Famous last lines
Both my (occasional) favourite first and final sentences are from Martin Cruz Smith's novel Gorky Park. This novel concludes with the following line:
“He thrilled as each cage door opened and the wild sables made their leap and broke for the snow — black on white, black on white, black on white, and then gone.”
If a story ends strongly, its ending may stay with you long after you have finished reading. What makes an ending ‘strong’? A story’s final sentence may play a role. Which of the stories in The Penguin Book of the Beach do you believe has the best final sentence? What makes it ‘the best’?
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I set my mind to come up with a strong ending but nothing jumped into my mind. In looking through my book shelves, I came across D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers - haven't looked at it for years, but I liked the strength suggested in the character: "He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly." I like endings that suggest life beyond the novel.
I liked the last few lines of 'The Hottest Night of the Century' by Glenda Adams:
"'I don't know why I try to keep on living,' he cried.
'So why do you?' I asked.
He drowned three weeks later."
I found this ending was unexpected and left me a bit shocked. It also made me think of regretting things I've said in the past. A strong ending, in my opinion, should leave you thinking, and often allows you to relate to your own life. This ending did that for me.
I enjoyed Lifeguard's ending a lot. I'm not sure if I would say the most, because it's sometimes hard to tell when faced with so many decisions. The lifeguard is patiently (or maybe not so patiently) waiting for the moment when his assistance is required.
He says, "Someday my alertness will bear fruit; from near the horizon there will arise, delicious, translucent, like a green bell above the water, the call for help, the call, a call, it saddens me to confess, that I have yet to hear."
This struck me as a remarkably honest thing to say, that he wanted someone to be in a position from which they require saving. It sounds like he wants to be needed, to feel as though he's useful. I thought it was a clever ending to a very well written story (possibly one of my favourite in the compilation). Endings are best when they finish on a powerful, profound note, and when they make you stop and think about what the story was really about. A great ending will have a purpose, and not simply serve as the conclusion.
One of my favorite last sentences from the collection is from the "Great Barrier Reef"-'...he was happy but let down...serious thoughts of his coming confrontations with malaria and leprosy and pain and sadness were returning, and what he need was a good night's sleep.'
Having gone through the beautiful imagery of the Great Barrier Reef and the fun party on board, the idea of 'malaria' and 'leprosy' seem so distant, to the point of gentle humour. Also, it is amusing to see the change brought upon the main character. The narrator has lost all her initial bitterness,and even adopts a slightly patronizing tone towards her partner. This sentence skillfully wraps up by story, by demonstrating what has been gained through this trip to the Great Barrier Reef.
I thinks that a good ending must leave a lasting impression on the reader well after the story's end. Above all, it should remind the reader of what message lies at its heart.
I also agree with Jess's opinion on the most effective last sentence however I found the finishing sentence from Frank Moorhouse's short story, ' Across The Plains, Over The Mountains, And To The Sea', also very subjective and moving.
To grasp the slight intensity of the last sentence without reading the whole story, I need to include the lines following onto the finishing sentence.
' "No,' she said, 'I don't remember it'
I went out of the party and on to the balcony of the house and wept.
I'm crying now.
'That's all right. When you're ready, we'll analyse the dream.'
The story basically revolves around a dream a man has about a trip to the coast with his mistress that he had taken in real life. He describes how liberating it was to be with her and the overwhelming connection he felt with her. The ending sentence suggests to the reader that perhaps the dream had, in fact, only been a dream, that he had never really experienced an amazing journey with her, and that it was all in his mind.
In my opinion, a strong ending is one where the final sentence causes an ongoing sense of overwhelming emotion and thought, for the readers. It should also be able to produce a lasting emotional attachment between the novel and reader.
I would have to agree with Jess on this one. The last three lines in "The Hottest Night Of The Century" by Glenda Adams made the strongest impact on me out of all of the short stories.
It was a shocking end to an already strange tale which is why they stood out from the other stories.
These last lines show that the man didn't understand his own existence, but for a long time he thought he was the only one who wondered at his life. Once his child questioned the same thing he gave up because it wasn't only he who was confused any longer. I like this ending to the short story better than any of the others because it exposes the impact other people have on our own decisions
Rosie's comment:
My favourite last line was from 'The Hottest Night of the Century' by Glenda Adams. It was my favourite story over all in the anthology, with the final lines being:
"'I don't know why I try to keep on living,' he cried.
'So why do you?' I asked.
He drowned three weeks later."
This was such a great ending to the story, because of the shock that the author intended with the bluntness of the final line, 'he drowned three weeks later'. I liked the ending, because it finished on such a powerful final sentence that stayed with me as I began reading the next story, which I find makes the best stories, ones that leave you with a lasting impression.
The two stories which I found had the best last lines have already been mentioned; The Hottest Night of the Century by Glenda Adams and Across the Plains, Over the Mountains and To the Sea by Frank Moorhouse. I looked for last lines which left an impression in me even after reading the many stories in the anthology and it is obvious that these two were the best out of the lot.
The short and bold statement made by the narrator of The Hottest Night of the Century left me wondering if what the son said had prompted the father to die "three weeks later". The instant I read it, the sense of guilt indulged in me as I think of times when I am angry and blurt out words I don't mean but was not held accountable for them. But in this story, it seemed as though the son paid the price.
Across the Plains, Over the Mountains and To the Sea by Frank Moorhouse carried a very different approach to an ending which also left a strong impression in me. The story opens up with a man confiding and talking about his broken relationship with a woman. To end, the psychologist says 'That's all right. When you're ready, we'll analyse the dream.' When reading through the story, I could really feel the pain and sadness the narrator had gone through. To realize that this was all a dream, suggests that the narrator may have undergone more painful experiences in reality. The reason for dreams is suggested with the many theories out there like Freud's, Hobson & McCarley's and Tarnow's. Moorhouse's connection of this story to the many reasons to dreaming leaves me as a reader wondering why the narrator had dreamed this particular dream; leaving us to analyze it as the psychologist suggested.
The last line that struck me was "That body thrashed and whitened the water, throttling out, vibrating, parts shearing away, roaring white hot, and all the way down she felt young and strong and perfect in the cold darkness" from Winton's "The Water was Dark and It Went Forever Down".
That paragraph represented victory to me, that the girl had the utmost determination to swim free from her mother's alcohol-fuelled misery and I actually admired the fact that the girl was willing to leave her mother behind to start afresh. If I were in that position, I'd probably wouldn't even begin to think about leaving my mother behind for my own good, but, that may be just me.
The last line that left an impression on me was the same as the one Beverly has mentioned, but I had interpreted it in a different way than her. To me, that last line seemed like her last moments, that the girl had chosen death over a life spent with her mother's alcoholic despair. The girl, wanted to keep her youth and vitality forever, and she soon took her own life, to keep that untainted by the stresses of her mother. To me, it seemed as though she drowned in the ocean of wine and gin her mother had consumed. The girl had lost out to the pressure, and desparately looked for the quickest way out, and ending her life was a solution she had chosen. Though Bev's interpretation that it was a victory was probably right in the way, that the girl had achieved what she wanted, eternal youth that cannot change because she isn't alive to age and be moulded into the alcoholic, troubled woman her mother is.
“But he kicked and struck, half in panic, half in pride, away from his father, away from the shore, away, in this strange new element that seemed all his own.” If you find someone who says they have read a more poignant and perfect ending to a short story, nay any story, you have found yourself a liar. This ending eliminates any doubt in the reader’s mind in relation to the petty and selfish nature of Mr and Mrs Singleton. It shows that the littlest boy was in fact the biggest man in the scenario, a sad truth for the Singleton family. Paul manages to do what neither his father nor mother could, have the maturity to simply walk away, that being the element that is all his own. This ending more than any other stuck with me after finishing the anthology ergo I chose it for the topic of “Famous last lines”
"On the right, on the side of the level, motionless sea, always in the same place, the same little wave is breaking." The ending for The Beach really stood out to me. Not only is it the final sentence of a unique short story that embodies the nature of the beach, it is also the end of the very book itself. To me, this line paints a scene of calm and solace. Each time I read it, an image appears before my eyes: Just like a movie, the camera is fixed on the shore, as wave after wave slowly encroach the wet sand of the shore. The use of repetition, in which the word "same" is used twice, instills a slow and steady sense of rhythm, and the sounds of waves can almost be heard.
This beautiful scene is brought together by each of these separate features, and its hard to see a better end to this anthology.
"No doubt full of their own fears of sharks, of drowning, of going down under too heavy of a load, and of all the things unseen, all the things below."
The final sentence from the story 'Redfish' seems to draw attention to the inherent fear we all have of the unknown. For a story that comes off as being relatively pointless, the ending is an appealing touch. I couldn't think of any story which would fall under 'best ending', but for me "Redfish" definitely stood out.
Last year, I found Sydney Carton's last sentence "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done, it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known" to be the best ending of last year, summing up the self-sacrifice he has undertaken to ensure the freedom of his friends.
This year, I felt that the ending of 'The Fish Scale Shirt' was pretty good. Here, it appears that the entire story, though vague in location, has been leading up to this one point. I almost treat this story as a story of self-fulfilment and potential, when the girl realises the shirt is meant for her, and drives off in the car, and leaves. Many new things are possible for her.
Paul's comment:
The line i choose as the most effective opus to a story from the anthology is that from 'The Hottest Night of the Century' by Glenda Adams.
"'I don't know why I try to keep on living,' he cried.
'So why do you?' I asked.
He drowned three weeks later."
I see this sentence as a potent contradiction of 2 of our basic human instincts, the instinct of survival, and our need as humans to succeed. Our instinct of survival is that which makes us gasp for air when we come above the water. It's this intrinsic feature in all of us that makes us hold on to the final thread of life that we have.
Our desire to succeed is what governs our actions and dictates which decisions we make and the path we take on our life. For some success and survival are intertwined, but for the man in this story, his goal is death. He has no goals that supercede death, and therefore death is his goal, and he succeeds in achieving it. In essence, 2 of our most basic instincts, elements of us that are what make us human, are contradicted, but the man's death although perhaps it was not a suicide, was his goal and was achieved. In achieving success through death, it makes us wonder about our capabilities to have the desire to survive, is there really a point in our lives when being alive is something we truly do not want? This line is very deep in its meaning and I think that it is because of this it is brilliant.
In my opinion, the ending of the story, -The Hottest Night of the Century- by Glenda Adams was the 'best' ending. The story ends with a single line, in a seperate paragraph; "He drowned three weeks later".
The amount of tension and distress that has built up in the family ever since the beginning is released in this single sentence. The distress from the lack of communication in the family, and so the lack of human companionship and emotion drove the Father of the narrator to suicide, is portrayed in these simple words.
Also with the narrator's last spoken line, "So why do you?", in response to her father's question about why he keeps living, also sums up the lack of affection in the family, that is shown in the string of events from the start.
As said by Ms. Jones, it's the basic human instinct of yearning for companionship that is basically our desire to continue living. When a person lacks these factors in their life, they end up in the state that the Father is in.
In my opinion, the last words of Learning to Swim were the most cleverly crafted.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Singleton had referred to a new element that seemed all their own - in Mr. S's case, it was swimming, and for Mrs. S, it was reading Leopardi and Verlaine in college, indulging in classics and the idea that she was most desirable.
Neither characters ever considered that the same individuality and importance that they had bestowed upon themselves would also show itself in their belittled son, but when Swift writes of Paul swimming 'away from his father, away, in this strange new element that seemed all his own', Paul defies his parents' pettiness and asserts his independence and strength of character.
Another reason the ending struck me was that I had not been expecting any type of emancipation or 'happy ending' as the climax of the story neared. I was encouraged by this conclusion. I agree with Ms Mitchell that an open ending inspiring contemplation of and affection for a character with suggested potential enriches the reading experience.
My favourite final like was from Learning to Swim by Graham Swift.
"But he kicked away and struck, half in panic, half in pride, away from his father, away from the shore, away, in this strange new element that seemed all his own."
I liked this final sentence because I believe it encapsulates the feeling of panic and pride that are felt when you strike out on your own as Paul is doing here. He is making the conscious decision to remove himself from the competition his parents are constantly locked in and finding his own way. In many ways his ability to do so shows that he is far more mature than his parents. That he can walk or swim away finding independence from his situation. Mr Singleton states in the novel that if Paul could swim he could leave but Paul’s learning to swim doesn’t only free Mr Singleton but also Paul.
My favourite final line was from ‘Learning to Swim’ - "But he kicked away and struck, half in panic, half in pride, away from his father, away from the shore, away, in this strange new element that seemed all his own."
I thought this ending suited perfectly to the short story because it left me thinking of how Paul is going to live his own life independently, without being treated as a prize by his parents. As he swims away from his father in panic and in pride, it portrays his strength and desire for freedom on his own terms. I characterise Paul with strong inner strength and also the main reason why Mr. And Mrs. Singleton are together. By Paul swimming away from both his mother and father this indicates the disfunctionality and falseness of his parents relationship and that their treatment of him, although they both consider it to be the correct method, it is wrong and Paul finds it unacceptable and that’s why he swims to find a ‘new element’ that will be all his own.
“He moved his hands to my neck. He touched my ears and my head. Then he put his hands over my face.
‘I don’t know why I try to keep on living,’ he cried.
‘So why do you?’ I asked.
He drowned three weeks later.” – The Hottest Night Of The Century
For me, these were the best ending lines for two reasons. Firstly, obviously there is the obvious reason, that this is quite a shocking, unexpected way to end a story, and by taking the reader off-guard it is able to make a much greater impact on them, making the story as a whole more memorable. Secondly, I also seemed to find the story in general as the most interesting story from Book Of The Beach, with the story being in told almost in little segments, each piece gradually getting more dramatic/intense, which helps to amplify the great ending. In my opinion, without the terrific story to back it up, the ending would not be anywhere near as powerful.
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