To Vina Jie-Min
Prasad: We’re Certain to Meet Again
by Katie Lu
As a consumer of fiction, it was
always difficult to let go of a world and characters I had grown to love.
However, if I did have to pick a work with one of my favorite endings, it would
be Liu Cixin’s Death’s End. The best
endings, to me, fit two criteria: they fit the overall themes and message of
the work, and they are resolved with finality while leaving enough loose ends
to engage the reader’s imagination.
Before I begin
the rest, an obligatory warning: MAJOR spoilers ahead for Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy! For
those who are unfamiliar with the series, I would recommend reading it before
you continue. However, if you are unwilling to read all fifteen hundred pages
for a mere three-page blog post, Wikipedia has decent summaries of each book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past.
The ending past Wikipedia’s summary
is as follows. In the Galaxy Era, Cheng Xin and Ai AA are the only two humans
who escaped from the collapse of the solar system in a light-speed ship. They
travel to DX3906 in hope of meeting with Yun Tianming. There, they encounter
Guan Yifan, a scientist from Gravity. Yun Tianming arrives while Yifan and
Cheng Xin are away exploring a different planet, but while heading back to
rendezvous Yifan and Cheng Xin’s ship accidentally collides with a
newly-expanded black domain. In the days it takes them to exit orbit, millions
of years have passed for Yun Tianming and AI AA because of time dilation. They
left a gate to a pocket universe, where Yifan and Cheng Xin find Sophon. They
enter to wait for the big crunch and the creation of a new universe. Later,
they receive a broadcast that too much mass has been removed from the main
universe to reach a critical point for collapse. In the last pages of the book,
they choose to heed the warning and return.
The last line of the penultimate
chapter reads, “The ultimate fate of all intelligent beings has always been to
become as grand as their thoughts.” The entirety of the series can be seen as a
spiraling staircase towards this ultimate ‘grandness’. First humanity leaves
their planet, then their solar system, then expand across the universe, then
leave their universe itself. With this great expansion comes great
responsibility. Cheng Xin, our protagonist, is tasked with the responsibility
for two worlds, then the fate of the human race, then, in part, with the fate
of the universe. This culmination of responsibility, this ultimate grand act,
is the natural consequence of the direction the plot has taken.
Another theme of the series is the
cold realities of the universe. The scientific axioms of interstellar
civilization spark the initial conflict. “Time is the one thing that can’t be
stopped,” and time is what separates Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming. It is only
natural that a physical quantity, critical mass, is what pushes the protagonist
to make her last fateful decision. The cold calculus of the universe demands
one last sacrifice, and she must pay it with her chance to continue her grand
adventure into a new universe. After this, there is nowhere for Three Body to go but its end.
A recurring line in the last book
is “the universe is grand, but life is grander. We’re certain to meet again.” After
the end of a story, the reader can only meet again with its characters through
their imagination. Therefore, a story which keeps readers engaged past its
conclusion leaves some plot threads hanging to create a world worth imagining.
The story must also take care not to leave too much of its conclusion
unresolved, or it risks creating an expectation for more content. In my opinion,
Death’s End strikes a good balance.
Maybe their sacrifice was enough to ensure the collapse, maybe it was not.
Either way, they will live the rest of their lives in the universe in which
they were born. Their stories are not over, but the exponential expansion of
the main plot is complete. There are no greater frontiers for these characters
to explore. However, they leave behind in the pocket universe a quantum
computer and an ecological sphere. Death’s
End exits with this poignant mix of hope and finality – perhaps some
fragment of life and humanity’s memories will one day journey to the new world.
Katie,
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting way to dissect an ending that some of your peers might have found too ambivalent to sit comfortably in. But, having read at the least the first of the three books in this trilogy, there's much to be said for an ending that embracing a theme appropriate to the whole narrative arc -- the value of life, and an observation of its vastness and fragility.
Best,
TT