Spoiler alert! Mouseover buffer! (spoilers not working on mouseovers and all) …
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OK:
Did Enid commit suicide at the end?
Seymour’s new jeans: same as the ones that were on the sidewalk? 'Cos they weren’t there on the sidewalk after you saw a new pair of jeans on Seymour.
OK, that sure didn’t work…Sorry if you haven’t seen this film. 
Believe it or not, I was just pondering the same question yesterday. I’ve asked a few people who have seen the movie (there are very few, believe me), and about half think she just left town and the other half think it was a metaphor for her killing herself.
By the way, what’s the significance of the title?
I’m not certain it matters. One way or another, she’d completely screwed the pooch with her old life and she was leaving it behind.
Whether she was leaving it behind simply by ending it, or by moving on to start over in a new place, doesn’t really matter for purposes of the story. Leave that for Ghost World 2.
I think the signifigance of the title is that the world that Enid once knew and loved is now dead. Not only her own world, but the world around her—the fun strip malls and kooky diners are being replaced by McDonalds and Wal-Marts. I think this was better explained in the graphic novel where, I believe, the diner she goes to closes.
As for her killing herself, I think she just gets on a bus and decides to disapear. All of the people she ever cared about have now moved on without her.
Just the fact that the old guy, Norman, was always “there”, waiting for the “bus that never comes”, but then tells Enid that he’s “leaving town.” Later she sees him actually get on an eerily empty bus and you never see him again.
It could mean that he did literally leave town, and Enid later leaves town by taking the same bus. Or it could mean that he “left town” in that he died, and Enid, wearing a blood-red dress, “leaves town” the same way, by dying, having killing herself.
I’ve watched it about three times, and I’m still trying to work this dilemma out.
That’s a pretty rad analysis of it. I’d say take it as an open ending and leave it at that.
This is a really interesting conversation! I taught this film in a college literature class and we spent nearly two hours discussing the ending. Most of my students saw Enid as leaving her childhood and going toward something else rather than killing herself. There were, however, some very persuasive arguments for the bus as a persistent symbol of death and therefore, it was suicide.
One of my favorite lines are from this film is when Steve Buscemi is peeling out in his beater and screams: “Why dontcha you have some more kids!!!”
I’ll try to find a cite (there may be one on this very board if you do a search), but I’m almost 100% sure that it was neither Clowes’ nor Zwigoff’s intention to have the ending be a metaphor for suicide. It’s a bittersweet ending (especially with that music), tragic. In fact, it can be perceived as the exact opposite- Enid’s growing up, finding herself, venturing out into the world as an individual, etc. It’s a cruel world, but she’s going out there.
As for the meaning of “Ghost World”
from http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/prev/archives/moviearch/g/mv_ghostworld.html
Interesting tidbit: rearrange the letters in Enid Coleslaw and what do you get…?
a silenced owl?
Daniel Clowes.
That’s what I thought, at least.
Now maybe I’m missing something, but since it is a movie and there is no actual scene of her killing herself, why would getting on the bus be a metaphor for killing herself?
Correct me if I’m wrong but this movie is basically what I would call part of a growing genre of “disillusioned young people figuring out what the heck to do with their lives” movies. Like Clerks, Clockwatchers or Garden State. Basically the characters wander around in a suburban landscape of quirky people and bizarre situations that they don’t feel quite connected to. They have variying degrees of emotional states from lonely to isolated to horribly depressed.
If anything, I am going with the getting on a bus being basically a metaphor for her moving on to the next stage in life. So in a sense it is a metaphor for death of her old high school life (Compared to say…throwing herself underneath the bus which would be actual death). She is moving on to her new adult life with all new kinds of feelings of emptyness, isolation and detachment.
When I was done I wanted the two hours of my life back. Nothing really drew me into this movie.
That said, I don’t see it as her killing herself. Doesn’t seem in character, she tried to get Cy to pick up and leave once. Always said it was her fantasy to do that. Norman got on the bus empty handed. She had a small suitcase. If it was death I see her without a bag too.
Because it was a bus route that had been discontinued. The old man kept waiting and waiting and waiting for a bus that could not come, but then it did come just for him.
Then later it came just for Enid too.
In spite of being told that no bus would come, the old man knew otherwise. My wife and I sort of took the bus scenes as a metaphor for trusting your convictions and being able to get what you want.
maybe the kids who saw the bus as symbols of death were also the ones who were wondering why they had teachers who didn’t know that literature meant writing not film