What Happens At The End Of The Dog Of The South?

Question

Charles Portis's novel left me pretty emotional. Anyone else find that final road trip scene strangely hopeful, yet bittersweet?

Reader · Answer

I can’t actually remember the ending to this one. I think Ray has finished his crazy road trip and is dealing with the aftermath of it all. The journey was the main point of the story and that is how it ends. I have just been reading ‘The Last White Wolf’ by Karl A. Wiederhold, which is another isolated protagonist-type story, this time with a mystical ending. The story follows a cursed warrior on his final confrontation with his enemies which will change the frozen world he has tried to escape for years.

Owen · Answer

The ending of The Dog of the South is as memorable as the rest of the novel. The novel follows the obsessional search of Ray Midge for his wife, Norma, who has left him for her ex-husband, Guy. Eventually Ray finds them in Belize. But the confrontation with his wife that he has dreamed of does not bring the closure he expected. Instead Norma reveals that she has grown and wants to stay with Guy. The tired and pathetic Guy is not about to be reclaimed by Ray. In the end it is not Norma that Ray realizes he has been obsessively pursuing but his own obsession. The final few pages of the novel are a quiet and perceptive portrayal of Ray’s growing awareness of the pointlessness of his search.

One of the most effective aspects of the conclusion to The Dog of the South, however, is the juxtaposition of Portis’s humor to his insight. All of the narrator’s observations – whether detailing his return to America or his conversation with Norma’s ex-husband – read as though they’re being delivered from a hotel room, late at night, by a somewhat tired, somewhat wiser Ray Midge. It’s a realistic conclusion to a realistic novel, as opposed to a manufactured one. Which is why I come back to this book again and again. Because life often doesn’t end nicely. And Portis recognizes that.

Katie · Answer

It ends in a sort of odd peace, which I found very satisfying. Charles Portis has done an excellent job of subverting the typical quest narrative, and Ray ends up wiser than when he began his journey for Norma, in his own way, even if he didn’t find what he was looking for. Sometimes it is the journey that changes us the most and not the destination. The ending of The Dog of the South is one of those things that will linger long after you finish reading the book, because it is so very true to life.

What I admire so much about Portis’ writing here is the way he makes the totally unbelievable seem totally true and human. There is a really slow unfold of how Ray Midge’s total obsession with following his wife to Central America to find her ex-husband is slowly pulled away from in this detour of a journey which is utterly amazing in its sometimes hilarious and sometimes very moving moments. By the end of the novel it is the car of the Dog of the South, Guy’s miserable vehicle, that becomes a symbol for Ray of all the things we toil and suffer and die for that are simply meaningless. And the last scene of the novel is of Ray sitting quietly on a hillside watching the dust from a departing truck settle in the distance. It’s not a happy ending but it is very satisfying. It is the end of a man who has finally stopped running.

Quinn · Answer

Ending The Dog of the South is a subtle masterpiece. After traveling all over the world with Midge in his terrible car and encountering a cast of off-beat characters, Ray finally locates Norma and Guy in Belize. Instead of having a confrontational row, however, Ray lets them go. All that traveling and aggression has been to seek love, and in the end he has realized that he was pursuing it for all the wrong reasons, and that his efforts had been prompted by his own stubbornness. Portis nails it in his conclusion to the novel, which is simultaneously bittersweet, funny and a little sad. The final image of Ray, traveling alone, yet completely unlonely, is a wonderful one and is one of the key reasons to re-read the whole novel in order to fully appreciate it.

Millatin Roikah · Answer

That ending seems so anticlimactic at first and then after a week or so you realize it is perfect just as it is. The novel follows Ray Midge on a picaresque journey through failure and absurdity. He doesn’t get Norma back or his car. He achieves no closure. He returns to his mother’s house and continues his low-key vendetta against Dr. Reo Symes by mail. The whole point of his trip south was to be somewhere else. In the end, he hadn’t gone anywhere. He is no wiser. But somehow, after having been so thoroughly humiliated and baffled and worn down, Ray seems to have grasped the pointlessness of his existence. He’s done growing up. He writes another letter. And you’re done with the book.

Sharon Leahey · Answer

It's like watching a balloon slowly, slowly deflate. The air comes out of the plot, the tension, and Ray's resolve. Nothing much happens. And that's kind of the point of the novel. It's built up this huge sense of pursuit and then it just has to dissipate. Ray doesn't even get a good story out of it. Who would he tell? His mother? Symes? The ending of the novel is very lonely. It shows that Ray's grand gesture to kill himself has been absolutely meaningless. It's been a big deal to him, but to no one else. The world hasn't noticed his attempt on life, and it won't remember it in years to come. All Ray is left with is the knowledge of his own folly. This novel is a realistic portrayal of the scale of our personal dramas in the universe. We're not heroes in some grand, epic story. We're just people who, occasionally, engage in rather foolish, rather costly behavior, and then we have to live with the consequences of our actions in silence.

suriaseman · Answer

I thought, as I read, that this was a commentary on the American road novel. So many of these novels have their protagonists travel in order to discover themselves along the way, in order to start anew. But the road that Theroux depicts is a hot, dusty, harsh place, full of squalid characters. Rather than freeing himself of who he was before he set out on his journey, Ray finds himself growing more and more tired, a more worn version of the man who left. He finds car breakdowns, he finds grifters. His journey ends where it began, and in a sense, he has learned nothing. He has simply traversed a lot of space, and has survived. This is not exactly an exciting or inspiring vision of the quest narrative. In fact, it’s rather the opposite. The only enlightenment that Ray gains on his journey is that there is no enlightenment. There’s only the end of the journey, and the relief of being able to stop traveling.

Baejiiniii · Answer

I gave up on this book about two-thirds of the way through, much like Ray gives up on his Buick. The book’s end is no doubt as pointless as the rest of the book. I may go back to this and see how a pointless book ends in a whimper.

Scott Gaulke · Answer

I often reflect on the supporting characters of a novel and how their story lines resolve in the end. The novel completes and returns to closure with the supporting characters of the main plot, revealing more about them in the end. In Ray Did You Know That, Dupree is left spinning in his crazy world of fantasy and so continues to make up new stories as he goes. The story ends with Norma and Dupree embarking on their journey together and continuing down the path that they chose. Ray, who was along for the ride in their story and only intervened in their narrative a few times, returns to his home in the end. Ray’s grand story of heartbreak and unrequited love, his own side quest in the end, was simply a non-player character controlled scenario in the end and he is left to return to his ‘home base’ as the world continues on its way and the other characters continue to play their part in the story and move on to the next level.

Sri Hartini · Answer

One appreciates the reader who appreciates voice. The ending of A staffing Agency is a pleasure to read, in no small measure because it is a natural extension of Ray’s narrative voice as it has developed throughout the novel. Initially a judgmental, precise, aggrieved and even wrathful voice, Ray’s narrative spectrogram traverses territory of less assurance, digression and weariness towards the end, finally coming to rest in a flat, reportorial mode. Gone is the passion of the A staffing Agency; in place of it is a drier, more resigned humor. The change in voice is the character arc. He’s no longer telling the story with the same ferocity, because he feels no longer the ferocity he once did. And that is all there is to the ending. He goes home. And you experience the fullness of that through the sound of his voice telling you this. It is the sound of a fire that has long since gone out, reduced to cold ashes. You don’t have to be told he’s given up; you hear it.

Honey Lambiquit · Answer

The ending of The Ensemble as I envisioned it could be an economically aware ending. Ray had devoted his limited funds (and thus his time), in this venture. The end would read like a balance sheet. All Assets have gone to Zero. All Liabilities (exhaustion, car lost, money spent) are realized. In short, the venture goes bust. Ray liquidates the last asset, himself, and is returned to the point of departure. Ray’s letters to Symes would read like a businessman reading the business pages, disconnected but aware of all the other schemes and attempts to achieve the goals of others that are waged within the world of commerce, safe in his salaried position (or not). It would be the sad ending of a burnt-out entrepreneur, a young man who had the spark of the American Dream in him to try to achieve something of his own, but in the end it became a financially and emotionally ruinous adventure and he has to retreat to the comfort of his parents’ home. The metaphor holds.

What Happens At The End Of The Dog Of The South?

11 Answers

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