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Chris -

Any tragedy usually means the death or ruin of a character, and I think that doesn't really telegraph the end so much as one piece of the outcome and removes it as consideration for what the ending will be -- in fact, it is a kind of short-hand misdirection so that we -- the reader, the audience -- will immediately ask, "How did it happen?"

The ends of King Lear and Othello and Hamlet include a series of calamities and horrific events well beyond the almost anticlimactic deaths of the lead characters. Yes, goodnight, sweet prince, but hell, the entire world as he knew it went with him. By removing the doom of the protagonist as a subject for suspense early on, I'd say the Bard did his job in raising a secondary question, since someone's death is sad, but the destruction and fall of an entire person's life around them IS a tragedy -- and what caused this? That may be the journey, but that ending is equally important.

I'd argue that endings do matter in those tragedies, a great deal -- and the death of the main or titular character is not the actual ending even if this physically closes the play. To use Hamlet as an example, the ending of that story is not just in Hamlet's downfall: an entire kingdom is wiped out and in ways that may be inevitable but are hardly predictable for the most part. We know none of this (presumably) at the start of the play. Apologies for those with spoiler-sensitivities, but if you are old enough to read the Shocklines board and haven't yet read or seen Hamlet performed, I can't really help ya.

Similarly, with The Great Gatsby and Sunset Boulevard, the deaths of those characters are not the endings of the stories -- purely by the fact that this knowledge begins the stories. The actual endings are not about death, but about other aspects of the story. The physical end of a character does not necessarily mean the ending of the story, and I'd argue in the case of Sunset Boulevard that the story is more about her, than about him. He is the tool that allows her story to reveal itself -- and reach its own tragic ending.

I hate to dismiss endings using examples like this -- the beginning, the journey, and the ending all count. It doesn't mean that an enjoyable and moving or interesting story have all three, but those examples actually argue against the idea that the death of a focal character is necessarily the ending or even the suspense of the ending. One might say that by opening with knowledge of the ultimate death of the main character or protagonist this removes this death as an aspect of the end of the story. One might even say in the case of the novel The Great Gatsby and the movie Sunset Boulevard that "death is only the beginning," which, in fact, it is in these tales.

Sorry to seemingly split hairs here, but I really believe it all matters in every story: the beginning, the middle, and the end. The journey is all three of those things.

I'm not arguing for surprise endings. I think those rarely work -- and when they do, they're gems, but they can only work once on a reader. When they don't, they're just another set of stories mangled by writers who want to save weak tales with shocks or misplaced twists. I also don't think the ending of a story needs to be anything more than the fulfillment of the promise set out at the beginning, which again answers the questions raised at the outset.

In the outset of The Great Gatsby, the question can easily be: who is Gatsby, and why is he great? What happened that led to his end? Did someone kill him? Did he kill himself? Is he even dead? Why this sense of brooding tragedy and import in the opening of this story? The story answers this as artfully as any novel I've ever read, and the ending of it -- which is illuminating for Nick -- may not be the death of Gatsby himself, but when Nick meets Tom later on. To me, Tom and Daisy are the real protagonists of the story. Gatsby is the catalyst for revealing who they are; Nick is the one who watches this unfold and has almost been fooled into caring for Tom and Daisy. Just my opinion, but given that I think this is one of three perfectly written novels in the English language that I've read (The Good Soldier and Rosemary's Baby being the others), I can't help myself.

This is from the beginning of The Great Gatsby and is the primary reference to his death upfront:

"Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction--Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No--Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."

This to me is the raising of the question that the novel answers: what preyed on Gatsby? That is what Nick's tale answers, and the foul dust begins to blow in fairly quickly after that.

This paragraph alone, by the way, reminds me of how perfect a novel this is. "If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him..." In that sentence, he creates curiosity for Gatsby in our minds. And it grows from there.

Thus endeth my overlong note on the subject, but I do love the fact that once in a blue moon I actually get to converse with people (even online) who actually read and think about what a story is and means. Thanks for bringing this up.

T.M. -

Thanks. I suspect I got a bit long-winded because I've been suffering through a short story's creation for the past three weeks, and I wish this were easier. Yet, I always enjoy it -- once it's all done and I know it's got its life.

So, reflecting here on Shakespeare, Sunset Boulevard and The Great Gatsby has been a relief.

"Speaking of Mia Farrow (horror transition alert!), I've seen the film of Rosemary's Baby--a darn fine film it is, too--but I have never read the novel. "Perfect," Doug? Really? Like, Fitzgerald-perfect? Ford-perfect"

Yes. And as good as the movie is, the novel is better. Not a word out of place, not a scene without a reason. A perfectly written novel. Not a word spoken that doesn't have meaning to the whole. There are very few of those that I am aware of in the English language (admittedly, I haven't read everything ever published in English, so I admit there may be 30 perfect novels out there.) But to me the perfection involves every element of the story with nothing in excess, not a detail, not a movement, not a word. The last scene, to my mind, is much more powerful than the movie's final scene.

There are some perfect short stories out there, but with novels, it's very hard to pull off. I almost feel as if Joan Didion's Book of Common Prayer is there, but not quite. And I may be wrong.

"Another novel that comes to mind in the "perfect" category for me, by the way, would be Bellow's Seize the Day. (But that's practically a novella.) "

I'll read that one next. I've only read a couple of Bellow novels. I need to expand my horizons a bit. Lately, I've been reading Victor Hugo and Balzac because I wanted to get to the origins of the big novels of cities and towns to see what some of the masters have done.

I agree that short lends itself closer to "perfect" (just my opinion of what's "perfect" -- nobody else needs to share it if they don't want to). This is why I think the novella is such a good form for fiction, particularly horror fiction. The novelette may be a better form for horror stories -- long enough to be developed, but short enough to keep the bite intact.