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One night during university, Tony and a few of his friends gather to see the famous Severn Bore at Minsterworth, not far from Bristol. A bore is a large wave resulting from changes in tidal surges: for a few moments, the course of the River Severn seems to change direction as the wave barrels upstream. Although subtler than a natural phenomenon like a tsunami or earthquake, the Severn Bore seems to Tony to be just as stunning and earth-shattering. For a few moments, time itself seems to reverse course—the laws of history, which is supposed to move in only one direction, seem no longer to apply. As The Sense of an Ending implies, however, the Bore is so alluring precisely because it is an exception to such laws. Time does only move in one direction: as much as Tony would like to go back and change the past, deciding not to send the cruel letter he mailed to Veronica and Adrian, or deciding not to end things with Veronica so callously, or even in a more general sense choosing to live life with less fear and caution, he cannot, like the Bore, move against the tide.
In addition, though, the Severn Bore represents another problem introduced by the novel at the start: the difference between remembering and witnessing. At one point Tony recalls the conversation he had with Veronica while watching the Bore pass: they talked about how it’s possible to see things one would never believe if one hadn’t witnessed them directly. The Bore is one of those you-had-to-see-it-to-believe-it moments, of course. Yet strikingly, when this memory returns to the 60-something Tony later in the novel, for the first time he recalls that Veronica had been with him that night—when he mentioned the night earlier in the novel, she wasn’t present in the memory. The Severn Bore is powerful in part because it’s a remarkable, surprising event that he has witnessed, and thus can believe—but even witnessing it directly doesn’t mean he can entirely seize his memory of what happened that night (nor other moments during his time with Veronica). The Severn Bore thus proves a somber reminder of the deceptions and self-deceptions of memory, and of the limitations of claiming to witness something first-hand.
Severn Bore Quotes in The Sense of an Ending
The The Sense of an Ending quotes below all refer to the symbol of Severn Bore. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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One Quotes
It was more unsettling because it looked and felt quietly wrong, as if some small lever of the universe had been pressed, and here, just for these minutes, nature was reversed, and time with it.
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Although many of Tony’s recollections of his time at Bristol have included memories of Veronica, here he also notes that one of the strongest memories he retains from his university years was the night he and a few friends stayed up late in order to watch the Severn Bore, a famous tidal bore near Bristol, in which the flow of the current reverses direction for a moment, culminating in a wave moving upstream seemingly against the tide. Watching the Bore is both a chilling and a marvelous experience for Tony, even though, as he notes, it’s a subtler natural phenomenon Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus qu
Two Quotes
I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory. So when this strange thing happened—when these new memories suddenly came upon me—it was as if, for that moment, time had been placed in reverse. As if, for that moment, the river ran upstream.
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As Tony has begun to communicate with Veronica for the first time in forty years, a number of the memories that he had related in the first half of the story reemerge, though often in a changed form. Characteristically, such memories lead Tony to rethink, once again, the meaning of time—here, the difference between clock time and “subjective time” (something that he and his school friends had seemed to acknowledge the importance of, in their penchant for wearing their watches with the face on the inside of their wrists). As Tony indulges in these long-buried memories, he refers implicitly to Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. P
What had begun as a determination to obtain property bequeathed to me had morphed into something much larger, something which bore on the whole of my life, on time and memory. And desire. I thought—at some level of my being, I actually thought—that I could go back to the beginning and change things. That I could make the blood flow backwards.
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After an enigmatic encounter with Veronica in the north of London, Tony is forced to face the fact that he still doesn’t understand what she wants him to realize about herself and her family, nor does he seem to have succeeded in making her change her opinion about him. Here he also recognizes how much larger the affair of Adrian’s diary has become: he began by wanting to gain access to what Veronica’s mother left him in her will, but at this point he has come to engage in a reckoning with his entire life. Once again, Tony implicitly refers Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiore
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Severn Bore Symbol Timeline in The Sense of an Ending
The timeline below shows where the symbol Severn Bore appears in The Sense of an Ending. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
One
...than work and Veronica. One that does stand out is the night he saw the Severn Bore , staying up until after midnight with some friends at Minsterworth. Suddenly, after flowing slowly...
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Two
...life, another part of him is always touched. He suddenly remembers going to see the Severn Bore with Veronica alongside him—he’d forgotten that she’d been there. They’d shared hot chocolate from a...
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...to her car. He tries to make small talk, including sharing his memory about the Severn Bore , but she says, “Driving.” So he looks out the window: first they pass a...
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...making a secret, horizontal gesture beneath the wisteria while waving farewell. He thinks of the Severn Bore , rushing past upstream, pursued by students. He ends by saying that, beyond accumulation and...
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