rolanni: (Ghost Ship)
rolanni ([personal profile] rolanni) wrote2011-11-24 06:52 pm
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Essay Question: Ghost Ship Cliffhanger!

WARNING: There may be spoilers for Ghost Ship in comments. This is a Warning, this is your only Warning. Proceed at your own risk.

Edited to Add: 
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To everyone:  Good discussion; keep it coming.

So! There's an expressed view that Ghost Ship ends on a cliffhanger, in the form of The Epilogue. We frequently get rapped for "cliffhangers," a charge I happen to think is (1) unfortunate and (2) inaccurate, but that's a rant for another day. What's interesting about the Ghost Ship "cliffhanger" is that the presence of the epilogue creates the "cliffhanger."

My question to you, then, is --

Would Ghost Ship have been a fuller and more satisfying read for you, had there been no epilogue?  Explain, with diagrams, if necessary.

Mind you, Steve and I discussed this very thing at some length, and you see where we finally came down.  I do think this is a topic worthy of in-depth examination, and I'm interested to hear opinions.

Have at it.
alicebentley: (Default)

[personal profile] alicebentley 2011-11-25 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
I quite liked having the epilogue. It felt like a natural follow-through for the rest of the book, just the sort of coda that wraps things in a tidy package.

But then, I didn't feel like it was a cliffhanger either. While it promises future events that we can't yet witness, for me a cliffhanger has a requirement that the next few moments could easily go different ways. The fact that we are provided with signs of life, and immediate access to life-preserving technology of a superior nature, says to me that the short-term outcome is not in doubt. Rescue had (unexpectedly) arrived.