Happy Endings

[stacer]

Has anybody read The Witch Must Die?  It's a book about fairy tales by Sheldon Cashdan, and it's amazing.  

I haven't, but I've heard it talked about quite a bit in children's lit circles. He's actually not the first to talk about it, though. Bruno Bettleheim is the one that first talked about it, if I remember right. But either way, I agree. I think it's Cashdan that tells the story about how an altered version of Little Red Riding Hood, in which the wolf didn't die, gave his daughter nightmares--but then when he told her a version in which the wolf died, she was fine. She needed to feel like the wolf couldn't come back.

[Skar]

I haven't, but I've heard it talked about quite a bit in children's lit circles. He's actually not the first to talk about it, though. Bruno Bettleheim is the one that first talked about it, if I remember right.

 
The last I heard, in my myth class at BYU (I think you were in that with me SE) Bruno Bettleheim had been discredited for having made up most of his research out of whole cloth.

She needed to feel like the wolf couldn't come back.

See, I have a problem with that.  The wolf can always come back.  Learning to deal with that fact is a big part of growing up and we're lacking it in our society.  Think about how many people you know who have already gone back to their smug belief that a terrorist act like 9-11 can't happen on American soil.  It's what they believed before 9-11, they were shocked and horrified by 9-11 but now they've gone back into their imaginary womb.
They don't wish to believe that the wolf can come back so they don't.

[stacer]

Yes, but it's a developmental process. The girl that needed to feel that the wolf wouldn't come back was 5 or something like that. The older you get, the more realistic endings tend to get, I think.

But that's also why I vote for hopeful endings, rather than always-happy. Sometimes it's not going to be a happy ending, but I still want that hope.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Yeah, I was in the class. To digress (as I always do), and because I remember the stupidest things, I remember a conversation wherein I mentioned that I thought Star Wars was the best movie ever, and you construed me to mean Ep. I (it being very recent). To clarify, I meant the original Star Wars (Ep IV).

See, I have a problem with that.  The wolf can always come back.  Learning to deal with that fact is a big part of growing up and we're lacking it in our society.  Think about how many people you know who have already gone back to their smug belief that a terrorist act like 9-11 can't happen on American soil.  It's what they believed before 9-11, they were shocked and horrified by 9-11 but now they've gone back into their imaginary womb.
They don't wish to believe that the wolf can come back so they don't.

well, I think it's understandable behavior. It's a radical worldview change people are asked to make, and most of them have not seen first hand the results of that act. It's very hard to internalize and even harder to change your world to something where you can't be safe. It's much easier to deny reality and go about your business. I suffer deeper depression cycles, for example, if I think too much about all the things that need to be done for the homeless and the hungry and so forth. Perhaps that's a personal failing. But it exhausts me emotionally to think about what I can't fix. So I do what I can: give to charity, esp through church, volunteer when I can (again mostly through church) and let people know my stance on things, offering to help when I can. People are like that, and while I admit it may be a failing, it's not one I can fault anyone for.

[fuzzyoctopus]

I'm sorry, SE, but you're wrong.  Like I said, I fully admit that it has a lot to do with my own personal worldviews, and I fully expect to never be able to convince you that I'm right.

He is the ultimate suffering hero and what is he rewarded with for all he goes through? Misery.  Death.  A heroin addiction.  I'm sorry, it just doesn't WORK that way. That's not how heroes are supposed to be used.

Jeff set up the soapbox for me, and I can't tell you how sick I am of people telling me I'm wrong for not wanting to watch 24. I dislike it.  It makes me angry and violent.  Therefore, in my mind, there is definitely something wrong with the show - no other show, movie, book, ever made me angry and hateful as 24 does.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I'm not telling you you're wrong, I'm just telling you that your interpretation is very limited, and that using "unrealistic" as a complaint is invalid. It's not about rewards and punishments. That's not thematic to the story they're telling. So I'm not bothered at all that he's not rewarded. He deals with the real life psychology of loss and the problems of the world he deals with.

Feel free to hate it -- lots of people hate things I watch, it doesn't bug me. But don't think I'm not going to disagree when I disagree with teh basis of your opinion.

[Skar]

SE, I agree.  

What you do to avoid depression cycles is not denying that the wolf can come back.  It sounds like you, instead, acknowledge the limitations of what you can do personally.  Denying that the wolf can come back would be you refusing to give to charity because there weren't really any homeless.

Maybe more people would be willing/able to look at the world's problems realistically, like you do, if they had been exposed to more of that reality when they were children.  Raising them on stories that never force them to deal with the fact that things don't always end well for everyone has got to be bad.

Like Stacer said, there's a developmental path there, 5 year olds don't need to be subjected to misery, but misery is a fact of life and there aren't very many youth books out there (I'm talking through my hat here as it's been a long time since I did any looking in that genre) that give it realistic screen time.

And another thing (here I go again) I think the trend for sappy sweet stories may have been heavily influenced by teachers who either didn't want to take the time or who just plain had too many students to have the time to explain the bad things to the kids.

[Skar]

To digress (as I always do), and because I remember the stupidest things, I remember a conversation wherein I mentioned that I thought Star Wars was the best movie ever, and you construed me to mean Ep. I (it being very recent). To clarify, I meant the original Star Wars (Ep IV).

Whew.  I'm glad I was wrongly construing.  I feel better about you man.

[Mistress of Darkness]

I think Ms. Fish summed up exactly how I feel about endings. (And I am definately going to read that book). If I'm going to go to the trouble to read a book or watch a movie, I'd like to feel uplifted in some way when I reach the end. It doesn't have to be all happiness for everybody either. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Dead Poet's Society come to mind. They are a little heavy to want to watch over and over, but I still enjoy them.

[stacer]

But Skar, that's the thing that BUGS me about realistic YA literature. I'm going to be taking a YA realistic fiction class this semester, and all the touchstone books I have to read for my preclass readings are so DEPRESSING. Take what another woman on that listserv said her son said after Columbine:

On the whole issue of happy endings, my son was about 15 at the time of the Colombine shootings.  One day he told me in utter frustration, "The media keeps saying that video games make some teenagers violent.  Mom, it's not the video games, it's the fiction we read in school!  In video games, we're the GOOD guys.  But what they make us read in school is all so bleak and depressing.  The schools are drumming into us, year after year, that life has no hope."  He added that the last time the school required him to read a "happy" book was in 5th grade, when he read "The Sign of the Beaver."  That had been 5 years earlier; no joyous school reading since then.  He went on to rattle off the usual required curriculum fare for 8th through 10th grade.  I don't remember all the titles, but they were ones I read in those grades, too, way back in the dark ages--they included Lord of the Flies, The Pearl and as optional reading, The Grapes of Wrath.  And more along those lines.

Ross went on to comment that most of his tenth grade friends took anti-depression medicines, and that for out-of-school reading, virtually all the depressed kids read fantasy only, because "they're desperate for hope."  

Ross' comments made me decide to end my own books on hopeful notes.  I distinguish hope from happiness--somewhat.  But there's certainly a big overlap.  Happy endings can ring false, but as a writer, I feel I owe our kids hope.  

I don't know that I'd blame teenage depression on the literature, but man, I hated those books when I was a teenager, and I hate them now. It doesn't help that most of those problem novels use such a preponderance of the Lord's name in vain. Drives me crazy, and it's so hard to skip.

[Fellfrosch]

I remember an editorial Doug Stay wrote for TLE, in which he said that one of the greatest benefits of storytelling was the ability to put your reader through bad things. Sympathetic characters who die, for example, are often very hard to read about but quite often become your favorite part of the story when you have time to look back and reflect. The death of Boromir, for example, is possibly my favorite part of the entire LotR trilogy despite being a very sad ending to that storyline.

[stacer]

Yes, but it wasn't hopeless or senseless. There was a reason for his death. And the whole story didn't end with the death of Boromir--there was still hope that the overall journey would succeed.

[Skar]

I don't want to come across as saying that sad/depressing endings are the only way to go either.  I think we should all strive for a "middle way" in our storytelling.

All bad is as bad as all good.  If you take my meaning.

Also, the books you listed I remember as being realistic but with hope in them.  If the kids didn't get that then I suspect it's because their teachers and parents didn't take the time to help them grasp the material.  Heck, their teachers probably didn't grasp the material.  They were probably following some set curriculum that they had never thought to alter much less understand themselves.

[Mistress of Darkness]

I think there was hope in Boromir's story. He didn't just die after trying to harm Frodo and steal the ring. He died trying to protect Frodo's friends, trying to redeem the bad act that he had done. And the scene with Aragorn just before he dies ends the story on a hopeful note. That is also the moment that Aragorn seems to start to accept/consider his birthright.

I think one of the great things about using literature to take someone through a tragic circumstance is to take them through the steps of recovery that follow. I still remember Dave Wolverton remarking that readers were generally more sympathetic because of the unique way that a reader experiences the failures and successes of the view-point characters. I think there is so much we can learn just by reading "useless" fiction.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Endings should not be chosen on the basis of whether they are happy or sad, but whether they are satisfying (in terms of appropriateness to the events and setting and personalities of the characters) and what will develop the theme.

one of my favorite teachers told me that "Sentimentality is the enemy of all art." What I think he meant was creating events based on what people want to see. To be memorable, there has to be meaning in what happens. That's what Stacer and MoD are saying here, I think.