Ending

The ending of a story may be the last thing the reader comes across, however it plays a vital role in every story. The ending of every book has the job of tying up loose ends of the story and well as leaving the reader with a sense of satisfaction when completing the story. Kurt Vonnegut presents this in several of his short stories. For example, when looking at the first story, ‘Long walk to forever’, the reader is invested in the story and all of its details and although the readers may not have expected that specific ending, they still were able to have a conclusion to the story they were reading. Vonnegut uses ending as an aide to tie loose ends of all his short stories. As mentioned in ‘Ending’, authors usually had trouble writing conclusion as they felt pressure to make happy endings constantly. However when reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories, it is simple to realize not all of his conclusions end on happy or expected terms.

Sir William had a unique writing style where he decides to throw everything into a new light once he reaches the last few pages of his novels. This is als a characteristic that can be found in the writing of Kurt Vonnegut. When we further look into, ‘Long walk to forever’ we can slightly see the author throw everything into a new light once he reaches the ending. The story almost seems like a love story, when the reader is following along with the story, they can almost seem to expect the ending. The reader expects for the two characters to fall in love by the end of the story and get married. However when we reach the ending, the complete opposite happens and the characters decide to both go in their separate directions. This ending throws off the reader because it was not expected however, the reader still feels a sense of satisfaction when reaching the ending of the story. Vonnegut uses ending almost as a tool to shift the entire story in order for the reader to view the story in an entire different light. There is a last minute unexpected plot twist for the reader and this greatly excites the reader to continue reading the rest of the short stories. This type of plot twist is actually commonly found in short-stories because they are characterized as “end-oriented”.

The beginning of the short stories of Vonnegut are what build up to the most essential part, the ending. Another example of the importance of ending is the infamous short story, ‘Harrison Bergeron’. In this story Everyone was made equal by providing a handicap on anyone who was considered to have any type of talent or was gifted in any way. The ending is not quite expected however. The reader may have expected the ending to consist of getting rid of all the handicaps and to let everyone flaunt their talents, or at least that’s what I would have expected. But instead the main character, Harrison, ends up being shot down. This almost the complete opposite of the ending that would have been expected by the reader. While reading the short story it seems very bizarre to the reader however the reason for this is to build this suspense for the reader therefore they will be exited to reach the ending and find out what happens. In a way, the reader is reading the story entirely to know the ending.