Lecture 14: Happily Ever After—How to End a Plot
Man Is Hard to Find,” about a southern family that takes a drive to
Florida and ends up murdered on a lonely country road by a serial killer.z 7KHNLOOHUZKRLVFDOOHG7KH0LV¿WLVPHQWLRQHGLQWKH¿UVWSDUDJUDSK
of the story, when the grandmother of the family reads aloud from the
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he and his henchmen turn up later.z 7KH UHDSSHDUDQFH RI 7KH 0LV¿W PLJKW KDYH EHHQ D 'LFNHQVLDQ
coincidence in the hands of a lesser writer, but his appearance in the
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reappears at the end full of genuine menace, the reader’s experience
mirrors that of the family members as they slowly realize that they’re
about to die.z The ending of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” falls halfway between a
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with the murder of several of its characters, but like an epiphany story,
it changes everything the reader thought about what came before. It
doesn’t answer a question that was openly posed at the beginning of the
story but instead answers a question that the reader didn’t even realize
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2¶&RQQRUDQVZHUVZLWKDGH¿QLWLYHQRThoughts on Endings
z The endings of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” 7KH$VSHUQ3DSHUV, and
“Miss Brill” are all satisfying in part because they are all prepared for early
in the narrative. All three of these endings also essentially leave the reader
with nothing left to know. The major questions are answered, and we have
gained our deepest understanding of the situation or the characters.z The fact that all three of these endings are more or less airtight and
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and O’Connor knew the ending of each story before he or she started.
o It might seem that knowing the ending in advance is the easiest
way to write, because you can craft the story to head in that