Atlas Shrugged was 800 or so pages of Objectivist philosophy, then turned into a pulp sci-fi novel for the last few chapters.
I’m not really certain if that made it better or worse, but it was certainly unexpected.
I think Grapes of Wrath’s ending is even weirder when you consider Ma Joad’s comments on it. “I knew you would do it.” Really? You knew your daughter would spontaneously start breast feeding an old dying guy? Even though in order to save him, she’d have to go back and keep doing it over and over? And you just sort of telepathically sensed this because nothing was said out loud between you two before it happened? Seriously? You thought to yourself before this happened, you thought, “I’ll bet Rosasharn lets the starving guy suck her milk out of her tits, that crazy young’un.” And then Rosasharn goes and does it?
Say Ma Joad, why don’t you think to yourself, “Pa, go out and rob us a bank, and we’ll all go on the run and meet back up with Tom someday.” Maybe that’ll be a better movie ending than that drippy speech about women and rivers and whatnot.
The ending of Grapes of Wrath is indeed unusual, but there are two passages that really pissed me off:
What the fucking fuck…? These made any possible sympathy I had for the main characters evaporate. You stupid dumbass shitkicker Okie scumbags, life is already hard enough, you’re driving a broken-down truck in tenuous shape and you’re going out of your way to inflict more misery, putting your vehicle and indeed your survival at risk? FUUUCK YOU! I hope you starve, you ignorant white-trash pieces of shit. I hope some rich guy’s goon cracks your fucking skull with a baton and spills what little brains you have in the dirt.
This has been an annoyance to me for some years, now.
The turtle is a connection to the beginning of the novel when he takes the turtle to his little brother. Is it a comparison of how people functioned during the depression?
I don’t think the ending is so much about bullying as it is about the “Brave New World” where people are shallow and just want cheap thrills and “orgy-porgy”, as opposed to John Savage, who thinks and feels deeply and finds that he can’t live in that world–in that way, the ending is necessary and inevitable.
One book with an ending that really has me shaking my head is Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. The beautiful and intelligent Isabel Archer
[spoiler] goes back to her emotionally abusive husband? And her friend tells Goodwood, a man with whom Isabel could be happy:
“Look here, Mr. Goodwood,” she said; “just you wait!”
On which he looked up at her—but only to guess, from her face, with a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now the key to patience.[/spoiler]
And how about the ending/epilogue of War and Peace? The beautiful, sensitive, artistic, vibrant Natasha
lets herself go completely, gets fat, doesn’t care about anything but her babies and their poop. “She valued the company of those to whom she could come striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby’s napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect that baby was much better.”
I had the same thought. That book has one of the grimmest endings in literature.
For another Disneyfication of a horrible ending, there’s Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid
After sacrificing her voice and going through excruciating pain every time she walks on her new legs for the sake of winning the Prince’s love, she loses him to another. She is then told the only way she can save her life is to stab the Prince in the heart as he sleeps and let his blood flow over her legs, which her sisters urge her to do. She refuses, and dies, or at least is turned into sea-foam. But this is seen as a happy ending because after three centuries of doing good deeds for people she can earn a soul and get into heaven.
Oh my God! The Okies are Replicants!
“I’ve…seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Oil wells on fire in the panhandle of Oklahoma. I watched dust storms darken the sky over the Great Plains. All those moments will be lost in time, like…tears in rain. Time to die.”
Then whatever you do, don’t read Jude the Obscure.
So was Anthony Bourdain. I didn’t like the way his story ended either.
“I’ve eaten things you people wouldn’t believe. Greek cheese on fire off a shoulder of Lamb. I ate sea-beans that glitter in their dark sauce near the Tannhäuser Cafe. All those dishes will be lost in time, like beer in rain. Time to dine.”
This didn’t bother me too much. Sure, it’s a bit clunky, but someone who had led a narrow life getting a social conscience ? That makes sense to me.
This, and the fact that up until then, Rosasharn had been a “central but minor” character. Her role in the story was basically “pregnant young woman in the background” with all the difficulties this added to the family’s predicament. She doesn’t do or say much throughout the book apart from whining from time to time. It’s understandable given her situation but still exasperatingly self-centered, and quite a contrast with the selfless, strong Ma.
Her initiative at he end is completely out of character, but it could have been the point where she gets depth, the start of a new part focusing on her taking over the leading role from Ma. Instead of that, the book just ends there.
My first thought here was also The Grapes of Wrath, for me it’s more ‘wow’ than WTF, but I didn’t realise so many other people thought the same way.
Yes. I got first class marks for essays at honours level on Portrait of a Lady and Henry James’s literary criticism, but the ending is WTF for me. I still don’t understand why it’s supposed to make sense.
Gone With the Wind. Now what?
I have, but I don’t remember much of it.
I think A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne may end in mid sentence as well. But who knows?
Maybe that is a complete sentence. Hard to say. Odd book.
j
It might be my favorite novel but the climax of The Stand is a muddled mess.
I was forced to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles in high school. It made me vow to never read anything by Hardy ever again.
I just read the plot summary of Jude the Obscure. Sheesh. I’m glad I never tried to read it.
I had to do a term paper on Jude the Obscure. It made me vow to never read anything by Hardy ever again.
Did he ever write anything that didn’t end in doom and despair?
Oh good lord (heh), this is true. The ending of “It” is the same for me.
Far From the Madding Crowd, I guess. It’s sort of a happy ending, at least by Hardy’s standards.
I’ll have to read that, it is so…unhardyish.