The Sense of an Ending: Flashbacks 1 key example

The image of the Severn Bore shows how memory both preserves and distorts. The river seems to run against its current, a vivid image that underscores the novel's theme of wanting to reverse time in order to reassess or undo the past. By embedding this hazy memory in Tony's adult narrative, Barnes invites readers to compare "then" and "now." The details that Tony was sure of in youth have blurred with time. What once felt bright and immediate becomes uncertain in hindsight.

This use of flashback shows how the novel resists presenting memory as stable. Memories, in Barnes's world, are ever-shifting, taking on new meaning depending on what one has learned or forgotten in the intervening years. The Seven Bore scene, replayed across time, makes visible the novel's central concern: that our lives are not only lived toward the future but are constantly rewritten in retrospect.