Just Peachy. A peachy noir story.

sorry in advance for the longness.  but i think it reads pretty fast, so here we go.

Rick saunters down the alley, his head down as he tries to protect his eyes from the sheeting rain. The streetlights don’t do much good for him—he’d trip over his own feet in broad daylight. A woman’s slender figure is wrapped around a street sign, leaning seductively against the cold metal. Rick doesn’t notice the other breathing organism on the street until he runs into her.

“Oh…uh, sorry, I didn’t see you,” Rick apologizes quickly as he runs after his gun, which skittered a few feet away when he collided with her.

“That’s fine, baby,” she breathes, flaunting her perfectly white teeth at him. “What’re you doing out this late at night?”

“Just…walking. Trying not to get rained on. Stuff like that.” Rick shrugs and re-pockets his gun.

The woman giggles and struts toward him. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Rick. Rick Hoover. And you?”

“Satine, darling.” She lifts up a finger and tantalizingly traces her long, inhumanly red nail across Rick’s neck. Rick lets out a squeal and jumps back, chuckling softly to himself.

“Don’t do that again,” he warns. “I’m ticklish.”

Satine stares at him, wondering briefly if he was messing with her mind. She shakes this thought from her head quickly and plasters on another smile. “Are you always so ticklish, baby?”

Rick shrugs. “It really depends. I guess when my mom used to tickle me, I’d die. Like, she seriously thought I was going to die, I was laughing so hard. But I think I’ve learned to control it over the years.” He adds this last statement in with a bit of pride.

“Well, good for you, Rick.” She pauses and quickly puts on a false look of concern. “You’re soaking, baby!” She gestures wildly at Rick’s sagging clothing. “My apartment isn’t too far from here; why don’t you follow me and we can get you some dry clothes, maybe some coffee…”

Rick holds his hand up in the air. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Dry clothes sound good, Sarah—”

“It’s Satine,” she interrupts irritably.

“Satine, Satine, right. Sorry. Anyway, dry clothes sound good, but honestly, I’m not much of a coffee drinker. D’you think you have anything else?”

Satine rolls her eyes. Jack better be paying me extra for this one—I don’t need to put up with this. She prepares herself and plasters a fake smile across her face. “Of course! I’ve got hot chocolate, juice, water…”

“Hot chocolate sounds great. Whipped cream?”

“What would it be without whipped cream?”

“Horrible hot chocolate, that’s what!”

Satine can’t shake the feeling that she’s talking to a ten-year-old. “Well then, we should probably get going before we both catch pneumonia out here.” She yanks an umbrella out of her trench coat and invites him to huddle underneath it with her. He accepts the offer and the duo slowly make their way along the shining sidewalk, careful to stay out of puddles deeper than a kiddie pool.

As they slosh down Newbury, a car’s headlights flicker on and gravel is crushed as the car rolls down the street, expertly tailing Rick and Satine.

“How far away is your apartment?” Rick asks. “I feel like we’ve been walking for hours.”

“It’s only been about ten minutes, Ricky,” Satine answers. I wonder where Jack finds these nut jobs. “Be patient, we’re almost there.”

“It must just be the rain messing with my mind,” Rick muses, twirling his gun around his fingers.

“Must be,” Satine mutters under her breath. “So, Rick, how long have you been…doing what you do?”

Rick looks at her, startled. “Doing what I do? What, you mean like my job?”

“Yes.”

Rick shifts his weight from one leg to the other. “Uh, couple years, maybe. Yeah, two or three years.”

Satine bites her lip thoughtfully. She decides to pull out something a little risky, just to gauge Rick’s reaction to similar events and questions. “Can I hold your gun?”

Rick freezes in his tracks and stares at Satine. “No, no, no,” he answers. “That’s 110% against company policy.”

“Oh, so you work for a company?”

“Yeah. I work for the company of myself.”

“Oh.” Satine’s voice trails off. “All right, then. We’re here.” She stops in front of a tall dilapidated apartment building with a green awning out front to keep patrons out of the elements. There are no lights on except the main one out front, signaling that at least one person was home. The four steps leading up to the main entrance are made of concrete but still feel unsteady under Rick’s feet. He scampers up them as though he’s on lily pads.

“What a…lovely place you have here,” he falters, struggling to come up with the right description without sounding like a complete jerk.

“It’s a trashy dump; you don’t need to try and act nice,” Satine assures him.

“Okay, then. This is possibly the ugliest housing development I’ve ever seen,” Rick rephrases.

“Um, thanks.”

“Not a problem. Any time.”

The floors inside are damp and waterlogged from the constant rain—they too sag under Rick’s weight, and he’s devastated to see that he has to climb a whole flight of the soggy stairs.

“I guess it’d be stupid and pointless to ask if there’s an elevator in here?” he asks meekly.

“You guessed right. Now come on, it’s not helping our colds standing here.” She grabs a measuring cup and scoops up some kitty litter from a nearby box filled with the stuff. She shakes it out over the damp wooden floor in an attempt to absorb some of the water and grabs Rick’s hand, leading him upstairs.

A few seconds later, a man—the same man in the car—struts into the lobby in a trench coat with a black hat that shadows his eyes and most of his face. He walks with his shoulders slumped. A middle-aged man looks up from his newspaper, not recognizing this new face. As the man makes his way up the stairs, Newspaper Guy yells out to him. “Excuse me, sir; are you here to see someone? Because if—” Before he can finish his sentence the man whips a gun out of his jacket pocket and shoots Newspaper Guy in the head with the aim of a sniper. He re-pockets the gun and slinks up a few more steps before glancing back down at his handiwork. Newspaper Guy’s blood is being soaked up by his newspaper and the kitty litter he collapsed into. What a way to go.

A car suddenly passes by, its headlights illuminating the inside of the lobby. The man’s grip on the railing tightens as his shadow behind the bars of the stairway is plastered up against the wall for a split second. Shuddering slightly, he takes the rest of the stairs two at a time, searching for the pair.

“Oh, well, hold on a second…” Rick begins, trying in vain to protest against the fact that Satine had had him “make himself at home” in a chair at the table and was now tying his wrists behind his back as they spoke.

She stands up triumphantly and wipes her hands against each other, as if Rick had a slime covering his body when she touched him. “You must know why you’re here now, right?”

“…not exactly, no. Should I?”

Satine pretends to mull this over. “Yeah, you probably should.” As if on cue, a man dressed from head to toe in black steps out of the shadows, a gun in his hand. Rick’s eyes widen and he chuckles nervously.

“You, um, you can, go back in the, shadows, if you want. No need for you to be here. Shoo?” It comes out more like a question, and Rick’s voice is high.

“You owe me $250,000, Rick Hoover,” the man says in a deep voice.

“For what?” The man reaches out and slaps Rick hard across the face.

“You know damn well what. You and I gambled awhile back, made some bets on whether or not a certain sports team was going to win it all. You lost big time and gave me a check for $250 thou. Well guess what, Sunshine?”

Rick shrugs as much as he can.

“Your check bounced, Hoover. It bounced hard. And I need my money.”

“For what? Drugs?”

“None of your business, Hoover!” The man whips the gun against Rick’s shoulder, trying to inflict pain and intimidation, but instead getting Rick to snicker.

“That didn’t hurt,” he taunts. “And besides, you think I have $250,000 on me right this second? You’re even more nuts than I thought.”

The man cocks his gun and points it at the side of Rick’s head. “You’re gonna take me to your house right now, Hoover, and if you don’t have the money, then I’m just gonna take everything you own until it amounts to $250,000.”

Rick scoffs. “Good luck—all I’ve got in my house is a TV, cordless phone, and the entire Seinfeld series on DVD. Oh, and a mini-fridge.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Wish I was, pal.”

“No, you’re definitely kidding me. I’ve seen your apartment; you’re loaded, and it’s all because of my money!” He beckons for Satine to untie Rick while tossing her a pair of handcuffs. “Get him into those; we’re leaving now.”

Satine jerks Rick up and snaps the metal around his wrists, following the man while dragging Rick behind her. They open the door, and standing in the doorway is the man who shot down Newspaper Guy, his gun pointed in their faces.

“Big Tony Thompson,” the man spits out.

“Steve Watson. I thought you were dead,” Tony accuses.

Steve holds his gun steady while shaking his head. “Still kickin’, Tony.” H jerks his head toward Rick. “Gimme him, you’re under arrest.”

“For what? You’ve got nothing.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Tax evasion, illegal drug trafficking—I wouldn’t be surprised if you were high right now—and the vice president of the Alcohol Lovers Anonymous committee. Should I keep going?” He cocks his gun and prepares to shoot. “Gimme him.”

“Uh, ‘him’ has a name, Steve,” Rick points out.

“Shut up, Hoover,” Tony snaps, striking Rick across the face with the butt of his gun, almost knocking him off his feet.

“You really need to learn when to keep your mouth shut,” Satine advises.

“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

Tony and Steve stare at each other for a few seconds, each with his gun drawn. Suddenly, there’s a storm of feet parading up the stairs, and Tony can’t help but smirk as he sees who’s behind Steve.

“Steven Watson, you’re under arrest.” Steve whips around, stunned. “What? How can I be under arrest? What’d I do?”

“Sources say that you killed Devon Clark.”

“Who?”

“The man downstairs, Watson.” The police officer grabs Steve’s hands and shoves them in handcuffs. He looks up and does a double take when he sees Tony. “Boys, we’ve got Big Tony up here, too!” he yells.

“You don’t have to yell, we’re right here,” a man Steve recognizes as Jacob Anderson, mutters. “That’s pretty lucky, though.” Jacob draws his gun out and points it at Tony. Tony nudges Satine, trying to tell her to take Rick and go out the fire escape; he’d meet them later. Jacob notices this and fires close to Tony’s feet.

“Not necessary, not necessary!” Rick yelps, startled.

“Drop it, Tony,” Jacob chides, sounding like he’s addressing a dog with a slipper in his mouth. As if on cue, a small swarm of police officers floods into the apartment, shackling Tony and herding him and Steve out into the hall. Rick and Satine are forgotten as the squad escorts Tony and Steve down the stairs and into undercover cruisers waiting on the curb.

Rick and Satine glance at each other, both feeling a tad bit awkward. “So…” Rick begins.

“Yeah.”

“Wanna go get a burger or something?”

Satine’s eyes brighten at the mention of food. “Sounds good to me.”

The duo makes their way downstairs, treading carefully on the strained steps.

“Hey,” Rick says suddenly, “you wouldn’t happen to have the key to these handcuffs, would you?”

Satine shakes her head. “Tony kept them in a secret place he never told me.”

Rick sighs and rolls his eyes. “Wonderful,” he mutters. “Just…perfect.”

Long Day’s Journey…

Eugene O’Neill was possibly one of the most depressing human beings who ever lived, and he proves this with his play Long Day’s Journey into Night, which is widely considered to be one of his best works ever. The play is autobiographical, therefore O’Neill enthusiasts/stalkers had a field day sucking up all this information about him and his twisted family. Now, Long Day’s Journey could be in contention for Most Ambiguous Ending of All Time, except for one tiny detail: O’Neill’s masterpiece was autobiographical. There must’ve been an ending; it was his life, and he’s dead now. There we go. End scene.

It can also be argued, though, that Long Day’s Journey was just a snippet of O’Neill’s life; therefore, it leaves the reader hanging and in some cases hungry for more. Eugene’s mother, Mary, is a morphine addict and is slowly but surely being driven insane. As an excuse for getting her fix, she uses her rheumatism-plagued hands as the reason why she needs more “medication.”

MARY: It was kind of you to keep my company this afternoon, Cathleen. I would have been lonely driving uptown alone.

CATHLEEN: Sure, wouldn’t I rather ride in a fine automobile than stay here and listen to Bridget’s lies about her relations? It was like a vacation, Ma’am. She pauses–then stupidly. There was only one thing I didn’t like.

MARY (vaguely): What was that, Cathleen?

CATHLEEN: The way the man in the drugstore acted when I took in the prescription for you. Indignantly. The impudence of him!

MARY (with stubborn blankness): What are you talking about? What drugstore? What prescription? Then hastily, as Cathleen stares in stupid amazement. Oh, of course, I’d forgotten. The medicine for the rheumatism in my hands. What did the man say? Then with indifference. Not that it matters as long as he filled the prescription.

Readers of the play and viewers of the film could be wondering how long it takes Mary to crack permanently and die. It’s also confirmed in the play that Edmund (this is Eugene’s character, he switched his name with his dead baby brother’s) is diagnosed with consumption and will have to go away to a sanitorium. His father, James (commonly referred to as “Tyrone”), assures his son and family that in six months to a year, Edmund will be back and healthier than ever. Does this really happen? After all, throughout the play so much stress was put on Edmund not drinking too much, but the last we hear from the O’Neill/Tyrone family, they’re sitting around in the dining room taking swigs of Tyrone’s whiskey while Mary tromps around dragging her wedding dress behind her. To a reader or viewer, this is definitely not the most preferable type of ending out there.

Another character that the audience grows concerned with is Jamie, Edmund’s older brother. He’s without a doubt the outcast of the family, listened to and taken seriously only by Edmund. His parents are ashamed of him and are convinced that he’s going nowhere in life.

TYRONE: Well, well, let’s not argue. You’ve got brains in that head of yours, though you do your best to deny them. You’ll live to learn the value of a dollar. You’re not like your damned tramp of a brother. Where is he, by the way?

EDMUND: How would I know?

TYRONE: I thought you’d gone back uptown to meet him.

EDMUND: No. I walked out to the beach. I haven’t seen him since this afternoon.

TYRONE: Well, if you split the money I gave you with him, like a fool–

EDMUND: Sure I did. He’s always staked me when he had anything.

TYRONE: Then it doesn’t take a soothsayer to tell he’s probably in the whorehouse.

EDMUND: What of it if he is? Why not?

TYRONE (contemptuously): Why not indeed. It’s the fit place for him. If he’s ever had a loftier dream than whores and whiskey, he’s never shown it.

There are a variety of choices for Jamie’s fate. (A) Does Jamie ever change his ways? He’s the only member of the family who addresses Mary’s problems head-on and it often gets him in trouble. (B) Will he soften his tone and words? (C) Maybe he’ll leave the family. (D) None of the above. Or there’s always (E): _________ where you can fill in your own preference for what happens to Jamie. This can be applied to all members of the O’Neill/Tyrone family, even though their fates are already set in stone. Escapades and controversies can be added along the way by readers/viewers with extremely active imaginations, but in the end they all end up the way they are now.

“I’m going to the movies!” Glass Menagerie analysis action.

Especially since we’re now knee-deep in amazingly depressing Eugene O’Neill’s work, it might be nice to take a quick break and go back to the less depressing, slightly less drug-addicted and lust-filled characters of Tennessee Williams. One of his most famous plays, The Glass Menagerie, tells the tale of a man named Tom, his crippled and painfully shy sister Laura, and their shrill-voiced, overprotective mother, Amanda. Williams based the character of Tom off of himself, so the play was described as somewhat autobiographical, although not to the extent that O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was. Let’s just hope that for Williams’ sake, his mother didn’t have a voice nearly as annoying as Katharine Hepburn’s in the film version of this play.

Tom is a dreamer who wants to get out of his mother’s house as soon as possible, but he feels guilty even thinking about leaving his family. His mother is desperate for Laura to find a gentleman caller and has Tom bring one home from his work. In a somewhat ironic twist Mr. Jim O’Connor, the potential suitor Tom brings home, was Laura’s high school crush. After some awkward moments, the two hit it off, only to be separated again by the fact that Jim has a serious girlfriend. Laura is heartbroken, Tom is stunned, and Amanda is convinced that Tom did this in order to make a fool of his family.

AMANDA: You didn’t mention that he was engaged to be married.

TOM: Jim? Engaged?

AMANDA: That’s what he just informed us.

TOM: I’ll be jiggered! I didn’t know about that!

AMANDA: That seems very peculiar.

TOM: What’s peculiar about it?

AMANDA: Didn’t you call him your best friend down at the warehouse?

TOM: He is, but how did I know?

AMANDA: It seems extremely peculiar that you wouldn’t know your best friend was going to be married!

TOM: The warehouse is where I work, not where I know things about people!

AMANDA: You don’t know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions! Where are you going?

TOM: I’m going to the movies.

This is usually Tom’s excuse for leaving his hectic, eclectic family. He wants to get lost in the non-reality of movies, just like most of us do today. Maybe that’s a little reason why Williams wrote so much–it provided for him a temporary escape from reality, just like Tom and his movies. There’s also some foreshadowing action going on, when Tom engages Jim in a conversation about how he wants to leave his mother and sister. Not too surprisingly, the conversation is about movies.

TOM: Yes, movies! Look at them–All of those glamorous people–having adventures–hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them!…But I’m not patient. I don’t want to wait till then. I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move!

Looks like Tom’s gonna pull a stunt like his father did years earlier, deserting the family with no real hope of survival, emotional, monetary, or otherwise.  This is where the possibility of open endings comes in, once again.  There aren’t as many choices here.  Tom does end up leaving the family but feels haunted by Laura’s constant presence in his mind; does his act spell death for his family?  Will he end up in an asylum, maybe becoming inmates with Williams’ Blanche DuBois?  The reader can listen to Monty Python’s Spamalot and “Always look on the bright side of life,” believing that the confidence Jim instilled in Laura will carry over into college or the workforce, and she and Amanda will be able to begin a new life without Tom.  Jim could leave his steady girlfriend, Betty, and go back to Laura.  That’d be nice.  Or maybe more people would subscribe to Amanda’s magazine program–that’s unlikely, but there’s always hope.

“I Love ye Name, Eben!”

Readers of modernist literature must always be thinking that they’ve seen the worst, the weirdest, the most psychotic. There’s T.S. Eliot, Ernie Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and now Eugene O’Neill. Everyone has their favorite modernistic writer, but O’Neill is a pretty serious contender for first place as the creepiest playwright in American modernist literature. One of his most famous plays, Desire Under the Elms, is a mixed bag of almost all of the attributes of modernism. One of the most glaring examples in Desire Under the Elms, though, would probably have to be “Language is no longer seen as transparent, something if used correctly allows us to ’see through’ to reality: rather language is seen as a complex, nuanced site of our construction of the ‘real;’ language is ‘thick,’ its multiple meanings and varied connotative forces are essential to our elusive, multiple, complex sense of and cultural construction of reality,” from John Lye’s page, “Some Attributes of Modernist Literature.”  In a nutshell, the attribute basically points out the fact that in most pieces of modernist literature, the writing styles changed drastically.  The characters’ dialogue doesn’t sound stiff and forced; now it flows and helps to create a powerful sense of realism in the reader.

Anyone who’s read O’Neill’s insane play knows that he penned the characters’ dialogue in order to make it sound extremely true-to-life, so much so that sometimes the reader was confused as to what was being said. For example, when Cabot and Abbie are talking about Eben after he and Abbie had gotten into an argument, the conversation carries on like this:

CABOT–(rather guiltily) He’s a sinner–nateral-born. It’s lust eatin’ his heart.

ABBIE–(enraged beyond endurance–wildly vindictive) An’ his lust fur me! Kin ye find excuses fur that?

CABOT–(stares at her–after a dead pause) Lust–fur yew?

ABBIE–(defiantly) He was tryin’ t’ make love t’me–when ye heered us quarrelin’.

CABOT–(stares at her–then a terrible expression of rage comes over his face–he springs to his feet shaking all over) By the A’mighty God–I’ll end him!

ABBIE–(frightened now for Eben) No! Don’t ye!

CABOT–(violently) I’ll git the shotgun an’ blow his soft brains t’ the top o’ them elums!

ABBIE–(throwing her arms around him) No! Ephraim!

CABOT–(pushing her away violently) I will, by God!

ABBIE–(in a quieting tone) Listen, Ephraim. ‘Twa’n't nothin’ bad–on’y a boy’s foolin’–’twa’n't meant serious–jest jokin’ an’ teasin’….

This might be a really annoying way to read a story, but at the same time, once it’s read for a few minutes, it usually has the potential to become a much easier read. The advantage to O’Neill writing his play this way is that the readers have the ability to feel like the characters are right next to them, telling their story just for them. The reader can almost hear Cabot’s raspy voice in their ear and smell the alcohol on his breath; it’s somewhat like a pop-up book in that way. It’s unclear as to how Abbie’s voice sounds, but something tells me it’s probably similar to that of Tennessee Williams’ Blanche. Eben, Abbie, Cabot, Simeon, and Peter seem more realistic as a result of O’Neill’s unusual writing style, and this helps to tie into the whole open endings subject again, because the ending of Desire Under the Elms is just a big black hole of questions. Are Eben and Abbie ever released from prison? Does Eben even manage to get into prison with his love? Does Cabot continue his pimping ways, or does he decide to settle down? Maybe he leaves the farm to the admiring sheriff who has the last word of the play–(looking around at the farm enviously–to his companion) It’s a jim-dandy farm, no denyin’. Wished I owned it!–and moves to another area. Do Simeon and Peter ever strike it rich in the gold mines of “Californi-a?” It’s multiple choice, mix and match; take your picks, shuffle the deck, let your imagination run wild. After all, isn’t that what makes reading this stuff fun?

“Stellaaaaaaa!”

Ah, the infamous “Stella!” cry, seen in various areas of pop culture: a hysterical, somewhat shocking impersonation from Elaine Benes, found in “The Pen” episode of Seinfeld (definitely check out that video, it’ll make your day), and Matt Groening’s cartoon The Simpsons paid tribute to Tennessee Williams’ play, A Streetcar Named Desire, by launching their own semi-epic episode, “A Streetcar Named Marge.” Tennessee’s famous play is centered around three main characters: Stanley and Stella, who are married–Stanley is a Polish liquor lover, Stella is his ultimately devoted wife who means well–and Blanche, Stella’s neurotic, flirtatious sister who possesses possibly the most annoying voice ever caught on film. The definition for the word “blanch” is for something, usually a person’s face, to become drastically pale from fear or illness. This describes Blanche’s face almost perfectly; she’s always worried that people–especially men–aren’t taking her seriously or don’t think she’s attractive.

Streetcar, plain and simple, tells the story of Stella and Stanley getting their lives interrupted and in some cases rearranged by Stella’s sister, Blanche.  Stanley hates Blanche with a passion and wants her out ASAP.  He goes so far as to rape and verbally abuse her in an effort to say, “Get out of my house and stay away from my girl.”

This ending is somewhat of a letdown; the dramatic scenes beforehand made the viewers or readers think that at least two characters–preferably Stanley and Blanche–were going to have a confrontation where one would kill the other. Tennessee’s play ends with many loose ends still needing to be tied up. Do Stella and Stanley stay together? Maybe Blanche has a huge breakdown in the car on the way to her new “home” and dies. There’s always the very real possibility that Stanley could be abusing Stella like he did Blanche. Mitch, Blanche’s brief suitor and Stanley’s best friend, could be driven to suicide after realizing all that Blanche went through during her lifetime, and that he didn’t cut her any slack at all. There are so many odds and ends that could be pieced together to make a killer ending and so many opinions on the characters that maybe an open ending was best for Streetcar. The Blanche haters could decide that she dies while the Blanche lovers could imagine her recuperating and eventually making her way out into the world again. Nothing is set in stone, so no one can tell anyone that their interpretation is wrong or stupid.

It’s T.S. Time, Baby.

T.S. Eliot is a pretty big punch in the face. One of his most famous poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” tells the tale of an extremely paranoid man who is desperate for love. He’s one of the smartest men out there, he probably did amazing on his SATs, but he lacks the social skills needed to survive in the world outside of school. Eliot shows that Prufrock is without a doubt among his peers by sprinkling the phrase “In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo,” throughout the poem. Prufrock is a constant thinker, but not in the traditional way. He’s nervous that every single thing he does is being analyzed by the people around him. He wonders, “Do I dare/Disturb the universe?” Two common dilemmas in his life are, “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?” The paranoia that pumps through Prufrock’s life leads all the way up until his death, which is where the possibility of an open ending comes in. This might be a stretch, because it’s definite that Prufrock died by the poem’s conclusion, but sides could be taken concerning how he stopped breathing. Did his nervous habits drive him to cut his life short, or was he forced to live his life in torturous solitude until he died of old age? The latter possibility could be decided upon due to the mentioning of “I grow old…I grow old…/I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” This could be considered as a half-open, half-closed ending, if such a thing exists. Eliot did indeed decide that his Prufrock was not fit to live, but his way of death is somewhat open to interpretation.

Uncle Ernie’s Killers

“I wonder what he did?” Nick said.

“Double-crossed somebody. That’s what they kill them for.”

“I’m going to get out of this town,” Nick said.

“Yes,” said George. “That’s a good thing to do.”

“I can’t stand to think about him waiting in the room and knowing he’s going to get it. It’s too damned awful.”

“Well,” said George, “you better not think about it.”

Upon first glance, a reader might think that this group of quotes is located in the middle of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, The Killers, a tale about two men who come into a diner with plans to kill another man named Ole Anderson. The story starts off as the two men, Max and Al, argued with George, the owner of the diner, about whether or not they can have “…a roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes.” A young man by the name of Nick Adams is sitting at the end of the counter, staying out of their issues, but he gets dragged in anyway. Picture a modern-day hostage situation at a bank or somewhere similar to that, and you’ve got the setting of what’s going on in George’s diner. Nick and the cook, Sam, are tied up in the kitchen, and George is forced to lie to customers that Sam is out running an errand or sick. This creates discontent among the diner patrons, especially this man:

In the five minutes a man came in, and George explained that the cook was sick.

“Why the hell don’t you get another cook?” the man asked. “Aren’t you running a lunch-counter?” He went out.

Max and Al probably put this plan into action in anticipation of Ole Anderson entering the diner and meeting his death. They could shoot him freely and wouldn’t have to worry about any stray witnesses. When Ole Anderson never showed up, his assassins left the diner, and Nick was chosen to go and warn Anderson about the two men after him. When Nick approaches him about the subject, he is apathetic about the situation–similar to the other characters in the story, as well–and simply thanks Nick for coming by, not wanting to know anything about the people hunting him.

The Killers is a perfect example of modernistic literature’s fascination with open endings because of the quote at the beginning of the blog. It seems like it would fit snugly into the middle of a story, but Hemingway decided that was that, he was done. The ending is extremely vague and left open to interpretation. Did Ole Anderson end up being killed by Max and Al? Maybe he ended up having a change of heart and fled the area, desperate to live. It’s like a multiple choice question with no wrong answer. The idea of open endings prevailing over closed ones was revolutionary back in the time of modernism’s introduction to the world because readers were challenged. Their opinions mattered, they got a new state of independence; they didn’t need an author to decide the ending of something for them.

Reality doesn’t have a closed ending.

When we die, most matters in our lives have yet to be resolved. We’re dead, we had a good/bad/semi-interesting life, and that’s about all that’s concrete. There are so many other bits of information that have yet to be determined: What will happen to our families? Who will come to our funerals? Will we be buried or cremated? Will the people we wronged ever be able to forgive us for what we’ve done? It’d be nice for our lives to be tied up with a pretty bow like movie characters’ are, but it’s never going to work that way. If you watch Barton Fink, the ending will probably shock you upon first viewing. The main character, Barton, has just discovered that his best friend in Hollywood, Charlie, is a mass serial killer and was responsible for killing the woman he loved. Charlie gave him a box filled with his “personal items” and left the state. Barton takes his new posession to a beach and sits down. A woman walks up to him and asks him what’s in the box. He doesn’t know, and he says so. Cue the credits.

Moving on to a more recent piece of movie magic from the Coens, No Country for Old Men, we find yet another version of an ambiguous ending. This movie takes the aspect of the open ending further than Barton Fink did in 1991. No Country focuses around the story of an insane serial killer named Anton Chigurh who is chasing a Southern sharpshooter named Llewelyn Moss, who found a suitcase filled with two million dollars on the scene of a drug bust gone bad. The movie comes equipped with a killer of an ending, involving the sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, talking about a dream he had the night after Anton showed just how much destruction he can cause in one night to one town. The dream is a bit dull, and Tommy Lee Jones’s voice is boring to say the least, so viewers tended to zone out after the first minute or two. The last bit of dialogue in the film is “And then I woke up.” The viewers are left with no clear answers. Is Anton still alive? How many people did he kill in total? Was Llewelyn, the main character “hero” who usually survives everything, a victim? Who’s got the two million bucks now? Everything is left up to the viewer; the ending is left undeniably open.

I’ll probably write more later, but Jeff really wants to read this, so I’ll send it out now.

Hi.

A blog! Werd. Good stuff, I guess. So, my name’s Allison, and I’m 17. My strong point is in Seinfeld trivia, and I love pop culture. Today/tomorrow I’m gonna write a post about modernist literature. The next post is gonna be focusing on “A turn to ‘open’ or ambiguous endings, again seen to be more representative of ‘reality’ — as opposed to ‘closed’ endings, in which matters are resolved,” which is from Some Attributes of Modernist Literature. It should be a good time. This aspect of modernist literature interests me most because two of my favorite directors, Joel and Ethan Coen, are somewhat notorious for using amibguous endings in many of their films, such as Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men, and Raising Arizona. Another example comes from Chuck Palahniuk’s controversial novel, Survivor.

“We got no food, no jobs…our pets’ heads are falling off!” –Lloyd, Dumb and Dumber

And this is just a cool video.