Purdy, E (2021) “You still don’t get it. You never have and you never will.”: Memory as an Echo Chamber in Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending. MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities, 15. pp. 29-37. ISSN 1994-8662
Abstract
Julian Barnes’s 2011 novel, The Sense of an Ending, begins with a carefully careless list of images that the narrator claims to remember ‘in no particular order’. As the novel progresses, these images are revealed to be significant for the narrator because he associates them with two events from his time at University: a failed relationship and the suicide of his close friend. By the end of the novel, however, it becomes clear that the narrator has falsely attributed significance to these memories and that — within a broader context — there were other moments which could have shed far more clarity on the events of the past. This article closely examines the narrator’s list of memories, in order to demonstrate that they are comparable to a sequence of echoes that reflect the plot of the novel. It argues that this process of echoing enables the reader to consider the distortive effects of memory, by emphasizing certain aspects of the story over others and thus altering the sequence of events, just as echoes distort sound. Through this line of reasoning, it draws upon the work of Peter Brooks and Roland Barthes to consider how memory acts as an echo chamber for the narrator, permitting him to use remembered events to create a false narrative which continually perpetuates itself, even when faced with contradictory evidence. The article goes on to argue that the beginning of the novel even exploits the reader’s own memory, forcing them to become complicit in the narrator’s echo chamber.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Modern Humanities Research Association 2020. This is an author produced version of an article published in MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 23 Oct 2020 13:40 |
Last Modified: | 04 Dec 2023 16:49 |
Published Version: | www.mhra.org.uk/publications/wph-15 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Modern Humanities Research Association |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:167005 |