After reading “A Sense of an Ending" with the Sixth Street Book Group, I recommended it to our parish group. A day or two before we met, a fellow member asked why in the world I’d recommended that book. So I had to think about why I think it has religious themes. It occurred to me that one parallel is the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The former goes into the Temple, marches up front and says, “Thank you, God, for not making me like other men—such as that tax collector.” The tax collector stays at the rear, beating his breast and saying, “Forgive me, Lord, for I am a sinner.”
Tony starts out like the Pharisee and ends up like the tax collector. His life is neat and tidy, no mess. He sees himself as a decent man. In the course of the story he comes to realize that he has never loved anyone. He threw Veronica over because he thought she and her family looked down on him. When the American girl he hitchhiked with said “Easy come, easy go” it didn’t occur to him until much later that maybe this was a question rather than a comment.
When his unfaithful ex-wife suggested they might reunite, he thought the idea too “odd” to carry through on—besides, he’s become content living alone. When Tony finally rereads the hateful letter he wrote to Adrian and Veronica he can no longer pretend that it was a mild rebuke and not a curse.
All along, Veronica has been saying Tony “doesn’t get it.” When epiphany finally comes, he’s no longer complacent. Instead, reprising a school chum’s assessment of history, there’s “unrest, great unrest.” It’s not that Tony is completely responsible for what went wrong, but like a world war there’s a chain of causes and he comes to realize that he’s a link in the chain. He’s not better than other men, after all, and as much in need of mercy as anyone else.
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