Suffering

            As the story progresses, Webster’s character starts to develop more. Webster starts out as a confident schoolboy who gradually becomes insecure about himself as he goes through university.  His relationship with his girlfriend crumbles and he starts to detach himself from his “closest” friends back from high school. The idea of time appears once again. Time is what causes the group to become distant and causes them to relive certain memories of each other in their minds. At times Webster seems to contradict himself and his theories, which reminded me of NFTU.

            The idea that everyone suffers throughout his or her lifetime becomes present in the first section of the novel. Webster’s now ex-girlfriend, Veronica, is described as being “damaged”. She acts a certain way due to experiences she has had throughout her life between her father and her brother. With the idea of suffering, The Sense of An Ending can be related back to Crime and Punishment. Almost every character in Dostoevsky’s classic had to deal with some sort of suffering throughout his or her life and learned from it. Webster makes the statement that those who avoid getting hurt or becoming “damaged” once again are those we would steer clear from. I agree with this statement a hundred percent because those are the types of people who will do anything they possibly can to not get hurt and do not care if someone else gets hurt in the process. There will always be people who try to better themselves due to their sufferings and try to help others and there will be those who try to bring others down with them. This goes back to our class discussion about not wanting to be alone when we feel hurt or we are suffering.

            Adrian’s suicide was described in great detail and by the amount of pages it took to conclude the underlying meaning of his suicide; I could tell that this was an important event in Webster’s life. I found it interesting how Webster tied Adrian’s suicide back to Robson’ suicide. Both boys did not feel the need to stay in the world. Adrian, in my opinion, committed suicide to prove his point that we can refuse the “gift of life” because it was a gift we did not ask for.