Bad endings

To the bitter END

Are there too many happy endings in children’s literature, asks Ross Montgomery. If we insist on reassuring closure, we’re denying children the opportunity to explore more complex issues…

I watched the film Stand By Merecently. There’s a scene inwhich twelve-year-old Gordietells his friends a story he’swritten about an obese andbullied boy named Lardass. Lardassenters a pie-eating competition, butrigs it so that he can gain longoverdue revenge on his tormentorsby vomiting theatrically on them.This sets off a dizzying chain reactionof mass vomiting, turning the pie-eating contest into a “complete andtotal barforama”. Then, to his friends’surprise, the story ends.

Teddy: How can that be the end? What kind of an ending is that? What happened to Lardass?

Gordie:I don’t know. Maybe he went home and celebrated with a couple of cheeseburgers.

Teddy: Jeez. That sucks. Why don’tyou make it so that Lardass goeshome and shoots his father? And he runs away. And joins the Texas Rangers. How about that?

Vern: I liked the ending. The barfingwas really good. But there is onething I didn’t understand. Did Lardasshave to pay to get into the contest?

Gordie: No, Vern, they just let him in. Vern:Oh! Oh great. Great story.

What I like about this scene is that is captures what it’s like to analyse stories with children. They love stories. They love being told stories. They adore making up stories, though many hate writing them down. But crucially, they all have very individual ideas of what makes a story ‘good’.

If you ask children to finish a story, they will usually default to a standard “everything was solved and that was the end of that” resolution. But sometimes this doesn’t happen. Sometimes their endings are sad, or unresolved, or unusual. And this is where teachers like me come in. We correct their unresolved endings. We say, “No, not like that – tie it up nicely. This is how you write a good story.” We would complain that Teddy’s ending makes Lardass’s story unfocused and confusing – which, in fairness, it would.

What Teddy’s ending wouldn’t do is universally alienate children who read it. Many might well prefer Teddy’s ending. But there is an assumption by adults that children need happy, uncomplicated endings because they can’t handle anything else. And in my experience, while children do appreciate neat resolutions, they don’t always demand them.

When I wrote Alex, the dog and the unopenable door (Faber & Faber, 2013), I was determined that it should not have an easy resolution. I wanted to lead up to a conventional ending, and then whip it away at the last minute, leaving the reader shocked and frustrated. It was something I was concerned about when it came to sending it off to publishers – how would they feel about such an upsetting climax? Luckily for me, my publisher was extremely understanding.

I had to do some explaining and compromising, of course, but to my delight the difficult ending stayed in. Now it’s published, it is something I often need to defend from (adult) readers – why did you include such a difficult ending in a children’s book? Isn’t it a bit much for them? Maybe. But I’ve found that children can be surprisingly content with sad or hard-hitting endings, sometimes even better than adults.

After I read Mockingjay (Scholastic, 2010), the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy, I was left ragged by the brutality of the final hundred pages. When I returned to school I was shocked to see Year 5 children reading this harrowing YA book. How on earth could ten yearolds cope with its scenes of nightmarish atrocity and the bleak consequences of war?

Surprisingly well, it turned out. It’s not that I think children have been left emotionally stunted by violent computer games, etc. It’s that empathy is something the average ten-year-old is still in the process of developing. Their understanding of a harrowing situation isn’t as complex as an adult’s. If I read them a book where a child is kidnapped, they’d barely bat an eyelid. By comparison, I’d have to go and have a lie down afterwards.

In many respects, children can deal with reading about upsetting situations better than adults. And yet we assume that they are the ones who will struggle. I’m convinced that we underestimate children’s ability to deal with upsetting and complex events. So why deny them the truth and effect of an unhappy ending? Why do we so often choose to edit that part out? Can’t we allow them to work out some answers for themselves?