VanderMeer's Wonderbook, Chapter Three: Beginnings And Endings(Insert Essay: Deserina Boskovich, The Challenges of Endings)

One of the central observations in Boskovich's essay here is the recognition that an ending can reshape an entire story, and that this may mean that the right ending is not always one that the reader will immediately accept or understand.  To illustrate this point, she discusses Stephen King's Dark Tower series.  The plot of the books leads the main character towards a confrontation in the tower, and while this confrontation occurs, the outcome subverts the expected resolution.  I haven't read this particular series, but I gather from Boskovich that the ending is one that alters the meaning and context of the journey that the character's have undergone.  

In her discussion, Boskovich admits that when she first read the book, that ending did not feel entirely right to her, yet that very discomfort was also part of what made the series endure for her.  It was not the ending she had anticipated, and was instead charged in a way that made her keep thinking about it.  Now, years later, she recognizes the power of that ending, and acknowledges that King's willingness to take the risk of not meeting expectations worked to make that ending stronger and more meaningful.  In turn, the ending provided a context for the narrative that reshaped the meaning of the entire journey.

That is, I think, one of the central points about a great ending: it does not merely resolve the issues of the story, but casts the entire narrative into a context that means it can never be seen the same way again.  This may be a fairly subtle thing, and does not require a complete subversion necessarily, but the point is that at the end their is revelation about the story for the reader.  This revelation is not in the details of what is told, but in how that ending reflects the beginning and the book as a whole.

For instance, consider Daniel Keyes' Flowers For Algernon.  In the story, Charlie, a mentally disabled man, gains intelligence after becoming a test subject in a medical experiment.  Now, it is fairly obvious that a setup like this can resolve in a few different ways, but generally speaking, it will be either a successful ending (in which Charlie retains his new intellect) or a failing ending (in which Charlie reverts or worse).  Now, if the ending is that Charlie goes on to lead a wonderful life as an intelligent man, that lends itself to one set of interpretations about the events of the story.  If Charlie reverts back to his original condition, that will give an entirely different impression of those same events.  These are just the obvious possibilities, but they are not the only ones.  Suppose the story ended with Charlies intellect becoming something he hates, because now he knows how cruel the world is and he just wants to go back but cannot?  Or, suppose Charlie's intellect turns him into a terrible person somehow?  What if the experiment made his intelligence keep growing exponentially?  What if he wound up becoming a vegetable, or even dead, as a result of the tests being run on him?  

Each of these endings could be built on to that same basic premise, but they each change how the reader understands the events of the story as a whole.  Notice as well that none of these examples are based on any sort of plot twist or secret knowledge.  The reader's reinterpretation results from them seeing the outcome alone, not from a revelation of new information about the earlier events.  While that type of twist is extremely valuable, my point here is that an ending changes the story even if it is fairly straightforward and doesn't provide new insights about what happened in that way.  The ending provides a context for understanding the story, and whatever emotional resonance comes through at the end is likely to be one of the emotions the reader most strongly associates with the book, since it will be the last before completing the story.  That final feeling lingers and casts it's shadow over the rest.  Suppose a story showed a woman having fun out for an evening, but the final scene shows her at home crying.  The meaning of all the things she did earlier is changed entirely by that context, and a reader is likely to think of the story as a sad one, even though 90 percent of it may not contain any hint of sadness.

It seems that one of Boskovich's favorite structures is cyclic, where the end of the story brings things around again.  Beyond the Dark Tower, which apparently does this, she discusses Walter Miller's A Canticle For Leibowitz,  which begins after a nuclear apocalypse and follows the rebuilding of the world to the point of it's destruction once more.  The ending shows humanity beginning to rebuild once more, but implies that this is just another repetition of that same cycle.  Cyclic structures of these sorts create a meaning that the reader cannot find until that ending occurs.  Until the ending, when the story returns to the origin point, the cyclic structure remains hidden.  The revelation of the repeated events becomes a central aspect for interpreting the meaning.

To offer an example of this, let us return again to the premise from Flowers For Algernon.  If the end of the story shows the scientists behind the experiment looking over there results, calling Charlie "Subject 3" and begin discussing preparation for a new with another patient, the meaning of the whole thing will change yet again.  Consider how each of the possible endings above could be coupled with a final scene like this and what that might do to change how a reader interprets the events of the story.  The cyclic structure suggests a shift in the focus of the story.  By making Charlie an example within a larger context, the focus shifts from his experiences to the questions surrounding those who are doing the experiments.  I am not suggesting, of course, that any of these ideas would be better than Daniel Keyes original choice (indeed, I am quite glad that he fought publishers about keeping the original ending when he expanded the original story into the novel), but merely attempting to provide examples of how changing a stories ending can cause it to be completely reinterpreted.

The ending to a story must reinterpret what came before, at least to some extent.  It has to collect the many disparate elements of a story and bring them together, and in so doing it must place them into a context together.  The way the ending unfolds organizes what came before, showing the reader which elements matter most, while setting others aside, and it must also answer certain questions while pointing out new ones.  The goal is to leave the reader with an experience that is satisfying, and which will provide them with the keys to understanding the story, or at least recognizing why it was worth reading.  To do this, one needs to consider how that ending will change the meaning of the story, asking  what it is the reader should take away from the experience.  The reader will remember the ending, even as they might forget certain scenes that occurred along the way, and they will see the whole of the book through that lens.  The ending should make them think back on everything that they have just read and think about it again, expanding their understanding of the story and, perhaps, one hopes, the world at large.