The effect is a heightened sense of realism (or what James Wood calls “thisness” in How Fiction Works) with a bit of tragicomedy. Instead of giving us more details, Joyce subverts our expectations by offering a hyper-awareness of a seemingly unimportant and completely mundane detail: the corkscrew. But even then, Joyce slyly withholds the nature of that realization (read: “epiphany”) from us – we can only deduce the reason why Joe is “very much moved” by Maria’s singing and why he cries. The only person who demonstrates a true understanding of her is Joe. Furthermore, Maria does not undergo any change – she is until the end a tender but clueless, tragic character. In “Clay,” Joyce surprisingly ends the story not on the main protagonist Maria, but on Joe, a side character.

He said that there was no time like the long ago and no music for him like poor old Balfe, whatever other people might say and his eyes filled up so much with tears that he could not find what he was looking for and in the end he had to ask his wife to tell him where the corkscrew was. To slightly vindicate myself for using Joyce’s (still-beautiful) ending as a jumping off point to talk about the pitfalls of epiphanic endings, here is an excerpt of a different story from the same author:īut no one tried to show her mistake and when she had ended her song Joe was very much moved. Charles Baxter, in the chapter called “Against Epiphanies” in his influential book Burning Down the House, likens epiphanies to “the mass production of insight” and pins the source on culture that has “a fascination with innocence.” He argues for and challenges writers instead to write “stories of real consequence in which no discursive insight appears, or in which the insights are shown to be false.” Because of the length of short stories, it can be argued that a realistic portrayal of a character’s dramatic change of heart is too difficult, if not artificial. Such epiphanies within characters of a short story, however, often run the risk of appearing predictable or didactic, especially in our postmodern age where simplistic assertions are suspect. It is a satisfying ending because we witness a character maturing, we see him finally come to grips with reality, and we apprehend the change before our very eyes.

The sentence contrasts earlier scenes where the boy daydreams and comically assumes chivalric airs. The ending shatters the boy’s romantic misconceptions and plays with the concept of a blind person finally being able to see (“gazing into the darkness I saw” and “my eyes burned”). In James Joyce’s “Araby,” the closing depicts a 180-degree change in the perspective of the narrator – an unnamed boy who, prior to the above, is a lovesick child blinded by the beauty of a neighboring girl. Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity and my eyes burned with anguish and anger. Let’s start with one of the most famous lines in literature: With those caveats in mind, the next best thing is to present case studies of endings that I think work (at least for me) within the context of those particular stories. In fact, what may sound like an effective closing to one reader might just be totally underwhelming to another. Ohio: “I know it when I see it.” As is the case with establishing aesthetic rules in writing, generalizations usually don’t work. The final paragraph of a story is usually what readers take away from the entire experience, as it is the last thing they get to process, and thus, the last thing they’re likely to remember.Īpart from the exhortations that a story needs to tie up all loose ends and bring closure to the readers, discussing what constitutes a good ending frequently devolves into the famous pronouncement in the concurring opinion of Jacobellis v. So much pressure lies in its mastery – where a solid or tepid opening could mean the difference between having a work read or not read beyond the first page, a satisfying or lackluster ending often decides whether the piece gets published or not.

Crafting good endings, like good openings, is among the most difficult feats to attain in a short story.

Before your eyes endings