Failing to resolve all the tension created throughout the song would be like leaving the story halfway through.Įqually, an ending to Beauty and the Beast where the monster, after learning to love, does not become a man again or where Pinocchio, after learning to overcome temptations and follow the voice of conscience, does not become a boy again, would be endings which leave the reader feeling betrayed.ĭifferent or unsatisfying endings might certainly create a good plot twist, an unexpected outcome, but at the expense of what? At the expense of the internal logic created throughout the tale. The last chord creates a tension which asks for a resolution. When you finish you will feel the need to resolve that sense of suspension. Those who know how to play guitar can also try playing a sequence of chords ‘I-ii-IV-V7’. The reason you feel that the song didn’t end, that everything hung in the balance, is because there is no harmonic resolution to the musical tension that was created up to that point. For readers who doubt what I am saying, imagine listening to the children’s song Three Blind Mice and ending the song before the farmer’s wife can ‘cut off their tails with a carving knife’. The unfolding of the story progresses as these tensions are resolved until, finally, the answer to the questions and the solution to the difficulties emerges at the end of the story ( resolution). It seems to me that what is at the heart of what we call the happy ending is the idea of ‘tension and resolution’ which, incidentally, is a recurrent theme in art.Īny kind of story, however original or peculiar, essentially does this: it creates difficulties, problems or questions for the characters or the situation ( tension). To answer this question we must explore further what the happy ending is. Why is there a kind of mistrust or even disdain for the typical happy ending nowadays? What has changed over time? Were happy endings finally discovered to be mere literary devices, ‘tricks’, false in their relation to real life? Or are they, on the other hand, something good and true and is it we, the readers, who have become cynical and disbelieving? Why do we no longer believe in the happy ending? The supposed Tolkien of the 21st century, GRR Martin, says as much in an interview: “As a writer I don’t know that I believe in the cliché happy ending (…), we very seldom see that in real life or in history.” Yet somehow the ‘eucatastrophe’ which gripped readers in 1955 is seen in 2021 as a weakness or cliché.Ĭonversely, the tragic ending, or the non-redemption of the main character, is nowadays recognised as ‘more real’. It can be found in all the most famous children’s tales. The idea of the happy ending is of course not unique to Tolkien. Thus, if catastrophe is that particular element of tragedy which precipitates the story negatively, eucatastrophe is, on the contrary, the ‘sudden joyous turn’ which emerges when all seems lost and there is no hope left. This sudden turn in the course of the story is called, in literary jargon, ‘Eucatastrophe’. In both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings – when all seems lost at the Battle of the Five Armies or there is no hope for Sam and Frodo at Mount Doom – Tolkien manages to turn events around, suddenly creating a resolution which brings about a warm happy ending. Still, there is a strange disdain for some parts of his work, particularly the way his stories end. This work is considered one of the finest literary achievements of the 20th Century, and any of this century’s competing tales – think of Harry Potter or Game of Thrones – surely tremble in Tolkien’s presence. “It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art.” So wrote J.R.R Tolkien in 1939, in his essay On Fairy Stories.Īs author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien is widely credited with having redefined the fantasy literary genre. Contemporary cynicism is killing literature, says Miguel Sepúlveda.
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