Wednesday, April 11, 2012
"Not with a bang but a whimper": Thoughts on the ending of TMLS
So, I've been thinking about last night's discussion, particularly the comments I made regarding the ending and I want to expand and clarify to a certain extent. I broached that the ending was less than satisfying or at least raises more questions than it settles. I don't mean to say that everything should be tied up nicely or that there should be that happy ending instead of ending with Moor waiting for that happily ever after, but rather I just felt that there was something happening with the ending in its oddity. After thinking on it for a while, I've come up with the idea that the dissatisfaction with the conclusion of the Moor's story is intended by Rushdie. Through the use of point-of-view narration, the audience has sutured itself onto the character of the moor. So when we reach the end, as moor looks for a place to lie down and sleep, waiting for a better time when things aren't so crazy, we are included in this action- or this final act of passivity. In this way, Moor's cowardice is an indictment of the audience and of contemporary society at large for their complacency in the face of fundamentalism, terrorism and gross injustice in the world. In The Satanic Verses, the satirist Baal insists that his work is "to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep." In raising the larger issues, fundamentalism, fanaticism, national identity, capitalism, etc. Rushdie is working to rouse us from our slumber and inspire conversation on these topics. Coming from this angle, the lackluster ending takes on new meaning and deeper resonance. I don't know- just a thought.
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This is a fascinating issue, Elizabeth, and I think your additions here are compelling. It continues to make me think that a really wonderful line of inquiry for a final essay would be some kind of exploration of the endings of various Rushdie novels: e.g., the final paragraphs of Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, Haroun, The Moor's Last Sigh, and Fury suggest so many interesting issues, questions, convergences and divergences (relative to such broad notions as optimistic vs. pessimistic visions, the state of the secular dream, the ability of stories and storytelling to contribute to change, etc.).
Your comments here also make me think of other novels that seem implicitly to address the reader and/or appeal to the reader's responsibility and participation at the end. Toni Morrison's Jazz is one that comes to mind immediately.
As for The Moor's Last Sigh, it's interesting -- and I think you are right on this potential ambivalence -- that some can probably say (and I'm sure some critics have) that the ending is too optimistic (with all its similes of and monuments to endurance and a possible "renewed and joyful" awakening) and others can say that, no, it's actually the case that renewal and joy are closed off quite thoroughly and definitively ("there is no road to Erasmo from here," the Moor is told). The ending is beautiful, certainly, and it's wonderful how it causes us to go back to reread the beginning of the novel (if not the whole thing!), but it's certainly not as cathartic as the end of, say, Haroun.
I like what you do with the Baal reference from The Satanic Verses ...
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