Happy Endings - do they float your boat?

[MeriPie]

For me, the perfect ending has to feel like a battlefield after the battle has finished. There are crows wheeling above, a heavy, pervasive silence, smoke and stench blowing across the corpses of the fallen... then a couple of people start to drag themselves up and pick their way through the chaos, stumbling off to find something or someone to heal their wounds. I don't mean literally, although it works literally as well.

I hate endings where you feel it's been tied off too neatly. If everyone dies at the end, just because the author couldn't be bothered to deal with them all, or everyone gets married and lives happily ever after, it really spoils the whole set for me. At the end of Robin Hobb's books ******SPOILER****** when Fitz just trots off and gets the girl and lives happily ever after, well... I know the guy deserves it after all he's been through, but it felt really contrived somehow. If it had maybe just been a different girl... Anyway, enough ranting.

I think my favourite ending that has the 'battlefield' feel to it is the end of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. I have to set aside a few days where I won't be needed for anything sensible before I read the end of that, because I cry for hours and hours and hours, and every time I think about it, I start again. Absolutely perfect ending, even though it's agony.

 

[Mouse]

Yeah the ending to HDM was awesome! I do like a good tragic ending!

Robin Hobb did pretty much the same ending with Nevare in her Soldier Son books too, but the rest of the series was so depressing, that I was actually glad it picked up at the end!

 

[Mark_R]

omg, i totally agree, the ending of HDM was utterly heart-breaking, and you wish to hell that Pullman could have just made it happy, but really the ending was right. I dont think i would recall the emotions of reading that trilogy if the ending had been any different... poor Lyra and Will....

 

[Murtagh's_Muse]

I do sometimes enjoy the Shakespeare-style ending of everybody dies. Typically I don't want the hero to survive, they tend to be self-righteous and unrealistically lucky/powerful. Some nicely flawed side characters could make it though. And sometimes it's nice to see the "bad" guy get away, particularly when they have some endearing (not hero-ish) qualities. For example in the Inheritance cylce I like Murtagh, the "good" villain, and as long as he lives everyone else could disappear in my opinion.

 

[MaraFox006]

It depends on the book. If it was happy throughout, I would want the ending to have something bad in it, like a cliffhanger.
Otherwise, I'm fine with a happy ending.

 

[Window Bar]

Drama or comedy? In comedy, a neat little package of laughter and good times can be presented as the ending.

Drama is so easy. Most important stories in real life involve at least a modicum of sadness. Even in children's stories, such as The Hobbit or Peter Pan, there is a loss incurred--the price of wisdom. Without it, we feel out of balance.

 

[RcGrant]

I like to feel that it isn't over at the end. This shouldn't be confused with not finishing off the story.

I guess the best way I can explain it is to use an example - Harry Potter. For me, the ending was excellent - Harry did what he had to do, then he fancied a bit of a kip. The problem with the series, for me, was the epilogue. I don't WANT to know what happened years later, and I didn't appreciate the whole thing being tied up in brown paper and string, and everyone had kids with really bad names.

*cough*

Anyhow, my point, if I can find it, is that I like to be able imagine what comes next. The story, which was what the book/series was about, is usually PART of someone's life, or PART of an era, or similar. It isn't everything. So I like to be able to walk away and imagine how I see the characters in a few years.

And don't get me started on post-publishing additions. Honestly, if I hear another interview with 'so-and-so wizard/witch is living in the outer reaches of a jungle and married X classmate' I will scream!

 

[Boneman]

And there's a happy ending (or is it just a beginning?) you're back, and posting on the chrons!!

 

[Blackrook]

Characters don't have to have a happy ending, but it makes the reader happier if the ending feels right.

It is well established that certain situations do not have happy endings, like the doomed love affair of West Side Story or the doomed love affair of The Postman Always Rings Twice.

In the first situation, the romance is doomed because it is forbidden by society, in the second instance the romance is doomed because the rules of karma forbids murderers from having a happy ending.

 

[Aliatvseries]

Well, that depends what's meant with happy endings. If that means all the characters survive unscratched and live happily ever after... then No. If it means characters get killed and the main character(s) suffers, but it still ends happily in some way, then Yes.