Disney gets a lot of flack for the way it changes classic fairy tales, but do you know how The Little Mermaid ended in the original, written version? The prince rejects the mermaid in favor of some other tramp, the mermaid is heartbroken, and she dissolves into sea foam and loses her soul. Oh, this was after she used her mad dancing skills, even though it was like walking on knives for our mermaid turned human. All that just to impress some idiot.
Well, then there's some weird bit at the end about her turning into some spirit of air and earning her soul by doing good deeds, but that pretty much comes out of nowhere and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so I'm ignoring it.
Reading this ending, I can't help but think: What the hell? That ending is TERRIBLE. It is basically the most awful, depressing ending ever. Could you imagine if other stories ended that way? If at the very end of Lear, Cordelia says "Go to hell, Dad!" and tosses him off a castle tower? (okay, that would be pretty awesome) If Frodo and Sam kill each other over the ring, or if Luke joined the Emperor? Or if John McClane bled out from his crippling foot wounds before he could even stop Hans?
Maybe the Disney ending, the "happily-ever-after" ending is kind of dumb. But I will take that treacly 'goodness' over the pointlessly dark ending any day of the week. At the very least, a stupid happily ever after ending leaves the audience with some positive feelings A good ending needs to satisfy, it needs to make all the struggle and darkness and pain mean something.
If the protagonist doesn't win, there at least needs to be a mention of hope, or room for a sequel or whatever. And I'm not saying that it should be one of those Disney endings, either; I don't like those. The happy ending needs to come at some cost to the character, else the conflicts they faced and obstacles overcome just weren't tough enough. Maybe they die, or someone close to them dies. Maybe they lose their 'innocence,' whatever that means. Maybe their soul is indelibly scarred, or there's some wound in their side that just won't heal. Maybe they give up one dream to save another. You know what I mean.
I think that writers experience the temptation to avoid a happy ending because it's seen as childish, and I expect that many writers, including myself, are cynics at heart. According to a family friend, I've been cynical since the second grade. Can anyone top that? Didn't think so. So instead they labor hard to create endings where the protagonist loses, or maybe the whole venture was pointless, or there's some other ironic twist worthy of the bad writing seen in the Twilight Zone (Scary Door = truest parody ever).
But as a reader, I like the good endings far more than the bad ones. I like worlds where suffering and conflict have meaning. Because there's a world that lacks that kind of meaning, where terrible things happen without real purpose, where there's no guarantee the heroic protagonists will achieve any kind victory whatsoever. It's the one we live in.
Does this make me escapist? Maybe. But fiction's first goal, in my opinion, is to entertain. If you want to be some literary snob and make some profound statement on the human condition, go for it, but no one will read the book if it isn't a good story.
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