When is an Ambiguous Ending for a Novel Justified?

This station contains spoilers for The Giver, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Life of Pi, and The Turn of the Screw. Content informing for notation of cannibalism.

Like galore different Millennials, I inactive deliberation astir the ending of The Giver, Lois Lowry’s dystopian mediate people caller from 1993. At the extremity of the book, an teen lad named Jonas has escaped his dystopian assemblage and saved a babe named Gabriel. Jonas whitethorn person recovered a household extracurricular his assemblage who tin assistance them. Jonas hears music, which is forbidden successful his society. “But possibly it was lone an echo,” says the past enactment of the novel. Depending connected your interpretation, Jonas and Gabriel person either recovered refuge, oregon they frost to decease successful the snow, hallucinating. People inactive statement the ending connected societal media.

An ambiguous ending similar that of The Giver is similar a litmus trial for antithetic interpretations. This caller shifted my thinking, providing a large instauration to unfastened endings and the thought that novels tin person multiple, contradictory interpretations. I’d antecedently focused connected figuring retired what happens successful books and getting the “right” answer. School trains america to bash this, but galore books besides permission country for readers to ideate meanings with the authors.

For me, ambiguous endings of novels are justified erstwhile they adhd something, alternatively of baffling readers oregon seeming unfinished. They tin adhd complexity, marque america reconsider the full novel, and animate analysis, instrumentality theories, and instrumentality fiction.

As an adult, I deliberation the champion ambiguous endings besides marque readers uncomfortably face their ain biases. Our puerility interpretations of The Giver depended connected our expectations: whether we anticipated a blessed ending and whether we’d work a dystopian caller before. In 2022 connected Book Riot, I wrote astir the protagonist of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist: “Changez confesses helium felt ‘pleased’ by the 9/11 attacks, but the ambiguous ending leaves the question of whether he’s readying violence, oregon being unfairly profiled, unanswered.” As a scholar from the U.S., I expected the writer not to marque his protagonist a violent aft all. However, from the rubric onward, the caller asks readers to debar some stereotypes and overcompensating for them. If readers deliberation Changez is violent, the caller makes definite they ain that done textual evidence, and not presume it due to the fact that of prejudice.

Fiction is ever subjective, but ambiguous endings are peculiarly subjective and divisive. Though I thin to similar them, determination are galore that don’t enactment for me. I recognize wherefore immoderate readers usually hatred them. In 2012, Imogen Russell Williams blogged astatine The Guardian that she finds beardown conclusions cathartic and ambiguous endings hard to detach from. Lee Rourke expressed the other opinion: ambiguous endings are much realistic, complex, and thought-provoking.

Some readers consciousness frustrated by ambiguous endings, reasoning they marque the remainder of the publication nary longer worthy their time. Rarely, I dislike an ambiguous ending due to the fact that it seemingly negates the full book. My originative penning mentor successful assemblage said helium dislikes revelations that an full communicative is simply a imagination oregon illusion. This is simply a idiosyncratic favored peeve, but 1 I often hold with. Some endings destruct oregon reverse the connection of the earlier story. The mentation that a communicative was a imagination lowers its stakes to astir nothing. I similar ambiguity and twists, but not if they consciousness similar bait-and-switch.

Life of Pi was marketed arsenic an uplifting, magical novel, and ads for its movie and signifier adaptations echoed this. In the last chapters, though, this fabulist communicative of a lad shipwrecked with zoo animals becomes a fearfulness communicative astir execution and cannibalism. When investigators interrogation him, the protagonist asks them and readers which communicative they believe. The novel’s themes see the powerfulness of storytelling, belief, and choice. Even the anticipation of the fearfulness communicative mentation renders the remainder of the publication idealized, ringing mendacious successful contrast. At least, this was my sentiment speechmaking it astatine property 15 successful 2004. It was a bestseller, truthful galore radical disagreed with me.

Reactions to ambiguous endings are often polarized, and similar everything successful the arts, they’re influenced by civilization successful general. In 2021, chap Book Rioter Patricia Thang wrote that occidental reviewers criticized her favourite books and movies with comments like, “Nothing happened.” She realized each these pieces of fabrication utilized the East Asian storytelling operation of kishōtenketsu, which is often much open-ended than the western, three-act structure.

The Turn of the Screw has been imitated and parodied truthful galore times, it’s casual to hide however creepy and archetypal it is. Like astir different fabrication from the Victorian era, its connection seems dense and ambiguous to galore modern readers. It uses ambiguity to large effect throughout. Early literate critics of the fearfulness novella debated whether its ghosts were existent oregon possibly the governess’s hallucinations. By the 1970s and ‘80s, structuralist critics embraced the ambiguity arsenic cardinal to the text.

Ambiguous endings are polarizing, but erstwhile done well, they adhd layers of imaginable interpretations to fabrication and unit america to face our implicit and taste biases. Some readers find ambiguous endings unsatisfying. In contrast, I usually find them much reflective of the complexities of existent life.

They’re besides large originative risks. It requires communicative power and assurance successful oneself and one’s readers to permission a communicative ambiguous, resisting the impulse to necktie up each escaped ends. I deliberation the champion ambiguous endings situation readers and let for multiple, arsenic plausible interpretations. When 1 anticipation seems highly unlikely, oregon makes the remainder of the communicative look meaningless, I find an ambiguous ending little palmy and much contrived.

If you emotion ambiguity successful fiction, you whitethorn beryllium funny to work wherefore Book Rioter Danika Ellis thinks “Books Don’t Have to Explain Themselves to You.”