Comparison between Adrian's suicide and Robson's suicide in the Julian Barnes novel "The Sense of An Ending ".
Abstract :
This paper tries to analyze and critically compare the suicide of Adrian and Robson. It is always interesting to study about the Suicide. In literature it's become more interesting. Suicide is now an object of multidisciplinary scientific study, with sociology, anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry each providing important insights into suicide. If we talk about the The Morality and Rationality of Suicide. Then we have to ask a several questions like : Are there conditions under which suicide is morally justified, and if so, which conditions? Is suicide ever rational or prudent ? Throughout history, suicide has evoked an astonishingly wide range of reactions like, bafflement, dismissal, heroic glorification, sympathy, anger, moral or religious condemnation but it is never uncontroversial. So the present paper tries to find out that who's suicide is philosophical and rational one. What situations makes them to commit suicide ? What Aldert Camus talk about the Suicide that " There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that” Camus sees Sisyphus’s endless effort and intense consciousness of futility as a triumph. “His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing”. Adrian who was the reads Aldert Camus and he was know what Camus was talking about so the question is that how can we define his suicide and Robson's Suicide ?
Key words :
Suicide, philosophical, rational, Aldert Camus
Introduction :
The Sense of an Ending is Julian Barnes's eleventh novel and it was awarded the Man Booker Prize. The title of the novel is borrowed from a book of the same name by Frank Kermode first published in 1967, the stated aim of which is "making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives". ( Frank Kermode) The novel ' The Sense Of An Ending ' is divided into two parts, both of which are narrated by Tony Webster when he is sixty year old, retired and living alone. In bother part we find that the incident of Suicide. In first part we come to know about the Robson's suicide and in the second part we come to know about the Adrian's suicide. Here both the Suicide have a different kind of context, but to the some extent same situation. Who's suicide is philosophical suicide ? So here I am trying to explain the both suicide, which is occurres in the novel.
In the first part Tony Webster who was the narrator of the novel, remembering his school days and his friends. At that time he also recall the Suicide of one student who was studied in six standard. And Tony and his friend eagerly want to know about the reason behind his Suiside. Old Joe Hunt was the history teacher and with whom Adrian make an argument about the Suicide of Robson. But Tony in the second part again thought about Robson's Suicide when his close friend Adrian committed suicide. But which suicide is rational and very well thoughtful act. And which suicide is the act of cowrdness.
Robson's Suicide :
Robson was a student in the “Science Sixth” at Tony Webster’s school. Robson never appears directly in the novel, but is a significant reference point for Tony and his friends after he commits suicide, having gotten his girlfriend pregnant. The boys view his suicide as less a tragic event than an opportunity for them to speculate endlessly and abstractly on his reasons and motives. What Tony tells us :
"Robson had got his girlfriend pregnant, hanged himself in the
attic, and not been found for two days."
Adrian remembers the Eros and Thanatos but what Alex said (another friend of Tony) “Robson wasn’t exactly Eros-and-Thanatos material,”. Because he was a steady, un-imaginative boy, gravely uninterested in the arts, who had trundled along without offending anyone.
" His action had been unphilosophical, self-indulgent and inartistic: in other words, wrong. As for his suicide note, which according to rumour (Brown again) read “Sorry, Mum,” we felt that it had missed a powerful educative opportunity."
Tony and his friends critically analyze the suicide of Robson. His suicide is not seem philosophically thoughtful or rational at all.
Adrian's Suicide :
Adrian was fascinated by literature and philosophy—his preferred authors are Camus and Nietzsche, but unlike the others, he is outwardly earnest about his intellectual leanings, embracing seriousness and frustrated that others around him refuse to be as serious. Adrian is particularly obsessed with the existentialist question of what makes a life worth living, and whether one can logically deduce such meaning from abstract theorizing.
" In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning: that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is a moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision. There was practically a QED at the end."
I would have to go back into my
past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher
friend, who gazed on life and decided that
Any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for—and whose noble gesture reemphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of. “Most lives”: my life.
Once Adrian said that the ".. individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for.."
" understanding Adrian’s reasons, respecting them, and admiring him. He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. "
However, it seems that Adrian may have done so for more concrete reasons—he slept with his girlfriend Veronica’s mother, Sarah, who became pregnant. But no airtight conclusion is ever reached about Adrian’s ultimate motives. He has done things like Robson but it seems that his death is a thoughtful one. He has not write a single word of sorry but he alao write a interesting suicide note. Which is helpful to us analyze the reason behind his suicide.
" Adrian had apologised to the police for inconveniencing them, and thanked the coroner for making his last words public. He also asked to be cremated, and for his ashes to be scattered, since the swift destruction of the body was also a philosopher’s active choice, and preferable to the supine waiting for natural decomposition in the ground. "
Which is rational and philosophical suicide ?
After knowing about the both the Suicide of the novel we came to the conclusion that there is no comparison. " Adrian had grown up, had left home, and
was far more intelligent than poor Robson."
As Tony Webster thinks about Adrian we also believe that he was an intellectual. What Tony speak about him :
" I would have sworn
on oath that Adrian’s was the one mind
which would never lose its balance. "
As in society people talk about the madness of Adrian. At that time he was angry and spoke these sentences. Adrian was a man who never lost his balance in any situation of his life. So Tony's point is that his suicide is not a result of madness but one of the intellectual's to end his life, well thought act.
Adrian’s suicide on the other hand is not ‘wrong’ at all because it shows ..“.. the superiority of the intervening act over the unworthy passivity of merely letting life happen to you. An implicit criticism of everybody else”. (Markowetz) He was the leader of Aldert Camus. As we know , Camus was a great thinker. He was talking about the absurdity in life and the continuing to live a life , through the myth of Sisyphus.
Conclusion :
Through the narration of Tony we come to know about Adrian Finn to be a person of great intellect but at the same time a person whose childhood was consumed with loneliness and vacuum. He speaks too little and thinks very much, he is one person whose life is dominated by philosophical questions and it is this quest that determines his existence. When as a philosopher, he thought that there was nothing more to gain, learn and enlighten oneself about, he would put an end to his life. At the same time, since he had always regarded human life as an unwanted gift, maybe he was not very much impressed with the idea of existence or did not have any such desire to carry on with the lonely and philosophical life he led.
If we think in another way then we can say that the very process of birth is not in our hands but death is in our hands. If we don't want to live then this is our choice. To end our own life is not bad at all. It's a freedom to live to die at any moment of life. But why does society or each and every religion don't allow us to do such a thing? That's become a crime in many religions. Because if it is permitted then no one cares about life and the whole cycle getting distubed. But what Camus and other thinkers talk about suicide is the free choice of soul. Feroz Rather said that
' What is lost, however, is the chance to further complicate and probe the mind of Adrian, to illuminate life and literature with a fresh streak of artistic or intellectual light, to organically theorise about the complexities of psychology and memory in the manner of a nimble Nabokov, a reflective Levi, a sagacious Sartre, to create some shimmering stones in the necklace of novel thought. '
Citation :
Camus, Albert.The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by O'Brien, Justin, Penguin Group, 1842, ISBN 978-0-141-18200-1.
Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford University Press, 2000, 1, ISBN 978-0-19-513612-8.
Markowetz, Florian. “A Philosophical Suicide - Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending.” Sides, Scientific B-Sides, 12 June 2012,scientificbsides.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/the-sense-of-an-ending/amp/.
Rather, Feroz. “An Asian Literary Journal - A Shroud Around the Suicide: Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending.” Cha, June 2012, www.asiancha.com/content/view/1195/115/.
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