Hayat M. asked:

Can someone explain the ending to me? I'm confused.

flag

65 likes · like
9 years ago
28 answers

To answer questions about I'm Thinking of Ending Things, please sign up.

Terry ~ Huntress of Erudition

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Kira FlowerChild

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Greg

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[I have some objections to the common views that the narrator was a "persona" or that this was essentially a thought-experiment that Jake put down in writing. Yes, Jake is every character in the story, but the narrator is not telling the only story that Jake has written.

Jake has written a story about Steph, a high school girlfriend. He has written a story about his career in laboratory science. He has written stories about his family life, probably even about a brother that never existed in the real world. Writing IS Jake's way of living in the world. He has a self-contradictory hypothesis. On the one hand, it's sufficient to be alone. No one can understand you better than yourself. Relationships are fundamentally doomed because you can't enter the private life of anyone else.

But, on the other hand, you can't be the World's Best Kisser on your own. These stories that Jake writes are the sound of one mouth kissing. They always lead inexorably back to the school, because there's no one in the story but Jake, and Jake is trapped in the school in a prison of his own making, because he's afraid of other people. There's nothing significant about this story with the girl from the pub. We're not even told that it's the last one he wrote before he kills himself, though there are hints that it's the one that they found near him at on the scene. In the story, the mother doesn't have cochlear implants yet, but Jake already does when he's found dead.

The Dairy Queen is just where he goes before work. He's living at his parents' farm house and drives by it on the way to work and gets lemonade or Blizzards there sometimes. But the girl who makes the lemonade is Jake, with Jake's rash, just like Jake has when he is the character of Jake's mother, who is also missing a toenail just like Jake's Girlfriend is missing a thumbnail because Jake has a nervous habit of biting his fingernails.

Jake is keeping himself alive for these stories that he writes, where the thought is real and it's the reality that might be fake, or at any rate the reality doesn't matter if the thought is real. Yet in the end, the thoughts aren't so real as he would like. They were enough to sustain him for 30 years, but no longer. In the end, he can't pretend anymore that celebratory events are happening or that his relationship is promising. All he sees is himself. Alone. And he doesn't want to go on anymore. (hide spoiler)]

flag

Justin

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Corey

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Amanda (Fiction Addictions on YT)

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Angela Meier I don’t really understand why people think Jake has Dissociative Identity Disorder. It doesn’t really manifest in that way and it’s pretty clear that he has ASD and poor social skills. It reads to me like he is imagining and writing in his journal what it might’ve been like if he ended up giving Lucy his number. Just unsure where the DID comes in other than we think were reading from Lucy’s point of view and then find out Lucy, Jake, and the janitor is the same person. I just understood it more of the janitors imaginative writing (from Lucy’s perspective) and not that he has DID.

flag

Caffers I recommend reading the book discussion at afterthingsend.com

flag

Karen Wenborn I'll never get those hours back

flag

Kelsey I’m also really confused. I don’t understand the part about the parents and What any of that meant? And the basement with all the paintings. How does this play into the story?

flag

Maggie_qwerty In my understanding - (spoiler ahead) - both Jake the scientist and his girlfriend the narrator are imaginary personas. We've been dealing all the time with a fantasy world of the super intelligent, autistic, and maybe even suffering from dissociative identity disorder janitor. A person who showed huge potential as a student, but was unable to come out of his shy shell, and wanting to live - he lived through his imagination. Which catches up with him at his work. Only we are forced to follow the story through fragments of his imagination, made to believe they were true people.

flag

Eni

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

John

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Phoebe

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Stephanie

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Daniel Bland SPOILER: The woman in the novel is just a fantasy. It's the daydreaming and inner dialogue of a man testing out different scenarios of what could be his life. The character, personality, name of her is constantly changing. Time is fuzzy. Since he lives a very uninteresting banal life, he has situational fantasies as a coping mechanism.

The movie even drops a reference to Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord and exemplifies how people strongly mesh symbols, art, and influences as their identity in an alienated life. A life that lacks self-determination and autonomy, the only thing you have left is imitation, and role playing.

It all leads up to the point before his death where he has to accept there is no more dreaming. There is no more time left. All hope is lost.

flag

Jay Zomberg Jake was schizophrenic. That about sums it up.

flag

Alisi ☆ wants to read too many books ☆

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Danielle Who is the girl at the dairy queen?

flag

silverbluemoon

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Val

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

flag

Jamal Morelli Here's what I thought:
He didn't kill himself in the end. The people discussing him, his notes, his time at the school, and the suicide throughout the book were also part of his mind.

flag

Abbie Bennett In the dark we forget.
Please explain the ending.
Very unrewarding ending for me.

flag

Deborah Well, I just finished the book and I am so lost! I will not be watching the movie.

flag

Darlene I think the writer speak of the confusion we see in our minds all the time. The questions we ask ourselves. For Jake girlfriend is the decision to stay and settle in a life she really dont want but finds a need for it in the end. For jake to settle to dream big but settle for what there is. The issue of dementia and alzheimers. And many more. Its brilliant

flag