whats the differance??

[tnkrbllrcks]

hey peoples whats the differance between a classic ending and a realistic ending??

thanx for your help!!

[slobone]

A classic ending ties up all the loose threads and provides a satisfying resolution for all the main characters. Often a death or a wedding. A realistic ending should be more like real life -- nothing really resolved. But those are rare, even in "realistic" novels...

[blazeofglory]

A classic ending is cinematic and a realistic is something that has to do with nothing, just ending without no specific forms. But when it comes to fictionalization it is mostly classic, for fiction is fiction, it can not be likened to a real life.

Don not confuse fiction with life. No writer can imitate life exactly as it is, for life can not be duplicated or mimicked.

Fiction can not duplicate life, for fiction however profoundly written can not resemble life at all.

[tractatus]

And often this comparison is made like "classic vs modern", or sometime postmodern. A classic could be realistic too.

[bounty]

i just finished the grapes of wrath and it was very much in keeping with whats been written above about a "realistic" ending. even a hundred pages previous to the ending i was wondering how steinbeck was going to finish the book. it didnt seem to be building to anything along the lines of what slobone said about a "classic" ending.

[bree]

I prefer classic to realistic. I did not like the ending to The Grapes of Wrath. However my old English Literature Lecturer said that classic endings were for lazy readers because they don't have to think further. Does anyone agree.

[bounty]

I prefer classic to realistic. I did not like the ending to The Grapes of Wrath. However my old English Literature Lecturer said that classic endings were for lazy readers because they don't have to think further. Does anyone agree.

hi bree---yeah, i didnt like it too much either, as an ending that is.

i can only agree with your old english lit lecturer if as a general rule we make a point of discussing/theorizing what comes next after the author leaves us hanging with a story that just simply ends. and that we would find legitimate worth in doing so. otherwise, yes, give me a book with a finish line and a story that ends.

[patrickbeverley]

I like realistic endings: I agree with Kurt Vonnegut's view that, "The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me ... is ETC." Mind you, he wrote that in Breakfast of Champions, one of the most bat**** insane surrealistic novels in existence.

[Whifflingpin]

"classic endings were for lazy readers "
Maybe 'realistic' endings are for lazy writers who do not know what to do with the characters & plot they create :D


Somerset-Maugham has some relevant comments in "The Razor's Edge." He writes, in the first paragraph, "I have little story to tell and I end with neither a death nor a marriage. Death ends all things and so is the comprehensive conclusion to a story, but marriage finishes it very properly too.... It is a sound instinct of the common people which persuades them that with this all that needs to be said is said. When male and female... are at last brought together they have fulfilled their biological function and interest passes to the generation that is to come."

Having said that at the beginning, Maugham goes on to leave the end realistically unresolved.