Post for February 28

I have been thoroughly enjoying The Sense of an Ending. This is the first time in an English class that I have ever read something so written so recently.

Like Dostoyevsky, Barnes pokes fun at humanity for constantly attempting to find conclusions to everything, which is what make the title The Sense of an Ending work so well for this novel, because one of the main argument that I believe Barnes’ is trying to make is that there actually is no ending. Like we discussed in class, the universe in continually expanding. Even millions or billion of years from now when everything we knew or understood is gone, stars and universes will still be born and die. In the big picture we do not really matter. Though this idea scared a lot of people in our class, I agree with Barnes when he says that “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” (pg.50). We do not need to over complicate things with trying to answer “why” to every small question or action. I believe that the realization that everything is infinite should set us free of having to be concerned with trying to understand the “big picture” and only focus on what each of us individually want from life. Believing that we should or have to do something is irrelevant, because in the end it wont really matter.