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I hate books with Dues Ex Machina endings espacilly Lord of the Flies.

<*Warning LOTF Spoilers*>

Jack's tribe had Ralph cornered and were going in for the kill Ralph was so dead meat. Then all of a suddenly a RN officer appears to recuse them. It was a crappy ending, to otherwise a good book with lots of good symbolism.

I want to here other disapointing ending to good books!!!!

(I don't care about spoilers)

Oh, then I definitely do NOT recommend JP3.

I liked that ending - thought the rapid bringing 'down to earth' of the madness on the island was a powerful reminder that there's an outside world and nothing that happened on the isalnd really matters

innerbrat wrote:Oh, then I definitely do NOT recommend JP3.

I liked that ending - thought the rapid bringing 'down to earth' of the madness on the island was a powerful reminder that there's an outside world and nothing that happened on the isalnd really matters

Aw c'mon, the ending to that movie was funny. It was about the only way they were going to be saved and it was such an exageration.

Tsyroc wrote:Aw c'mon, the ending to that movie was funny. It was about the only way they were going to be saved and it was such an exageration.

That movie irked me. I wanted to see that big lizard burn.

Ok, for other crap endings, try any Stephen King novel.

Oh, it was a silly alien all along...

Mike_6002 wrote:I hate books with Dues Ex Machina endings espacilly Lord of the Flies.

<*Warning LOTF Spoilers*>

Jack's tribe had Ralph cornered and were going in for the kill Ralph was so dead meat. Then all of a suddenly a RN officer appears to recuse them. It was a crappy ending, to otherwise a good book with lots of good symbolism.

I want to here other disapointing ending to good books!!!!

(I don't care about spoilers)

If you read the book, again, you will find that the ending with the British officer and the cruiser is not only foreshadowed, but a necessary way of ending the book. The final scene with the cruiser in the back ties the book together, and binds the struggles of the boys on the island with the war that stranded them on the island, originally.

Think of it this way: when the officer arrived, he saved Ralph from the other kids that were hunting him. At the same time, the officer is participating in the same thing--by hunting and trying to kill other men from the unnamed country that England is at war with. Thus, it further unifies one of the central themes of the book by reminding us one final time that what happens to the boys could happen to any of us, and that the boys behave in the same way that other people would.

Further, if read so that the Island is the Garden of Eden, the destruction of the Island that is presented at the end of LotF is representative of God's rejection of humanity, but is ironic because the rest of the book has shown us that God, the Devil, and Man are all the same, and that they created each other through their struggles. Once you understand that, you understand the main message that the book attempts to deliver.

Since you clearly did not recognize the symbolism of the ending of the book, my best guess is that you have not yet begun to understand the rest of the themes that run throughout the book. If you want, I would encourage you to go back and try to read the book, again. Look for the parallels with the adult world, and the biblical allusions that occur. Then try to understand the basic method that Golding is trying to teach.

Remember, independent of what you think about the philosophy that Golding writes about, The Lord of the Flies is the greatest book ever written in English. Intelligent readers like yourself owe it to Golding to try to understand the thing. Never underestimate the thought that he crafted his story with, and don't take things for granted within its pages.

Any book by Dale Brown, Tom Clancy, Eric L. Harry or any other American "military-thriller" author.

Why? Because you know that America will always win no matter what odds are against them in the last 10 pages.

Master of Ossus wrote:

Mike_6002 wrote:I hate books with Dues Ex Machina endings espacilly Lord of the Flies.

<*Warning LOTF Spoilers*>

Jack's tribe had Ralph cornered and were going in for the kill Ralph was so dead meat. Then all of a suddenly a RN officer appears to recuse them. It was a crappy ending, to otherwise a good book with lots of good symbolism.

I want to here other disapointing ending to good books!!!!

(I don't care about spoilers)

If you read the book, again, you will find that the ending with the British officer and the cruiser is not only foreshadowed, but a necessary way of ending the book. The final scene with the cruiser in the back ties the book together, and binds the struggles of the boys on the island with the war that stranded them on the island, originally.

Think of it this way: when the officer arrived, he saved Ralph from the other kids that were hunting him. At the same time, the officer is participating in the same thing--by hunting and trying to kill other men from the unnamed country that England is at war with. Thus, it further unifies one of the central themes of the book by reminding us one final time that what happens to the boys could happen to any of us, and that the boys behave in the same way that other people would.

Further, if read so that the Island is the Garden of Eden, the destruction of the Island that is presented at the end of LotF is representative of God's rejection of humanity, but is ironic because the rest of the book has shown us that God, the Devil, and Man are all the same, and that they created each other through their struggles. Once you understand that, you understand the main message that the book attempts to deliver.

Since you clearly did not recognize the symbolism of the ending of the book, my best guess is that you have not yet begun to understand the rest of the themes that run throughout the book. If you want, I would encourage you to go back and try to read the book, again. Look for the parallels with the adult world, and the biblical allusions that occur. Then try to understand the basic method that Golding is trying to teach.

Remember, independent of what you think about the philosophy that Golding writes about, The Lord of the Flies is the greatest book ever written in English. Intelligent readers like yourself owe it to Golding to try to understand the thing. Never underestimate the thought that he crafted his story with, and don't take things for granted within its pages.

That sort of jarred my memory, thanks

Simon as Jesus, that was good symoblism

And the destrction of the conche as the fall of civilzation that was another good point, man Grade 11 english has sure paid off

Master of Ossus wrote:Remember, independent of what you think about the philosophy that Golding writes about, The Lord of the Flies is the greatest book ever written in English.

Gotta disagree with you there, MoO. I thinkAnimal Farmand1984are both better books than LOTF, although it's up there.

Mike_6002 wrote: That sort of jarred my memory, thanks

Simon as Jesus, that was good symoblism

And the destrction of the conche as the fall of civilzation that was another good point, man Grade 11 english has sure paid off

No problem. After teaching this book for five years, I think I can go through and explain one scene of it, now.

Bad endings? Pretty much everything by A. C. Clarke. Particularly the ending novels of series...

IG-88E wrote:

Master of Ossus wrote:Remember, independent of what you think about the philosophy that Golding writes about, The Lord of the Flies is the greatest book ever written in English.

Gotta disagree with you there, MoO. I thinkAnimal Farmand1984are both better books than LOTF, although it's up there.

Any of you read Beloved or Heart of Darkness?

Shinova wrote:Any of you read Beloved or Heart of Darkness?

Can't say I have. They good or bad?

IG-88E wrote:

Shinova wrote:Any of you read Beloved or Heart of Darkness?

Can't say I have. They good or bad?

Beloved won the Pulitzer prize for fiction (in fact, many of the author's contemporaries, some of them competitors for the pulitzer, wanted Beloved to win the prize). The author later went on to win the Nobel prize for Literature.


For Heart of Darkness, take Lord of the Flies, multiply it by ten quality-wise and add symbolism at its best. Make the book one of the two books always taught by literature teachers in high school (the other book being Hamlet), and hail it as one of the top 100 greatest literary works in the twentieth century, and the book that T.S. Eliot (the greatest poet of the 20th century) considered the single greatest English novel in existence. That's Heart of Darkness


Beloved is by Toni Morrison
Heart of Darkness is by Joseph Conrad

IG-88E wrote:

Master of Ossus wrote:Remember, independent of what you think about the philosophy that Golding writes about, The Lord of the Flies is the greatest book ever written in English.

Gotta disagree with you there, MoO. I thinkAnimal Farmand1984are both better books than LOTF, although it's up there.

I can think of a few others I think are better than LOTF (in addition to Iggy's two, both of which I love), like Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, Sometimes A Great Notion, Farenheit 451...

Zaia wrote:Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, Sometimes A Great Notion, Farenheit 451...

All good books. Anyone ever readRed Badge of Courage? VERY good book.

Shinova wrote:Beloved is by Toni Morrison
Heart of Darkness is by Joseph Conrad

I'll have to see if I can find them.

I once read a book called Maldoror, about this guy who was cursed to be evil by God. By some french author guy, no wonder.

A note of warning based on my previous post:


They're difficult to read, especially Beloved (symbols, foreshadowing, imagery upon imagery upon imagery, and even stream of consciousness :shudder:).

They're only for the intellectually advanced.

One of Harold Coyle books had a very abrupt ending. It was about a small unit in combat in the Balkans. "God's Children" is the title. It felt like he just ran out of time and wrapped up the book where it was.

Heart of Darkness is truly excellent. My 12th grade English teacher had us spend a semester on it. Other good books to read include:
Let's Put the Future Behind Us - Jack Womack
The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishigiro
Requiem: A Hallucination - Antonio Batucchi (my spelling is way off, don't have it handy)
Gun, With Occasional Music - Jonathan Lethem

My username is from Nymphomation by Jeff Noon, a cool sci-fi book.

As for books w/ crappy endings, which is the purpose of the thread... I've never read Battlefield: Earth, but if it's anything like the movie ending, it's a crappy as is humanly possible. The ending of Hokkaido Popsicle (Isaac Thomson), sequel to the truly awesome Tokyo Suckerpunch, is somewhat anticlimactic. Now that I think of it, the ending to Nymphomation sort of comes out of left field, though it's not crappy per se. All of Neal Stephenson's books sort of lose their steam at the end, though he's getting better; Cryptonomicon did a pretty good job, but Zodiac and the Big U just sort of... end. It's been a while since I've read those, though, so I may revise my opinion after rereading them.

For the most part, the books I read have good endings. I pick them with my foolproof "judge books by their covers" method. Thus far, I've yet to be disappointed.

Also, perhaps the best ending of all time is the final line of The Broom of the System (David Foster Wallace) - "I'm a man of my

Shinova wrote:

IG-88E wrote:

Master of Ossus wrote:Remember, independent of what you think about the philosophy that Golding writes about, The Lord of the Flies is the greatest book ever written in English.

Gotta disagree with you there, MoO. I thinkAnimal Farmand1984are both better books than LOTF, although it's up there.

Any of you read Beloved or Heart of Darkness?

I have read all of those books. None of them compete with Lord of the Flies. POTENTIALLY one could argue that Faerie Queene, Scarlet Letter, Gulliver's Travels, and Canterbury Tales were more revolutionary, but the only other book that even comes close to Lord of the Flies, literarily, is Catcher in the Rye. I don't even think that the most ardent Conrad or Faulkner fans would claim that those respective writers' work was as good as Golding's. That is not, of course, to say that any of the others are weak books. All of them are great, but Golding's work is the most deeply symbollic book that has ever been written, independent of the message it promotes.

Shinova wrote: For Heart of Darkness, take Lord of the Flies, multiply it by ten quality-wise and add symbolism at its best. Make the book one of the two books always taught by literature teachers in high school (the other book being Hamlet), and hail it as one of the top 100 greatest literary works in the twentieth century, and the book that T.S. Eliot (the greatest poet of the 20th century) considered the single greatest English novel in existence. That's Heart of Darkness

Hah, yeah right. I've taught them both. Lord of the Flies is far deeper, symbollically. On a literal level, Heart of Darkness is stronger, but critics who suggest that Lord of the Flies approaches Conrad are usually ill-treated for a reason. They are wrong.

IG-88E wrote:

Zaia wrote:Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, Sometimes A Great Notion, Farenheit 451...

All good books. Anyone ever readRed Badge of Courage? VERY good book.

Of course I have. It is a good book.

Oh, yes, my nominee for the worst ending ever: The Postman. Everything up until the warlord was actually interesting, but the warlord part of the book was a ho-hum ramp through tired literature. Of course, the Kevin Costner film focused entirely on what was by far the worst part of the book, and we all know how well that worked in the theaters.

Couple of the Dune books had stupid endings...hmm...oh yeah, Xenocide's (Orson Scott Card) ending was kinda...well, weird. Children of the Jedi had a crap ending. Ringworld was overall boring with a useless, lame ending.