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.