The Sense Of An Ending

The Sense of an Ending is a relatively new novel written by the famous British contemporary writer Julian Barnes.The author completed its publication in 2011 and won the British Man Booker Award in the same year.This work starts from the narrative perspective of the male protagonist Tony Webster.By constantly recalling and reflecting on his life experience from the middle school to college,the narrator continues to have a constant re-immersion into life spanning the influences of the school experiences to his later life until the present retirement.The work has attracted a lot of attention from the academic world with its post-modernist style of refined language,innovative narrative structure and philosophical thoughts.The previous literary research about this book mainly includes self-identity construction,historical view,ethics,narrative strategies and techniques and so on.This thesis starts from the male self-image in the novel,focusing on the image of the traditional England reflected by the self-image of the British male and discussing the view of gender,the collision between rationalism and emotionalism and the concept of class disclosed by the traditional England.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction,which briefly introduces Julian Barnes,his writing experiences and the awards he has received,presents a summary of his novel,The Sense an Ending,gives a general survey of previous studies on Barnes and this work,and explains the focus and structure of the thesis.Chapter Two mainly analyzes the self-image of the British male in the novel from the facets of gender,rationalism and the view of social hierarchy.On the issue of gender,the males in the novel regard themselves as superiors and tend to control the right of discourse.With regard to rationalist,British men prefer philosophical thoughts,trying to keep rational under the shadow of conservatism.As to the view of social hierarchy,men thrive for the upper middle class with a higher social status and more wealth influenced by the strong sense of class consciousness.Chapter Three explores the cultural relationship between the self-image of the British male and the cultural connotation of the traditional Britain based on the previous analysis and the related historical documents.The self-image of the British male reveals to some extent,a kind of cultural stereotype of the traditional England,which includes the world hegemony,the reason-oriented value and the aristocratic cult.In other words,the question of the self-image of the British male is consequently viewed as a metaphor for the traditional England.Chapter Four digs the contemporary challenges of the traditional England with the breach of the male characters’ perplexities.The writer in a tender way points out the contemporary challenges what the traditional England may confront with,from the facets of the subversion of the traditional view of gender,the impingement of emotionalism to rationalism and the increasing social mobility.In other words,The Sense of an Ending,not only depicts a panorama image of the traditional England,but also provides highly self-conscious reflections upon the invention of cultural traditions,sharply showing the fact that the traditional England cannot survive in the contemporary time and needs to rectify itself.The last chapter summarizes the previous discussions and states the major argument of the thesis:the novel focuses on the bankruptcy of the traditional England reflected by using the self-image of the British male as a metaphor,examining the features of the traditional England and its contemporary challenges,and strives a new path for the contemporary England and its advanced social values.Barnes in this work not only expresses his humanistic reflections about the British traditional culture,but also provides his thoughtful viewpoint about British men and the development of the contemporary England.