The Importance of Endings

Today, I am fueled by the three cups of very strong coffee I consumed with my breakfast and the literary insight that can only come from trying to do my AP Lang homework. (Two days in a row! Is this real life?)

Key word: trying(!) to do my AP Lang homework. Perhaps it's the three cups of coffee, but I'm finding myself very easily distracted by basically everything, including my portable lap desk. It has a very pleasant surface, you see, so I often find myself doodling in the corners of it when I get bored with my real work. Today, it started with scribbling down a song lyric that was stuck in my head, and led to the writing of my favorite quotes from novels. And it occurred to me that practically all of these quotes were the last lines of my favorite novels. So, I'll warn you now that if you think you can figure out the ending of a book from the last line, you should stop reading.

However. That warning is just dumb, because the last lines of a novel (when they're written really, really well) almost never give away the plot of the book. And maybe I only think this because I've read all of these books. But honestly, unless I told you, would you be able to guess where "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" comes from?

It's from The Great Gatsby. Now, if you've read this already, you understand how freaking awesome this last line is. But if you've never read it before, it just looks like a highly literary metaphorical-type statement. Which it is. But there's no way you can guess the plot of the book from it. Make sense? I don't know if I'm making sense. Blame the caffeine.

Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that the novel as a whole makes the last words important. If you read the last line first, it doesn't really mean anything until you read the whole book. So I'm not really giving out spoilers here, I'm just reflecting on the literary brilliance of last lines. Which you won't even really understand without reading the whole book anyways.

Anyway. Some of my favorite last lines come from the work of John Green (I mean, duh). He has this way of wrapping up the conflict of the main character in one sentence. Like at the end of An Abundance of Katherines, it reads: "And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way". HERE IS WHERE THERE ARE GOING TO BE SPOILERS. If you've read Katherines, you know that the main character struggles throughout with this desire to be special. He feels as if he's peaked and has nothing to offer other than his extensive knowledge of things that have already happened. He reflects upon the fact that most child prodigies, such as himself, never grow up to be geniuses. This last line summarizes how he has come to accept this. Go read the book, okay? It's a lot more awesome when you read the book.

I assume the majority of you have read The Book Thief, and if you have not you need to stop whatever it is you are doing immediately and go read it. I'm serious, stop it. Right now. Go. I'll wait.
For those of you that have read it, you know that it is narrated by Death. This makes the last line SO COOL. "I am haunted by humans." ISN'T THAT BRILLIANT? Sorry, is my nerd showing? Blame my enthusiasm on caffeine. But WHY is it brilliant? Because it's deliciously ironic, that's why! Is this a paradox? I'm pretty sure it's a paradox. I don't know, my vocabulary is a little rusty this time of the year. DEATH is haunted by HUMANS. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? It's genius even if you haven't read the book. But, of course, it's even more so when you have.

So what point am I trying to make here? I don't really think I am, actually. I just started geeking out about endings and thought I'd share it with you, Internet. I just love endings. All kinds of endings. Happy, ambiguous, melancholy. ALL THE ENDINGS. Also, endings are really difficult to write. Even when you're just writing an essay for English class, the hardest part is always the conclusion. How do you sum up everything you've already said without repeating what you've already said? It's hard! Endings just reveal the brilliance of the writer. Heck, I consider myself pretty good at this, and I still wrestle with endings for frakkin' blog posts. Like anybody actually cares that much. So let's just say that there is much to be appreciated in an ending, like there is much to be appreciated in the book as a whole.

...

The end.