Writing Tools

It's not easy to write about endings. To appreciate a great ending, you need to experience the whole work. Disembodied endings can seem like uprooted trees, ripped from their life source. That's why I like to revisit the memorable endings of important works of American literature. The great ending brings back the whole story. As with "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn":

Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.

I'm not sure there's a name for that kind of ending, so I'll give it one. Let's call it a "reflective ending," in which the narrator reflects on the action of the story to help give it meaning. Perhaps the most famous reflective ending comes from "The Great Gatsby":

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. ... And one fine morning ----

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

What interests me in both of these endings is that nothing happens. Except for thinking, reflection.

A powerful alternative is the "narrative ending," a final scene that crowns the action.

A favorite concludes "The Grapes of Wrath," a moment of brilliant hope at the end of Steinbeck's epic of Dust Bowl Depression. The Joad family has journeyed west looking for work only to confront one terrible obstacle after another. As we near the final scenes, young Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn child: "On a newspaper lay a blue shriveled little mummy."

A bit later the Joads, sheltered in a barn, encounter a boy whose father is starving:

"Hush," said Ma. She looked at Pa and Uncle John standing helplessly gazing at the sick man. She looked at Rose of Sharon huddled in the comfort. Ma's eyes passed Rose of Sharon's eyes, and then came back to them. And the two women looked deep into each other. The girl's breath came short and gasping.

She said "Yes."

Ma smiled. "I knowed you would. I knowed!" She looked down at her hands, tight-locked in her lap.

Rose of Sharon whispered, "Will--will you all -- go out?" The rain whisked lightly on the roof.

Ma leaned forward and with her palm she brushed the tousled hair back from her daughter's forehead, and she kissed her on the forehead. Ma got up quickly. "Come on, you fellas," she called. "You come out in the toolshed."

[...] For a minute Rose of Sharon sat still in the whispering barn. Then she hoisted her tired body up and drew the comfort about her. She moved slowly to the corner and stood looking down at the wasted face, into the wide, frightened eyes. Then slowly she lay down beside him. He shook his head slowly from side to side. Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. "You got to," she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close. "There!" she said. "There." Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.

The greatest endings in literature are the ones we remember, and this one has burned in my memory for more than 40 years.

So perhaps we have a new tool here, a choice about endings: "The writer can choose an ending that 'tells' or one that
'shows.' "

Is there an ending from a novel that you remember in a special way?