The disappointment at Endings.
I have often noticed that many people feel disappointed with the endings of stories. Well known examples recently being dissatisfaction at the endings of Star Wars and Game of Thrones. Some people have complained about the ending in some books of mine too, A lot of people seem to get quite upset about it.
There are three reasons for this, I think:
1. The basic rather mundane reasons that the writer or director fails to do a good job in some way.
2. A more complicated aspect is that each of us, when reading X book or watching Y movie, has our own interpretation of the story and its possible ending, and that presents a million possibilities...so when the ending is fixed to THAT specific one its ossified, limited...and we feel disappointed that the great range of possibilities been lost.
3. This is the most philosophical aspect: we humans have a deeper inner need for perfect union, completeness, full meaning, peak experience, return to god...whatever we want to call it. And when we get deeply into a story that seems to have vital strands of human nature in it we feel a kind of surrogate of existence there. We want THAT story to be such a perfect union, and soul fulfilling expression of human condition... we want closure. And when there story, perhaps inevitably, fails to provide that...oh how disappointing!
While writing this i realised that the endings of songs often feel more complete or satisfactory. I wonder why that is? Is it because music is non-verbal?
I have often noticed that many people feel disappointed with the endings of stories. Well known examples recently being dissatisfaction at the endings of Star Wars and Game of Thrones. Some people have complained about the ending in some books of mine too, A lot of people seem to get quite upset about it.
There are three reasons for this, I think:
1. The basic rather mundane reasons that the writer or director fails to do a good job in some way.
2. A more complicated aspect is that each of us, when reading X book or watching Y movie, has our own interpretation of the story and its possible ending, and that presents a million possibilities...so when the ending is fixed to THAT specific one its ossified, limited...and we feel disappointed that the great range of possibilities been lost.
3. This is the most philosophical aspect: we humans have a deeper inner need for perfect union, completeness, full meaning, peak experience, return to god...whatever we want to call it. And when we get deeply into a story that seems to have vital strands of human nature in it we feel a kind of surrogate of existence there. We want THAT story to be such a perfect union, and soul fulfilling expression of human condition... we want closure. And when there story, perhaps inevitably, fails to provide that...oh how disappointing!
While writing this i realised that the endings of songs often feel more complete or satisfactory. I wonder why that is? Is it because music is non-verbal?