Essay Question: Ghost Ship Cliffhanger!
Thursday, November 24th, 2011 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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:
Reminder to Anonymous Posters: 1. Please sign your post(s); 2. Anonymous posts don't appear until I manually OK them. That means that sometimes -- like today, for instance -- there will be a period of hours before you will be able to see your post. This is how the system is supposed to work, and you don't need to resubmit.
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.
Edited to Add:
Reminder to Anonymous Posters: 1. Please sign your post(s); 2. Anonymous posts don't appear until I manually OK them. That means that sometimes -- like today, for instance -- there will be a period of hours before you will be able to see your post. This is how the system is supposed to work, and you don't need to resubmit.
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.
What pedanther said
Date: 2011-11-28 05:22 pm (UTC)I was crushed to read that Daav was caught out by the agents and that, although he successfully completed his mission, he appeared to be on his way out. To learn that rescue was at hand was cheering and gave hope that All Would Be Satisfactorily Resolved in the upcoming sequel.
I, too, trust to the Luck, and to the Tree's foretelling via the not-yet-ripe pods. It makes the wait for Dragon Ship a little bit more endurable ~
LynneW