false politeness ... And then, instantly, I betray him" (116). This is a rather strange and somewhat malicious trait to attest to. The stagnant narrator missing it all, whom the reader has become comfortable with, is not the same man who here admits to presenting himself as an honest man only to immediately turn, transforming to a deceptive being. Despite this unfamiliar trait, the reader becomes aware that this sentence removed from its direct context becomes applicable in many locations in the narrative (I use a ... false politeness ... and then, instantly betray him"). At one point, Tony sends the postcard of the Clifton Suspension Bridge assuring his friend Adrian that he is fine with he and Veronica’s newfound love and wishes them well. Later in the novella, he admits that he sent a second evil and scathing letter filled with anger wishing a horrible fate upon the couple. This certainly falls into the category of “polite[ness]” followed by “betray[al].” Both in his treatment of his old friend and his reader.

It must be noted that despite Tony stating that he haphazardly grabbed the, "nearest postcard to hand--one of the Clifton Suspension Bridge (45)" a look into the history of the bridge via Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifton_Suspension_Bridge) reveals the following information:

• Two men were killed during the bridge's construction; since opening it has gained a reputation as a suicide bridge.   

(wait a sec...  the bridge is commonly associated with suicide???  Was Tony sending s message with his "polite" response?)

• Although similar in size, the bridge towers are not identical in design, the Clifton tower having side cut-outs, the Leigh tower having more pointed arches.   

(Could these towers be symbolic representations of Tony and Finn?)

• In the third season premiere of the Canadian television series, "Murdoch Mysteries: The Murdoch Identity",the bridge is featured.  While suffering from amnesia, Detective William Murdoch gets caught up in an assassination plot against Queen Victoria at the bridge's opening.  

(This will make more sense later on into my argument - see: Julian Barnes work under his pen name - but for now, please note that here we see an assassination attempt involving a character with severe issues with his "memory.")

Later in Barnes' novel, Tony admits to “writ[ing] Veronica out of [his] life story (76)” when telling his wife of his previous history of lovers only to reveal the truth a couple of years later once he was “fully confident in [his] relationship (76)."  This is a clearcut example of “politeness” preceding “betrayal.’  Now at this point, this imagined reader encounters a small epiphany: is this not how Tony Gardner conveys his stories to his reader throughout the entirety of the novella?      
                I use a certain false politeness ... And then, instantly, I betray him

            

When he first tells his reader the stories of both his weekend in Chisleworth and his experience with the Severn Bore, Tony leaves out key aspects of both tales.  With the weekend at the Ford’s, only in Tony’s second telling does he reveal that Mr. Ford insulted him, that Jack refers to his mother as “The Mother” and that after an erotic kiss (that he previously went out of his way to exclaim didn’t exist!) he promptly completed a masturbation session by “sluicing [his] sperm down the house’s pipework (123).” Interestingly, during the first telling of the family visit, he mentions not a wanking session over the toilet, but that he "peed aggressively in the basin (30)."  This particular reader wonders how the inclusion of  the choice of wording in "aggressively" when describing urinating didn't raise alarms upon an earlier read.  In any event, it is clear that the first version Tony shares is far more polite than the second.
                
                  I use a certain false politeness ... And then, instantly, I betray him

Similarly, when he first tells of the Severn Bore reversing its flow Veronica is not there and he celebrates chasing after the wave alongside his torch-wielding schoolmates.  The second time around, Veronica is very with him. Those enthusiastic chaps are now referred to as “[t]he others [who] whooped off after it (130).” This time Tony separates himself from them. Instead of giving chase, Tony and Veronica now sit “[a]lone ... [their] mood was thoughtful, sombre even, rather than ecstatic (130)”  Is this what Tony’s referring to when he says he’s “polite” before “betray[ing]” folks?  Is he only sharing this more puzzling information now that he’s “fully confident” in his established relationship with his reader?  Is he okay including these naughtier, head-scratching moments because he’s aware that his character - the boring British chap, refined by excellent schooling - has been well-established and that now has fully gained his reader’s trust? This hypothetical reader arriving at this moment of question now hungrily tears into Barnes’ text in search of more evidence of the author’s narrator conveying untruths upon his unknowing audience.

                  I use a certain false politeness ... And then, instantly, I betray him

            
One passage in particular comes to mind. Upon seeing who he believes is Adrian’s son, Tony muses, “[w]e listen to what people say, we read what they write—that’s our evidence, our corroboration.  But if the face contradicts the speaker’s words, we interrogate the face (150).”  That’s interesting. The reader never sees Tony’s face.  The reader only sees words on a page that he or she is trained to take as truth. Is the narrator brazenly boasting of pulling one over on his reader in this moment?  Other lines are remembered.  At one point Tony boasts of “reiterat[ing] apparently truthful data with little variation (70).”  Apparently truthful, huh? That sounds like it could be translated as "seemingly honest" or even as "a lie told well."  Is Tony admitting to telling untruths over and over again, never changing his story?  At another point, in one of those puzzling direct addresses, Tony seems to blurt out, “[y]ou might think that ... all my conclusions are reversible (48).”  What?! Why would his audience assume the opposite of what he speaks to be true? More importantly, why does the narrator even imagine this as a possibility? Does the character, Tony, surpass the realm of untrustworthy narrator and enter into the category of full-on bold-faced liar? One whom is willingly constructing a false existence?  At this moment, faced with insurmountable evidence, this conceptualized reader is sold on the theory that Tony Webster is being untruthful about just who he is—the simple British dolt has been exposed as a self-made construct. The reader is aware that they must return to Tony’s early life for further evidence.  Tony himself is instructive of doing just this when he tells his reader, “we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us (13).”

Very early on in Barnes’ novel, a shocking discovery is made by he who engages in this explication de texte. When the young boys learn that their schoolmate, Robson, has committed suicide the narrator announces, “[n]ow he had offended us by making a name for himself with an early death ...[h]is action had been unphilosophical ... and inartistic ... Robson was our age ... unexceptional, and yet ... f[ou]nd a girlfriend ... to have sex with ... Fucking bastard! (14,15).”  On a first pass, the use of “us” makes this passage less troubling as one can assume and perhaps understand this is how boys collectively share feelings when faced with emotions they fear admitting to their peers.  In fact, once highlighted the use of "us" and "we" is used so often from pages 14-20 in such an over-the-top manner that Tony begins to sound like the wise turtle from "The Neverending Story."  When putting this theory of Tony reinventing himself in play, it would seem that these are not shared feelings at all but those of the narrator alone disguised as such.  It becomes entirely imaginable that Tony has used the collective "us" when talking about Robson's untimely death to make his own empathy-lacking reaction sit easier with his reader and not stand out has horrifically insensitive.  Faced with a suicide - a crisis that should elicit grief from a young boy - instead here in Barnes' novel, supreme jealousy is depicted.  Julian Barnes is illustrating a deviant character entirely devoid of empathy.  The imagined reader whom we’ve followed is not sure of the implications behind this word, but sociopath can not be driven away.

            
The highly regarded doctor R. Hare devised a most comprehensive sociopath checklist listing twenty possible traits. Without exhaustively going through each of theses before applying Barnes’ text, many words and phrases do stand out: 

“superficial charm ... grandiose self worth ... proneness to boredom ... pathological lying ... manipulativeness ... lack of remorse or guilt ...lack of empathy ... impulsivity ... failure to accept responsibility ... does not percieve that anything is wrong with them ... secretive ... paranoid ... conventional appearance    (Robert D. Hare, Psychopathy Checlist, Revised (PCL-R)).”

Accepting the now proven fact that Tony projects a false version of himself while existing in a universe completely vacant of guilt and compassion, it would seem the character would score excessively high on Hare’s sociopath checklist test.  In fact, through this simple piece of research, it is hard to imagine that Barnes did not construct his character with this medical document in hand, making sure to satisfy each bullet-point.

• superficial charm 
• grandiose self worth 
• proneness to boredom 
• pathological lying 
• manipulativeness 
• lack of remorse or guilt 
• lack of empathy 
• impulsivity 
• failure to accept responsibility 
• does not percieve that anything is wrong with them 
• secretive 
• paranoid 
• conventional appearance  

For instance, Tony’s admission of possible paranoia appears on numerous pages of the text. Most notably, on pages 32 and 68 ("perhaps this was mere paranoia." & "living alone has its moments of self-pity and paranoia").  This trait seems to betray both of the Tony’s: the character trusted after a first read as well as the manipulative antihero of the second.  "Paranoid" just doesn't seem a fitting description of either Tony. Now, upon seeing the word appear upon this document of medical research, this clears up any confusion. Barnes is working diligently to be inclusive of as many sociopathic traits as possible. Considering all of this, it is curious that the most obvious trait is seemingly missing in The Sense of an Ending.  

Cases of a sociopath gone unchecked often end in acts of violence followed by an “emotional need to justify their crimes ... [and] need [for] their victim’s affirmation ... [and] love (Hare).”  Why would Barnes be meticulously inclusive of all these sociopathic traits without having his character display the most obvious one of all???  Why would he leave out any act of violence should Barnes be constructing a character sociopathic in every other way? 

Determined, the close-reader returns to the text.   

In doing so, the very first page of text, in fact, the very first sentence of Barnes’ novel, provides the long-desired anagnorisis for this "imagined" reader.  

Barnes’ award-winning work of fiction begins, “I remember, in no particular order: — a shiny inner wrist; ... — bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door (3).”  The wrist reference previously was thought to be a metaphor for one of two things. It is believed to refer to either the schoolboy watches that the three wore in reverse or to the residue left behind in the wake of Tony and Veronica’s curious early sexual explorations. Now that the reader is searching for a crime, it becomes overtly apparent that the first memory the narrator chooses to open his story with is Adrian’s lifeless wrist shining with blood. 

For our imaginary reader, it’s hard to imagine how the second part of this quote has gone unquestioned for this long. Cold bathwater behind a locked door!?   How in the hell would Tony remember the scene that served as Adrian’s final resting place if he were not there himself? Sirens, whistles and alarms go off in this reader's head as the answer to this question comes crashing down. Tony murdered Adrian and made it look like a suicide. Those resistant to this outlandish interpretation will look to the very next line of text as their own evidence: “This last isn’t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed (3).”  They may claim he addresses the fact that he wasn’t present. They're wrong. Instead, this is one of the many examples of Tony very conscious of his construction and  trying to cover himself before he has even been questioned. In actuality, the latter part of this quote is the very first direct address of the novel and now serves as an overt confession: "what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed." Another way of saying this would look like: What the reader will remember, or take away from this account, will differ from what actually occurred.  Is this not the truth in the case of the classic reader who still finds good old Tony endearing? On the very first page, both Barnes and Tony are taunting and challenging their audience.  Acceptance of this taunt instantly brings to mind a phrase repeated a few times in the novel. 

“You just don’t get it ... You never did, and you never will (138).”  

This memorable line long thought to be emblematic of Tony’s deductive shortcomings is now transformed to a jeering insult imposed upon the reader by a scoffing Tony who was created by a now seemingly much more manipulative author in Julian Barnes.

With Tony revealed as Adrian’s murderer, the textual evidence arrives at a furious rate. Lines that were, moments earlier, inconsequential now carry homicidal weight.  Upon his breakup with Veronica, Tony casually states, “we had freely entered a relationship that didn’t work out.  Nobody got pregnant, nobody got killed (42).”  Killed?!  Does the average first love of college often end in death?  Barnes’ genius is fully realized when encountering moments like this.  He deftly surrounds these incriminating statements with pertinent plot information, thus, masking their overt obviousness.  The reader rushes by these passages as they seem unimportant surrounded by sentences carrying more of the story's  weight.  Similarly, upon hearing Veronica’s response of “Blood money (89),” Tony responds by saying, “But it didn’t make any sense ... No blood had been spilt (90).”  Isn't blood money a fairly common term that most would not take in a literal sense?  Tony’s failure to treat this statement as the metaphoric figure of speech most are well-familiar with should have sounded alarms when first encountered, but again, due to Barnes’ dutifully undetected dispersal of clues, and well-established harmless narrator, the reader passes right over the line with no sense of an in propriety.  Our imagined reader is not through with his or her findings.

            
Memory of ample courtroom terminology now surfaces that begs for investigation. In combing the text a staggering discovery is made. A form of the word corroboration appears 12 times in the novel (150, 43, 65, 19, 84, 107, 119,119, 119, 150, 150, 126).  Guilty appears more times than counting permits even appearing four times on a single page (42).  Witness pops up six times (65, 19, 107, 107, 119, 130).  Legal terms like evidence (19, 150, 43, 47, 84) motive ((19, 117, 72) proof (43, 117) and coroner (20, 53) are revealed to crop up with such frequency, the reader checks the novel’s cover to make sure no prankster swapped out Sense of an Ending replacing it with a juicy legal novel by David Grisham.  As if the repetition of these words going unquestioned and undetected was not enough, scenes wherein Tony openly has witness stand fantasies are recalled in the mind of our conceptualized reader.  Lost in his thoughts Tony conveys these daydreams: “If asked in a court of law what happened and what was said (38)” and far later in the novel, “Please, Mr Webster, spare us your sentimental lubrications.  This is a court of law that deals with fact.  What exactly are the facts in this case? (131).”  

Why does Tony consistently imagine himself on trial?  The only understandable reason for his obsession with legal jargon lies with the fact that Tony carries with him the heavy weight that, at any moment,  he just may get caught and thusly charged with Finn's murder.  This leads this exceptionally tuned-in reader to one final question: How did Tony get away with it?  What was his alibi?

            
The answer is so easily found that the imaginary reader is, again dumbfounded as to how it was overlooked.  “My parents thought of getting in touch with me when it happened, but had no idea where I was (50).”  Even upon a first reading this brief passage detailing Tony’s momentary, six-month existence as a freewheelin' hippy, traversing the U.S. like a rolling stone, seemed out of character when first encountered, but was quickly expelled from memory with the more pertinent news of Adrian’s suicide that directly followed. After describing the easiness of his union and subsequent parting with his then girlfriend, “easy come easy go Annie (50),” Barnes by way of Tony, seems to intentionally expose this lie as the narrator wonders why “something in [him] didn’t require more complication as proof of ... what? (50)." This casual relationship is being described by a narrator who's shown himself to be one who obsesses over every detail of each of his past relationships.  He even goes as far as to state, "Annie was part of my story (50)."  Here, Tony brazenly and openly questions the  verisimilitude of his own account of history and then all but tells his audience he's lying.  The character via Barnes knows he can get away with this display because the author is sure his reader is fully invested in trusting Tony at this point in the novel.  

Soon after this passage about his short American stint as a free-wheelin' Tony rolling-like-a-stone across America, when Tony’s dad hears the news of the passing of his son's boyhood chum his father states, “’Sorry ... lad (50).”  Instead of depicting Tony here understandably bereft with grief over the sudden passing of his very best friend, Barnes has his main character more occupied with his disappointment in his father’s performance: “My father’s comment didn’t seem exactly up to the mark.  I looked at him and found myself wondering if baldness was inherited (50).”  Yes, because that’s a normal an entirely unselfish reaction to have... your best friend is dead.... instead of thinking of this, you quip over the "performance" of your old man and his weak attempt at grief before then noticing his hairline...  Yep, sociopath, indeed.
 

With all these pieces put together and in play, the hypothetical reader can call it a day.  There is much more work to be done.  He or she must now reconstruct this crime by way of Barnes’ text.  The reader knows Sarah Ford was implicitly involved, but must comb through the Sense of an Ending for textual evidence.  For now though, the exhausted reader may rest.  What was set out to be proven has been achieved.  Tony Webster most certainly is a deranged sociopathic murderer who spends the entirety of the novel convincing his reader otherwise.  For this uninformed and trusting reader, “there is unrest.  There is great unrest (163).”  

Regardless of how well this crime is reconstructed there will always be unanswered questions and loose ends left.  This is the case with even the most surface of readings though.  Those completely skeptical to this analysis involving murder and mania might find it of interest that Julian Barnes writes detective fiction under the pen name, Dan Kavanaugh. Barnes is keenly aware of how to sparingly spread clues about his work whose sum eventually culminate revealing who is, in fact, the killer as he's done this multiple times by way of said pen name.  With his writing of The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes got to visit this genre that he clearly holds with affection (murder/mystery), but now without being bound to its strict and confining rules involving the tidying of everything up.  Here, Barnes seems thrilled with the freedom to leave matters in disarray.  You can almost see him grinning a sinister smirk as he types his final words, able to bid adieu to his reader, leaving them in a permanent and final state of “unrest....  great unrest."