Lopate, Phillip - How Do You End An Essay

How Do You End an Essay?
Author(s): PHILLIP LOPATE

Source: Salmagundi, No. 168/169 (Fall 2010-Winter 2011), pp. 135-149
Published by: Skidmore College
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How Do You End an Essay?
BY PHILLIP LOPATE
The Problem*
I am often asked by students: How do I know when an essay is

finished? It is a difficult question to answer in the abstract, and my first
impulse is say that it depends on each piece. But I know I am dodging
the problem by resorting to a case-by-case approach, because underneath
their inquiry is a larger, legitimate concern: If, as I maintain, an essay is
the track of one's thoughts, and is not dependent on any discernible deep
structure such as the isosceles triangle epiphany in the modern short story,
what's to say that it can't simply go on and on? Each thought leads to
another, and then another, so how is one to know when the time has come
to end an essay?
There are several ways to go about answering such a question.
The first is to examine various models, classic or contemporary, which
have been deemed successful, and analyze how their endings were staged.
The second would be to meditate in a high-flown, philosophical manner
about the nature of the essay, its cultivation of doubt, the epistemological
quandary we are up against, a snake chasing its tail, etc. The third would
be to examine my own practice as an essayist, since I have certainly
* I am deeply indebted to Vijay Seshadri for some of the ideas in this essay, which were
sparked in conversations between us.
136 PHILLIP LOPATĚ
managed to come up w
arguing backwards, I m
be a published essayist
The trouble with the
I instinctively know h
question-and-answer se
ing the awareness that
boat, hitting against the
Such comfy metaphors
of literary composition
common in creative wr
hide behind the priestl
nabe writer mystified.
but to examine in good
another.
Endlessness
As usual in discussion
It is not just a matter o
essay, but of trying to
to his descendents by h
style. The late Leonard
dal of Montaigne's essa
the consecutive logical
shape is their sense. It
feelings, not by a pret
What is unique about
exhibited, which allowe
to start off his essay "O
seasickness, fear, ridin
liberal princes, Roman
stunning denunciation o
of Mexico, only to retu
Jackson Pollock of essay
How Do You End an Essay? 137
inch of the composition with equal emphasi

of literary perspective. In vain do we sea
themes and an orderly development build
as his eighth essay in Volume 1 , when he
way, Montaigne compared his mind to "a
hundred times more trouble than it took
many chimeras and fantastic monsters, o
or purpose, that in order to contemplate
at my pleasure, I have begun to put them
make my mind ashamed of itself."
This passage is highly characteristic
self-divided stance as both thinker and obs
patterns. It is as though he refuses to tak
cerebral meanderings, which he compare
"some excrements of an aged mind." He i
shame in the parade of his wicked though
Because Montaigne kept amending h
editions those archaeological layers indica
A, B and C, he was free to change the en
of his essays have B and C additions tack
Had he lived longer, undoubtedly there
amendments to the endings as well. All
the sense of inevitability toward which t
have built, although occasionally they nicel
Sometimes they indicate a doubt that he
which drives him toward further general
occasion. For instance, in his famous, on
Child," which argues for a more benign,
abnormality, the original ending reads:
Médoc, thirty years old or thereabouts, w
He has three holes by which he continual
has desire, and likes to touch women."
in the final edition which drove the poin
are not so to God, who sees in the immen
forms that he has comprised in it; and it is
that astonishes us is related and linked to
138 PHILLIP LOPATĚ
kind unknown to man.

but that is good and or
ment and relationship,
explicit expressions of
or comfortable talking
a failure of nerve, or m
his message from the ab
genitals. (That first en
of Raymond Carver's s
Carver's own desire to
Montaigne's essays, a
the majestic final essay
promising streams of a
boat launched onto the
to surrender to the wa
idea to another. These l
seven-paragraph paper
around a topic- "On so
"Of Repentence," "Of v
what their titles indicat
ancient world to curre
the historical and biolo
Montaigne is hard to
try to emphasize struct
as shaped artifacts- yo
casualness. You can off
will get him; but rare is
that temperate self-acc
often misconstrued by
heads or tails of him i
being foisted on us as o
an old geezer, I can "re
of adolescent confusio
equilibrium (and what t
he is opposed to the fan
the everyday, for mode
of all for experience, w
Perhaps this is also why his final e

masterfully sums up his approach to lif
ability to harness reason, or insistent th
nothing but fools," still reminding us th
defecate, and ladies too," he is also grateful
ing him the fine art of resignation. "Consi
stone weans you from life and detaches y
and asks, "But is there anything so swee
from extreme pain, by the voiding of m
by lightning the beautiful light of health
in our sudden and sharpest attacks of col
he confesses- how he scratches his ears,
up, loves sauces of all kinds, bites his ton
comic details have their place in the larger
beating up on yourself, Montaigne says in
of our maladies is to despise our being."
ists he remarks: "They want to get out
the man. That is madness: instead of chan
into beasts; instead of raising themselves
transcendental humors frighten me."
I am arguing here that Montaigne's
ness or "endlessness," if you will, has a g
a balance, through the sifting of long e
imperfection. Montaigne was a master o
such as he advocated does not drive towar
kind. What we now call "closure," in the
Louise Huxtable: "closure, that solipsism
grief') would have made no sense to Mon
and there was none of that Romantic impa
and contradictions through transcendenc
as a form to develop, in part, because it o
too-hasty resolutions.
One way to understand Montaigne's e
associating approach is to contrast it with
form: the personal essay exemplified by
Romantic essayist. What Hazlitt did, bri
140 PHILLIP LOPATĚ
self, and to place that s

narrative essays, such a
First Acquaintance with
tagonist into action, taki
the inevitable end-point
over, the friendship is f
kaput.) Hazlitt's bristlin
hunger to bond with fe
ming from that Romant
a malcontent, too singula
engages, embraces, rejec
in Hazlitt's affecting if
his unrequited infatuati
Even when Hazlitt wri
tive, analytical one, suc
Jugglers," he stages a co
through the distinction
ending of "On the Pleas
raveling the web of hum
cowardice, want of feel
towards others, and ign
all excellence , itself givi
public and private hopes
wrong; always disappoin
friendship, and the foo
myself? Indeed I do; an
world enough." Hazlitt'
much more given to fo
than Montaigne. He put
ing for a writer whose
artistic hero was Titian.
a strenuous wrestling m
and has pinned one of th
In short, even in his
dramatically before us
of Hazlitt states: "As of all men he had the most intense consciousness
of his own existence, since never a day p

a pang of hate or of jealousy, some thril
not read him for very long without com
character- ill-conditioned yet high-mind
egotistical yet inspired by the most gen
liberties of mankind. ... So thin is the vei
his very look comes before us. . ."
Hazlitťs descendants include some of
ists we have, such as George Orwell, M
Mary McCarthy, E.B. White, James Bald
to create a highly singular persona who w
to their flow of thoughts by means of a
characterization. Montaigne let us in on
but ultimately regarded himself as sane,
everyone; whereas Hazlitt saw himself as
a character fundamentally problematic- b
my own practice is closer to the Hazlitt e
though Montaigne's "endless," streaming
me.
An interesting aside is that contemporary literary theory has ca

into doubt the whole notion of the unitary self, positing that the inner
is in fact a fiction, and what we call a "self' may be more a collect
reality, conditioned by the media and the expectations of others; th
any case we are composed finally of language, and language is as m
a product of what is outside us as what is within us. I have long held
personal essay to be one of the last bastions of the orthodoxy of the uni
self: those of us who are drawn to practicing this form tend to believ
our possessing a core reality or self, and we would cling to this convi
even if critical theory disproved it 100%. The lyrical essay, which
recently come in vogue, offers a compromise bridge between the two
tions, which allows for more of a porous, diffuse, destabilized, collec
self than the individualized, Romantic essay model. Seen in this light,
progenitor Montaigne is more "modern" than Hazlitt , because he chan
the wisdom of the Ancients and Erasmus as though they were occupy
as much space in his cerebral cortex as himself. His mind floats on
undulating current of inconstant thoughts which his ego is paralyze
142 PHILLIP LOPATĚ
control, and, even wh

the sense of having a
else's: "Each man bears the entire form of man's estate." This is not
merely a humanistic statement, but a recognition of our shared genetic

material, which dilutes the privilege of the unitary self and promotes a
model of more interdependence.
Endlessness has long been a literary modernist trope. Curi-

ously, it is more often found in modern fiction than in the modern essay,
though it is usually novelists of an essayistic bent, such as Proust, Musil,
Bernhard, Sebald, Saramago, Marias and Bolafío who are given to open-
ended discourse and long unbroken paragraphs that offer no end in sight.
Tracing the method of novelistic endlessness back to its source, we find
Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy. Sterne especially championed the
practice of inexhaustible digression. Is endlessness, then, perforce comic?
Certainly there is something funny about a speech never coming to an end,
or a narrator never coming to the point; and, to the degree that death is
avoided by such out-talking, the tragic is circumvented too. The Marquis
de Sade, no tragedian himself, is also endless, though comic in only an
inadvertent way: it is hard to know which is more horrifically absurd, the
sadistic acts he describes with relish, or his torturers' interminably self-
justifying speeches.
Perhaps this is the moment to consider that our Western model
of the shaped literary artifact, smooth as a Brancusi egg and tapering to
an exquisitely polished point, may actually be quite recent and provincial.
Much of the world's great literature- The Mahar abata, the Icelandic
sagas, the chivalric romances such as Urfe's UAstree , Don Quixote , The
Thousand and One Nights, Gargantua and Pantagruel , the picaresque
novel, Les Miserables , War and Peace , Proust and so on- has followed
an open-ended, additive model, with episodic strings of adventures and
complications trumping the expectation of a singular finale . Poe may have
said that a poem must be short or face the risk of mounting imperfection;
bui, pace Poe, perfection is very rare in literature, and probably over-rated.
Taking the long, global view, Montaigne's practice of endless essay-spin-
ning may therefore be less of a scandal than it would at first appear.
Getting in and getting o
Most great essays are not flawless, an

attempt to finesse this fact. Dedicated stude
the canon as though everything included
and it is their job to figure out how the pa
sumption, which nonetheless can lead to
are great essays that are perfect, such as
Lake." Every word, every comma prepar
about White and his son: "Languidly, and
watched him, his hard little body, skinny
as he pulled up around his vitals the sma
buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my gr
always good strategy to invoke death at t
B. White's control of diction (vitals, sogg
have to say that as a practicing essayist I
him. Maybe it's envy, because I could ne
texture as totally, but I would much pref
that meanders juicily into open-ended im
Room of One's Own , than an essay by W
to a T. That skill, it seems to me, belongs
the essay, and I can't forgive White for r
grievously. Then again, he did write a n
says, and to be fair, Woolf wrote a perfe
Moth," and I have forgiven her for it. It
two lines: "The moth having righted him
uncomplainingly composed, O yes, he se
than I am."
Often the heightened ending of a great essay will attempt to

distract the reader from the flaws that preceded it. "Such, Such Were the
Joys. . by George Orwell is one of my favorite essays. It proceeds for
most of its length in linear narrative fashion, recounting the grim experi-
ence the author had when he was a lad in an English boarding school.
At every step of the way the adult author questions or qualifies the im-
pressions of the credulous, ignorant boy he was; but for all that, it is an
144 PHILLIP LOPATĚ
engrossing adventure s
abandoned children dep
environment. The vigor
fairytale energy. But O
to power- how he had
and once he had done th
and his wife were not o
seemed not to know h
Were the Joys. . ." doe
only after I had been te
of me always expected
Copperfield or Oliver T
the sudden turn Orwel
some fascinating candid
relations between child
ent day. Orwell, the po
even after we have elim
irremediable sorrow wo
is encapsulated in a las
everything has grown,
This shifting of gears p
analytically the precedi
there was something st
that the novelist in Or
ground to the essayist,
Another superb writ
remarkable narrative p
novels), was James Bal
ern American literatur
of the tensions betwee
white society. Baldwin
portrait and analysis, j
for twenty thrilling p
the harsh emotional am
this final paragraph: "
the mind forever two
idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totall

is, and men as they are: in the light of t
that injustice is a commonplace. But this
complacent, for the second idea was of eq
in one's own life, accept these injustices a
them with all one's strength. This fight b
it now had been laid to my charge to keep
despair. This intimation made my heart h
was irrecoverable, I wished that he had
have searched his face for the answers wh
me now."
This eloquent, elegant solution does many things at once. The

idea of two clashing ideas held suspended in the mind acknowledges the
reader's hunger for resolution, without giving in to false simplicities. It
is of course not new, recalling as it does Keats 's epistolary remarks on
negative capability, or F. Scott Fitzgerald's postulate in his essay "The
Crack-Up" ("the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to
function"). But the specific terms assigned to the split (the wisdom of
acceptance versus the unwillingness to stomach injustice) have a certain
moral grandeur. Baldwin's sentences move adroitly from the general
(the formal pronoun "one") to the personal "I;" the word "fight" implies
summoning of aggression, a suggestion immediately belied by the in-
junction to free the heart of hatred; and the piece ends with a poignant,
complex image of an impossibility: searching the face of someone who
is no longer there, and simultaneously looking Janus-faced towards the
past and future.
This ending is written in such a way that it perfectly illustrates
the tortured reconciliation Baldwin feels called upon ("it now had been
laid to my charge" is his curious locution) to achieve. But I also think it
works so well because the essay is still relatively short. Problems of scale
mar Baldwin's essays once they start becoming longer and longer. The
Fire Next Time has some of the most magnificent pages he ever wrote;
but it also gets entangled in its own rhetoric, towards the end, as Baldwin
invokes preacher-fashion the image of cosmic apocalypse - always a risky
maneuver when addressing an American society which keeps managing
146 PHILLIP LOPATĚ
not to go up in smoke
Street and The Devil Fi
ings of "the wrath to
kept being drawn to m
and so Montaigne-like;
extended essay. But the
social problems of an A
while living abroad, and
knowing how to get out
a sermon about heaven
to deliver. The more h
more unrealistic expect
unifying impression.
A brief typol
An essay may end in

a joke, a question, a quo
niques as exist, that is
ending may recapitulate
a refrain, or it may twe
One way to end an essa
a new insight, either t
or stumbled upon in co
may end in a moral sum
to "Of a Monstrous Chi
subject is exhausted as
ist persona, that high- w
between passion and d
may end in a sigh, a sh
Often the initial set
ending. In an excellent
says," Marilyn Zion ga
in Winter": "Ozick open
road map or a program
store in winter; the gold leaf on the dom

loss, panic and dread.' By beginning with
familiarizes the reader with the places whe
piques the reader's curiosity. What do the
reader wants to know. . . .As the short essa
now elderly, grows less certain and self-ass
persona we met in the opening paragraph
making explicit statements about tangible
asking questions about abstract concepts
Ozick ends with the following question, 4
a well of tears, what you meant to do (be
done, papa and mama are under the earth,
future shrinks and darkens, stories are onl
for nothing but an old scarred pen, and w
Ozick's movement from certainty to do
in general , as their explorations come to ho
founder, Montaigne: "What do I know?"
is a quasi-scientific experiment to discern
A person's thoughts may have no natural
maybe beyond that, who knows?), but a p
its limitations.
Here are other examples of aforem

plucked from Zion's paper or at random.
such as Gretei Ehrlich 's "The Solace of O
as if it were a pie shell, with things who
to see what is already there." Or a joke:
searching for some chalk to draw with, h
piece of chalk. Or a sudden change of m
migraines, "In Bed," which, after detailin
state, concludes: "For when the pain rec
everything goes with it, all the hidden re
The migraine has acted as a circuit break
intact. There is a pleasant convalescent e
and feel the air, eat gratefully, sleep well.
a flower in a glass on the stair landing.
reminded of Montaigne voiding his kidne
148 PHILLIP LOPATĚ
Year's Eve," which is m

with a jolly quoted son
of Turtles" ends with a s
in the Hudson River and
of diving in after him,
One of the loveliest e
in Natalia Ginzburg's "H
describes the way the a
own (the piece is essent
lems of how to conclud
structure for a longer se
courtship, when everyth
walk along the Via Nazio
lying and that he remem
us, these two people, alm
people who conversed so
chatted a little about ev
talking, two young int
so uninvolved, so ready
ready to say goodbye to
of the street." By alteri
Ginzburg achieves the e
movie, the camera pulli
ironic wisdom, and the
Formal analysis of the

criticism, compared to p
thing. Even if the reaso
academy and the marke
to chart a different cou
sciousness of deep struct
alternatives. That is, one
one is launching into th
for each essay, simply b
Montaigne felt when he
by studying the universe
essayist to recover, however fleetingly. T

to bring the damn thing to a close?
In my own experience, writing th
something to do with internalizing the a
If I sense the reader tapping her foot, I k
Though mindful of Montaigne's convictio
to everything else, which would encourag
to a thousand different associations, I rea
are many more entertainment options than
piece, the maximum word-limit assigned
to inducing conclusion. But even when n
usually start with an intuition of scale th
merits a certain number of pages, and to
much fun one is having, risks bloatednes
For me, an ending may arise from a c
optimism. Say I am getting tired of work
I had thought would take only a day and i
or third week; meanwhile the material, th
(we are back to those metaphors again, th
is thinning under my hands. At the same
an intriguing glimmer in the distance tha
as an ending. The fact that it does not re
raised but, instead, slips out of their gras
away from them possibly all to the good
some things to work out on their own (o
erating elation of having pulled off a fas
responsible, less optimistic mood, I see t
say. So I tinker by adding a few lines, a p
leave it alone. I am not interested after al
serve, it is "good enough," it will have to

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How does the author describe structuring an essay?

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What are some examples of ways essays can end?

How Do You End an Essay?

Author(s): PHILLIP LOPATE

I am often asked by students: How do I know when an essay is

inch of the composition with equal emphasi

kind unknown to man.

Perhaps this is also why his final e

self, and to place that s

of his own existence, since never a day p

An interesting aside is that contemporary literary theory has ca

control, and, even wh

merely a humanistic statement, but a recognition of our shared genetic

Endlessness has long been a literary modernist trope. Curi-

Getting in and getting o

Most great essays are not flawless, an

Often the heightened ending of a great essay will attempt to

idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totall

This eloquent, elegant solution does many things at once. The

An essay may end in

store in winter; the gold leaf on the dom

Here are other examples of aforem

Year's Eve," which is m

Formal analysis of the

essayist to recover, however fleetingly. T

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