Batch:- M.A. Sem 4 (2023-2025)
Enrollment Number:- 5108230034
E-mail-Address:- pallaviparmar501@gmail.com
Roll Number:- 20
Subject code:- 22414
Paper 207: Contemporary Literatures in English
Submitted to:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar.
Date of Submission:- 17, April, 2025
Abstract
Key Words
Introduction
About Julian Barnes
About The Only Story
A Love That Begins with Boldness and Hope
The Illusion of Love: Paul’s Idealism and Emotional Fantasy
The Growing Distance: Susan’s Silence and Emotional Withdrawal
The Absurd Condition: Together but Emotionally Alone
Reconstructing Love Through Memory: Storytelling and Self-Understanding
Conclusion
References
This assignment explores the emotional journey of Paul and Susan in Julian Barnes’s The Only Story. What begins as a bold love story slowly turns into sadness and distance. Through Paul’s memories, the novel shows how love can quietly turn into loneliness when there is a lack of mutual understanding. The story reveals that even deep love cannot always protect against silence, emotional pain, and growing apart. By using different narrative styles and deep emotional reflections, Barnes presents a touching and tragic picture of love, memory, and emotional isolation.
Love, Memory, Loneliness, Emotional trauma, Alcoholism
Narrated from Paul’s perspective as an older man, the story examines how love can transform into loneliness and guilt. Over time, Paul realizes that love alone is not enough to save or sustain a relationship. Susan, once a source of joy, becomes distant, leaving Paul to reflect on how their love changed.
Barnes doesn’t provide a dramatic conclusion but illustrates how emotional distance grows quietly. The novel meditates on love, loss, and the loneliness that can arise when two people no longer connect, even while physically together. The Only Story explores the silent distance that love can create.
Barnes uses emotional imbalance to show how misunderstood love leads to quiet distance. Paul’s fantasy of being a savior isolates both of them. As Melnic and Melnic note, Paul later realises that “his version of love was shaped more by memory and self-narration than mutual connection”. Love becomes a private dream rather than a shared reality, marking the beginning of emotional loneliness in their relationship. (Melnic & Melnic)
As time passes, the love between Paul and Susan slowly fades—not because of any loud conflict, but because of something quieter and more painful: emotional silence. Susan, once full of warmth and laughter, starts to change. She becomes more distant, withdrawn, and turns to alcohol as a way to escape her inner pain. Paul, holding on to the idea that he can save her through love, becomes confused and hurt. He doesn’t understand how the closeness they once shared has become so fragile. Chalupský observes that Paul’s emotional path shifts from passion to disillusionment as he starts to sense that “what he imagined as eternal love is slipping away silently” (Chalupský).
Susan’s emotional withdrawal happens slowly. It begins with shorter conversations, longer silences, and a heaviness that hangs over their relationship. Paul sees her suffering, but doesn’t fully understand the depth of her trauma. Melnic and Melnic explain that Paul, as the narrator, does not give us a clear or full picture of Susan’s inner world. Instead, “he uses storytelling to come to terms with his own failure to connect” (Melnic & Melnic).
What makes their story even more heartbreaking is that they continue to live together—yet feel miles apart. There are no fights or loud arguments. Instead, they sit in the same room, emotionally unreachable. Susan becomes numb, while Paul feels lost. Nayebpour and Varghaiyan use Julia Kristeva’s theory of “shared singularity” to explain this emotional breakdown. Paul and Susan never succeed in creating a shared emotional space, and their failure “to foster true dialogue or sharing between their individual selves” leads to a growing quiet distance (Nayebpour & Varghaiyan).
In the end, love doesn’t vanish with one dramatic moment—it slowly disappears into silence. Paul keeps trying, but his love can no longer reach Susan. Her silence becomes louder than words. This is the kind of emotional loneliness Barnes explores deeply: the distance that grows not from leaving someone, but from staying without being truly seen.
In the final stage of Paul and Susan’s relationship, they experience a painful form of loneliness within their love. Despite living together, they are no longer emotionally connected. There’s no dramatic breakup, just a quiet fading of their bond, reflecting the absurdity of modern life—desiring connection but failing to truly reach each other. Nawaz, Ijaz, and Anjum explain this through postmodern absurdism, citing Thomas Nagel’s idea of “the absurd.” They note that Paul feels “obliged to live on the individualistic plane,” torn between his love for Susan and the reality that their bond no longer sustains them (Nawaz et al.).
Susan retreats into pain and alcoholism, while Paul stays out of guilt and duty, but their love has no joy left. They live side by side yet emotionally apart, becoming “characters facing the brutal attacks of a meaningless life.” Their relationship reflects the absurd human condition: deeply loving but unable to connect, together yet isolated. Barnes doesn’t provide a solution to this loneliness; instead, he makes us feel it through silence and emotional absence, showing that love does not always protect us from being alone. Sometimes, it becomes the place where loneliness begins (Nawaz et al.).
Reconstructing Love Through Memory: Storytelling and Self-Understanding :
After Paul and Susan grow apart, Paul is left to deal with what remains is memories. He begins telling the story not just to explain what happened, but to understand himself. His memories are not always in the right order, and some parts are missing, but he tells them in a way that helps him process the emotions he still carries. His storytelling becomes a quiet way to make sense of the love that once gave him joy and later brought him pain.
According to Melnic and Melnic, Paul is not focused on giving a clear or factual report of events. Instead, he tries to make peace with his past through storytelling. His version of the past is shaped by feelings, not facts. This shows how memory is personal and emotional. Even Paul admits that memory chooses what to remember depending on what the heart needs. He wants to “remember her correctly,” but knows that memory is never perfect. (Melnic and Melnic)
Chalupský also points out that Paul keeps returning to the same emotional moments. He is not looking for a clear answer but trying to understand how his love for Susan slowly became something sad and lonely. His story changes from first-person to second and third, showing how distant he feels from the person he used to be. In the end, Paul’s memories do not solve anything, but they help him accept what happened. Through remembering, he sees how silence replaced love, and how the distance between him and Susan grew without either of them truly knowing when. (Chalupský)
Even after his relationship with Susan fades, Paul never fully lets go. He continues to remember her and visits her even when she no longer remembers him. This shows that his feelings don’t disappear but transform into a lasting grief, becoming part of who he is. Zekiye Antakyalıoğlu explains that Paul doesn’t follow a typical mourning process, as described by Freud, where a person accepts the loss and moves on. Instead, his sorrow stays with him, shaping his life and memories. This aligns more with Jacques Derrida’s idea of melancholy, where grief persists because the person we loved becomes part of us (Antakyalıoğlu).
In The Only Story, Julian Barnes uses a very unique narrative style to show how Paul changes over time. At first, Paul tells the story in the first person, using “I.” He sounds close to the events, full of emotion and belief in love. But in the second part of the novel, Paul starts using “you” instead of “I,” which creates distance. By the end of the story, he uses the third person, saying “he” instead of “I,” as if he’s no longer talking about himself at all.
Dr. Dilip Barad explains that these shifts are not just about writing style they reflect Paul’s emotional journey. In the beginning, Paul is young, confident, and connected to his love for Susan. But as he starts to feel confused, disappointed, and hurt, he can no longer speak from the same place. The second person shows that he is stepping away from his younger self, and the third person shows how he becomes emotionally numb and distant (Barad).
By the time Paul speaks in the third person, he has become a quiet observer of his own life. He no longer sounds sure of anything. These changes in voice help the reader feel how Paul has changed on the inside. He is not the same person who once believed love could solve everything. He has lost part of himself in the process.
Barnes uses this drifting voice to show how emotional pain, regret, and loneliness can affect a person’s identity. Paul no longer fully owns his story. His voice fades just as his relationship with Susan fadesslowly, quietly, and painfully.
By the end of the novel, Paul isn’t trying to explain his love story to others; he’s trying to understand it himself. His memories may be disordered and shaped by emotion, but they are still real. For Paul, remembering is a way to survive the loneliness left by love. Diana and Vlad Melnic explain that Paul’s storytelling is not about accuracy but healing, using Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity. His memories, though imperfect, help him make sense of who he became through love and pain (Melnic & Melnic).
Zekiye Antakyalıoğlu links Paul’s memory to mourning, explaining that Paul’s act of remembering Susan, even after she forgets him, reflects Derrida’s concept of melancholy—keeping someone alive inside us after they’re gone (Antakyalıoğlu). For Paul, memory becomes a quiet act of love. Dr. Dilip Barad supports this by showing how Paul’s narration shifts throughout the novel, with his emotional connection to the past fading as his voice becomes more distant. Still, the story remains a part of him (Barad).
In the end, Paul isn’t trying to change the past; he’s trying to live with it. His storytelling becomes his way of holding on to meaning, even when love has turned into silence. Remembering is his way of keeping something real.
Conclusion:
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