THE ARTIFICIAL ENDING
One of the surest tags of the American short story has been its
happy ending. No matter what vicissitudes the hero or heroine may
have undergone, what problems and tragedies may have overtaken them,
what unmendable exploits of circumstance or fate they may have been
subjected to, in the end all must be well with them. The happy ending
is a direct result of our uplift optimism, of our Pollyanna philosophy
of life, of our fear of reality. We have always justified it on the
ground of our national psychology, which, we claim, is buoyant and
aggressive and won’t accept defeat. We have insisted that the American
always “gets what he wants when he wants it.” And even the cynics among
us did not dispute our last claim; they pointed to the happy ending.
It is true that of late, since it has become the fashion to question
everything, the happy ending has come in for its share of blasphemous
discussion. Here and there views have been expressed that a happy
ending is not absolutely necessary to make a story readable; some
of these views are so decidedly antagonistic as to maintain that a
happy ending is invariably inartistic, which simply proves, again,
that rebound is directed with equal force but in opposite direction as
the original bound. Even aspiring story writers come in occasionally
inoculated with doubt of the very propriety of the happy ending. To
such, we the votaries of the perfect short story, having exhausted all
our erudite arguments in a vain attempt at reconversion, finally apply
the one unfailing argument--the threat of the editorial rejection slip.
The happy ending, we admit, may not always be artistic, and it may not
always bring an acceptance, but the unhappy ending almost invariably
brings a rejection.
The fallacy of the happy ending clearly illustrates the lack of any
sound system of thought or reasoning underlying the exposition and
production of American fiction. We have the support of venerable
theories and formulas and high-sounding abstractions, but not of
facts and logic. It is as if we dared not examine the result of the
application of our theories and the filling of our formulas. Glibly
we state the psychology of the average American reader, which we
profess to know so well, but do not care to assure ourselves whether
our deductions, and even our major premises are correct. For if it
were true that the average reader always demands a happy ending, we
would have no explanation of the popularity of most of the works of
Poe, Bret Harte, Jack London, Kipling, Conrad, Maupassant, and even
the gray Russians. Doubtless there are individual characteristics in
the writings of these gentlemen that have appealed to our happily
disposed readers, but how much of the appeal has been due to a vogue
created by official O. K.’ers? The inchoate reversion to an insistence
on the unhappy ending, which is becoming apparent among some layers
of our reading public, tends to confirm this suggestion. For it is
not probable that the same people who have never been able to enjoy a
story unless it ended happily should suddenly have been seized with a
passionate amour for the “morbid” ending; and, from any rational point
of view, it is just as fallacious to accept the unhappy ending as an
invariable rule as it is to accept the happy ending. One may be as
artificial as the other.
Manifestly there are kinks in the average reader’s psychology of which
we have not been aware, or if we have, have paid little attention to.
This psychology which we have taken for granted and builded upon is not
after all so solid as we have supposed it to be. It can be and is being
molded. It appears that the present-day average reader fears nothing
so much as the imputation of being average. Here and there a brave
soul may vociferously boast of being a “low-brow,” thus betraying a
troubled consciousness of mediocrity, but on the whole the tendency is
to deplore the tastes of the average, thereby imputing to one’s self,
by implication of contrast, the possession of tastes above those of the
average. Hence the sudden ability to enjoy an unhappy ending. Hence
also the distrust of the average editor of this sudden growth in taste.
He knows its make-believe nature: the average reader may learn to
pretend a dislike for the good old happy ending, but in truth he enjoys
it as much as he ever did. Hence the continued demand for stories with
happy endings.
This may not be such a cheering view of the average reader’s
psychology, but neither is it entirely cheerless. By exploiting its
hypocritical vein of pretended admiration for good literature, we may
hope ultimately to develop a genuine admiration. People of habitual
coarse tastes, for beverages, delicacies, clothes or arts, usually
begin the refining process by affecting the tastes of those whom they
think their betters. The process itself is rather long and tedious and
often disheartening. But the aping instinct helps measurably. We cannot
hope to have a discriminating reading public in a day. Too long have we
impressed upon our public the blessings of a happy disposition and the
artistry of reflecting it in our literature. Too long have we brazened
about our pride in Pollyanna, Wallingford, Torchy, and a hundred other
fictive chasers of the blues, who won’t take defeat but go on singing
on their way. The happy story, with its breezy style, its giggling
climax, and its smacking dénouement has become a fixed type from which
our readers’ affection cannot be so quickly alienated.
D. W. Griffith, one of the ablest producers of moving pictures, is
reported to have made the statement that the average spectator of
cinema drama has the intelligence of a nine-year-old child.[25] That
Mr. Griffith is justified in his statement may be assumed from the
huge success he has had in purveying cinema entertainment. He has made
millions where others have made scanty half-millions. Verily, he knows
his public and is in a position to estimate its mental powers with
some measure of accuracy. His contempt of its intelligence does him
credit....
One of his greatest successes has been his production of “Way Down
East,” a spectacular melodrama of the old angel-girl-Satan-man variety,
with a resulting illegitimate baby which happily sees fit to die,
leaving the little mother to find work with a good Christian family.
But her past is against her and she is finally driven out into a
terrible snow-storm by a man who quotes the Bible by the yard, and the
women in the audience wet their little handkerchiefs, and the men hawk
and cough and blow their noses. The big scene of the picture, and which
is probably responsible for seventy-five per cent. of the picture’s
phenomenal success, shows a whole river of ice floating down toward a
furiously-dashing waterfall. The poor little heroine is on one of the
huge cakes of ice fast nearing the watery precipice, while the good
boy who loves her honestly is jumping like an acrobat after her in the
teeth of a raging storm.
Now, all the moving-picture patrons in the country, from the past
experience of having witnessed one thousand pictures and read ten
thousand magazine stories, ought to know that there is not one chance
in a million that the plucky lover will not arrive in time to rescue
his sweetheart--such things have not happened and do not happen (in
our stories, of course!), yet they become wide-eyed and panting with
excitement, as if they were in doubt about the outcome. Griffith
uses the “cut-back” every ten or twenty feet, showing the thundering
falls, the crashing ice with the limp figure of the girl upon it,
the boy precariously maintaining his balance, then back again to the
falls; thus prolonging the agony until he thinks the public has got
its money’s worth; then the boy arrives, clasps the girl in his arms,
his erring Christian father asks her forgiveness and welcomes her as
a prospective daughter-in-law, and the public file out in the lobby,
exclaiming ecstatically to one another: “What a masterpiece!” Verily,
this Mr. Griffith knew whereof he spoke.
Our public is still thrilled with a climax of whose outcome there
ought to be not the slightest doubt. Which merely proves that if our
fiction still has a measure of suspense it is not due to our clever
technique but to the almost fabulous stupidity of the large mass of
readers. We have evolved our tricks of technique for the prime purpose
of maintaining a keen suspense, of keeping the outcome of the conflict
which every story must have in the balance, of heightening the reader’s
curiosity to follow the destiny of the hero or heroine in whose behalf
his sympathies have been enlisted to a satisfactory end. But if after,
let us say, twenty years of reading fiction, there should suddenly dawn
upon our average reader’s mind the idea that as the hero or heroine
of a story is always immortal and unconquerable in the end, no matter
how circumstances may appear to be against him or her for the moment,
would not our skillfully woven suspense suffer a severe jolt? Of what
use would it be to fear for the safety of the trapped little girl when
a dogged confidence, gained by profitable experience in reading, would
suggest that she is due at the altar on page five and would inevitably
keep her appointment? Of what use would be taking seriously the
pugilistic encounters of the Man-Who-Can’t-Be-Knocked-Out? Why thrill
with anxiety over an overturned automobile when it is certain that the
hero pinned underneath it will have sustained nothing more serious than
a few scratches that must heal before the final sentence is completed?
What would become of all our tricks and ingenuity and inventiveness?
Would not this one convention of the invariably happy ending then
defeat all our efforts at creating suspense? And if that happened would
it not be the direst calamity to all we have worked for, to the entire
mechanism of our “perfect” story?
The preceding paragraph is prophetic of what ultimately must happen. As
yet that day may be far off in the hazy distance, but when it comes the
philosophy of our short story must undergo a complete metamorphosis.
Its own glaring contradictions, if not external influences, must
ultimately bring that about. To preach Suspense as the highest law,
then kill it at its very inception by another law of the happy
ending is an absurdity that cannot long remain unapparent even to a
nine-year-old intelligence.
Meantime the reaction noted in some quarters toward the invariably
unhappy ending is just as sinister an influence toward the rise of
another absurdity. Whether this reaction be sincere--as in the case
of those who have been fed with glucose fiction ad nauseam--or merely
fashionable--as in the case of most of the Left Wing of our present-day
average reading public--if crystallized and perpetuated as a dogma it
is bound to constitute a serious hindrance in the evolution of the
short story. Once and for all we must come to an acceptance of the
truth that there can be but one kind of an ending to a story--whether
happy or unhappy--and that is the logical one, an ending which is a
direct inevitable outgrowth of the story itself. No law can be made
that would apply to all stories; each story generates its own laws.
The question of repugnance or preferences of the reader does not
enter here at all. The question of cause and effect, of intelligent
probability gaged by a keen observation of the laws or lack-of-laws of
reality--this question alone must become paramount and decisive.
It is true that the noblest literary works, from the dramas of Æschylus
to the present day, have all been tinged with sadness--Maupassant’s
definition of literature as being a mirror of life, proving a true
one. Also that other one--is it by Goethe?--that literature is the
conscience of the human race. In the world of men, with the dark
mystery of death as an ever-present certainty, thus sowing a sense of
the futility of all human aspirations and achievement in the hearts
of even the most aggressive of us; with a lurking consciousness of
insurmountable limitations besetting our fondest dreams; with a still
more pronounced consciousness that the maturing of dreams frequently
marks their decay, and almost always marks the thawing of their dewy
glitter--in such a world, literature, welling up from the depths of
inner consciousness, cannot help being tinged with sadness. In fact,
the vast bulk of the world’s literary masterpieces consists of
tragedies. The sooner this fundamental fact is woven into the fiber of
American fiction the sooner will American fiction become the mirror of
American life and the conscience of the American people.
But this solemn historic consideration does not justify the adoption
of a rigid rule that an unhappy ending of a story is artistic and that
a happy one is always inartistic. Least of all could it be justified
in its application to the short story, which frequently deals with
but a single incident in the life of a character rather than with a
complete history. There are infinitely more probabilities of ultimate
defeat in a complete history than in a single experience. Death is
not always the price of an adventure, nor disillusionment that of an
undertaking. Conrad’s “Youth,” melancholy as it is with the breath of
finiteness of all our glorious epochs, has no tragic ending. The young
commander has dared through stress and storm and adversity, has pitted
the strength of his youth against that of the sea and has come out
victorious, glowing with the symbolic message: “Do or Die!” And though,
when he recounts the narrative of that first command of his, youth is
far behind him, he is filled with lyric memories of it far sweeter
than his distant exploit itself. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s “Revolt
of Mother” ends happily and yet logically and artistically. Perhaps
in her next encounter with her hard-hearted and hard-headed husband
Mother won’t be as successful, but in this one which Mrs. Freeman had
chosen to relate, she carries the day. Maupassant’s “Moonlight” ends
well. The old Abbé realizes that “God perhaps has made such nights
as this to clothe with his ideals the loves of men,” and the young
couple can henceforth love unmolested. James Branch Cabell’s “Wedding
Jest” ends happily, although satirically--the point of the story--not
a happy one by any means--being contained particularly in the ending.
An enumeration of all the great short stories that have happy endings
would make a paragraph of considerable length.
From any technical point of view the unhappy ending, when canonized
into a convention, will defeat any skill and ingenuity or even natural
artistry in the maintenance of suspense. After a while readers will
learn that every story must end unhappily and will be on their guard.
Already the few periodicals that have made a convention of the
unconventional ending are suffering a depressing monotony. There really
is no reason for following the love illusions of the unsophisticated
heroine when it is certain that disillusionment awaits her in the
end. Nor is there reason for feeling elated over the success of our
hero when we know that it is temporary, that it is only a matter of
paragraphs or pages before this success will be turned into defeat.
If then we arrive at the conclusion that neither the happy ending nor
the tragic ending is in itself an indication of artistry, but must be
considered in its relation to the story it ends, we arrive at a view
which is at once rational and simple--so simple, in fact, that it seems
banal to emphasize it. In the matter of endings we have been thinking
in terms of producing the greatest effect, totally ignoring their
inevitability as culminating points of given sets of plot influences.
We know that the end of a story marks an emphatic place which leaves
the greatest impression upon the reader’s mind; it is, rhetorically, a
strategic point, and therefore we concentrate all our surprises, our
jugglery, our uplift message and our disposition upon this point. We
want the reader to go away smiling, or pleasantly startled, or, if we
write for the conventionally unconventional publication, unpleasantly
satisfied. The fact that a writer after having set his characters in
motion and allowing them to act and react upon the various forces of
the plot, to mold and be molded, has no power over the ending other
than that of guiding the threads of his story--characters, motives
and circumstances--to the end they are logically bound for, is as yet
obscure among us. We are associating the ending with its impressions
upon the reader, with its gallery value--rather than with the soul
of the story. As Mr. Carl Van Doren, former literary editor of _The
Nation_ and now of _The Century_ has expressed it: “According to all
the codes of the more serious kinds of fiction, the unwillingness--or
the inability--to conduct a plot to its legitimate ending implies some
weakness in the artistic character.”[26]
This weakness that Mr. Van Doren refers to in reality arises from
our very conception of the function of fiction and the motives that
govern its birth. In a majority of cases the prime motive for writing
a story is to obtain a check from a publisher; the dazzling figures
cited in our newspapers and writers’ magazines as the incomes of some
fictionists exert an irresistible appeal. The constant hammering upon
literature as a commodity which can be and is being produced as any
other commodity at such and such a price, the size being determined
upon its ability to perform the clownish function of supplying a laugh
or a thrill to the largest number of T. B. M.’s or T. B. W.’s, is
another influence responsible for this weakness. That fiction is a
medium for the expression of a writer’s reactions to his business of
living is a view that mighty few of our writers, editors, and literary
savants seem to hold. So that the fallacy of the happy ending, and of
the unhappy ending as well, is inevitably bound up with the larger
fallacy of mistaking the manufacture of stories for the function of
literature.