I'll See Your Happy Ending and Raise You a Downer

happy ending, the--an outcome of a story or novel in which one of more of the lead characters is successful in achieving a goal; a payoff or result of a narrative in which the behavior of the protagonist leads the reader to feel optimistic; characters getting what they want without having to overpay.

One could almost paraphrase Tolstoy with the observation that happy endings are all alike, then qualify that observation with the added observation that the happy ending is the one where most of the characters achieve some measure of success after having competed for it. One could also consider the number of such endings that were dictated by publishers after having read the original endings produced first by their authors. Charles Dickens, who knew his way around endings, comes to mind with his original ending to arguably his most superbly realized novel, Great Expectations. Dickens's publisher was not happy with the ending, asked for, and got an alternate where things produced a greater glow of home, but at what cost?

In some noteworthy cases, publication seems to depend on the trope of the greater good rather that what works for a single character. The ending, which is to say the payoff of Lolita had to have a justice-is-served ending because the stakes were--and still are--so high. Conventional morality wants Humbert Humbert to have suffered more than he already has. Conventional morality wants to forget that Dolores-Dolly-Lolita might have been sophisticated and aware enough to have read Humbert and his intentions and, accordingly, to have "been there" for him.

Two notably happy endings that bear heavy irony are found in Huckleberry Finn and Catch-22; each novel ending with the protagonist fleeing from a decidedly impossible situation. Both these happy endings deserve consideration and study. Each one has the protagonist faced with an untenable fate. As readers, we join them in that escape and consequently experience the happiness of the ending. Humbert Humbert is in a no-win situation. Even if he'd been able to ride off into the sunset with Dolores, we know she'd probably have grown tired of him soon enough and, indeed, he would have grown tired of her because she was already on the verge of outgrowing his range of interest.

As in other relevant matters, the writer must be the arbiter of what constitutes the happiness part of the happy ending trope. The better way to look at the happy ending is to see it as a "justice served" moment, when the time has come to cash in the characters' and the author's chips for dramatic currency.

Annie Proulx's short story, "Brokeback Mountain," written to expose what she felt was the resident homophobia of most rural areas, can hardly be said to have a happy ending, but given the characters and the author's stake in it, the payoff of the story speaks to the issue of justice and the double standard in its service.

Happy endings and sad endings are opening hands in the metaphoric poker game of the contemporary story; the true ending, the literary ending, comes with the reflection on the fate of the characters involved as it is measured against justice, served or not served.

Front Tier Justice

ghost of Hamlet's father, the--a young prince being invoked by his father's ghost to pursue revenge on his uncle; a metaphor by which a character is reminded of some debt from the past, related to a much loved or much feared friend, relative, or mentor, calling upon the character to become an instrument of revenge; the forces of guilt or retribution conspiring to drive a character to exact payback for events not directly related to him; the long, heavy-handed reach of obligation, conflicting with a character's personal agenda.

The ghost of Hamlet's father wants revenge against Claudius, his brother, for having murdered him and subsequently become the husband of Gertrude, his widow. What better instrument for the ghost than his son? A productive line of inquiry in family and dynastic narratives, placing the squeeze of conscience and duty on the present day protagonist, undercutting his or her own ambitions and recipe for achieving them.

In the traditional ghost story, the ghost has remained in a particular corner of reality, wanting retribution or some related form of justice before moving on to its place in history, reaching across time and cultures for an instrument to represent it in the here and now. Thus haunting is brought into the dramatic sphere as a force that wants something, reminding characters of obligations, debts unpaid, talents undeveloped, justice hanging fire--all of these connective tissue to someone, some ideal, some unfinished business. Thus too the haunted character is placed in the exquisite conflict between his goals and those of another, placing the haunted in a position to discover attitudes, qualities, and techniques which will allow him or her to cope on behalf of another, then become that great dialectic of independence with a long list of influential connections.

Not all ghosts rattle chains or moan at midnight, some are more subtle, attracting their mortal instruments across centuries, cultures, traditions, drawing complete strangers into their orbit. Sometimes the instrument of justice is merely an individual who speaks up to insist that Uncle Fred may have likes his peppermint schnapps but he was as well a wise, empathetic, and kindly man. In another such a fanciful scenario, the ghost and mortal instrument could easily be as diverse as, say the iconic but no-nonsense English poet great, John Milton, and a word-loving hip-hop singer from South Philly, happening on an unpublished manuscript in a centuries-old reading room at a college in England, then bring yet one more last and resonant word, perhaps his most important word of all, from the old poet to the world of literature. Thus too the genie in the bottle, waiting with growing impatience for someone--anyone--to find the bottle in which he has been imprisoned for thousands of years, remove the stopper, which allows the genie to step out for a stretch.


justice--a sense of closure to a conflicted outcome; the payoff of a story; the rendition of a negotiated settlement on some moral, ethical, or artistic conflict.

In a legal sense, justice should be impartial, balanced, perhaps not quite satisfactory to all built at least carrying a sense of attempted fairness. In the sense of reality, which fiction approaches with some degree of ironic vision, justice is more likely to reflect blindness or bias or rank unfairness, even to the point of referring to some outcomes as poetic justice.

One instructive way of determining the attitudes and visions of a particular writer is to consider how that writer's stories payoff as related to a scale of justice. Suggested authors on whom to start: Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Joyce Carol Oates, Willa Cather. Another instructive approach is to ask after reading any work of fiction, Was justice done in this story?

The Well-Tampered Clavichord

One of my many reasons for favoring the mystery novel resides in the opportunity to identify with an individual working within the constraints of a bureaucracy as he or she pursues the truth regardless of outcome.

The pursuit is multifarious, simultaneously in spite of and against established order, frequently under some time constraint, just as frequently making some discovery that will damage the intent or reputation of someone in power.

Private investigators also intrigue me because they frequently have become private, as, say, Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer became private out of a contempt for the limitations and corruption inherent in bureaucracy.

And of course the man or woman on the street, the innocent victim who is wrongly accused and must in his or her own self-interest, solve the crime, becomes another grand source of identification for me.

Although a fan of justice being done, both in the abstract and the specific, I don't care if the murderer is actually caught as much as I care that the murderer is identified and given some literary equivalent of the scarlet letter to wear. Seeing justice represented in drama satisfied me by reminding me of what could happen in real life, what very well might happen in real life.

Mystery fiction draws me into its labyrinthine and devious pages because of its focus on discovery--discovery of motive, of fact, or information. I read on for the flare-up of awareness that a character is not all he or she seems, that a relationship has some hidden common denominator, that some social or ethical more has been breached and someone is trying to cover it up. I read for the delicious moments in which the suspects of a crime are set scurrying in the fear that the investigation will reveal some misadventure of their own, completely collateral to the investigation in progress.

As I hope you will see of me, I relish this genre not for the sense of dramatic revenge in which the miscreant is punished, because, in fact, I am in addition to being naive, optimistic, and given to think well of my fellow humans, also a bit conflicted in my cynicism, my occasions of bigotry, and my willingness to suspect what I do not understand. I neither sit on nor aspire to the moral high ground, if for no other reason than that position would occlude my greater vision of myself and the humanity of which I am a part.

I relish the mystery because the truly good ones lead me to ask of myself:

What new miracle have you seen today? Where have you looked? What small miracle have you missed in search of the colossal, effulgent beauty? What story might you have missed? What opportunity did you allow to go uninvestigated? What equivalent of the purloined letter has been sitting on your desk all this while? What small pleasure have you missed because you were too busy to look? What question have you left unasked? What sincerely felt complement have you failed to convey to someone who evoked it within you? What crime have you committed upon another today? What crime have you committed upon yourself? What thing did you fear today that you took no step to understand or overcome? What,if anything, has made you feel happy today? What have you done to exercise and hone your craft today? What line did you step over today in the reach of accomplishment? What line held you back? Who are you? What is your motive? What is your opportunity?

Means, motive, and opportunity, are the factors that identify the major suspects in a mystery novel. What do yours say of you at any time?

Where is the mystery in you?

What will you do about it?