Horrifying Conclusions: Making Sense of Endings in Steinbeck's Fiction

John Steinbeck, like many other authorS, had his difficulties bringing fictions to a fitting end. Most notoriously, his masterwork, The Grapes of Wrath, attempts a method of closure which many readers just cannot swallow, and East of Eden also configures a final scene which is likely to leave readers baffled. From the first, there has been a chorus of critics objecting to the loose ends left by Steinbeck, but there have also been antiphonal loyalists eager to show how these knotty endings actually constitute beautiful bows. Rather than attempt once more to prove the perfection of these endings as written, or the lack thereof, I want to step back a bit from these perennial problems with individual works and examine the problematics of closure in Steinbeck’s work. Using the principles of narrative theory, one can effectively investigate some of the constraints on fictive resolution in Steinbeck’s world. So, rather than emphasizing convincing interpretations of the endings of particular works of fiction, I will first provide a broad survey1 of the narratological categories influencing closure in the fictional works of John Steinbeck and then evaluate significant concerns of the implied author, text, and reader which determine resolution. As a young writer Steinbeck studied the short story form intensively, particularly during his time at Stanford under the guidance of Edith Mirrielees and in the years soon afterward. This early apprenticeship in short fiction seems to shape the choice of narrative techniques throughout Steinbeck’s career, even when he experimented with various other fictional formats. Typically, early 20th-century short stories published in American magazines