The Only Story by Julian Barnes
Video 1: "Introduction | Character | Plot Summary | The Only Story | Julian Barnes"
1. Introduction to the Novel
Julian Barnes’s The Only Story (2018) is best approached as a memory novel, narrated retrospectively by an ageing protagonist who looks back upon a single relationship that defined his life. Rather than presenting a neatly ordered sequence of events, Barnes constructs a narrative that moves restlessly across time, reflecting the instability, selectiveness, and emotional distortion inherent in memory. The novel begins in suburban London during the 1960s and gradually extends into near-contemporary times, tracing not only the passage of years but also the narrator’s moral and emotional reckoning.
The story is framed as an act of recollection. The narrator repeatedly reflects on the idea that while people experience many stories in life, only one story ultimately matters. In this novel, that “only story” is a love affair, but Barnes deliberately strips love of its romantic aura and instead presents it as a source of ethical responsibility, failure, and long-lasting remorse.
2. Narrative Method and Technique
2.1 Non-linear Narrative Structure
Barnes rejects linear chronology in favour of a fragmented structure. The narration moves constantly between present reflection and past experience, shifting from the narrator’s old age to his youth and then returning again to later stages of life. These temporal jumps imitate the workings of memory, where recollection does not unfold in orderly sequence but emerges in fragments, repetitions, and revisions.
The protagonist often begins an episode in the present, interrupts it with a recollection from decades earlier, and then revisits the same event later from a different emotional or moral perspective. This technique reinforces the sense that memory is unstable and that truth is continually reinterpreted.
2.2 Shifting Narrative Voices
One of the most striking formal features of The Only Story is Barnes’s use of multiple narrative voices within a single text. The novel moves between:
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First-person narration (“I”), which conveys personal memory and self-explanation
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Second-person narration (“you”), often used as self-accusation or moral interrogation
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Third-person narration (“he”), which creates emotional distance between the narrator and his younger self
This unusual blending of narrative modes destabilises the reader’s trust in the narrator. The shifts suggest psychological fragmentation and moral uncertainty, as though the narrator cannot fully own or face his past actions. By constantly altering perspective, Barnes forces readers to question not only what is being remembered, but also why it is being remembered in that particular way.
3. The Novel as a Memory Narrative
At its core, The Only Story presents one story told from one consciousness. Other characters never speak directly; their inner lives remain inaccessible. Everything the reader knows about them is filtered through the narrator’s memory, which may be selective, defensive, or distorted.
This narrative strategy raises a central question that runs throughout the novel: can memory ever be trusted as truth? Barnes suggests that memory is shaped as much by guilt, fear, and self-preservation as by fact. As a result, the novel demands an active reader who reads against the narrator’s version of events.
4. Major Characters
4.1 Paul Roberts (Narrator and Protagonist)
Paul Roberts is both the narrator and the central character of the novel. At the time of narration, he is approximately sixty-nine or seventy years old. The love affair that defines his story begins when he is nineteen.
Later in life, Paul becomes a businessman and a partner in a cheese-making company. His professional success contrasts sharply with his emotional and moral failures. Throughout the novel, Paul presents himself as thoughtful, reflective, and deeply engaged with ideas of love and responsibility. However, his repeated confessions of cowardice and avoidance undermine his self-portrait.
Paul frequently admits that he ran away from confrontation, danger, and responsibility. These admissions, combined with his tendency to rationalise his choices, mark him as an unreliable narrator whose memory is shaped by self-justification as much as by remorse.
4.2 Susan Macleod
Susan Macleod is the woman at the centre of Paul’s “only story.” She is forty-eight years old when the affair begins, married to Gordon Macleod, and the mother of two daughters, Clara and Martha, both of whom are older than Paul.
Susan’s inner life remains largely silent in the narrative. Readers learn about her only through Paul’s recollections and interpretations. Over time, Susan develops severe alcoholism, becomes a habitual liar, and eventually suffers from dementia, leading to her institutionalisation.
A crucial moment in the novel is Susan’s brief revelation of childhood sexual abuse by her uncle, Humphrey. This disclosure provides psychological context for her emotional instability, sexual withdrawal, and later addiction. However, Barnes does not dwell on this trauma, emphasising instead how women’s suffering often remains marginal and unspoken.
4.3 Gordon Macleod
Gordon Macleod is Susan’s husband. He is depicted as violent, abusive, and emotionally brutal. Gordon represents patriarchal authority and domestic violence, and his presence intensifies the moral complexity of Paul’s relationship with Susan. Paul repeatedly avoids direct confrontation with Gordon, reinforcing his pattern of cowardice.
4.4 Martha and Clara
Martha and Clara are Susan’s daughters and are older than Paul. They remain largely in the background of the narrative, yet they carry the heaviest burden. As Susan’s condition deteriorates, Martha in particular becomes her primary caregiver. The daughters silently absorb the consequences of Paul’s abandonment, though their perspectives are never directly voiced.
4.5 Eric
Eric is Paul’s friend and functions as a moral mirror in the novel. In an early incident, Paul runs away when Eric is attacked, later disguising his fear as an attempt to get help. This episode establishes a recurring pattern of behaviour that Paul later repeats in his relationship with Susan.
5. Plot Summary (Chronologically Reconstructed)
Phase 1: Present Time
The novel opens with Paul in old age, reflecting on the idea that while life contains many stories, only one truly defines a person. For him, that defining story is a love affair that continues to shape his conscience.
Phase 2: Fifty Years Earlier (Paul at Nineteen)
Under parental pressure, Paul joins a tennis club in suburban London. The tennis club symbolises class aspiration and social matchmaking. It is here that Paul meets Susan Macleod when they are paired in a mixed doubles match. Their partnership on the court gradually leads to intimacy off it.
Phase 3: The Affair (Approximately Ten Years)
Paul and Susan engage in a long-term affair that lasts for nearly a decade. Eventually, they live together in London. Despite Paul’s repeated requests, Susan refuses to divorce her husband. During this period, Susan’s alcoholism intensifies, and her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. Paul, meanwhile, continues to pursue education and career opportunities, creating a growing emotional imbalance between them.
Phase 4: Breakdown and Abandonment
As Susan’s alcoholism worsens and early signs of dementia appear, Paul leaves to pursue his career abroad. He frames this departure as ambition and necessity, but the narrative strongly suggests avoidance. Responsibility for Susan’s care falls largely on Martha.
Phase 5: Final Meeting (Fifteen to Twenty Years Later)
Years later, Paul visits Susan in a mental institution. She is mentally absent, almost unrecognisable, and unable to engage with him. Paul seeks absolution, confrontation, or accusation, but receives none. The meeting forces him to confront his moral failure without the possibility of forgiveness.
6. Timeline Overview
7. Central Themes
7.1 Love and Responsibility
Barnes dismantles romantic idealism by presenting love as ethically demanding rather than emotionally fulfilling. Paul’s failure lies not in loving Susan, but in refusing responsibility when love required care and courage.
7.2 Memory and Unreliability
Memory in the novel is selective and defensive. Paul’s narration attempts to justify his actions, forcing readers to question the truthfulness of his account.
7.3 Cowardice and Moral Failure
Paul repeatedly runs from danger, confrontation, and responsibility. His life is marked not by dramatic wrongdoing but by consistent avoidance.
7.4 Trauma and Silence
Susan’s childhood abuse explains much of her later suffering. Barnes treats trauma indirectly, making its presence more unsettling and realistic.
8. Intertextual Connection: The Sense of an Ending
Barnes’s earlier novel The Sense of an Ending invites comparison with The Only Story.
Unlike The Sense of an Ending, The Only Story avoids a dramatic twist and instead sustains moral unease throughout.
9. Conclusion
The Only Story is not a romance but a post-romantic exploration of love’s ethical cost. Through fragmented narration and unreliable memory, Julian Barnes exposes how love without responsibility becomes a form of exploitation. Paul’s final insight offers no redemption, only recognition: when love is abandoned, it does not disappear—it returns as lifelong remorse.
Video 4: "Narrative Pattern | The Only Story | Julian Barnes"
Julian Barnes’s novel The Only Story presents a carefully crafted narrative pattern that combines classical narrative techniques with postmodern experimentation. Though Barnes is widely known as a postmodern storyteller, in this novel he deliberately adopts a classical mode of storytelling while simultaneously questioning and destabilizing it. The narrative unfolds through memory, retrospection, unreliable narration, shifting narrative perspectives, and sustained philosophical brooding, making the novel both structurally traditional and thematically modern.
1. Structured along Classical Line
The narrative of The Only Story is consciously structured along a classical line. Barnes explicitly invokes a classical definition of the novel by referring to Dr. Samuel Johnson’s entry in A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), where a novel is defined as “a small tale, generally of love.” Barnes’s thirteenth novel proves to be, in many respects, a contemporary exemplar of this definition. It is “small” in the sense of its intimate and specific focus, concentrating on one man’s recollected story, and it is also “small” in length, running well under three hundred pages, though it spans more than three decades of time. As a novel “generally of love,” it narrates Paul Roberts’s re-examination of his only story, a life-changing and life-defining love affair that moves from innocence to experience, from youth to age, and from infatuation to weariness.
Barnes further reinforces this classical structure through a three-part division, simply titled One, Two, and Three, following a clear beginning, middle, and end. The narrative proceeds largely along a chronological trajectory, even while using flashback as a classical storytelling technique. In this sense, the novel follows a recognizably traditional arc while subtly complicating it through memory and reflection.
2. Narrative Trope
A major narrative trope employed in the novel is retrospection, which functions as a key organizing principle. Paul Roberts narrates the story from the vantage point of a seventy-year-old man, repeatedly moving backward into his past, particularly to his nineteen-year-old self, and then forward again through different phases of his life. This narrative movement may be understood through the metaphor of wrap and weft, where the philosophical reflections form the fabric and the story itself is woven into it. The narrative does not unfold as a continuous linear account; rather, it moves in and out of memory, reflection, and storytelling.
Paul openly admits that in revisiting his past he is inevitably revising and re-visioning his personal history and emotional experience. His retrospection is not a vantage point of tranquility; distance does not bring clarity. He claims neither wisdom nor accuracy, thereby foregrounding the instability of memory. This trope of retrospective narration, deeply rooted in oral and classical traditions, is reworked by Barnes to emphasize uncertainty rather than authority.
3. Unreliable Narrator – Paul Roberts
Paul Roberts functions as a distinctly unreliable narrator, a defining feature of modern and postmodern fiction. From the very beginning, he destabilizes his own authority by contradicting himself. He raises the fundamental question, “Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less?”, only to undermine it immediately by stating that it is not a real question because we do not have a choice. This pattern of assertion followed by self-correction recurs throughout the novel.
Paul explicitly warns the reader about the unreliability of his narrative when he states that he is telling everything “as I remember it”, admitting that memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it by the rememberer. He claims he never kept a diary, only later to concede that this is not strictly true. Such contradictions expose the deeply subjective nature of his truth. He is a vested teller, arguing his case both with himself and with the reader, selectively shaping events to suit his present understanding.
By presenting memory as personal history and the self as historian, Barnes problematizes truth itself. Paul’s narrative becomes not an objective account of events but a biased reconstruction, shaped by guilt, remorse, self-justification, and emotional survival.
4. Narration Drifts from First Person to Second and Third Person
One of the most striking aspects of the novel’s narrative pattern is the way narration drifts from first person to second and then to third person. In Part One, the story is largely narrated in the first person, reflecting Paul’s closeness to his past, his love, and his sense of self. In Part Two, the narration shifts toward the second person, creating a sense of detachment and self-address. By Part Three, the narration increasingly moves into the third person, marking a profound emotional and psychological distance.
This narrative drift symbolizes Paul’s gradual dissociation from Susan, from his own past self, and ultimately from his “only story.” As the narration moves outward, Paul’s self-reliance collapses, and he comes to recognize himself as a coward, overwhelmed by remorse and guilt. The final scene, where Paul calmly asks for directions to a petrol station after visiting Susan in a near-vegetative state, underscores his complete emotional withdrawal. The shift to third-person narration thus represents his final separation from love, memory, and identity.
5. Authorial Comments – Philosophical Broodings
The narrative pattern of The Only Story is deeply shaped by authorial comments in the form of philosophical brooding. Unlike traditional novelists such as Thomas Hardy, where philosophical reflection appears intermittently, Barnes makes philosophy the dominant element of the narrative. The story itself becomes a scaffold for sustained reflection on love, suffering, memory, truth, and human responsibility.
Paul frequently pauses the narrative to contemplate abstract questions, such as whether every love, happy or unhappy, is a real disaster once one gives oneself over to it entirely. He reflects on competing formulations of life—whether life is beautiful but sad or sad but beautiful—and remains unable to decide between them. These philosophical passages often overshadow plot and character, reinforcing the idea that Barnes is less interested in storytelling for its own sake than in using story as a vehicle for thought.
Ultimately, the novel suggests that love cannot be captured in a definition, only in a story, and even that story remains unstable and unreliable. Philosophical brooding thus becomes central to the narrative structure, transforming the novel into an extended meditation on how human beings narrate, revise, and survive their own lives.
Conclusion
Thus, the narrative pattern of The Only Story reveals Julian Barnes’s unique blending of classical narrative form with postmodern uncertainty. Through retrospective narration, an unreliable storyteller, shifting narrative perspectives, and intense philosophical reflection, Barnes demonstrates that storytelling is both unavoidable and insufficient. The novel ultimately shows that while we may have only one story worth telling, that story is never fixed, never complete, and never entirely true.
Video 6: "Theme of Love | Passion and Suffering | The Only Story | Julian Barnes"
Introduction
In this thematic study of The Only Story, the focus is on the theme of love, which gradually unfolds into the intertwined ideas of passion and suffering. The very word love divides into these two aspects, and the novel repeatedly explores how passion inevitably leads to suffering. The discussion examines how this idea grows throughout the novel through textual evidence, philosophical reflection, and psychological interpretation, particularly through a Lacanian understanding of desire and repression. One of the reviewers of the novel, Ellen Prentiss Campbell, very interestingly observes: “Remember, as you read this small book, generally and specifically about love, remember that suffering is, after all, the Latin root for passion.” This observation becomes a key entry point for studying the novel in detail.
The Etymology of Passion
The word “passion” is one of those words where the modern application appears disconnected from the original meaning. The word itself comes from the Latin root patior, which means to suffer. Its first use in English appeared around 1175 AD, and interestingly, the word is used more frequently in writing than in speech. In its original sense, passion itself meant suffering. In modern usage, however, passion is understood mainly as an intense desire, often sexual in nature, with little or no connection to suffering.
The older meaning of passion did not specify whether the force compelling one to action was rational or irrational, nor whether it could be resisted. The root word carried the idea that passion was an external force, something that moved a person to action or caused them to suffer. In the modern sense, it is unclear whether passion originates from inside the individual or whether it is an outside force working upon them. Yet, the root meaning of passion clearly expresses the idea of being moved to action where there is pain and suffering.
Love as Passion and Suffering
In The Only Story, love cannot be separated from suffering. Philosophically, Julian Barnes seems interested in exploring the idea that love is not merely passion but is always connected with suffering, an idea already embedded in the etymology of the word itself. The novel begins with the famous question: “Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less?” From the very first line, love and suffering are inseparably linked.
Paul Roberts, looking back at the age of seventy, reflects on his nineteen-year-old self and wonders whether there was ever any real choice involved. He keeps asking whether love was inevitable, whether it was irrational or irresistible, or whether it simply happened. Even at an advanced age, Paul is unable to clearly define what love truly was, finally concluding that love cannot be defined but can only be captured in a story.
The Only Story: Passion Turning into Suffering
The novel narrates the story of nineteen-year-old Paul’s passionate attraction towards Susan Macleod, a forty-eight-year-old married woman with two daughters. This relationship is nothing but a story of passion turning into suffering. It is Paul’s life-changing, life-defining love affair, moving from innocence to experience, youth to age, and infatuation to weariness.
The suffering extends beyond Paul and Susan to include family members, Paul’s parents, Susan’s husband, her daughters, and even others who come into contact with the relationship. The novel thus shows how a single passionate relationship radiates suffering outward into a wider social circle.
Unreliable Understanding of Love
Paul repeatedly acknowledges that most of what he had read or been taught about love did not seem to apply. Traditional ideas such as “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole existence” appear to him deeply gender-biased and incorrect. In Susan’s life, love appears in multiple forms—Gerald, Gordon, and Paul—whereas for Paul, love becomes his entire existence. Barnes deliberately challenges traditional knowledge systems, a distinctly postmodern gesture, offering counter-factual realities instead of accepted truths.
At nineteen, Paul believes that love is incorruptible, proof against time and tarnish. His youthful understanding of love is shaped by books, films, conversations, fantasies, and cinematic idealism. Later, his older self recognizes that understanding love is not about rational comprehension but about experience, intensity, and emotional immersion.
Alcohol, Truth, and Lies
Paul develops a personal theory that all alcoholics are liars and all lovers are truth-tellers. Though he admits this theory is based on a small sample—mainly himself—he believes it to be an essential truth. However, this belief collapses when Susan becomes both an alcoholic and a liar. This realization deeply unsettles Paul, as it contradicts his understanding of love and truth.
As Susan’s drinking worsens, Paul moves from denial to comprehension, yet the realization that Susan drank only occasionally before living with him becomes a brutal chronological fact he cannot fully bear. Love, truth, and moral clarity dissolve into confusion.
Lies, Courage, and Inevitability
The novel traces a progression of lies—Paul lying to his parents, then lying to protect Susan and their love, Susan lying to Paul, and finally Paul lying to Susan. These lies emerge from a need to create an internal space where the self can remain intact. Paul repeatedly questions whether staying with Susan is an act of courage, cowardice, or mere inevitability, likening himself to a wooden log drifting in the Mississippi River, powerless against the current of time and circumstance.
Love and Duty
Paul recalls classical literature where love and duty conflict—duty to family, church, state. However, in his own life, these structures barely exist. There is no strong religious, patriarchal, or hierarchical system guiding him. Instead, love itself becomes a duty, binding heavily and demanding sacrifice. Barnes dismantles the grand narratives of love and duty found in classical and religious traditions, replacing them with a raw, unsentimental realism.
Love as Disaster
One of the most significant reflections in the novel appears in Paul’s notebook: “In my opinion, every love, happy or unhappy, is a real disaster once you give yourself over to it entirely.” This statement captures the essence of the novel’s philosophy. Love is neither purely pessimistic nor bittersweet; it is a truth spoken from within the vortex of love, enclosing all of life’s sadness.
Paul never regrets loving Susan. What he regrets is being too young, too ignorant, too absolutist, and too confident about love’s nature. Love, he realizes, inevitably carries the potential for destruction.
Lacanian Interpretation: Desire and Love-Objects
From a Lacanian perspective, human beings are subjects of unconscious desire, born out of repression that begins with the acquisition of language. Desire seeks outlet through love-objects, often other human beings. When the love-object is human, suffering becomes inevitable because the other is also driven by their own lack and desire.
Susan’s tragic trajectory—alcoholism, mental illness, and institutionalization—can be understood as a failure to find a stable outlet for desire. Paul, too, is damaged in the process. Love becomes not fulfillment but mutual wounding.
Conclusion
Ultimately, The Only Story presents love as passion rooted in suffering. The novel breaks the meta-narratives of romantic love, sacrifice, and redemption, replacing them with a postmodern realism that insists love is inseparable from pain. The novel returns us to its opening question—whether one would rather love more and suffer more, or love less and suffer less—and leaves us with the understanding that to love at all is to accept suffering.
Video 3: "Memory Novel | Memory and History | Memory and Morality | The Only Story | Julian Barnes"
The Only Story as a Memory Novel
The Only Story by Julian Barnes can be read as a memory novel, a novel that centrally deals with history, memory, morality, trauma, and responsibility. The novel does not merely narrate a love story; rather, it examines how memory works, how it distorts, prioritizes, and revises lived experience. Barnes also places the novel within a wider philosophical and ethical debate on memory by drawing parallels with cinema, theory, and his own earlier fiction.
History as Collective Memory and Memory as Personal History
One way to approach the novel is to understand that history is collective memory, while memory is personal history. History records the shared past of societies, nations, and communities, whereas memory records the lived past of individuals in personal and private spaces. Much of personal memory is never shared publicly; it is narrated only to the self. When an elderly individual sits down and revisits the past of his own life, the only available resource for telling that story is memory.
However, the reliability of such memory immediately becomes questionable. Just as modern historiography no longer blindly trusts historical accounts and always asks “Who is the historian?”, the same skepticism must be applied to personal memory. If history can be biased, selective, or ideologically shaped, then memory too becomes suspect, even when it is one’s own.
Memory and the Problem of Truth
Traditionally, one might ask, “Why should I lie to myself?” Postmodern thought challenges this assumption by suggesting that human beings constantly lie to themselves. Memory is not a neutral recording device. Events may be recorded inaccurately from the very beginning, coloured by fear, desire, shame, or self-justification. When such distorted memories are retold repeatedly, they may harden into what appears to be truth, even though they are fundamentally unreliable.
Julian Barnes repeatedly warns that we must be careful with our memories, because memory is shaped by self-talk, selective recall, and unconscious fabrication. What we believe to be “what really happened” may only be what we needed to believe in order to live with ourselves.
Memory and Morality: The Example of Memento
To explore the ethical dimension of memory, the lecture refers to Memento. Beyond its cinematic gimmicks, Memento carries a profound philosophical and ethical message: if memory is taken away, moral responsibility is also taken away. The protagonist, suffering from amnesia, is manipulated into committing murder precisely because he cannot remember his actions and therefore cannot feel remorse.
This raises a disturbing moral question: Is our sense of morality rooted in memory, and if memory is erased, do we erase morality along with it? Barnes is deeply interested in this question. In The Only Story, memory is not erased through disease, but reshaped and edited, which produces a similar ethical danger. When memory is distorted, responsibility is diluted, and guilt becomes negotiable.
Remorse, Responsibility, and Memory
Barnes distinguishes sharply between regret and remorse. Regret is light; remorse is heavy and enduring. Remorse exists only when memory persists. In Memento, the protagonist cannot experience remorse because he cannot remember. In The Only Story, Paul Roberts remembers—but selectively—and this selective remembering complicates his sense of responsibility for Susan’s destruction.
Barnes’s concern is not morality in a religious sense, but responsibility. The novel repeatedly asks: Who is responsible for the damage done? Paul often frames events as inevitable, but Barnes subtly suggests that memory manipulation allows Paul to evade full responsibility.
Trauma Is Memory
The lecture next turns to the idea that trauma is memory, drawing on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s argument in Memories of Displacement. Trauma narratives operate differently from historical narratives. While history explains events causally and chronologically, trauma memory resists explanation. What cannot be explained belongs to the marginalia of history.
In The Only Story, Paul’s trauma—his relationship with Susan—is precisely such an experience. It cannot be explained socially, morally, or psychologically in a way that would win sympathy. Paul cannot publicly narrate his trauma without being blamed. As a result, his trauma remains internal, narrated only to himself.
Memory, Marginality, and Silence
Chakrabarty’s argument, though rooted in postcolonial studies, helps us understand Barnes’s novel. There are experiences that cannot be spoken, not because the subject lacks language, but because society offers no space for such speech. Paul’s suffering occupies this marginal space. Susan’s suffering, even more so, remains largely inaccessible because we never enter her memory.
In this sense, Barnes universalizes the idea of marginality: every human being can become voiceless in the face of certain experiences. Memory becomes the only space where such stories survive.
Imperfections of Memory: The Sense of an Ending
Barnes directly connects The Only Story to his earlier novel The Sense of an Ending. In that novel, history is defined as “that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” This definition applies equally to personal memory.
Paul’s story suffers from imperfect memory and inadequate documentation. Diaries are incomplete, burnt, crossed out. There is no solid evidence to support his version of events. What remains is a fragile certainty—a personal history constructed between forgetting and distortion.
Historians, Barnes reminds us, treat even a participant’s explanation with skepticism. Mental states are inferred from actions, not declarations. Similarly, readers must infer Paul’s moral and psychological state from what he does, not from what he claims.
Memory Prioritizes
One of the most important insights in the novel is Paul’s claim that memory prioritizes whatever is most useful to help keep the bearer of those memories going. Memory brings happier memories to the surface first, because survival depends on them. Painful memories are submerged, delayed, or softened.
This explains the structure of The Only Story. The narrative begins with youthful happiness, then gradually moves toward suffering and collapse. Memory follows an emotional arc: upswing first, downswing later.
Illustrations from the Novel
In the final pages of the novel, memory begins to release residual fragments, much like sediment rising from the bottom of a cold cup of tea. Episodes involving Eric, the fairground beating, the Formula One driver Max Verstappen, and the stranger at the bar appear suddenly, without narrative continuity. These fragments are not random; they reveal Paul’s mental state.
Eric’s survival instinct contrasts with Paul’s self-destructive devotion. Paul running away during Eric’s beating exposes his cowardice. The Verstappen reference reveals that Paul’s youthful “courage” was actually fearlessness, not moral bravery. The bar anecdote about the bird exposes abandonment and guilt. Through these memories, Paul’s self-portrait quietly collapses.
Conclusion: Memory as Ethics
The Only Story ultimately presents memory as an ethical force. Memory shapes identity, responsibility, and guilt. When memory distorts, morality weakens. When memory resurfaces, remorse follows. Barnes shows that we cannot escape responsibility by revising memory forever; residues always rise.
Thus, the novel stands as a profound memory novel, where history, trauma, morality, and personal responsibility converge within a single, deeply unreliable act of remembering.
Video 2: "Joan | Character Study | The Only Story | Julian Barnes"
John: A Character Study
Introduction
In this session, the focus is on the character of John, a detailed character study through which Julian Barnes seems to offer a possible response to suffering and damage—a response very different from that of Paul or Susan. Paul, who narrates the story, continues to suffer from emotional pain even in old age, while Susan undergoes extreme suffering, ending her life in mental illness, dementia, and eventual death in a mental asylum. Susan’s pain is presented largely through symbolic and mediated representation. John, however, appears to have saved herself from complete damage, and it is this question—how John survives—that becomes central.
The character study asks whether nothing went wrong in John’s life, or whether John simply found a different way of dealing with damage, unlike Susan or Paul.
John’s Background and Relationship to Susan
John is Susan’s close friend and also Gerald’s sister. Gerald, Susan’s first love, dies of leukemia, a blood cancer, and this loss deeply affects both Susan and John. Gerald had been extremely close to John; their mother died when they were young, and their father worked long hours in an insurance company. As a result, John and Gerald grew up dependent on each other, forming a strong emotional bond. Gerald’s death devastates John and causes serious emotional damage.
Susan narrates John’s story to Paul, and Paul, in turn, narrates it to the reader. Thus, John is known to us through layers of memory and narration, filtered first through Susan and then through Paul.
John’s Domestic Space and Lifestyle
Paul frequently visits John’s home with Susan. John is presented as an older, middle-aged woman, drinking regularly, smoking, solving crossword puzzles, and living with pet dogs, initially yappers and later a dog named Sybil. Her life appears solitary, with no permanent human companion, but filled with routine and self-contained habits.
John is described as a large woman, wearing a pastel-blue trouser suit, with tight curls, brown lipstick, and a face that is carefully powdered. She collapses into an armchair with a footstool, suggesting physical heaviness and emotional exhaustion. Her leisure consists of crosswords, cigarettes, alcohol, card games, and dogs—a life structured around manageable, predictable comforts rather than intense emotional commitments.
Symbolism of Dogs and the Name “Sybil”
The presence of dogs in John’s life is significant. Dogs live shorter lives, and every pet owner knows that the loss of a pet is painful. Yet people continue to keep pets despite this certainty of loss. When John replaces the yappers with a dog named Sybil, the symbolism deepens.
Sybil is a mythical figure, famously referenced in The Waste Land. The Sibyl is granted immortality by the gods, but immortality turns into a curse, as she grows old, decays, and longs for death. When children ask her what she wants, she answers, “I want to die.”
Through this reference, the novel suggests that immortality is a curse, and that death is a form of release, even bliss. Life accumulates damage, and death becomes the final relief from suffering. John’s dog named Sybil subtly reinforces the idea that endings are necessary, and that endless continuation—whether of life or pain—is unbearable.
John as a Tennis Player and Her Personality
John was once a strong tennis player, both in singles and doubles, particularly successful when partnered with Gerald. She played competitively until her knees gave way. She is also known for her swearing, bluntness, and lack of social pretence. John no longer tries to please anyone; she speaks directly, often using bad language, unconcerned with social expectations.
Susan remarks that people notice John’s drinking, smoking, bridge-playing, dogs, and swearing—but rarely ask what made her the way she is. Barnes here points to the tendency of society to judge surfaces rather than histories of suffering.
John’s Romantic History and Emotional Damage
After Gerald’s death, John “went off the rails.” She began sleeping with various men, attempting to escape grief. Eventually, she became involved with a married, wealthy man, who kept her as a mistress, setting her up in a flat in Kensington. Paul initially struggles with the moral labels associated with this role—“kept woman,” “mistress,” “sexual function”—terms he had only encountered in books.
Susan dismisses such labels, noting that words rarely fit lived experience. Barnes emphasizes that language lies, and moral categories imposed by literature often collapse when applied to real human lives.
John believes her lover’s promises that he will divorce his wife. When he finally does, he marries another woman instead. This betrayal devastates John. In anger, she burns belongings in the flat, nearly causing a fire. Eventually, she returns to her father’s home, broken but alive. Her father says little, simply embraces her.
Turning Away from Human Love
After this final betrayal, John withdraws from romantic relationships. She devotes herself to caring for her father, becomes deeply involved with dogs, learns breeding, and structures her life around non-human companionship. This is crucial: John does not seek healing through another damaged human being.
The lecture frames this through a Lacanian understanding of desire and lack. Human beings carry gaps, wounds, and repressed desires. When two damaged people come together, damage does not cancel out; it often multiplies. John avoids this multiplication by turning to pets—beings who do not demand emotional reciprocity in destructive ways.
John as a Counterpoint to Susan
Susan, damaged by childhood abuse, failed marriages, and emotional dependency, seeks fulfillment through human love repeatedly—Gerald, Gordon, Paul—and each time the damage deepens. Paul, too, eventually abandons Susan when the relationship becomes unmanageable. John, by contrast, steps away from romantic attachment, choosing solitude, animals, and controlled routines.
John survives. Susan does not.
Walking Wounded: John’s Philosophy of Survival
When Paul later visits John, she tells him that nothing ever truly ends. Once damage goes deep, one remains “walking wounded.” The only real options are walking wounded or dead. This is John’s grim but practical wisdom.
She asks Paul not to embrace her. She prefers distance, restraint, and minimal emotional exposure. When she says, “Send a wreath when the time comes,” it is unclear whether she means for herself, for Susan, or even for her dog. The ambiguity reflects her ironic detachment from sentimentality.
Conclusion: The Significance of John’s Character
John functions as a philosophical counter-model in The Only Story. She does not escape suffering, but she contains it. She avoids romantic obsession, chooses limited attachments, and accepts damage without romanticizing it. Through John, Barnes suggests that survival may require renunciation, distance, and a refusal to seek salvation through love.
John’s life is not happy, but it is endurable. In a novel filled with emotional excess, obsession, and ruin, John represents a quiet, unsentimental mode of survival.
Video 8: "Two Ways to Look at Life | The Only Story | Julian Barnes"
Two Ways to Look at Life
(Philosophical Ramblings of Paul Roberts)
In The Only Story by Julian Barnes, one of the most significant philosophical ideas comes from the ramblings of Paul Roberts, who is both the narrator and the protagonist of the novel. This idea can be treated as a short note for examination purposes, but it is also extremely useful for understanding the entire narrative, the characters, and the events of the novel. Paul repeatedly reflects on two ways of looking at life, presented metaphorically, and these two viewpoints shape his memory, narration, and self-justification.
Two Extremes of Viewpoint
There are two ways of looking at life, or two extremes of viewpoint, with a continuum between them. These are not fixed positions; one may drift from one to the other and then return again. There is a curious and complex relationship between these two extremes, and Paul’s life is shaped by constant movement between them.
First Way: Life as Choice and Free Will
One way proposes that every human action necessarily carries with it the obliteration of every other action which might have been performed instead. Life, therefore, consists of a succession of small and large choices, all of which are expressions of free will. In this view, the individual is like the captain of some paddle steamer chugging down the mighty Mississippi of life.
The captain must make constant decisions—sometimes small, sometimes large, sometimes easy, sometimes extremely difficult. Life becomes a continuous process of choosing, and every choice produces anxiety and regret, because one is always aware that something else could have been done instead. As time passes, one inevitably thinks, “I should have done that instead of this.” This is the anxiety of choice, yet the captain continues to steer the ship forward.
Whether the ship reaches home, gets damaged, loses its way, or even sinks like the Titanic, the responsibility lies with the captain. From this perspective, whatever happens in life is the result of free will, and the individual must take responsibility for the outcome.
Applied to Paul’s life, this view suggests that his attraction at the age of nineteen to a forty-eight-year-old woman may have been a questionable choice, one that resulted in lifelong emotional wounds. He is unable to form another successful relationship, even at seventy. Yet Paul insists that he does not regret loving Susan. He feels remorse, but not regret. He sees the relationship as an expression of free will, something he chose and therefore something for which he must bear responsibility—at least in theory.
Second Way: Life as Inevitability
The other way proposes that it was all inevitability, that pre-history ruled, and that a human life was no more than a bump on a log, itself being propelled down the mighty Mississippi, tugged and bullied, smacked and wheedled by currents and eddies and hazards over which no control was possible.
In this view, free will is largely an illusion. If life is a bump on a log, and the log itself is being swept along by a powerful river, then the bump has no control—not even over the log, let alone over the river. One is simply drifted into life, pushed by circumstances, chance encounters, age differences, coincidences, and forces beyond control.
Paul repeatedly asks “What if?” questions: What if he had not been nineteen? What if Susan had not been so much older? What if their names had not appeared together on the tennis pairing sheet? From this perspective, events pile up inevitably, one over another, and the individual is merely carried along.
Paul’s Oscillation Between the Two Views
Paul ultimately believes that life does not have to be one or the other. A life—his own, of course—could be lived first under the dispensation of inevitability and later under the dispensation of free will. However, he also realizes something deeply unsettling: retrospective reorderings of life are always likely to be self-serving.
When things go well, we claim free will and good choices. When things go wrong, we claim inevitability and helplessness. Memory rearranges events to protect the self and the ego. Paul’s narration constantly oscillates between these two explanations, sometimes asserting choice and responsibility, sometimes surrendering to inevitability.
Conclusion
Thus, The Only Story presents two ways of looking at life: life as choice and free will, and life as inevitability and drift. Paul Roberts’s entire narrative is shaped by his movement between these two extremes. His memory, self-defence, guilt, and remorse are all structured around this philosophical tension. The novel never resolves the conflict; instead, it exposes how human beings use both explanations selectively to make sense of their lives.
Video 5: "Question of Responsibility | The Only Story | Julian Barnes"
Theme of Responsibility
The next important point in The Only Story is the theme of responsibility. Quite early in the novel, we encounter a quotation that clearly signals this concern. Paul Roberts tells the reader that he shall have to be careful when telling his story, and that he has learned to become careful over the years. He immediately complicates this by asking whether he was earlier careless or merely carefree, and whether a word can have two opposites.
This hesitation itself indicates that even on the question of responsibility, the protagonist will try to play with meanings. Paul keeps shifting between carelessness and carefree living, between blame and excuse. From the very beginning, the novel suggests that responsibility will be unstable and contested, not fixed or absolute.
Question of Responsibility
Paul Roberts, the narrator, is seventy years old and deeply unhappy with his life. He narrates only one story, the story of his relationship with Susan, because it defines his life. The crucial question, however, is whether Paul takes responsibility for what happened.
Taking responsibility is never easy when something crashes—whether it is a ship sinking, an airplane crashing, or a relationship collapsing. In such situations, people usually look for someone else to blame. Paul’s narration reflects this human tendency. He struggles to accept responsibility and repeatedly looks outward for causes.
How Paul Blames Others
One of the most significant figures Paul blames is Gordon, Susan’s husband. Paul emphasizes Gordon’s domestic violence and presents it as the primary reason Susan sought a relationship outside her marriage. According to Paul, if Gordon had behaved well, Susan would never have felt the need to form a relationship with a nineteen-year-old man.
Paul narrates the married life of Gordon and Susan in detail, highlighting abuse and cruelty. Through this narration, he constructs a version of events in which Susan’s vulnerability is created by Gordon, and Paul merely steps into a pre-existing gap. In this way, responsibility is initially displaced away from Paul.
The Metaphor of the Link
To deepen the discussion of responsibility, the lecture connects this novel with The Sense of an Ending. In that novel, Barnes introduces the metaphor of the chain and the link.
A chain is made up of many links. If one link breaks, the immediate question is: which link is responsible? Is it the broken link itself? Is it the neighboring link? Or did the pressure come from far away in the chain?
This metaphor shows that responsibility cannot be easily isolated. A broken link can only see nearby links; it cannot see the entire chain that stretches into the past. Therefore, blaming a single person may be a limited and misleading act.
The Possibilities
Several possibilities emerge from the metaphor of the chain:
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Quality of metal: Some links are made of strong metal, others of weaker metal.
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Frangibility: Some links can stretch and absorb shock, while others break easily.
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Direction of pull: The force that breaks a link may come from far beyond what the link can see.
Barnes illustrates this through multiple images. Trees survive cyclones by bending, not by standing rigid. Snakes survive dangerous terrain by slithering, not by attacking sharp tools. Flexibility allows survival; rigidity leads to breakage.
Applied to human relationships, this suggests that damage is rarely caused by a single person. Everyone is part of a larger chain of circumstances, histories, and pressures.
Learning Outcome
Paul gradually applies this understanding to his own life. At first, he insists that Gordon’s behavior was a crime of absolute responsibility. A man hitting a woman, he claims, has no defense and no mitigation. Gordon’s guilt, for Paul, appears absolute.
Later, however, Paul begins to reconsider. He realizes that only outsiders with insufficient knowledge can confidently apportion blame. He admits that he himself is too involved to judge clearly. He starts to recognize his own role within the chain of responsibility.
The major learning outcome of this theme is introspection. Barnes suggests that literature teaches us not merely to identify who is guilty, but to ask: What was my role? Paul’s brokenness may itself have damaged the entire chain of relationships—Susan, her daughters, her parents, and others.
Conclusion
In The Only Story, responsibility is shown as complex, distributed, and difficult to fix. Blame is easy; responsibility is not. Barnes urges readers to move beyond accusing visible figures and to reflect on their own position within a larger chain of causes and effects.
Ultimately, the novel suggests that true responsibility begins with self-questioning, not with condemning others. Paul’s narration, like Tony Webster’s in The Sense of an Ending, is a form of self-talk and introspection, where responsibility is finally turned inward.
Video 7: "Theme of Marriage | Critique of Marriage Institution | The Only Story | Julian Barnes"
Critique of the Marriage Institution
The Only Story, like Julian Barnes’s earlier novel The Sense of an Ending, offers a strong and sustained critique of the institution of marriage. Both novels repeatedly suggest that marriage, rather than being a stable source of happiness, often becomes a sham—a structure marked by fakeness, complacency, and emotional dishonesty.
The novel openly questions the cultural assumption that marriage is inevitable, placed alongside birth and death as one of the fixed milestones of human life. Barnes challenges this conditioning by suggesting that marriage is not a natural destiny but a socially enforced institution, one that often fails to deliver emotional fulfilment.
Love versus Marriage
A crucial idea articulated in the novel is captured in the line: “You are an absolutist for love, and therefore an absolutist against marriage.” This statement positions love and marriage as opposites, not complements. Love demands total emotional commitment, while marriage, the novel implies, gradually erodes that intensity.
Popular culture reinforces this irony: comedies traditionally end with marriage, because if the story continued beyond that point, it would turn from sukhan (happiness) into dukhan (suffering). Life, however, does not end with marriage. What follows is often marital strife, emotional exhaustion, and in extreme cases, domestic violence—as seen in Gordon and Susan’s marriage.
Marriage as the End of Love
Barnes repeatedly implies that marriage is not the aim of love but often its end. The passion that precedes marriage rarely survives its institutional structure. Susan’s emotional hunger at forty-eight is a direct result of this erosion. Marriage, instead of nourishing intimacy, creates emotional starvation, pushing individuals toward extramarital relationships.
This critique echoes earlier literary challenges to marriage, such as Jude the Obscure, where Hardy questioned Victorian moral rigidity. Unlike Hardy’s time, modern societies—especially Western societies—have normalized divorce, live-in relationships, and alternative domestic arrangements, reducing the cultural and moral stigma attached to leaving marriage.
Middle-Class Complacency and Silence
A major target of Barnes’s critique is English middle-class complacency. Through Paul’s narration, the novel argues that middle-class respectability depends on silence. Abuse is hidden, unhappiness is concealed, and suffering is endured privately to maintain social appearance.
Susan never reports Gordon’s violence—not even to a dentist—because middle-class England has “a thousand ways of avoiding the truth.” Marriage becomes a space where cruelty survives because speaking out would threaten social respectability.
Metaphors of Marriage
Barnes uses striking metaphors to expose the emptiness of marriage:
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Marriage as a buffet where dessert is served first: Pleasure precedes obligation; dissatisfaction follows.
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Marriage as a jewellery box that mysteriously turns gold and diamonds back into base metal.
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Marriage as a disused boathouse containing a rotten two-person canoe—meant for escape but no longer seaworthy.
Divorce may exist in theory, but in practice, complacency prevents people from using it. Susan remains trapped, even when Paul suggests marriage or separation, because neither offers real escape.
Marriage versus Responsibility
Paul’s observation of his parents reinforces this critique. Their marriage is not violent, but it is emotionally empty—a relationship sustained by habit, not affection. Marriage, the novel suggests, is less about love and more about shared burdens and responsibilities.
This contrasts sharply with Paul’s youthful, romantic ideals shaped by literature and cinema. Married couples behave differently from lovers, and this difference exposes the gap between romantic fantasy and marital reality.
The “Theory of Marriage”
Paul recounts a striking idea offered by a woman friend: marriage is something one should dip in and out of as required. This is not adultery, she argues, but a pragmatic recognition of how marriage functions—as a stable base rather than a source of total emotional fulfilment.
Ironically, this theory mirrors Susan and Paul’s relationship. Susan “dips out” of marriage emotionally, but the novel insists that people never truly leave each other without damage. As John observes, if one cannot forget even a pet, how can one forget a human being?
Barnes’s Narrative Stance
Importantly, Barnes does not moralize. He does not declare marriage good or bad, ethical or unethical. Instead, he presents lives as they are lived—fragmented, compromised, wounded. Readers are invited to reflect, not judge.
This refusal to moralize distinguishes Barnes from didactic writers. Like Paul and Tony Webster, his narrators engage in self-interrogation, not moral preaching.
Conclusion
Overall, The Only Story presents marriage not as a solution to human unhappiness but as one of its most persistent sources. Barnes exposes the institution as emotionally restrictive, socially hypocritical, and incapable of sustaining absolute love.
Rather than offering alternatives or judgments, the novel leaves readers with a quiet but unsettling realization: marriage may promise stability, but it rarely delivers happiness, and love, once institutionalized, often becomes its own undoing.
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