I found the end of The Sun Also Rises interesting, if not particularly satisfying, although none of the novels we've read really have particularly satisfying endings (I remember some people not being happy about the ending of Mrs. Dalloway). Mrs. Dalloway I think was sort of a peek into someone else's life, but it felt like Clarissa's life was much more "stable." If people's lives go in little cycles until they break out of them, Clarissa's seemed small and settled, whereas Jake had a sort of big cycle in the book -- completed with the bookends of the cab ride. Maybe some people find a sort of routine life depressing, but I thought Jake's story was really sad. He seemed happiest alone but he kept getting dragged back to Brett -- honestly, I don't blame Brett that much... I'm not sure you can really blame anyone in something like that, although it sounds a bit like an abusive relationship. It feels like a more depressing version of those TV shows where nothing ever changes from episode to episode -- you get a new sort of case, tensions escalate, but everything is back to normal at the end. Sometimes it feels like the writers are afraid to change anything and maybe that's what Jake feels -- he goes with the drama and the bullfighters but at the end of the day, Paris is comforting, and his relationship with Brett might be in a way comforting. He likes Brett, Brett likes him, he understands the troubles that come with that relationship. And they both know they will both come back to each other -- even after the fiasco with Cohn and then Romero, Brett is confident that she can write to Jake and he will answer, and of course Jake does, and the cycle, with the climax and the return to normalcy, will start again.
Maybe this is a bit depressing so here's a picture of Hemingway and a cat (Blogger is not cooperating with my multimedia dreams).
The whole idea of a "satisfying ending," in the plot-based sense of all the loose ends tied up neatly, with a wedding of the two main characters finally coming to fruition, is in fact one of the nineteenth-century conventions many modernists like Woolf and Hemingway were trying to get away from. And again, there's an idea of realism at work: life itself, with its many overlapping plots and narratives and subplots and digressions, doesn't necessarily provide "happy endings." Stories continue. People develop in some ways and stay the same in others. "Tying everything together," in this light, seems artificial. Endings of narratives in the twentieth century often are deliberately left open.
ReplyDelete(Of course, such an open ending can still be either satisfying or not--and I realize you weren't necessarily complaining that every thread wasn't tied up. I just wanted to point out the historical insight underlying your comment.)
I agree that neither Mrs. Dalloway nor had "satisfying" endings per se, but I think it makes both of these books less artificial and in fact better as a whole. I can't see either ending being resolved. Mrs. Dalloway focuses on the life of Calrissa and those around her, and a happy ending would be strange. It doesn't really make sense to think of someone's life as being resolved, and having a fairy tail ending where the characters live happily ever after. And similarly, is the story of an impossible romance (in their case). I can't see Brett and Jake ever running off into the sunset to be married like a Shakespearean comedy. Their relationship will always be the same, and the ending reflects that: Jake will hate the fact that he loves Brett, and begrudgingly go to the ends of the world for her, and Brett will continue to hurt Jake unknowingly through her being with him. That's always how it will be, and the ending reflect it perfectly—Brett says essentially "wouldn't it be great if things were different and we could be together?" while Jake responds with a tone that says "yeah, it'd be nice, but things aren't different, and here we are."
ReplyDeleteTrue, the novels are unresolved, but do they not reflect life better as a result?
To me the ending did make the book seem like one big cycle, what with Jake almost pathetically coming to Brett's aid-- but Jake's last comment made the ending more satisfactory, at least for me. It seemed like he was becoming more aware and more angry about his pointless relationship with Brett-- and that not only was his injury keeping them apart, but their personalities, which is something that they didn't mention in the earlier cab ride.
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify, I do like the endings a lot -- I think they're more powerful than many typical happy endings where all the loose ends are tied up, which sometimes annoys me. However, liking the ending doesn't mean I don't find it a little depressing, although Kai's reading makes it less so.
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