I’m sure everyone agrees that Sense of an Ending is a nice change of
pace from the extremely dense Dostoyevsky. Although I have noticed some of Dostoyevsky’s
ideas in Barnes’ book, I am not sure yet whether Barnes was influenced by Dostoyevsky
or I am just used to discussing Dostoyevsky’s theories and any slight resemblances
sets off my Dostoyevsky meter. I found Barnes’ discussion of the malleability
of time particularly interesting, as I have noticed this myself. We can change
how we perceive time with just our mind. For example, once a school year ends I
think back to the beginning of the year and it feels both as if the year went
by super fast and relatively slow. Another example is when I play lacrosse, ironically,
whenever my heart is beating quickly and the adrenaline is being pumped
throughout my body, time seems to move the most slowly at these moments, it’s
as if the entire world slows down as well as my thoughts. I found it amusing
that Barnes mentioned that the main characters have read both Camus and
Dostoyevsky. Right now, the three main characters seem like little punks who
think they know everything, sophomoric for a better term. However, they have
reason to feel above the rest of their peers as they have read great works of
literature. They all also appear to be a bit romantic, as they all want their
lives to be like a work of literature, and are jealous of Adrian who has that
type of life, but does not “take advantage of it”. It is easy to see that they
are not emotionally of intellectually developed, mainly because of the fact
that they wanted everything to be an absolute, a yes or no; they have yet to
grasp the truth that the world is not black and white. I am excited to see how the
novel progresses.
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