International Research Journal of Education and Technology

This paper examines Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending through a postmodern framework, arguing that memory in the novel functions not merely as a psychological faculty but as a subtle mechanism of self-deception that reshapes moral responsibility and narrative identity. Rather than presenting the past as stable and objectively recoverable, the novel exposes recollection as selective, interpretative, and ethically charged. Through the retrospective narration of Tony Webster, Barnes demonstrates how individuals unconsciously revise their personal histories in order to preserve emotional equilibrium and protect a coherent sense of self. The resurfacing of a long-forgotten letter destabilizes Tony’s carefully constructed self-image and forces him to confront the moral consequences of language, jealousy, and indifference.

KEYWORDS:

 memory, moral responsibility, self-deception, narrative identity, postmodernism