Endings are sacred. They are our prize for venturing so far
out. It is a literary sin to reveal an ending to someone who hasn’t reached it
yet. An ending is our last contact with a book, the final clasp, the last
clinch before we are left to slip back into our own world. An enduring ending
stays with us.
Endings are a lot like fireworks. There are those that bang,
fizz and shimmer across the sky. Endings that make a little squeak but then
fizzle out to nothingness. There are endings that take you by surprise, making
your heart leap momentarily or changing colour at the very last dazzling
moment.
For me, a good ending is one that gets you ‘home’. Home
being a place of return after a journey of enlightenment and experience. An
ending should deliver you back to where you belong– maybe weary, maybe relieved
– to the place you started. But that starting point should be different because
you’re a different person since you were at the beginning.
Five Memorable Endings:
1. Murder on
the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. The trademark summing up by Poirot with
a twist of the knife.
2. Vilette
by Charlotte Bronte. A chord of doubt and ambiguity at the last moment.
3. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch. An epilogue of
letters from other characters in the book throws doubt upon the narrator’s credibility.
4. 1984
by George Orwell. Status quo continues in a world that will never be the same
again.
5. The French
Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles. The author enters the novel to give the
reader three different endings with different outcomes for the lovers in the
story.
What is your favourite ending? What makes a good ending?
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