Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

My views are here on the novel "Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes...............

1.What is the meaning of phrase ‘Blood Money’ in Veronica’s reply email?

Sarah Ford, mother of Veronica sends letter to Tony Webster and 500 pounds. When Tony tells this to Veronica, she says it was “Blood Money”. This novel is about lack of God, faith, love and Karmic philosophy etc. Here blood money means the money earned by KILLING or HURTING the innocent people. Here killing doesn’t mean physical killing or murder but the killing of feelings and emotions. When Tony and Veronica were in a relationship, her father had offered him huge amount of money but after that, they broke up. Then Adrian sent a letter to Tony asking for his permission to date Veronica. Tony, in response to that letter told him to meet her mother. Due to this, she lost her everything. There can be two reasons from Veronica’s point of view. One is that she may thinks that Sarah, her mother was responsible for Adrian’s suicide as he might have felt guilty after making relation with Sarah. Another reason can be that she thinks that Tony is responsible for Adrian’s suicide. If Tony won’t have written in reply to that letter, Adrian wouldn’t have met Sarah. So we can say that Veronica thinks that Sarah and Tony both are responsible for Adrian’s suicide, and so she calls that money as blood money.

But he can’t understand this word. Mrs. Sarah Ford and Adrian fall in love and the result came out that mentally retarded child was born. So, this son is the brother of Veronica and she cared for him. Veronica suffered in society and she has to sacrifice the entire critical situation. Through the letter of Tony innocent child also suffered a lot. So, these all things happened because of one letter and behind Adrian’s suicide also Tony plays a vital role. That’s why she wrote “Blood Money” in the reply.  

2.Do you see any possible reason in the suicide of Adrian Finn?

                                                              

Earlier Adrian had good relation with Veronica. But once time he wrote letter to Tony about their (Veronica and Adrian) relationship. It is the wish of Veronica that he should writes letter to Tony. But it is the fault of them. Tony feels jealous of their relation wrote one letter to Adrian about Mrs. Sarah Ford. It is the loose stone of this novel and because of this Adrian meets Sarah and then all things started. But then Adrian feels shame because it is not the healthy relationship and he commits suicide.

  

3.How was Veronica related to Adrian, the one suffering in care-in-the-community?

Veronica and Junior Adrian can be called siblings as Sarah and Adrian were the parents. We can also say that Adrian, who was Tony’s friend, was suffering from mental trauma and had gone mad as he can be called the step father of Veronica.

4.In the light of new revelations, how do you read character of Veronica? Instinctive, manipulative, calculating, stubborn, haughty, sacrificial, trustworthy, Good Samaritan?

When we go through the whole story, we can read her character as trustworthy as well as sacrificial. Earlier we found her calculative when she broke up with Tony. In the next part Veronica shows Tony a group of mentally retarded people but he doesn’t understand what she tried to convey. She can be called calculative because Tony was never able to understand her and she thought that if she continues her relation with Tony, they will never be happy. In the end we can see that Veronica is taking care of junior Adrian so we can call her as sacrificial.

5.What do you mean by Unreliable Narrator? Is Tony Webster classifiable as Unreliable Narrator?

'The Sense of an Ending' novel divided into two parts. First part is all about imperfections of memory and second part is all about inadequacies of documentation. But how can we say that Tony narrates all these things are true? Tony can also be called an unreliable narrator because he starts his narration by saying that “I remember, in no particular order”. Tony Webster also remembered his School days, Class of History, Class of English, Friendship with Veronica all these things. But we can’t fully faith on these stories because it is the memory of him. He minutely told the whole story of his life but may be it happened that many things of his life he can’t narrate and it is the missing dots of the story. We can say that whatever the narrator is going to tell is the thoughts of his broken memory as he joins the missing dots with his own perspective and imagination.




Thank you.....