The Sense of an Ending

Has the adaptation

Canonical title

The Sense of an Ending

Original title

The Sense of an Ending

Original publication date

2011

People/Characters

Veronica Ford; Adrian Finn; Anthony Webster; Sarah Ford; Margaret Webster; Jack Ford (show all 20); Mr. Webster; Mrs. Webster; Mr. Ford; Adrian Finn, Jr; Old Joe Hunt; Alex; Colin Simpson; Marshall; Phil Dixon; Annie; Susie Webster; Mr. Gunnell; Mrs. Marriott; Terry

Important places

Bristol, England, UK; Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK; London, England, UK; Kent, England, UK

Related movies

The Sense of an Ending (2017 | IMDb)

Dedication

for Pat

First words

I remember, in no particular order:
   -a shiny inner wrist;
   -steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;
   -gouts of sperm circling a plughole, be... (show all)fore being sluiced down the full length of a tall house;
   -a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeams;
   -another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;
   -bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.

Quotations

"We could start perhaps with the seemingly simple question. What is History? Any thoughts, Webster?
'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied a little too quickly.'
Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well as... (show all) long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated...' (p. 25, large print ed.)

---

We muddle along, we let life happen to us, we gradually build up a store of memories. There is the question of accumulation, but not in the sense that Adrian meant, just the simple adding up and adding on of life. And as the ... (show all)poet pointed out, there is a difference between addition and increase.

---

Indeed, isn't the whole business of ascribing responsibility a kind of cop-out? We want to blame an individual so that everyone else is exculpated. Or we blame a historical process as a way of exonerating individuals. Or it's... (show all) all anarchic chaos, with the same consequence. It seems to be me that there is--was--a chain of individual responsibilities, all of which were necessary, but not so long a chain that everybody can simply blame everyone else. But of course, my desire to ascribe responsibility might be more a reflection of my own cast of mind than a fair analysis of what happened. That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.

---

That last isn't something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

---

And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing--until the eventual point when it really does go missin... (show all)g, never to return.

---

I'm not very interested in my schooldays, and don't feel any nostalgia for them. But school is where it all began, so I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories wh... (show all)ich time has deformed into certainty. If I can't be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the impressions those facts left. That's the best I can manage.

---

Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortable feelings toward its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostal... (show all)gia serve?

---

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely t... (show all)he story we have told about our life. Told to others, but--mainly--to ourselves.

---

Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does; otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but th... (show all)at's something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we're just stuck with what we've got. We're on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn't it? And also-- if this isn't too grand a word--our tragedy.

---

I was saying, confidently, how the chief characteristic of remorse is that nothing can be done about it: that the time has passed for apology or amends. But what if I'm wrong? What if by some means remorse can be made to flow... (show all) backwards, can be transmuted into simple guilt, then apologised for, and then forgiven?

---

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation" p17

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond this, there is unrest. There is great unrest.

Blurbers*

Cartwright, Justin; Wagner, Erica

Original language

English

Canonical DDC/MDS

823.914

Canonical LCC

PR6052.A6657