Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens -Dickens bestrides the world of Victorian novelists like a veritable colossus. Not only are his novels rivaled perhaps only by Maryann Evans/George Eliot for the brilliance of his characters, the depth of his insight, and the strength of his plots, Dickens was a veritable fifth force of nature in terms of his influence on mid-19th century culture. His novels were so popular, both as serials and between covers, that crowds in New York all but stormed the ship that bore the first copies of The Old Curiosity Shop to learn if Little Nell lived or died, and his scathing portraits of greed, legal chicanery, and the maltreatment of the poor led directly to social reform in his native land.
If that weren't enough, Dickens edited his own magazine, drew sold out crowds on the lecture circuit in the United States, and permanently reshaped the British and American celebration of midwinter in thanks to his unforgettable novella about Ebenezer Scrooge's memorable journey through Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet To Come.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.
he wrote, and generations yet unborn would still shudder as the Ghost of Christmas Present drew back his robe to reveal the starving results of social neglect.
Given all this, one might think that Dickens was the one novelist of his day who might end his books as he saw fit.
One would be wrong.
We all know the story of Great Expectations: young Philip Pirrip, called Pip, is kind to the escaped convict Magwitch, who in turn pays for his education and turns him from a blacksmith's apprentice into a polished young man with expectations of great wealth and a secure place in society. Along the way Pip meets the avaricious Pumblechook, the lively young Herbert Pocket, and the beautiful, cold-hearted Estella, who has been trained practically from birth to treat men as men treated her guardian, the embittered spinster Miss Havisham. Of course Pip falls in love with Estella, and despite more plot complications than would seem reasonable in any other writer's hands (including Estella's disastrous marriage to Bentley Drummle), the novel ends with Pip and a humbled Estella clasping hands and facing the future together.
Except…that isn't the ending Dickens wrote. Recognizing that Estella and Pip were far too damaged to make a good partners for anyone, let alone each other, his original finale had the two characters, both adults, meeting briefly, chatting quietly for a few minutes, and then parting, presumably never to meet again. It's a bittersweet ending that flows naturally from the Pip and the Estella we see in the novel, and if it's not the customary happily ever after, it's far more astute and psychologically honest than what was eventually published. Whether the public would have accepted this is unknown, but since they'd already wept over Sydney Carton's heroic sacrifice, the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist, and the almost comically drawn out death of little Nell, it's quite possible that Pip and Estella's melancholy final encounter would have passed muster.
Alas, the public never got to read Dicken's first ending. One of his friends (Edward Bulwer-Lytton of "It was a dark and stormy night fame") was so convinced that the book would fail if Estella and Pip did not walk off into the sunset together that he insisted that Dickens reunite the lovers at the end of the book, and be damned to whether it made sense. Dickens complied in what he later called "a pretty bit of writing," and Great Expectations had the happy ending both friend and the public demanded.
Fortunately for posterity, Dickens kept a copy of the original ending, which sometimes is included in critical editions of Great Expectations. Judge for yourselves, gentle readers, and tell me: who was right, Dickens or his beta reader?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling - JK Rowling always claimed that she knew exactly how the Harry Potter books would end. This was one of the many, many reasons why her books were so popular; no matter how many subplots, characters, bits of magic, and near-Dickensian surnames her enormously popular books threw at their fans, readers could rest secure in the knowledge that Rowling had planned the entire series and wouldn't let us down. She even said in more than one interview that she had already written the last chapter and kept it in a safe deposit box near her home in Edinburgh, where no one could possibly burgle her home and reveal it before the time was right.
And if she finally broke down and admitted that, well, she'd had to rewrite that precious chapter a bit to reflect all the changes that her overall plot had undergone after seven books and God only knows how many smutty fan stories pairing Harry with Draco (or Hermione, or Snape, or every single Weasley including Cousin Mafalda who didn't make the final cut of the fourth book) well, that only made sense. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was her first book, after all, so of course she'd tweaked the last chapter of the last book a bit.
Fans all around the world rubbed their hands together in glee when Bloomsbury announced the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Finally they would get to read this mysterious epilogue Rowling had hinted at for years! Would it truly end with "scar," as she'd said so many time, or had that been one of the changes? Would Harry be alive or dead? Would he be with his beloved Ginny, or another girl? What would happen?
Then the great day came, and millions of readers snatched millions of books from the hands of thousands of harried bookstore clerks and started to read…
And read…
And speed through chapter after chapter…
And read…
And cry until their sinuses clogged, their noses dripped, and they’d gone through a box of Kleenex…
Until they finished the main story…
And got to that all-important last chapter…
Only to behold a flat, hurried, dull epilogue that adds nothing whatsoever to the epic story of the Boy Who Lived.
Oh, that's not to say that nothing happens. We learn that Draco Malfoy (who is going bald at the young age of 36) has named his son Scorpius, for reasons that are left unsaid since neither has a single word of dialogue. Hermione and Ron, who have stayed together despite having almost nothing in common, have named their son Hugo in what may be a tribute to Rowling winning the Hugo Award for an earlier Potter book, while Harry and Ginny have three children, all named after significant dead figures in Harry's life, not Ginny's. Harry reassures his son Albus Severus that he's named after "the bravest man I ever met" and that he'll still love him even if he's sorted into Slytherin, then touches his famous lightning bolt scar and thinks that "all is well."
And that's it. There's nothing about the eighteen years between the ending of the main story and this amateurish little scene. Never mind that Wizarding Britain had torn itself to shreds less than twenty years earlier, or that Harry, Hermione, Ron, and every other character had seen the sort of horrors before they'd turned eighteen that sends battle-hardened adults into rehab, or that whole families had been wiped out, or that large sections of Hogwarts had been reduce to a smoking ruin. It's as if Rowling was so anxious to end the Potter series that she deliberately ended the book in such a way that her readers a) wouldn't pester her for more Potter books, b) no one would be tempted to write a sequel after her death, and c) maybe the production of all those smutty fan stories that paired Harry with Ron (or Snape, or Lupin, or Ludo Bagman, or all the male Weasleys, en masse or individually) would finally end.
If this was indeed Rowling's intent, alas! she failed. After the initial collective "Huh? That's it?" arose from millions of sleep-deprived throats, the fan writers got to work. That precious last chapter was dismissed as "EWE" (Epilogue? What epilogue?), rafts of stories featuring a divorced Harry and Ginny dropping off their kids at the station were written and read, and a whole genre of "young generation" fic appeared, much of it pairing Albus Severus Potter with Scorpius Malfoy in a romantic relationship hideously nicknamed "AS/S."
No wonder Rowling hasn't finished her encyclopedia.
My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult - several years ago a family received much publicity for conceiving a baby long after they'd seemingly finished raising their children. The reason was simple: the parents, Abe and Mary Ayala, conceived their daughter Marissa because their eldest daughter, Anissa, who suffered from a virulent form of leukemia, needed a bone marrow transplant, and none of her existing relatives were a close enough genetic match for the transplant to take.
Fortunately for all concerned, the new baby was indeed a good match, and the story ended triumphantly with the sick daughter restored to health thanks to her cherished baby sister. What they would have done if the baby had not been a suitable marrow donor, or the psychological effects on the infant might be once she learned that she existed solely to heal her sibling, was never made clear, despite the family's fervent insistence that they would have loved her just as much if their genetic gamble had failed.
Fortunately all seems to have worked out as planned: Anissa Ayala is a healthy adult, Marissa Ayala is a well-adjusted 21 year old, and the family is loving, close-knit, and happy. However, the happy ending could have just as easily been tragic. What would have happened if the older girl had relapsed and needed either another marrow transplant or perhaps an organ in the years to come? What if the original transplant had failed and the parents unconsciously blamed Marissa for not having good enough genes? What if Marissa had someday balked at undergoing a painful medical procedure that might leave her vulnerable to future physical problems? How would the family cope if she decided that she'd had enough and finally refused to give another pint of blood or pound of flesh?
The Ayalas are not the only family who've decided to roll the genetic dice in hopes of saving an existing member through creating a compatible donor. If anything, the odds are good that this will happen with increasingly frequency now that researchers have managed to map a fetus's entire genetic code based on a cheek swab and a vial of blood. A good and profound book will undoubtedly be written on this very topic someday.
On the surface, My Sister's Keeper promises to be that book. Anna, the tweenage daughter of the Fitzgerald family, was conceived to be the genetic donor who would save her older sister, Katie, who has leukemia. Alas, the initial medical procedures failed, and now Anna, faced with the prospect of donating a kidney to her ailing sister, has decided that she's had enough of being responsible for Katie's continued existence.
In the best tradition of precocious fictional children, Anna hires an attorney and files suit to be legally emancipated from her parents so she can decide whether or not to donate that kidney. Add in that Katie finally admits that she encouraged her sister to file the suit because she is sick of seeing Anna exploited for her benefit, and the result is the sort of superficially profound book that is perfect for post-potluck discussions at book groups throughout this great land.
And then Picoult, in a twist that would have shamed Dickens at his very worst, has it both ways: Anna wins her court case but is in a traffic accident on the way home from court, and Katie gets one of her kidneys when the hospital declares her brain dead and the physicians ask her parents if they'd be willing to consider organ donation!
Needless to say, the parents immediately agree, and we learn at the end of the book that six years later Katie is healthy, happy, and convinced that “someone had to die” for her to live, and that person was her sister. The ethical issues of self-determination, voluntary donation, and whether it's right to make a baby to be someone else's private pharmacopeia are glossed over with earnestness, sentiment, and what has to be one of the least believable coincidences in American letters.
None of this has adversely impacted My Sister's Keeper's popularity, or prevented it from being filmed (albeit with significant changes). Jodi Picoult still writes bestsellers, and her fans still snap them up and read them at the beach or for book clubs.
What this says about the American public is not clear, but somehow I don't think it's good.
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So, my friends, what books have you encountered with an ending so terrible that you chucked them at the terrified cat? How many dents in your bedroom wall bear witness to books thrown with great violence and loud cries of, "You have GOT to be kidding me!" Have you ever sworn off an author permanently because of a lousy ending, or at least contemplated it? It's Saturday night, so gather 'round the chimenea and speak….
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*For the curious, here is how Anthony Adverse ends:
After more turmoil, adventures, suffering, loss, gain, and angst than you can shake a broadsword at, the hero is finally at peace homesteading in America...
Until he hits himself in the thigh with an axe for no discernible reason while chopping wood and bleeds to death. If that weren't enough of a downer, the little chapel on the site where he died is desecrated by pioneer children a few years later.
Nice ending, no?