Where Tales Turn 3: the End

The big scenes in the End

Home & Destination

When a man sets out on a journey, he knows the ground he leaves. It is his home and well-trodden ground. But he can’t know the end of his journey until he comes to it; each journey has its own end; no man can know beforehand the place where he will end.

As the journey, so the tale. When we think on the big scenes the tale at its base must give us, we can see the Start with clear eyes. Each tale starts at the same place, with an audience that knows nothing of what is to come, and with a hero who knows it no better. We can then say that something must turn the hero onto a new road, and we call it the First Encounter. We can say, too, that something must keep the hero from giving up and turning back, and that he must have some aim in mind, and we call this the Start of the Middle. We know from past tales we love, that we want some high point near the road’s end, where it seems the worst will come and the best is farthest from the hero’s grasp, and we call this the End of the Middle.

But what comes after that?

Short Tales are not Long

The End of a long tale differs from the End of a short tale. A short tale might have an End of one sentence or two:

But then the hero won free and was safe.
And the rest of his days were happy.
The End.

Or briefer still:

And that was the end of him.
The End.

A short tale has the most strength when it ends abruptly. But a long tale may have chapters yet to tell, with a big scene or two, and a flat string of scenes between them, before it reaches ‘the End.’

Half-Scene: End of the Fight

The End of the Middle may not fill a full scene. It may come in the midst of a scene: there may be no gap between the moment the hero has all but failed, and the moment he manages to free himself, push back the doom that hangs over him, and win to some safe place to lick his wounds.

In this case we have a problem more for the critic than the talesman. The critic must choose whether to say the scene is the End of the Middle or the Start of the End, or whether to say the End of the Middle and the Start of the End are but half scenes. But the talesman only has to tell his tale, and he doesn’t care what to call it, but only to work his audience to his utmost.

The Healing: the Start of the End

The Healing is a scene that tells us what the hero does just after he escapes the doom that almost spelled his end and the end of all our hopes in the End of the Middle. This is often a scene of meditation and stillness more than outer action. The hero must think things over and make up his mind how to strike again. He must also steel his heart to face once more what all but finished him in the End of the Middle. In this scene the hero grows and changes for the last time in this tale. He can’t be the same man who went into the End of the Middle, or else it would come out the same way. He knows better now than to try that once more. Something must have shifted in his heart and he has won more wisdom than he had. In this way we can say that the Lesson or Moral in the tale rests within this one scene, for what the hero here gains, or knows that he has gained or had all along, is the one needful thing to win his heart’s desire. But often a good talesman will hide what the hero learns here, and leave it to his audience to say what was the one needful thing that marked the hero from what he was before to what he is now.

There are reasons to hide the Lesson. First for reasons of policy. For if the talesman tells the audience just how the hero grows here, he will give away the End of the End and kill all his suspense. Second for reasons of pace, for the audience knows the End of the End lies not far off now, and they itch to get to it. Third for reasons of taste, for a good audience hates all sermons in their tales.

The End Glimpsed and Guessed at Last

The final big scene wraps up the main tension of the tale. It kills once and for all either our hopes or our fears. It does so with finality. We know both from what happens in this scene and from the way the talesman tells it, that there will be no more chances after this. The hero has won all or he has lost it, and that’s that.

This scene may hold outer action, but it will not reach a higher pitch than the End of the Middle. It will not match the pitch of the End of the Middle. There is a sense in which a good talesman will at the Healing or Start of the End, let his audience know what the End of the End will be. Indeed a good audience has already guessed it, for they know they have to to with a tale and not real life. And in the well-shaped tale, the End of the Middle mirrors the End of the End. They are opposite in the sense that the End of the Middle forms a false End of the End, and the End of the End rights that lie, and gives us the tale’s true end. The one who seems to win all at the End of the Middle will surely lose all at the End of the End. The one who seems to lose all at the End of the Middle will surely win all at the End of the End.

In a well-shaped tale this must be true. Think: if the End of the Middle and the End of the End are much the same, then where has the tale taken us in the meantime? It could have ended at the End of the Middle. It should have ended there.

The End of the Middle strains our hopes and fears to the utmost. When it is done, we will be able to guess at the End of the End.

But our suspense is not quite done.

Confirmation and Detail

What’s left to our suspense is the confirmation of our guess or expectation. This is a strong force in us in the audience. We can work ourselves in agony to be told what we already know. We ‘know’ it — we’re ‘sure’ of it — but we still need to be told so that our last doubt, that gnaws and tugs at us, can be killed. This is what the End of the End does, and when we find our guess confirmed we feel a great satisfaction. But when the talesman gives the lie to our guess, we feel more cheated than pleased at his cleverness.

There’s another way suspense lingers through the end. For though we in the audience may be sure (or almost sure) of the End of the End on the whole, there may yet be some small details we can’t tell for sure. We may know the hero will go on to win his heart’s desire, because he all but lost it in the End of the Middle — but what about his dog, or his old teacher, or his faithful friend, what will become of them? Will his happiness be complete, or will some small loss temper it? And just what will the hero do when he has his heart’s desire? These are the small matters that the End of the End tells us, so that it holds some surprises for us after all.

The Last Untold Scenes

A tale has many untold scenes. There are scenes that take place before ‘Once upon a time’ just as there are scenes the talesman skips over along the way, for he can’t tell all, and wisely holds some back, even to some scenes we wish he had told us. And then there may be one last scene left untold, that comes after The End.

In a short tale, the End will be brief — abrupt — jagged. It leaves us, in a sense, to make the last scene up ourselves, and makes us picture to ourselves what goes on in the moments (or hours, or years) after The End.

This last untold scene may also trail a long tale. The wise talesman, like a good guest, knows to leave before his audience (or his host) has had too much. With the human heart, though, the hardest point to reach and stop at is the point of ‘enough.’ And with an audience, the talesman has to work on many hearts at once. He can’t reach ‘enough’ with each and every one. But to go past ‘enough’ will take us into ‘too much’ and that will spoil all. Thus the wise talesman is wary, and make sure to give us rather ‘not enough,’ though he will come as close as he dares and his skill allows to the magical, mythical point of ‘enough.’

The trick here lies in the use off the last untold scene. When the talesman hints at but does not spell out the last scene of the tale, he leaves it to his audience to go on and make it up in their own hearts. Thus each one of the audience will carry on the tale and the untold scene to his own point of ‘enough’ whereupon he will let the tale go with a sigh.

(Composed with pen on paper Tuesday 19 February 2008)