VLVL2 (15): The Last Sentence

[isread at ukonline.co.uk]

>From Tim S:

>>The last sentence:  "It was Desmond, none other, the spit and image of
his grandmother Chloe, roughened by the miles, face full of blue-jay
feathers, smiling out of his eyes, wagging his tail, thinking he must be
home."<<

The novel might well end where it begins, but doesn't. Desmond's journey
is apparent, which means at this point that he stands in for other
characters, also "roughened by the miles". Hence a possible alternative
reading of the epigraph: the second day elevates the dog's status (as
opposed to being, more simply, a second chance). The second day isn't
simply repetitive.

The final phase of the novel begins with Zoyd's journey, with the infant
Prairie, to Vineland, following the conversation with Sasha on 305. As I
noted at the time, Zoyd's first "good luck at downtown" Vineland (318)
also returns us to the novel's opening.

To speak therefore of a happy ending, with or without the question mark,
is to deny the possibility that the novel never actually achieves the
kind of closure that might be implied by that view: the Traverse-Becker
get-together surely confirms the importance of continuity. Moreover,
that this has always been posed as an annual event reminds us of the
conflict between cyclical and linear notions of time, also set up in the
first chapter.