What do you guys think?
Sunday, November 21, 2010
about Le Pan's alternate ending
I just finished reading the "happy ending" of Animals. Which isn't so happy, though Sam escapes by a hair the fate he almost shared with the rest, the line is still very long. My emotionality is relieved that Sam is saved, but I didn't feel the same necessary heavy dread I did after the original version's ending. And I guess what this version really changes is the line between mongrel and human is delineated very clearly, as being deaf is no longer incriminating of mongrelness and Zayne accepts Sam as a child. And I am not sure that I like this and its potential effect on the reader. If Sam is human and the human is at least saved, I don't think there will be as much sympathy for the regular-type mongrels. They are mongrels, after all.
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So perhaps the insistence of a publisher to have this "happy ending" is in fact a shortsightedness that damages what might be more important than "saving the human." In fact, isn't this precisely what, as a result of our discussions of the novel, the story combats against: it decenters the human in productive, even if horrifying, ways...
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