a.s. 2006/07 quarta BT

The beginning and the ending of a novel

La lettura – Jean Honore Fragonard

A few words at the beginning may summarize the novel they introduce. The first page of a novel may suggest mood, rithm or subject. Great Expectations (C.Dickens), Victory (J.Conrad), Moby Dyck (H.Melville) are all in the first page.

Pip becomes aware of himself and of his life in a churchyard, on the tombstone of his parents. This ‘birth’ is emblematic of his condition as an orphan, but contrasts with the ‘expectations’ of the title.

The under-vice-librarian in Moby Dyck introduces the novel with a huge amount of quotations about whales.

The very first page of Victory focuses on isolation and the refusal of having any contacts with the world.

All the three beginnings are examples of the novels in a nutshell: they anticipate the conflicts, the themes, sometimes the endings.

The last page of Victory hints that, in a sense, the protagonist (Heyst) succeeded: he is nowhere to be found. What commander Davidson found of him is … “Nothing.”

The last page of Great Expectations shows Pip in a situation not so far from that in which we met him at the beginning of the book: he is an orphan, again. Magwitch died and all the property is lost.

The last page of Moby Dyck is the epilogue of the mythic battle we have watched, with no winner.

Sometimes the novel starts in medias res, sometimes with the introduction of the characters, sometimes with a theory (which will be demonstrated along the story). Often the novel ends with a recapitulation of all the themes and characters. The contrasts, the conflicts upon which the novels often rest must be solved at the end. The harmony broken at the beginning must, or may, be restored at the end; or a new situation of equilibrium is to be found. Sometimes there is a message (it may be moral) for the reader, sometimes there is not, and the reader may think what he likes.