Final Post

In the end, I didn't exactly understand all the different family relations between Adrian, Tony, Veronica, and Marry, but I don’t know why people who were related to each other had a baby together. Something that stood out to me the most though was Adrian’s suicide. I felt like not only was his suicide related to realizing he’s having a child and is in love with someone he’s related to, he also proved Tony wrong. Tony said that he couldn't wait for them to break up in his letter, and by committing suicide, it made it completely impossible for any of Tony’s predictions to come true. The idea of suicide begin a sin has been on my mind in general because after talking about people's selfish human nature, why would people care so much about others ending their life. People who commit suicide are labeled as weak and taking an easy way out, however, they probably have the most strength to really be able to take your own life. I am in no way supporting that anyone commits suicide, but I’m just thinking about it in a different prescriptive. 

Another lasting impression I got on the book is the idea of remorse, and looking back on your life. Tony’s life was everything he did not want it to be while he’s a teen, but that probably happens to the majority of adults. Being a teenager, I have big plans and ambitions and want to break free of “societies institutions”. However, once “life just starts happening”, you see how hard it is to break free of that routine and time starts moving quickly. Once Tony reached a certain age his life stopped moving forward and the only thing that kept him going was living through his memories. When you live through your memories, all you can really do is think about what could have happened or things you wished you changed, and I never want to live like that. “We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe” (page101), is sadly true, because that’s what ends up happening to most people’s lives. 

In the end I actually expected more from this book, I thought it was going to be life changing but it wasn't really. I did not mind reading it but I liked Notes From the Underground better because it gave me more to think about. 

Final Post

As I reached the end of the book I must say that it shocked me, but I was pleased with it. Throughout the entire beginning of the novel, I felt the book was boring and not much was happening. I like books with action, with conflicts from beginning to end and the first half of Sense of an Ending didn't intrigue me that much. However, things changed on the seconds half, both for me and in the book.

I was absolutely shocked when I found out that Adrian had had a ration ship with Satah, Veronica's mom. After this relationship was brought up,  my interest for the ending rose since I wanted to find out the causes and explanations for such an occurrence. It is revealed that Adrian sought out Sarah due to Webster's letter, even though he didn't mean it in that way, and later on had little Adrian which ended being Veronica's brother.

At the end I felt bad for Veronica for having to go through all this. I have seen real life circumstances with things like this happening and it is highly detrimental for the son/daughter who has the mother in such a relationship. At the end, I believe Barnes is trying to portray the message that point of views over the years do change since as Webster looks back to his kyung years and recasts the letter he wrote tonAdrian at the time, about dating Veronica, he realizes it was a spiteful and extreme letter, where at the time it was just seen as a normal letter to a friend. It is true though that point of views may be changed due to new rvations or evidence that ournbroughtbuo and change one's perspective of life, such as when Webster finds out Adrian had slept with Sarah, however, I do not believe Webster stand to blame for any of this. He wrote a reply letter to his best friend on the topic of dating his ex girlfriend, it was impossible to know that all the following evens were to happen.

I am glad ideas this book as it proved to me that life is unpredictable, and all our actions have the power to create multiple outcomes in other people's minds.

Final Reaction

I think this is one of my favorite books that we have read this year. Though NFTU and The Stranger deserve a considerable amount of merit, I like this more specifically because it is not as dense. Barnes ability to focus in on very specific details could probably be characterized as being similar to the realism movement in literature. I know that when we read poems in spanish during freshman year, we discussed the realism movement for an extended amount of time. Much of the movement was centered on minute details. Though the works were not necessarily packed with themes, symbols, or information that made you think extremely thoroughly, the details are what gave the story life (sorry for the cliche). That is exactly what I like about The Sense of an Ending.
In my personal perspective, the book is centered around the idea that we can never really know anyone entirely, not even ourselves and that is a byproduct as basic human nature. I stated before that Barnes crafts his work around extremely particular moments and details; I picked up on my perspective during one of these aforementioned details. As Tony drinks his cup of whiskey and reads the letter he addressed to both Adrian and Veronica he is stunned at what he is written. This moment is what made me pick up at a point that I think Barnes is getting at. Tony's shock appeared to go past the standard "not remembering that I did that" shock; his shock seems to be more associated with the fact that he could not believe that he could do that a person. he was shocked that he, being of a specific nature/character was able to write something like that. Now, if Tony which seems to be a fairly good representation of the average man, cannot believe he wrote that, can we ever know ourselves then? I don't think that we can ever know ourselves entirely and that others do not ever see even 80% of what we see with ourselves. Essentially, I think most, if not all of us, spend our lives hiding from our true personas and don't even know it. I'm not sure the reason for this, but I know that I don't attribute it to Freudian psychology entirely.
Tony seems to have a definite struggle when his ex-wife tells him that "he is now alone". She does not say so abrasively, or in a "kicking him out" kind of way, she is just reminding him that he is now alone. I think he's more bothered by the state of being alone than he is by his ex-wife telling him how it is because he does not know his real self. He ends up having a problem with being alone because he has no one to identify with.

final post

Wendell Pfeffer

3/3/14

            After reading this book nothing has changed with Tony. He still retains the same thoughts of Veronica and Adrian when he was a young lad. When Adrian and Veronica became a couple Tony was left in distress and I don’t blame him. Like I stated in my past blog Adrian betrayed his friend by choosing Veronica over him. This shows how little I think Adrian actually cared for Tony. I actually feel really sorry for him when he had to deal with this situation I probably would have done the same thing he did maybe even worse if I knew that my “best” friend was dating the girl I loved. To be honest though Tony was a horrible match for Veronica; they weren’t a happy couple and if Adrian hadn’t intervened then who knows what would have happened. At one point though I thought that Tony permanently moved on with his life, but I was wrong. Even after forty years Tony had never forgotten one thing about Veronica, his one true love. He would keep obsessing in his mind about her over and over again to a point where I actually became sick of it. He even uses his friend’s diary as an excuse to see her again and too potentially get back with her.

            Apart from the situation Veronica and Tony had their seems to be a connection with Dostoyevsky and Adrian. Adrian and Dostoyevsky share the same gift – intelligence. They are able to see both sides of the argument with complete clarity. This can either be a good thing or a bad thing. For Dostoyevsky this gift rendered him inactive. But for Adrian it was completely different because he was able to fit well with others and make decisions. He even had some good friends, a good wife and a son. Still though I think he suffered greatly because of his intelligence, which could have been the reason for his suicide. I really doubt his suicide was because of Veronica or her pregnancy.

             I really liked this book because it gave me a first person perspective on a person’s life and the problems they faced. Many of the problems related back to me in the beginning but towards the end that started to change. I began to feel sorry for him because no matter how hard he tried he wasn’t going to get what he wanted and that was true love.

Monday Post

I really like this book for two major reasons. The first is the most obvious, It was fun and easy to read, it is the type of book that you read for entertainment. I found that once I got into it, I really did not want to put it down. More important, is the second reason, I enjoyed a lot of the ideas about life and time presented in it. I like how in part one, Tony describes a brief recap of his life focusing on the major events that he has kept with him for the rest of his life, I think that doing this added all the value to the deep thoughts and ideas presented in part two. After finishing the entire book, I stand by my previous blog post even more strongly and I believe that women are truly very manipulative and they do take advantage of me as is the case with Veronica, and Margaret to a certain extent. She uses Tony in her old age after having broken his heart because she does not want to be alone. Granted, Tony uses her for the same reason but it is not clear whether he ever stopped loving her the way she clearly stopped loving him. This goes to show that she was the one who made the separation happen and because of this, she is now considered the manipulator.

Moving on from this topic, I think that this book was written with several goals in mind. The first is to express the idea of the misconception we have of life. We tend to believe that life begins at birth. According to Tony, life begins, from what I understood, in your mid twenties and possibly early thirties. This is when he describes his life as beginning. When talking about his school years he says that at that point he was waiting for life to begin. The other goal is something that is discussed quite a lot, and that is the idea of: what is history? After reading this book, I believe that history is the stories left behind after everyone has told his or her version. In other words not the lies of the winners nor the acceptances of the losers, but a combination of everybody’s story put together, a balance. 

The End of Sense of an Ending

I really liked this book and I am happy to say that because anything that is ever assigned to me I end up hating it just because I have to read it by force and not for pleasure, but I am honestly glad I read this book. It was a short and fast read, and it connected well with me. I do have to say though that there were points in the book that got really boring in which I just wanted to put the book down for a long time or maybe skip a few pages.

This book was connected to the stranger in the way that Adrian had that clear filter. He represented that elite group in society that can understand both sides of every argument and value them equally. He also represented the undisturbed filter we are born with. He was able to look at thinks objectively, which is almost impossible for us because our filter is being filled with different things every day, and he understood that. He understood that history is made by the victors and is fully subjective. That to know history you must first know the history of the historian to see what approach on history he had.

It was funny because as soon I figured out Adrian’s son had mental problems right off the bat an my mind automatically made the connection. Adrian represent the elite group of abnormally high IQ that can be fully independent, and although he wants to be social and fit in in society, he isn’t able to socially function. On the other hand, Adrian Jr. represents that other minority that has the blow average IQ, which makes these kind of people dependent of others, but, just like his father, cannot function in society. So we are demonstrated both extremes of the social dilemma for intelligence levels.

I also thought this book touched a lot on the fact that memories are incredibly unreliable because of their subjectivity. Tony remembered himself acting mature about Adrian and Veronica dating all his life, only to reread the letter forty years later and find out that, in truth, he had basically wished hell upon them. Memories are what we want them to be. We have free will and free though which allows us to shape our ideas and memories into something that pleases us and makes us feel better about ourselves, rather than putting ourselves down with what is probably the truth.

Final Reaction

Sense of an Ending was one of those books whose endings completely take you by surprise. I’m not sure whether I can properly express how the novel made me feel. I’m not quite sure I can say, even after all that, whether I really liked it. The novel almost made me feel a bit empty, like the end of anyone’s life is almost as if you are waiting for death and preoccupying with things that are below average mental capable. That life for most people is average, and no matter what company we procure over our lifetime, death and the end of life, the deteriorating one the body and mind, is something that he have to face on our own.

The novel to me had a lot to do with history and the way we manipulate to fit what makes us comfortable. Tony had this imagine of himself that he had keep for almost his entire life about the way he was in his youth. The experience and stories from his memories supported his theory that in general he was a good man who accomplished many things. This imagine of young Tony, was in turn completely shatter by a letter he wrote to his friend, Adrian and his ex-girlfriend. He started to doubt his mind and his own memories. He started to doubt the way he felt about certain people. He started to doubt whether he just let life happen or whether he took control. He wondered if he was the kind of person worthy of living a long and happy life.

The he idolized his friend Adrian. Tony called Adrian suicide brave and logical. He even called to first class. Tony made it seem like Adrian had made the right decision by killing himself because he reasoned it all out with mathematical equation and natural logic. Then Tony perception of Adrian changed when he found out the true reason for Adrian suicide. He saw Adrian as a coward and a man so obsessed with the idea of brilliance that he made it look like he killed himself because of brilliance. He killed himself not for his intelligence but from shame. He was the kind of moral man that Tony had always remembered him as, but actually something completely different. In the end the novel made me realize two things: firstly that we often use our memories as a source of evidence to prove certain point, but when in reality our memories are embellished or too general to really give us any real conclusion. Second that sometimes that leaving things to the unknown is better.   

Final post

Damn, that ending really escalated quickly. I began getting really frustrated in the middles of reading this book. It felt like it just kept on dragging on and on and on. It truthfully took the last 10 pages of the novel for me to finally feel intrigued again. Barnes' makes it philosophically self evident in his novel that perception is often skewed based on what we fear. Tony's inability to understand the situation with Veronica comes from the fact that Tony cannot truthfully perceive the right scenarios over and oer again. When he meets Veronica's parents, his fears of the, not liking him and his fears of them judging him too harshly over shadow in his mind the fact that they genuinely liked them. That false perception right there leads to the domino effect of all of his misunderstandings.

The ending really hit me harder than I would have expected. I'm not usually the type to feel the way I did after this novel, but I did. Barnes' build up throughout the novel is legendary in my eyes. He builds it up in such a complicated, subconscious vortex of material to the point where it becomes immediately clear to the reader.

This book is a good example to me of how we as individuals tend to skew our perceptions of events or the actions of others based on our fears of them. I did not recognize this pattern in myself and other humans until reading this book. I think it's something that I will carry within myself for the rest of my life. Instead of accepting my first, impulsive perception of an event or action, it's better to give the benefit of the doubt in certain cases, and really think the perception through, logically and rationally.

Love vs Infatuation

Before I comment about my feelings on the book, I believe it is necessary for me to answer the comment towards my post on the fact that women are manipulative. First, I would like to point out that my past has nothing to do with anything that I write on this blog. So, if you think that there is something in my past that might make me upset towards women then that is for you to guess at but not to bring up since it is after-all my past and is not up for discussion. Also that quote doesn’t seem to be on page 49 but I’m sure you can show me later where it’s actually located but, I digress. The reason why men try to avoid relationships is because women try to make things complicated. For example, the fact that you want to bring up the idea that it is part of human evolution to manipulate and therefore all humans manipulate one another which makes us all liars and evidently untrustworthy. This of course is not the case but I’ll roll with this idea. Humans are superior animals that can think and hold strong emotions. Plus, it is one of our human instincts to have sex since we all want to reproduce because that is our way of survival. Now, with such a human instinct, we all share the feeling of infatuation towards others. The definition of infatuation is: to be inspired with an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone else. So, men who we can agree are more simple-minded when it comes to emotions, wish to have sex with these women or men they are infatuated by. So, they “hook up” with one and move to the next. In conclusion, I have just proven that to “hook up” with several women or men is in fact a part of human instinct. However, when we think of what the majority of women want from a man, they want lasting love that should last, immense amounts of attention to be paid towards them, etc. Plus, women do not see the action of sex the same way as men do. Men only do so for pleasure and for their human instinct. Women seem to only do so when they believe that the man they are with actually loves them. Now, the word love is defined as: an intense feeling of deep affection. So, when a man leaves a woman because human instinct dictates to him to do so, the woman eventually gets jealous and sees it necessary to win this man back because they miss the admiration that was given to them by that man. To win him back, the woman must strategically recreate the infatuation the man once felt towards the woman by manipulating and seducing him. And no, if I can prove mathematically that woman equals evil then I have a problem with woman.

On to the book, it was a lot easier to interpret than Notes from the Underground but, I did not like the idea that Veronica was toying with someone like Tony. Tony was an innocent man who was insecure around women and needed help when it came to conversing with them. However, Veronica took advantage of his insecurity and exposed it to the world as if to humiliate him. I did enjoy the character of Mrs. Ford since she seemed to be the only person who wanted to actually help the poor lad. He could be classified as a scared lamb among wolves. Majority of women did not want to help him and fellow men just stood back and laughed as he stumbled over his own feet. The ending of the book was very confusing due to the fact that we where only hearing his interpretations but what it seems to be is that Adrian slept with Mrs. Ford and had a child whom is actually Veronica’s sibling. If not, then I am completely lost just like Tony. But if so, then it is what Veronica deserved since she never helped Tony who didn’t want to help her in the end and which I congratulate him on.  

The Sense of An Ending

I have just finished reading The Sense of An Ending and I can truthfully say that I enjoyed reading it. Julian Barnes did a great job in creating a character to portray the role of a coming to age character. we here this term so frequently when it comes to novels. However, contrary to a normal coming of age story, the character in The Sense of An Ending, has a large period of his life shown. Usually, it shows an event from there time as a teen and ends there. This relates to my overall interpretation on what the book was about. In my opinion, Barnes is attempting to show an older man who has lived life to the fullest. Now that he is older and less active, he has more time to sit around and analyze his old memories. He knows that death is near and as a result he wants to fix all of the flaws and battles that he has had throughout his life. He tries to make good with an ex girlfriend who hated him for screwing her over. He also tries to repair the relationships in his family. While reading, there was one particular quote that stuck out for me. You can find it on page 13 "Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure." To me this quote shows that it is the hardships that change your life and everything depends on how you react to it. Depending on what you do with your life, you have to try to forget about what happens in the past and focus on the future. This is something that Tony had a lot of trouble in doing. He always tried to figure out why he committed actions in his past and wanted to try to correct them even though there was not really a way that he could do this. Tony wanted to try to figure out why his good friend Adrian killed himself and in my opinion I feel as if Tony kind of blames himself a little for it. He thinks that if he never sent the letter then he might have had a better relationship with him. However, Veronica (or who knows maybe it was Mary) did not allow him to find out the real way that Adrian responded out of a cowardish act.

Final Reaction

    When I first began to read The Sense of an Ending I was captivated by its plot and was eager to read ahead and find out where this story was being led. Although the story took place in England and several years before we were born, I was still able to relate to their teenage lives. There was a lot going on throughout the book which kept me interested and wanting to learn more about the narrator and his group of friends. As the book went on it became a little repetitive. As Tony grew older I found it more and more difficult to relate to him along with his issues. Maybe because he is now older and living his final years in retirement so thats not exactly something I could relate to. The story slowed down at this point. He is constantly overwhelmed by his thoughts and filled with regret. We all experience some feelings of regrets but its part of life and something we need to learn to overcome. Tony seems to be completely overcome by all of this, especially after reading the passage from Adrian's diary.
        I found it strange that he wasn't going out of his way to get the diary or reach Veronica. He seemed to be giving a minimal effort, and even when he received an envelope or some email back from Veronica he took ages to reply or read whatever contents were sent to him.
         Once he got in contact with Veronica the book seemed to come back to life. I was suddenly interested again and was eager to find out what exactly happened. I knew Veronica had some information that Tony was not aware of, but she seemed reluctant to share it with him. Eventually she did, but Tony did not catch on immediately.
       The book ends with a twist, leaving many unanswered questions. We never find out what exactly it is that Tony doesn't understand. Im sure that maybe he gets it towards the end, but he doesn't share it with the readers which is basically the whole point of a book. We never truly find out why Adrian committed suicide, which I have been wondering about since his suicide was announced. Because of the title of the book I was expected a great ending, but Im left even more confused. I hope I just misinterpreted the ending and there is something greater than what I got from the last couple of pages.

If you haven't seen the movie We're The Millers I strongly suggest that you do.

Final Reaction

       I truly enjoyed this novel. The ending gave it a good twist and simultaneously made everything that was said before make perfect sense. Adrian, a character whom was initially presented to the readers as a clear-minded, intelligent, moral, admirable man turned out to be the exact opposite. As I mentioned in my previous blog posts, I really liked the person Adrian was. He almost seemed perfect. But reading the rest of the book showed me that I actually strongly dislike the person Adrian was, and that all the intellect and cleverness inside of him was worthless compared to the acts of betrayal he committed. First, he goes out with his "best friend's girl." Then, he betrays her with her MOTHER, and then, when the mother is pregnant with his son, he kills himself, betraying his son, his current partner, and every impression or belief that he ever expressed to any of those that were close to him. Adrian's suicide was once admired and respected by Alex, Colin, and Tony, but later I realized that this was all a false image that Adrian created, and these three men had fallen for it.
       Tony, on the other hand, is a completely different character. He just "lets life happen to him." He seems pretty neutral about everything, but not in the "Jesus" way. Tony is just indifferent about everything that happens to him, and when he thinks he knows what he wants, he realizes he wanted the exact opposite. Old Tony is, in fact, a hyper-conscious being; but that does not mean that his actions represent this. I question Tony's ability to love another as much as he loves himself. Because it is clear in his writing that although he has much self-hatred, he values himself more than anyone else as well. Throughout the entire novel, Tony wanted to find out what it was that Adrian had written about him in his diary. He wanted "The Sense of An Ending." He wanted to close this story and go on with his life, though now I wonder if his life would have had any excitement at all had it been for the presence of Adrian's story.
      In my opinion, this story has many important themes. Impulse versus logic, clarity versus distortion, the coming of age, the question of life, and the tendency of humanity to do that which is disadvantageous in order to prove a point. Everything we have talked about in this class was somehow a part of "The Sense of an Ending." The terrible things Tony had written, drunk and impulsively, to Veronica and Adrian, ended up biting him in the ass, and though he may not have recognized it, it caused his life to be depressing and resentful. Later in life, he realized what he had done, and felt remorse for it. The actions we commit under emotions and the heat of the moment are often those we regret in the future, and though we know that doing such things are bad for us, that the best thing to do is wait until the moment has passed so that we can think logically and coldly, we choose to do that which is worse for us because we simply can. Because we feel it is what we can do, even though we know it is what we shouldn't do. These natural human actions are represented by Tony's actions, and I know we can all relate to at least one of the incidents in the novel. I'm glad I read this novel and feel that it incorporated many of the discussions we had in class.

Final Post

            I thought that the end of the book was really rushed and didn’t make that much sense. I don’t understand how Tony couldn’t differentiate Mary and Veronica, because shouldn’t Mary logically be a lot younger than Veronica? I understand that all of the emails and discourse exchanged between Tony and Veronica (or Mary?) at the end of the book were supposed to be clues for Tony to stay away form Veronica (or Mary?) I don’t think this book makes any sense whatsoever.

            I really want to like this book but I was left confused and unsatisfied. Tony was annoyingly self-pitying and way too melodramatic. If I were him, then I really wouldn’t like myself either. He spends too much time thinking about his relationships with other people and using them to get ahead with his desires and wishes. Also, he has a very low self-esteem that brings him to all of this trouble. There were a lot of ideas in this story, some of which I really like but they were all cramped together and disorganized so I felt like the book was unsolved when it ended. 

            I think that this book exaggerates the nonsense and futility of philosophy in reality. Sure we can hypothesize, predict, determine trends, and waste time fixating on the past, present, and future but there really is no progress that evolves from this matter. I think this led to Tony’s unsatisfying grandparenthood. A couple of parts that I like include the ideas that we invent pasts for others around us to infer their characters, “our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life”, and the effect of time on self-reflection. I think everyone pursues to understand their surroundings and make up excuses or ideas that make them more comfortable. But, since we solely determine these comforts ourselves, we become more isolated than the other people around us and from the truth. Humans have the ability to make up whatever they believe in, regardless of whether it is good for them or not.

            I don’t like this book because Tony is pretentious throughout the entire book and expects too much from other people and himself. He is really pessimistic about life and it causes him to live a miserable life. The idea that we all have responsibilities over our effects on ourselves and other people makes sense because we live in a world where we constantly collaborate and interact with other people and explore these relationships.