The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society.
There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. Of course, Eugenides is also echoing the end of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” whose last extraordinary sentence is about 4,000 words long and ends with Molly Bloom’s boundless enthusiasm: “yes I said yes I will Yes.We is set in the future. Torn between two very different men, Madeleine endures real tragedy before finally correcting her course, which we, her desperate fans, can’t know for sure until that very last word. “The Marriage Plot” is a cerebral romantic comedy about Madeleine, a thoroughly modern young woman who gets her ideas of love from 18th- and 19th-century fiction. Such is the effect of the last line of Eugenides’s most recent novel, which seems in retrospect constructed to bring us directly to these three letters. “The Marriage Plot,” by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)Įvery once in a while a novel ends with the satisfaction of a final puzzle piece snapping into place - somehow both inevitable and surprising at the same time. “And Madeleine kept squinting, as though Mitchell was already far away, until finally, smiling gratefully, she answered, ‘Yes.’” The light of a single lamp brought into his dark parlor arrives like a foretaste of grace. March saying, “Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this.” But by the time March returns to his happy home at the end of Brooks’s novel, we know him as the haunted survivor of carnage - and a crushing spiritual crisis. Alcott gives little indication of what horrors may have shaken Father during his fight for abolition, and “Little Women” ends with Mrs. March, who has gone south to serve as a chaplain to Union soldiers. This Civil War story cleverly blends biographical details about the real Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s father, with elements of the fictional Mr. The father of the four March sisters is just a minor character in Louisa May Alcott’s beloved “Little Women” (1868), but Geraldine Brooks put him at the center of her historical novel “March,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. “For an instant, everything was bathed in radiance.” Perhaps they will be answered in a sequel that Atwood plans to publish in September called “The Testaments.” When the applause dies down, he asks, “Are there any questions?” Those of us staring at a Supreme Court now tipping away from women’s reproductive rights probably have several questions. Surely we have learned by now that such judgments are of necessity culture-specific.” The lessons of the past, he notes chillingly, are obscured by the passage of time. Lapsing into the bland objectivity of academia, the professor warns his fellow scholars to be “cautious about passing moral judgment upon the Gileadean. Professor Pieixoto describes the challenges of transcribing the story we’ve just read from 30 cassette tapes found in an army footlocker. The book ends with an epilogue that takes place at an academic conference in the year 2195.
If you haven’t read Atwood’s dystopian novel since it was first published, you may have forgotten what follows the story of Offred’s resistance to the Republic of Gilead. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood (1985) Here are 23 final lines that I have never forgotten.
Others enter into the language, take on a life of their own, and eclipse their source. Some of those great final lines remain markers of our favorite novels, holy relics of our most cherished reading experiences. It determines if parting is such sweet sorrow or a thudding disappointment.Ī character in one of Jess Walter’s novels says, “A book can only end one of two ways: truthfully or artfully.” Alas, most don’t end truthfully or artfully, but there are rare exceptions: novels that conclude with such gracefully calibrated language that we close the back cover and feel physically imprinted, as though the words were pressed into us by a weight we can hardly fathom. We follow them across hundreds of thousands of words, but the final line can make or break a book. Stock-still at their desks, novelists face a similar demand for a perfectly choreographed last move. A flubbed dismount sullies even the most awe-inspiring routine. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience.įor the Olympic gymnast, success comes down to how well she sticks the landing. Warning: This graphic requires JavaScript.
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