With both As I Lay Dying and The Memory of Running, I was disappointed by the endings, like many other students. I wasn't sure if this was a common trend across many of the books we've been reading, and with the not-so-happy story of Room, I wasn't expecting a happy ending either, and was hoping for an ending that wasn't too dark.
My wishes were granted, luckily, with the ending to Room. Ending this story is a difficult task. The time that Jack (and especially Ma) spent in Room will impact them for the rest of their lives, and this story will continue on throughout their entire lives. But Donaghue can't go on forever, talking about what happens to Jack over the rest of his life. This would be a tough situation to deal with, but I thought that Donaghue handled it quite remarkably.
Her decision to conclude the story with Jack leaving Room stands out. The fact that Jack moves on from Room (figuratively and literally) after visiting it one last time ends a story inside of itself. That's the story of Jack's escape from Room, and his initial time out of Room. Surely, there's a story before Jack's birthday and after Jack and Ma say "Bye" to Room, but Donaghue uses these events to create an interesting and compelling story about a situation that I had never really even thought about before.
The ambiguous ending of Room also is an important aspect to it being good to me. I thought that if Donaghue tried to wrap up too many loose ends, than the novel would lose a lot of my positive thoughts toward it. I absolutely hate it when an author decides that enough is enough and just starts bringing an end to every single story component. It's nice to leave things hanging up in the air, because it leaves it up to the reader and makes us think about it. If we know that Jack and Ma are hit by a bus on the way back from Room, there's no story to tell (Holding back the fact that that would make the ending suck.). The fact that the end of the story of Room is left up to us really makes the story, because it leaves it up to us.
The ending wasn't too optimistic or pessimistic either. Jack and Ma won't be able to completely move on and live perfectly normal lives. At the same time, their time in Room hasn't completely destroyed their lives, and there's plenty of time to reintegrate into society and become normal, everyday people enjoying life. Once again, books which force either a happy or sad ending stink, because it's hard for a reader to make their own opinion. I'm not sure if it's just me (probably the same for others too, though I don't know), but I like coming to my own conclusions on stories, so having an ending crammed down my throat can really make me dislike books or even whole series (Harry Potter and Hunger Games were both kind of ruined by the forced endings, IMO).
Room's ending was pretty good, not only because it was well placed, but because it left an ambiguous ending which left interpretation up to the reader.
I personally don't like it when things are left up to the reader. I feel like I don't have the right to decide what happens to the characters since I didn't write them, and I like to know concretely what's going to happen. However, I did think that Room's ending provided good closure, but I would've liked some sort of epilogue as Shaleen suggested in class.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the ambiguity made the ending for me more satisfying than if everything had been tied up with a neat bow. I think the tricky thing about Room's narrative is that on the one hand, we want to be able to connect with and understand an ending, and the only way to really do that is to make sure that Ma and Jack are still entirely recognizable as the people we met at the beginning, but on the other hand, the whole point of the heroes' journeys seem to be to move on from Room. I think where Donoghue ends it is good because it's not too long after the escape that Room is just a small blip in Jack's memory, but it's also long enough afterwards that Donoghue can reasonably provide some closure for Jack's and Ma's stories.
ReplyDeleteI would debate you on the fact that the final Harry Potter book had a forced ending, although I agree about the Hunger Games. The whole story was foretold by a prophecy, so of course all of the loose ends got wrapped up. I think that J.K. Rowling did a fabulous job ending the series.
ReplyDeleteI was glad that Donoghue didn't do a cheesy wrap-everything-up epilogue a la Harry Potter -- I feel like that kind of thing forces the author to please the reader and make everything turn out ok. The ambiguity of the ending suited the book, I thought -- it was optimistic enough that I wasn't super worried about Ma and Jack's future, but I also liked that it didn't pretend that everything was going to be magically okay for them.
ReplyDeleteI think an epilogue could have been done well and could have been done very badly. Yes, it would be easy to fall into the trap of writing a cheesy epilogue where Jack is doing great and Ma is almost fully recovered and everything is fine. But you could have also shown the long lasting effects of Jack's experience with Room in a not entirely positive light, like how it might affect his relationships, how he takes care of his kids, etc, while still offering a hopeful outlook on life.
ReplyDeleteYou describe well the appeal of the ambiguous ending. We're trained as young readers to expect an ending to be "happy" or (in rare cases, in children's literature) tragic or sad. But real life doesn't have "endings" in this way--even if a protagonist's story (or life) is over, the wider narrative of life goes on, and one ending is always just a part of another innumerable set of stories unfolding. This is especially true in a case like Ma and Jack's: how "happy" can the ending really be? It's a complicated, emotionally fraught situation. It's not enough to wish that none of it had ever happened (even if that *could* be an available ending, to return Ma to the day she was abducted and have her escape somehow)--Ma literally *becomes* "Ma" in Room, when she has Jack, and her whole identity is bound up in Jack's existence, which she doesn't regret at all. It's about moving on to the future, but Donoghue can't make that seem to easy or neat, either. We're left with a picture of a mother and her son poised to embark on "independent living" (as the name of their new apartment complex trumpets), and independent living entails all manner of risks. There's no guarantee that they'll be "happy," any more than anyone else's happiness is guaranteed. But Donoghue leaves us with an image of aesthetic closure, the novel comes full-circle, and we see them as capable of making a strong go of it. If Jack can do the Great Escape, he'll be able to handle middle school.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Mr. Mitchell here. This book would be extremely difficult to create a perfect satisfying ending that resolved every issue the book has had thus far. This more ambiguous ending creates a sense of fulfillment while still leading to thought after the book is over.
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