Are We There Yet?

            The most successful fiction should mirror the way that real life happens, and for that reason some of the best short stories ever written do not end with clear resolutions. A character might come to a crossroads and not know which way to turn; some unexpected element often enters and stuns the protagonist to such an extent that all seems lost. This is often where the story should end. The unresolved ending is the better option for writers and their readers in a serious work of fiction.

            Life is a journey that for most of us never has many clear resolutions. We may reach certain milestones: birthdays, graduations, anniversaries of marriages, or the start of a career; but for the vast majority of our allotted time we are works in progress. There is always something left to do, some unfinished business that awaits us in the future. We often tell ourselves that we will be happy when we reach a certain point, a goal we have set that will make us complete, only to find when arriving there it is not what we had envisioned. Such is life, and perhaps the only true resolution is when life ends.

            Fiction is a reflection of life, and in the hands of gifted writers it can enhance our living by giving us insights into the human condition, from unique perspectives we would never encounter otherwise. An author has powers of creation that are unparalleled in the arts; the ability to construct new worlds and to inhabit them with characters, settings, and situations that have never before existed. The only real restriction for a work of fiction is that it has to end at some point. The story cannot go on indefinitely, in the manner that our actual lives seem to. The writer's choices at the end of the story are crucial when dealing with a work of adult fiction.

            The distinction between adult and children's fiction is an important one when it comes to the question of unresolved endings. With few exceptions, most stories for children have distinct and usually positive finales. I believe that as adults we tend to shelter the young from the harsher realities of life, and that this is reflected in their literature. Our belief is that children need hope. They need to believe that things work out for the best. My father has told me about an incident from my childhood that illustrates this poignantly. At about age three, I was watching an episode of The Twilight Zone with him. In the plot, there were astronauts on an alien planet, and at the end one was left behind when the rest lifted off for the return to Earth. I could not handle that scenario. My father says I was very upset, and that he had to lie to me- tell me that they were going to come back for him, so he could get me to bed.

            Good parents instinctively shelter their children, but eventually this has to change as they grow older, and it becomes a balancing act. I believe that writers of children's fiction face a similar dilemma. Is it possible that a childhood of reading stories with the inevitable happy ending sets one up for a more painful encounter with reality later in life? Yes, I think so, and that many adults cling to this need for clear resolutions and good outcomes in their reading choices (and even their life choices) as a result.

            The mature writer of adult fiction has a responsibility to portray some of the ambiguities of existence, no matter how otherwise fantastical a particular story's elements are. As Flannery O'Connor observes, “Fiction is an art that calls for the strictest attention to the real” (Charters 1042). Among the gifted authors that observe this are Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, and John Updike. A careful look at their choices at story's endings sheds some insights on the benefits of the unresolved one. In Carver's “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, an afternoon and evening have been spent by two married couples in conversation and drinking gin while sitting at a dining room table. Their rambling talk touches on many subjects; love, death, and jealousy among them. It is starkly real, exactly the way that inebriated adults would engage each other, and it therefore must end in a realistic and open-ended manner. When the gin runs out, they have also ran out of things to say, and sit in silence and darkness. It is the logical conclusion. They will wake in the morning, hungover maybe, and with none of the problems they discussed solved. But there is no need to go there; Carver leaves that for the readers to realize on their own.

            “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates is the tale of a teenage girl who is testing her boundaries, trying to find an identity as adolescents often do. In the course of her outings with friends, she meets an older man that eventually comes to prey upon her at her home. Urged by the threat of harm to her family if she doesn't comply, she leaves with the predator and the story is over. It is a very untidy ending. The reader can assume an impending rape and possibly even murder, but to put this in writing would be a mistake. It is the horror of not knowing what will happen that delivers the impact, because the girl victim doesn't know her fate either. Oates, by leaving it all unresolved, puts us right there in her shoes.

            John Updike's “A&P” is the third exhibit in the case for open-ended fiction, and the story teaches us an important moral about poor decisions and their outcome, made all the more moving by the harsh anticlimax that nineteen year-old grocery clerk Sammy experiences. In a hormone-driven moment of false bravado, merely to impress some scantily clad girls, he quits his job when the boss lectures these females about their attire. The entire drama has occurred within the A&P until the end, when Sammy walks out into the parking lot, freshly unemployed. For a dose of realism, there is no sign of the girls he was trying to impress, but merely an upset mother with her crying children getting into a car. He looks back into his old place of work, sees his boss filling in for him, and begins to regret his foolish mistake. It is the correct moment for the story to close. The protagonist has brought an unexpected end to this chapter of his life, and what lies ahead is unclear. That story is not written yet.

            An important consideration needs to be applied to the act of leaving a story unresolved. It should not be a gimmick. If all that was required for a good story was to leave it hanging, then soap operas and other serial dramas would be considered works of art too; they clearly are not. Sometimes we have an author such as Flannery O'Connor, who claims that her stories surprise even her. If such a writer finds their story progressing toward a clear resolution, it is their duty to follow that instinct as well. While I consider the non-resolved ending the wiser choice for authors, like any other technique it must have good reasoning behind it, and not be applied simply because it is an easy out.

            In fiction, as well as other fine arts such as painting or music, one of the best talents to be developed is knowing when the work is finished. Some novels I have read would have been better as short stories. A painter does not have to paint realistically and give us all the details of a scene, but instead can imply or even abstract them. And speaking as a musician that has played professionally for over thirty-five years and listened to vast amounts of music, I have come to appreciate songs that make their statement simply and in less than four minutes. There was a bad trend in the 1970s when songs lasted for whole album sides and the musicians soloed incessantly (and there are still “jam-bands” keeping that trend alive). It is self-indulgent on the artists' parts, and emphasizes technique over quality. When reading the best authors or experiencing other great works, we shouldn't notice the technique.

            In short stories and even longer forms of fiction, I have made the assertion that unresolved endings are a preferable alternative to the works of lesser authors who always feel the need for closure.The trend toward the latter has been fueled in part by the general public's seeming preference for tidy endings in their more escapist fiction and film choices. There will always be a market for the various genre fiction that fills bookstore shelves; the romance and mystery novels where the lovers get their way and the detective always solves the crime.

            For the serious student of literature, however, there is a responsibility to seek out the more mature works by authors that take their craft more to heart. They strive to teach us about life, with all its ups and downs, twists and turns, and dreams that do not come to pass. Life does not come with a guarantee of successful outcomes, and neither should we expect it from our stories. We must embrace the uncertainty of our existence to be truly happy and content here in the moments we have.

Works Cited

O'Connor, Flannery. “Writing Short Stories”. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short

      Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins. 2007. 1041-1046.