Narrative Game Between Fiction And Truth

Julian Barnes,one of the most outstanding novelists now in Britain,is often considered as one of the three giants in contemporary British literary circle,the other two being Martin Amis and Ian McEwan.Having been nominated for three times,Barnes eventually won the Man Booker Prize with The Sense of an Ending in 2011.The Sense of an Ending continues Barnes' exploration of individual memory and history.In this novel,Tony,the protagonist-narrator,reconstructs his self-knowledge through reminiscences in two periods.Also,Barnes prefers attaching great importance to the innovation of narrative strategies as well as the profundity of the themes of novels.This thesis aims to interpret the theme of self-knowledge in The Sense of an Ending mainly through analysis of Barnes' exquisite narrative strategies.There are three chapters in the body of this thesis besides introduction and conclusion.Chapter one will concretely study how Tony subverted his former memory and self-knowledge and then reconstructed a truer self,on the basis of close reading.Chapter two will witness the analysis of the narrative strategies which coincide with the themes of the novel from three aspects,narrative time,narrative perspective and narrative voice.First,it will study,according to Genette's theory of narrative time,how the narrator demonstrates his blurring memory in the narrative time to construct an indeterminate truth or turn the fictional to the factual from aspects of time order,duration and frequency.Second,it will study the fixed inner focalization applied in this novel,according to Genette's theory of perspective.On the one hand,through inner focalization,Tony's story as well as his self-analysis can be presented clearly.On the other hand,with fixed focalization,the authenticity reflected through the focalizer can arouse suspicion.Therefore,there is a limitation in cognizing a true self for Tony as the focalizer of the story.Besides,it will make a further study of the perspective of the narrating “I” and that of the experiencing “I”.And also,how the protagonist-narrator changes from an unreliable narrator to a relatively reliable narrator.To some extent,such a change shortens the distancebetween the narrator and readers,and contributes to the disclosure of the theme of pursuing true self-knowledge.Finally,the protagonist-narrator in reminiscence constructs a “true” self which turns out to be unreliable with his subjective interpretation.It is just a fictional truth.Analyzed by Phelan's classification of unreliable narration,characters and themes of The Sense of an Ending can be better understood.And readers can dig out the narrator's motivation of being unreliable.Chapter three will try to further explore Barnes' motive of fictional creation.Here Barnes reflects on the relationship between history and truth through the writing of Tony's personal history.It still needs to be discussed whether one can break the constraints to perfect his self-knowledge and whether the historical truth can be found out.Nonetheless,pursuing a true self and historical truth is of great importance.