Closure is the term that refers to the endings of literary works. The purpose of the ending of a story is to resolve all of the conflicts within the story, to create a sense of resolution or stability in the mind of the reader, and/or to complete the sense of circularity or overall aesthetic oneness and unity that characterizes a work of literature. In his book Toward an Ending: Closure and Structure in the American Short Story, critic John Gerlach identifies the following methods by which story writers end their stories:

1. Solution to a Central Problem

2. Natural Termination

3. Completion of Antithesis

4. Manifestation of a Moral

5. Encapsulation

These are broken down as follows:

I. Solution to a Central Problem:

• a character faces a problem or desires to reach a goal; story ends with this occurring in one way or another

II. Natural Termination: i.e. the story ends with a natural occurrence or process

III. Completion of Antithesis: the completion or circularity of a subject

• "The mental equivalent of a character setting out on an adventure is a character exploring a range of attitudes toward a subject" a. circularity
  b. move from one pole to another (love to hate, etc.)
• "Before we can sense that something is closed, we must be able to judge its boundaries, to feel that it will not move further in time and space."
• "Antithesis [of all closural devices] is the most firmly anchored not just in narrative, but in the act of perception."

IV. Manifestation of a Moral:

• "the short story has many sources, one of which is the parable or exemplum: that is, tales that were very brief, were once offered as illustrations of the ideas that cultures once regarded as necessary for survival."
• "the moral has become the theme or character's (or reader's) self-realization"

V. Encapsulation: "a coda that distances the reader from the story by altering thepoint of view or summarizing the passing of time"

• this was a common mode of closure in the 19th-century
• "Endings are in one sense in the reader's head: the reader feels them, creates them."
• "These various types or levels of closure rarely operate in isolation."

   

   

  BACK