Holding Pen

So far, I'm really loving this book. The author's writing is smooth and captivating; when I first started reading The Sense of an Ending, I got hooked and wanted to finish it all in one sitting. The characters are well developed and interesting; I particularly love the way Barnes captures human interaction. When the new student, Adrian Finn, enters the group of boys, their whole relationship is realigned. Adrian becomes the center and focus of all of the boys; they all try to impress him and fight for who has the right to be his closest friend. Adrian's conversations with his teacher, Hunt, and the topics he discusses are particularly insightful and well written.
Adrian often brings up the idea of Eros vs Thanatos, a Freudian concept of instinct for life and love vs instinct for death and aggression. Once the issue of Robson's suicide comes to light, Adrian comments "Thanatos wins again" (p.14).
The issue of Eros and Thanatos was discussed at great length in Notes from the Underground. I believe one could compare Eros and Thanatos to Dostoyevsky's "Sublime and Beautiful" and "enjoyment in bloodshed". Dostoyevsky is referenced several times in the novel, as is Albert Camus. The novel flows well into the discussions we have been having.
One of my favorite paragraphs in the book so far is "...we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives... How were we to know that our lives had in any case begun, that some advantage had already been gained, some damage already inflicted? Also, that our release would only be into a larger holding pen, whose boundaries would be at first undiscernable" (p. 10).
The holding pen is "the wall"; it is societal constructs. We keep waiting for some grand event that will set our lives in motion; we do not realize that, all this time, our lives have already begun.
Looking forward to reading more.

-Anike