Trope Tuesday: Bittersweet Ending

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR AMERICAN GODS, LAGAAN, LORD OF THE RINGS, TREASURE ISLAND, AND CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON.

And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Return of the King.

I love bittersweet endings.  I love stories that warm my heart even as they make me cry.  There’s something about reading them that makes me feel alive, and something about writing them that makes me feel like I’ve truly told a story worth telling.

The tvtropes page claims that bittersweet endings fall more to the cynical side of the sliding scale of idealism vs cynicism, but I disagree.  Without tasting the bitter, how can we know the sweet?  Too many of our modern stories are like high fructose corn syrup, where everything gets tied up with a pretty bow and the characters remain essentially unchanged.  I firmly believe that it’s only through sacrifice that we can know true joy, and stories that follow this often end up being bittersweet on some level, even if they are idealistic.

The tvtropes page lists six types of bittersweet endings, which are:

• Did Not Get the Girl: When the hero either loses the girl or has to give her up to win the day.  American Gods is a good example of this, I think: Shadow never actually gets back with Laura, even though he spends most of the book looking for a way to bring her back.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: When the hero fades into obscurity after winning the day.  Lagaan, one of my favorite Bollywood movies, is an excellent example of this.  The last line of the movie is the narrator explaining how after the events of the story, the village faded into history until it was forgotten.
• End of an Age: When the triumph over evil transforms the world so completely that there is no going back to the way things used to be.  Lord of the Rings is the best example of this: after the one ring is destroyed, all the other rings lose their power, and the elves must pass into the west.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When victory comes only after the death of many or all of the main characters.  This is basically every David Gemmell book ever written, which is why I can’t get enough of him.
• Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Where life is great for the main characters but everyone else ends up suffering.  I can’t think of any examples where this is done well; it’s probably just bad storytelling.
• Karma Houdini: When the bad guy doesn’t get what’s coming to him.  The best example of this is probably Treasure Island, where Long John Silver gets away with the treasure in the end, leaving the good guys to say “I can almost find it in my heart to hope he makes it.”

It’s important to point out that this trope is not simply a tragic tale with a heart-wrenching twist.  Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, for example, is a straight up tragedy: even though Mu Bai confesses his love to Shu Lien, he promptly dies, and Jen commits suicide.  It’s an awesome ending to an awesome story, but there is no sweet in it.

When done poorly, a bittersweet ending can feel confusing or anti-climactic.  When done well, however, I think it adds a wealth of depth and feeling, as well as a degree of believability and realism.  After all, how many of our victories are complete?  How often do we have to give up something good for something greater?

So yeah, I love this trope.