There are lots of books in literature with good endings. I think Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre have perfect endings. I also liked the way East of Eden and The Great Gatsby end they are very tragic though.
There are lots of books in literature with good endings. I think Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre have perfect endings. I also liked the way East of Eden and The Great Gatsby end they are very tragic though.
Although it's a long time since I read East of Eden, I found it a very tedious read and don't remember the ending. The last lines of The Great Gatsby are, in my view, among the greatest ever written.Originally Posted by Snowqueen
Great endings to novels stay in the mind and among those I can't forget are the final paragraphs to Maupassant's 'Bel Ami' and 'Une Vie'. The ending to Émile Zola's 'La Bête Humaine' is quite simply the epitome of great writing. Two men, the driver and the stoker of a steam train, who are bitter enemies, are taking a troop train to the front in the Franco Prussian war of 1870. The stoker keeps piling coal into the train's furnace in the face of the driver's objections that the train is going much to fast, which in turn leads to a death struggle as the two men fight and fall from the train, leaving it to its own volition as it speeds through signals and stations causing death and destruction on its wayward journey.
I translate the final lines as:
'So what if the machine crushed its victims en route! Wasn't it heading for a future careless of the blood expended? Without a driver, in the darkness, like a blind and insensible beast that has been unleashed amidst death, it rolled and rolled, full of that cannon fodder, of those soldiers, already stupefied with fatigue, drunk and singing.'
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Well I think she kind of had an excuse for being "whiny," during the Great Depression, as a pregnant teenage girl who was recently abandoned by the father of her baby. It's not supposed to make you feel guilty, it's supposed to make you aware of empathy-prompted social responsibility and the strength and value of human interconnection. If it makes some people feel guilty, then that really does more to highlight what kind of people they are.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
I'm not complaining about her whining. What I didn't get was the way she suddenly turned into this saint of charity right out of the blue. Anyway, I didn't mean to offend people who did feel the empathy that I just could not feel. That was only my personal, highly subjective response to that particular scene, and the book as a whole.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
I really think that it was the death of her child that made her realize her own insignificance. She whined because she didn't like her life, and when the child died, she realized that in the grand scheme of things, her life really didn't count for much. When she encountered that man in the barn, she demonstrated that she had outgrown that selfishness and that she recognized that other people have it worse off, and that she can play a role in making their lives better. That's my simplified interpretation anywayI found the scene devastating. I had the opportunity to see a live performance of a stage adaptation last year. I have never heard a whole theatre so silent.
I'm weary with right-angles, abbreviated daylight,
Waiting for a winter to be done.
Why do I still see you in every mirrored window,
In all that I could never overcome?
I'm not offended, I think I just tend to sound like I am.
It was a rapid character change, but I think it can be explained by her stillbirth. The characters who were most altruistic were those who were hit hardest by the Depression, and those were callous were the ones who had lost the least (the Californians, shop owners, ect.). I think the point of the book is that the more you've lost and suffered, the more you're willing to give. Rose of Sharron had just lost her child. As a symbolic act it really tied the book together perfectly I think, the ultimate loss followed by an image of absolute altruism.
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"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Henry James' Washington Square with Catherine, her father dead, having her embroidery, for life. Ibsen's Hedda Gabler with something of a nativity juxtaposed with an outrageous, if beautiful, suicide. Dostoevsky's The Gambler with an astonishing gamble in "love".
"Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself"
"Rose" by Martin Cruz Smith
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