Exploring the path to death through Barnes's older characters: Between irony and melancholic meditation

This article aims at analysing four of Julian Barnes's novels with protagonists either entering or in their old age in order to discern to what extent conceptions of ageing, old age and death are depicted in Barnes's fiction and develop throughout his writing career. Barnes's memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008) will also be central in the discussion, since, in it, the author reflects on conceptions of old age and death from different philosophers and authors intermingling them with his own personal experience and that of his family, specially his parents. For Barnes, death represents another part of life, even though he himself has confessed to have been obsessed with death since his early adolescence. On the other hand, in Barnes's novels, and from the point of view of his protagonists, ageing and old age is not that different from other life stages, since, one's essence does not change throughout one's life course. By resourcing to irony and imbuing the narrative voice of his novels with what he calls melancholic meditation, Barnes approaches the reader to the experience of ageing, old age and death pointing to the fact that existential questions and life concerns are intrinsic to human beings rather than to specific ages.