musing on narrative closure

[jrtom]

"One drawback in belonging to a race of storytellers is a tendency to forget that life isn't a story, however great the need to perceive it as one. And one of life's chiefest failings, from a storytelling perspective, is that life lacks closure."

"Closure in what sense?"

"Closure in the sense of narrative convergence, all the elements coming together, loose ends tying off neatly after a final climax. Real life is never that tidy, and it doesn't stop happening just because someone's won a victory. Where the endpaper would come in a novel, actual events are followed by more actual events."

--Matt Ruff, Sewer, Gas, and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy

Not an original thought, I'm sure, and I'm pretty sure that I've even inflicted it on my friends before (although not on LJ, as far as I can tell :> ). But worth observing . . . especially for the sake of those (occasionally me) who sometimes say, or think, "As soon as I finish school/get the kids out of the house/get out of debt/get married/etc., then my life will really start." It doesn't, of course; it just starts another chapter . . . and thinking in those terms can cause one to treat the time until the end of the chapter as something to be gotten through as quickly as possible, rather than something to be appreciated for its own sake. (Besides, those that try to insist that the universe provide or respect narrative closure are bound to be continually, or at least periodically, frustrated.)

Comments

[hypgnosis.livejournal.com]

At one point years ago, I was discussing Machiavelli, and our friend Miacid said "The reason why the ends don't justify the means is that there are no ends." After stuff happens, more stuff happens.

On a related note, an abbreviated version of this piece ran twice in Ann Landers, and is posted up on my fridge.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Um, well, it's a nice quote, but "ends" in that context doesn't mean "terminations", it means "goals"--or the original concept wouldn't mean anything. I respect M. a lot, but in this case I think that he was doing what you and I often do and letting the language run away with him. (Assuming you've quoted him correctly, anyway.) People can and do have goals, and the fact that things will change after that doesn't mean that the goals don't justify the methods used to achieve them--it depends on the goals, and the methods.

Related note: that's a nice piece; thanks for linking to it.

Chitter! Squeak!

[(Anonymous)]

I think you're making a semantic distinction without a real difference. The reason why "end" for "goal" is the same word as "end" for "final state" is that (I believe based on no real linguistic research) goal based planning pretty much makes the implicit assumption that you do stuff for a while, then that stuff causes the goal to occur, then nothing else of interest happens.

And, yes, the fact that things will change after the goal is achieved often DOES mean that the goal doesn't justify the means. It's essentially an optimization problem. If I spend [some finite time] doing something painful and nasty the afterwords I get to spend [essentially infinite time] is a steady state where everything is OK now, the cost of the painful stuff can be neglected as small compared to the nearly infinite benefit of everything being OK forever thereafter. If what happens is I spend [some finite time] doing something painful and nasty then afterwords for [some trivial amount of time] everything is OK, then some new thing happens and I spend [some finite time] doing something else painful and nasty... then the cost ends up being essentially continuous pain (always with the hope that just a little later everything will be OK...)

In any case, almost certainly whatever I really said way back then I was quoting Dr. Manhattan from _Watchmen_.

Re: Chitter! Squeak!

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Congratulations: you've just refuted both homework and physical exercise. :)

Also, consider the situation in which not achieving a particular goal has a very high negative cost. Even if you have to keep re-achieving that goal (or something analogous)--that is, if there is no persistent benefit--it still may be worth the cost of achieving it.

There are also often circumstances in which the achievement of one goal makes another easier.