Julian Barnes

ceased to exist. Selfishness is what allowed survival of the fittest. Julian Barnes touches on the subject in “The Visitors”, the second chapter of his novel, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters. In doing so, he relates two events in which a monkey and a man, Franklin Hughes, are left to make the ultimate decision of saving a loved one or making a tragic sacrifice. Through the image of the monkey and Franklin’s story, Barnes agrees that self-interest always triumphs over altruism, and this…

All composers hold a mirror to what they consider to be the key aspects of their perception of our common humanity. Through Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, it is apparent that each composer perceives our common humanity in a different light. These compositions are set in a time nearing the end of life as humankind apprehends it to be, thus creating high levels of uncertainty and unrest within society. It is under…

The trope of nostalgic and wistful people looking back on their teen years, the good years, approaches stereotype. Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, on the surface, appears to employ the same stereotype of a wistful old man experiencing a bout of retrospection for his lost friend and the times he once had. The narrator of Carson McCullers’s “Ballad of the Sad Café” in The Ballad of the Sad Café works with the same forlorn recollection of when the town was more alive. Both narrators use two…

what they did not want to do. They could chose the type of way they wanted to live, the type of job, and even their type of religious beliefs. Julian Barnes a famous English writer stated “Life is a matter of cosmic hazard and that the human species will completely disappear and not be missed, because there is nobody and nothing out there to miss us.” what Barnes is trying to say once the human existence is gone the evidence of god and life it won’t be an important factor anymore. This is how a…

Cultural and societal identities have been characterised throughout history using a variety of mediums. As illustrated by many authors; such as Roy, Barker or Barnes, the written word, can be among the most powerful form of rhetoric, giving society the “stamp” of identity as chosen by the author. Culture and society can be described as the defining expression of our identity, national or otherwise. Group identity begins with the basic patterning of social cohesion such as inherited knowledge,…

Art is complex, it is more than just an object filled with paint for it to be used as an antique for your living room set. Art can be used as an expression, positive or negative. Art can entice in many ways, for its concealed hidden message for the viewer to analyzed and understand the meaning than the art itself. Art is expressed in many alternatives as well, not just historic paintings from Picasso, Warhol. As well from the like of musicians, a certain creation something more presented than…

Do you think it's fair to other athletes when some athletes are enhancing drugs? I don’t think it’s fair to other athletes because it’s basically cheating. “Performance enhancers, like steroids and other forms of doping, have a negative effect on long-term health. For than users of these enhancers are hurting themselves in the long run without on the average improving their short-term rewards from athletic competition, as long as competitors also use harmful enhancers. This is the main…

In 2009, a small town in Yemen called al-Majala was at the mercy of a drone attack that killed 41 civilians, including 21 children. Not even half of that number was confirmed to be militants. The people in this country can only imagine what it is like to have death flying above them, but the innocents in the Middle-Eastern countries do not have to imagine. The number of innocents on the receiving end of drone attacks has only increased over the years, because the drones act on a program that…

painting of it. Even though the painting may seem perfect in our own minds, another may have a completely different picture of the event, which can cause a massive ammount of unreliability in recording history. Tony from The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes has a flawed memory.…

Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Barnes, Timothy D. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Eusebius. Life of Constantine. Translated by Averil Cameron and Stuart D Hall. New York: Clarendon Press Oxford, 1999. Gill, N.S. "Julian and the Fall of Paganism." Classical/Ancient History Web site. n.d. http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/julian/a/Julianapostate.htm (accessed March 2, 2014). —. "Profile of Nero."…