Anxiety Of Existence In Julian Barnes's Novels

Julian Barnes is one of the most famous contemporary British writers.Combining various post-modern artistic expression techniques,His novels describe the individual life experience and the observation of contemporary human living conditions.Behind his humorous and casual writing style,there is another worried and confused face.Reading of these works,we can feel Barnes's confusion and anxiety about the future of the British nation,social ethical value orientation,contemporary religious belief and other issues.Barnes wrote about the crisis of national cultural memory and the impact on“Britishness”in contemporary society with a touch of irony,expressing his anxiety about national cultural identity.In England,England,he criticizes the simple duplication of the national cultural memory by some contemporary British people,as well as the misreading and abandonment of the essence of national culture by describing the process of pitko group's construction of“England,England”,a new nation.His Arthur and George,on the other hand,describes the struggle between racism and rationalism,racism and chivalry,showing the impact on the“Britishness”featured by inclusiveness in the era of deepening globalization.Barnes expresses his anxiety about the contemporary individual moral issues from the perspective of individual moral crisis and marital moral dilemma.In The Sense of an Ending,Barnes wrote the process of individuals in moral crisis maintaining their moral selves with the help of narration,and expresses the difficulties in self-construction due to the uncertainty of history and memory.In Before She Met Me,Barnes wrote a trilogy of individual“self-salvation”by delicate psychological description.With the help of the protagonist's failed self-salvation,Barnes expressed his anxious on“what is the ideal marriage morality”.In the end,Barnes deconstructs the Bible and religious authority by using intertextuality and marginalization in A History of the World in 10~1/2/2 Chapters,and then questions the significance of religious salvation.In Staring at the Sun,the author also tells us that the individual who insists on rational thinking cannot see the redemption of god or get rid of the fear of death through Gregory's four steps of exploration.The doubt of religious salvation and the fear of death constitute Barnes's religious anxiety.Barnes's novel not only describes the anxiety of existence faced by individuals with different identities,but also points out the way out of the anxiety,that is,human love.The study of Barnes's existential anxiety is helpful to establish the relationship between his creative characteristics and his ideological connotation and to enrich the understanding of Barnes.His work of writing the anxiety is also a process of finding the ultimate meaning.He continues to explore the question whether love is the ultimate meaning in his subsequent works,which reflects the complexity of the ultimate meaning and his own profound thoughts.