Name : Dhruvita Dhameliya
Roll no : 03
Semester : 04
Year: 2021 to 2023
Subject : Contemporary Literatures in English
Topic : Write an Essay on the Theme of Passion and Suffering in ‘The Only Story’
E-mail ID : dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Introduction of Writer:
Julian Barnes is an English novelist and journalist. Best known for his witty and intellectual novels, Barnes has enjoyed commercial and critical success for almost forty years. Barnes' work often deals with identity, memory, and historical themes. His most famous work is the postmodern novel Flaubert's Parrot. Julian Barnes has written numerous novels, short stories, and essays. He has also translated a book by French author Alphonse Daudet and a collection of German cartoons by Volker Kriegel. His writing has earned him considerable respect as an author who deals with the themes of history, reality, truth and love. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 with The Sense of an Ending, having been shortlisted three times previously with Flaubert's Parrot, England, and Arthur & George. Barnes has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories.
In 2004 he became a Commander of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His honours also include the Somerset Maugham Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was awarded the 2021 Jerusalem Prize.
Introduction of Novel:
The Only Story is primarily about the nature of love, and its impact on the people involved in it. The novel begins with a quotation from the eighteenth-century poet, essayist, and literary critic Dr. Samuel Johnson. In A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Dr. Johnson defines the newly arising genre of the novel as “a small tale, generally of love” Unlike Dr. Johnson’s irony, Barnes’s quotation does not tend to challenge either the novel as a genre or love as its main theme. Instead, as Barnes proves in his novel, the only story of the so-called “small tale” is, or should be, love. By focusing on the complexities of the concept of love from a continuously transforming perspective, Barnes encourages us to interrogate our conventionalised understanding of love. In this regard, the narrator begins his act of narration with a general statement. He enters into an imaginary conversation with his ideal hypothetical audience on the opening page. By addressing his implied reader, he foreshadows the central theme in his own act of storytelling:
Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question. You may point out – correctly – that it isn’t a real question. Because we don’t have a choice. If we had the choice, then there would be a question. But we don’t, so there isn’t. Who can control how much they love? If you can control it, then it isn’t love. I don’t know what you call it instead, but it isn’t love.
Through a chain of rhetorical questions and the possible answers to them, the narrator tries to persuade the readers into believing the fact that the most fundamental question of being and existence should be a question related to love. Hence, in the opening page the narrator tries to justify the central point of his narration which turns out to be a narration totally dedicated to love: “Most of us have only one story to tell. I don’t mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there’s only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine” The narrator does not mind admitting that he has been telling his story of love for a long time despite the fact that its reiteration has not brought him any certainty about either the nature of love or its impact on his life. In other words, he does not know whether this time his storytelling, which is mostly based on his act of remembering, will finally reveal to him the “truth” about love and the love affair he experienced five decades ago, “The question then is: do all these retellings bring you closer to the truth of what happened, or move you further away? I’m not sure”
The narrative events and situations in The Only Story are presented in a chronological order. Part One is narrated in first person, Part Two mostly in second person, and Part Three in third person. By choosing such a mode of narration, the author presents the nature and definition of love according to different perspectives. Part one of the narrative is about the birth of love, part two is about the death or test of love, and part three is about the aftermath or effect of love. Similarly, the different parts of the novel, in accordance with their content, are narrated in different modes, and different forms.
Themes of Novel:
Theme of Passion and Suffering
The Etymology of Passion
Love and Duty
Psychological Interpretation of Suffering
Theme of Passion and Suffering
The storyline in The Only Story revolves around the narrator’s memory of a love affair. He went through his first experience of love in his late adolescence and early adulthood years. Through his narrative of remembering, the narrator finds out that at that time he did not understand the concept of love as he would do later in his life. His understanding of love and beloved at this stage is completely based on an imaginary relation. His beloved acts as a mirror symbolising the desired, ideal wholeness. The narrator presents his younger self as a subject of lack or emptiness and his beloved as a subject who can complete his lack. Such a concept of love which is based on an imaginary relation is similar to Lacan’s definitions of the term.
d on an imaginary relation is similar to Lacan’s definitions of the term. More than presenting love as a rational, controllable, or calculable human phenomenon, The Only Story portrays it as an illusory and indeterminate emotion. In his attempts to define love, Lacan’s perspective is close to the situation represented by Barnes. Lacan refers to love in his different works at different periods. He associates it with lack, destitution, poverty, aporia, and narcissism. Speaking about love or defining it was always a challenging problem for Lacan since, according to him, an unchanging definition of love is nearly impossible. In all his discourses/seminars about love, he finds it “not possible to say anything meaningful or sensible about love”
“Love,” according to Lacan, “is a phenomenon which takes place in the imaginary level” Besides being about the complications of love, The Only Story is also about an unresolved conflict between two unlike generations. In other words, also the uncertain nature of the concept love itself is a formidable obstacle to interaction between the two central characters, their belonging to different epochs is another major obstacle. Without sharing their own individual characteristics, Paul and Susan fail to achieve a harmonious happiness. The narrator painfully remembers how his younger self in the past struggled for a long time in order to maintain the established unity between himself and his beloved as an attractive object of his desire. The purpose of his story is to achieve something in fiction that he could not in reality. However, when his illusions are shattered under the effect of his reconstructing memory, he finds it impossible to achieve a unity or sense of wholeness with his beloved. Thanks to his act of storytelling, he realises that love should be something more than a solipsistic emotion as it is a socio-culturally determined behaviour. The uncompromising nature of a unique kind of what Kristeva terms as singularity helps us to explain the rigid dichotomy between the narrator and his beloved.
The plot line in part two mostly turns around Paul’s and Susan’s shared life in a new environment, London. Paul in his twenties lives with Susan in her fifties. In this stage of their relationship, they inevitably enter into a new structure which is part of the so-called Symbolic Order, or the adult world. They both undertake some of the basic functions of adult life. It is during this time that for the first time Paul begins thinking, not just feeling, about his relationship with Susan. The denouement of their love plot also begins at this stage.
The order of presented events in this part, as it is true about the other two parts, is achronological. In his narration, the narrator presents a mixed-up combination of experiences, feelings and thoughts in different phases of his shared life with Susan. He sometimes returns to the experiences he had at the Macleods’ in order to talk about the felt animosity between himself and Mr Macleod on the one hand, and the domestic violence or the troubled relationship between Susan and her husband on the other. Besides that, he presents the events which finally led to their decision to move from their village to London. He tells the readers how he encouraged Susan to apply for divorce from her husband because of his mistreatment of her. At the same time, he talks about Susan’s reluctance to do so and her gradual immersion in dishonesty and alcoholism. Finally, he describes the fundamental change of his own perspective towards love and Susan which mainly happens as a result of his long contemplations of his own and Susan’s characters and conditions.
The more Paul matures with the development of the relationship with Susan, the more he begins to notice the real problems. Throughout this period, he gradually takes distance from his primarily passionate and absolutist perspective towards love. This becomes possible through the practical nature of his experience. He encounters the real hardships in his relationship with Susan. Unlike the imaginary nature of his courtship years, the partnership teaches him some of the norms of the symbolic order.
Under the effect of some unexpected events and situations, Paul discovers different aspects of Susan’s character. He becomes more aware of the different and complicated character of his beloved the more he tries to understand her mental states. This process teaches him about the different aspects of her character and his own character. He becomes aware of the fact that, as a woman of his parents’ generation, she is also a “conditioned” woman who is hardly able to break away from her family, and from the established structures like marriage. He also learns that the marriage institution is so strong that even Susan, despite the fact that she has been experiencing intense aggression and domestic violence for long years, cannot break away from it. However, despite the difficulties produced by their open-to-public action in moving away from their village to London, he gives a promise to himself to “redouble” his “commitment” to Susan as she gives herself to alcohol, cigarettes, and depression. Paul pretends to do so in the name of his love. In other words, he thinks that his decision to slowly move away from her is because of his true love for her. In comparing his life with those of his friends, Paul finds his new and unusual life more “interesting” although he is in love with a woman “being characterised as potentially mad”. He tries to justify his situation: “you are still ahead of them because your relationship is more fascinating, more complicated, and more insoluble” Such counterfactual behaviour, however, partly derives from his one-track mind.
Towards the end of part two, Paul does not talk about the cause of Susan’s alcoholism as much as he talks about her inability to stop it. He presents his younger self in this stage as a devotee, and loyal lover who did not abstain from whatever he could do. It is painful to him to see that while as a lawyer he can solve other people’s problems, he is unable to solve his own problem. Finally, by taking out the “running away fund” that Susan gave him once and running away, he decides to leave Susan. He begins sleeping with prostitutes and tries to forget about Susan and her problems. At the same time, he continuously attempts to justify leaving her:
“And so, by the end, you have tried soft love and tough love, feelings and reason, truth and lies, promises and threats, hope and stoicism. But you are not a machine, switching easily from one approach to another. Each strategy involves as much emotional strain on you as on her; perhaps more … you find yourself thinking: she may be destroying herself in the long term, but in the short term, she’s doing more damage to you. Helpless, frustrated anger overwhelms you; and, worst of all, righteous anger. You hate your own righteousness”.
At the end of part two, Paul defends his decision in leaving Susan. He no longer cares about the people’s, including the readers’, judgement of him, “You do not care how anyone might judge you if they could see where you are and what you are doing. … You do not reproach yourself; nor do you experience guilt, now or later”. Having left Susan, Paul begins the long and unending re-evaluation process of his affair with Susan.
Conclusion:
The Only Story unveils the illusion of love and shared singularity through the reconstructed nature of memory. His storytelling enables the narrator to perceive the fact that his love affair with his beloved was primarily based on some mutual, and unfulfilled, expectations. They could hardly comply with the egoistic demands of each other. Their relationship broke off since their love, in agreement with Lacan’s understanding of this concept, did not deliver themselves from their profound sense of lack. The narrator presents his experience of love as an unusual event which occurred during the decade of the 1960s in European culture. Paul was born into the sexual revolution that happened in this decade. He was a forerunner of the modern generation in his society. He was an individual with a maximum sense of egoism. Unlike Kristeva’s definition of shared singularity, the represented fictional society in the village does not allow its people to pursue their own individuality, and foster the sharing between them at the same time. The inhabitants, therefore, fail to recognize each other’s singularities, let alone share them. Thus, their uncompromising private realities set up an important part of the major barrier between them. Having failed to overcome the dominance of their own subjectivities, they are unable to build a shared singularity which could guarantee the unproblematic continuation of their romantic companionship. Besides the importance of the two characters’ increasingly opposing traits, their contextual realities make a harmonious and long-standing relationship impossible for them. Though for different reasons, Paul and Susan fail to share their singularities with each other. However, later in life he comes to the belated understanding that his own ego centred character and unwillingness to share with Susan should have been among the primary causes of his problems. All in all, he represents himself as a symbol of individualism.
Thank You
Word Count: 2640
Works Cited
BIJMAN, M. “It's not about mixed doubles at all – The Only Story, by Julian Barnes.” SEVEN CIRCUMSTANCES, 17 August 2018, https://sevencircumstances.com/2018/08/17/plodding-sadly-towards-disappointment-the-only-story-by-julian-barnes/. Accessed 27 March 2023.
McAlpin, Heller, and Julian Barnes. “Beautiful But Heartrending, 'The Only Story' Looks Back At Love Gone Wrong.” NPR, 17 April 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/04/17/600902229/beautiful-but-heartrending-the-only-story-looks-back-at-love-gone-wrong. Accessed 27 March 2023.
NAYEBPOUR, Karam NAYEBPOUR. “Reconstructed Memory of Love in Julian Barnes’s The Only Story.” vol. 2, December 2021, https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/979900. Accessed Thursday January 2023.
“Reconstructed Memory of Love in Julian Barnes's The Only Story.” DergiPark, 4 April 2021, https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/979900. Accessed 27 March 2023.
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