As the last few pages of this book flew through my fingers, fatigue drying my eyes, in a desperate attempt to finish this book in time, I was brought back to earth, and could never have been prepared for an ending like the one Rohinton Mistry wrote. It left me feeling heartbroken for the next few days. I was honestly expecting ‘a happy ending’, whatever that might be for Dina, the tailors and Maneck-a glimpse into the joy and prosperity that life would bestow them after surviving an eternity so filled with hardship. It came as an overwhelming shock to me when fulfillment was nowhere in sight, and as the book ended the bleakness of their pain overwhelmed every single character. I was so confounded, so overwhelmed that the author could leave me with absolute hopelessness and an apparent absence of any redemption. If anything, their sufferings that had come to a head in the last few chapters with their lives on the brink of ruination, were left in complete and irreparable devastation. Without completely giving away the end of the book, I will simply state ambiguously that it ends with a suicide for one character, deaths of almost every related family member, and the other characters are left to struggle through the remainder of their days with all their hope removed due to the government-stimulated castration. I am still struggling desperately to find the author’s reasoning for leaving the book this way-it seems completely contradictory. It is not a fine balance if death has mastery over their lives, and if the book is so heavily dominated by events that completely diminish all hope. I wanted to see it this way at first, as it was easier to get lost in the ocean of despair that flooded the end of this novel, yet I know now that this was not the author’s intention. Through feeling the culmination of this absolutely intense pain, we became aware of the truth of their reality. It is the balance of life and death, and pain and joy, that leaves us with a lasting impression- through the sufferings we are exposed to we experience just how real their seemingly small doses of happiness are and at the same time become aware of the balance the must be maintained when approaching a story in general. Every now and again we need to be jolted awake by the potency that IS real life, and to experience truths we are unaccustomed to. In turn we are left with “a fine balance of hope and despair” concerning all circumstances, for the remarkable individuals within this story and in our lives beyond.
4 comments:
It certainly is a powerfully written book. You have make excellent posts--they are eloquent and full of insight.
Your writing has convinced me to read the books...geeze.
I know exactly what you are describing here at the end of this novel. I felt the same way at the end of Exodus, by Leon Uris. It ends similarily, but in its particular case it is the overwhelming despair that there is no end in sight for the persecution of Jews.
Your post reminded me sharply of "The Victim Theory" that we just read in Writer's Craft.
That is so funny that you thought of that Laura, you read my mind! I was planning to include that in my apologia, how the victim theory really does define many elements of the Canadian mindset, and how that is explicitly reflected in my novel! Great minds think alike- now I can be confident that I was not being to obscure in juxtaposing those two concepts!
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