Endings

The Birthday Party’s Ending In a piece of literature, the writing style is consistent throughout the entire paper. When a person is asked to write an ending to someone else’s work, it can prove to be a difficult task. He must take the writer’s style into consideration in order to write a proper ending. In the short story “Birthday Party,” two paragraphs were provided for the reader. On a separate sheet, seven possible ending were given. Immediately, some of the choices can be ruled out. The first ending does not support the character of the husband. In the original, it is stated that the husband was “hotly embarrassed.” He would not cause a spectacle in a public place as presented in the first ending. The ending also implies that the husband was embarrassed because the wife bought the wrong cake in the last line. “After 15 years, you’d think I would remember he doesn’t like cheesecake!” Why would that make the husband feel embarrassed? It does not fit in. The third ending also had a problem with characterization. In the original, the wife “beamed with shy pride over her little surprise.” She would not be as oblivious to her husband’s departure and as emotionless as she was eating the cake if she put so much thought into the evening. The fourth ending does not fit the style of the original. The narrator in the original focuses on describing was he sees. He does not sink back into his thoughts as exhibited in the fourth ending. The second and seventh endings do not fit into the realm of plausibility. The second one ends with an acidic cake burning the husband’s hands and the seventh one ends with the husband body slamming the wife. Those to endings are far in left field. The seventh one also has an issue with narration. It makes the in-laws the narrators but that can’t be possible. In first paragraph of the original, the narrator did not know of the surprise. It states, “It suddenly became obvious that this was an Occasion.” If the narrator was in fact the in-laws, they would have known about the surprise from the beginning. The fifth ending only has one problem, the point of view. It is written in third person from the wife’s perspective. This is shown multiple times throughout the paragraph. For example, “To anyone else it would have looked like devotion and gratitude but she knew he was angry.” And so the best conclusion to the story is the sixth ending. The characters act within their personalities’; the wife gets upset and the husband feels guilty. It has the correct point of view, first person. The writing style is descriptive of the environment. The resolution is believable with the makeup between the spouses. Writing an ending to one’s own work can be difficult. But it is a lot easier than doing it for someone else’s story. The individual must adapt to a new style and thoroughly understand the characters developed in a foreign mind. Completing another’s story is a daunting task. But if one can do it successfully, it is a sign of a great writer and reader.