What Does Olive Kitteridge Ending Reveal About Olive?

Question

As someone who loves dissecting complicated characters in literary fiction like this, the finale left me reflecting a lot. Not sure if I truly understood her final scenes or what they revealed about her core. What did you all take away from Olive Kitteridge's conclusion? It felt so impactful yet ambiguous.

Kellis Milena Pino Herrera · Answer

Olive Kitteridge in the end is a lonely, judgemental woman, but also someone with huge amounts of unexpected empathy and understanding of others. As others in Crosby have finally connected with her, she too has connected with them and felt their acceptance of her prickly, lovable nature. That Olive Kitteridge, with all her sometimes nasty, tough exterior and harsh judgments of others, hides so much pain and loneliness under that tough exterior, is what makes her so compelling. That same dynamic between a tough exterior and an often hidden, emotional interior is explored in modern, comedic fashion in ‘Olive’s Roommate’, a short about a sharp-tongued freelance writer who is forced to share a small apartment with another person. In order to escape her acerbic new roommate who is bizarrely perfect in every way, the writer, in her notes to her new housemate, tries to express her deepest hatred and disdain for her peacefully harmonious life.

Kara · Answer

The final scene of 'Olive Kitteridge' played out more like a slow-motion somersault in a future direction for the main character as opposed to your typical redemption narrative. To me, Olive is shown to be human in her full, sometimes irritating, complexity. All of the traits that are usually viewed negatively (her bluntness, her impatient demeanor and defensive posturing to keep people at arm's length) were all still intact but we got to see underneath her skin a little and saw her slowly come to terms with her loss in the only way she knew how to be present with it.

The ending actually focuses more on the small acts of tenderness Olive is capable of. I was aware that the story was dealing with mortality but it was also showing how we come to terms with our own deaths and learn to deal with our own grief. Olive is slowly able to let a few people in and the softening of the community towards her, and her towards them, is part of her growth. The small, imperfect connections she makes with others are the softening agent that changes her. There’s still lots of regret and stubbornness in there but she’s gained enough awareness of how her judgments about people have affected them for her to be different in some way.

This viewer left with a feeling of comfort that Olive has not become someone entirely different. The way that Olive has learned and grown throughout the story is shown in a very honest portrayal of human nature. She has become more real, and that in itself is hopeful.

Zion · Answer

The ending of ‘Olive Kitteridge’ shed a light on the contradiction that is Olive Kitteridge – tough and tender, judging people and showing compassion to them at the same time. The ending refrained from giving the reader a clear moral to take away from the story and portrayed Olive’s struggle with mortality, regret and small mercies. It were the small acts of kindness and understanding that showed us how Olive had grown. She hadn’t changed into a completely different person or become miraculously sweet and nice, but she had learned to acknowledge the limits of her authority and to be vulnerable as a human being. That’s how the ending of ‘Olive Kitteridge’ felt – beautiful and, in the best possible way, unfinished.

Gregory · Answer

I thought the end of ‘Olive Kitteridge’ was so gentle and so ‘other’ than what I had expected. The book’s slow unpeeling of a character and a story reached a kind of conclusion but rather than finding redemption in the usual ways the novel showed us how to notice the ordinary and Trace out the edges of this prickly, and often hurtful, woman. And just as we had perceived Olive’s bluntness, her impatience and her defensiveness as a hard shell or edge, the final pages showed how that edge had been slowly unpeeled and how Olive had let herself be grieved and regretted and even loved.

I also appreciated the way the novel held to ambiguity in the ending. It was satisfying without being at all tidy or smug. It didn’t resolve all of the relationships in the novel, nor did it grant Olive a generic overcoming of her past behavior. Instead, we are left with Olive behaving tenderly in a few instances, and we are given the sense of growth that he has experienced in moments of insight. The ending, much like the rest of the novel, is a testament to the author’s faith in the subtle truth of life. The final chapters of our lives are often messy, and conflicting. But, in the end, they are full of quiet compassion.

Talia · Answer

While I didn’t find that Olive Kitteridge went through any sort of dramatic transformation by the end of the book, I appreciated that she arrived at a sort of self-awareness instead. The ending was marked by short scenes and simple, domestic details that conveyed a lot about Olive’s internal changes. And, I thought, rather than having to make some big confession to her family and friends, she is able to show them her growth through her gestures of attentive listening, her unspoken apologies, her gentleness towards someone she used to despise. It shows that her growth is practical and earned through her living and failing and choosing.

This is also very true to life in that Olive’s growth happens within her relationships to her neighbors and to her son. I think Strout makes a strong point in portraying the ending of Olive Kitteridge in this way because the final portrait of Olive is of a woman who has caused a lot of pain and suffered a lot of loneliness. Yet she is also a woman who is capable of alot of empathy, many times expressing it in quiet ways that she never even admitted to herself before. Olive’s growth is that of an imperfect yet courageous woman.

Wyatt · Answer

In the last chapter of stories in ‘Olive Kitteridge’ what I came to realize about Olive was that she had always been human beneath her tough exterior. In the end her harsh words and critical manner had only served to protect herself and when the protective covering dropped we saw her human frailty and a deep sense of remorse. Reading through the stories it became apparent how in brief moments of kindness and gentleness Olive was shown to be tender in her dealings with others. Not in a dramatic way and certainly not in a dramatic transformation but in a quietly slow unfolding of her human nature. And in the end we see a fully human Olive able to grieve and to acknowledge the others around her. The characterization is completely believable and thus not cloying in its portrayal of a hard woman melted by circumstances. Rather it shows that beneath her tough exterior Olive was always a very human and very complicated person.

Yolanda · Answer

The end of ‘Olive Kitteridge’ was a deeply moving insight into the main character. The focus wasn’t on resolving issues or wrapping up loose ends for the main characters in a neat bow. Instead we were shown in minute detail the small moments of connection and growth between the main characters. We see in the final scenes that Olive’s greatest defense mechanism, her toughness, is a combination of her harsh exterior and her inability to deal with the pain of her loss of control, her loneliness.

Unlike many stories which try to deliver a neat moral at the end of the day, this one was not neat. It was also very real. What I gathered from watching Olive Kitteridge learn to be kind was that presence is far more important than words. All her awkward, kind and grudgingly patient actions, listening to others without trying to take control or dictate, were far more meaningful than any speech or words of apology. I also saw how she could be very cruel at times and that the cruel things she did were part of who she was, but they existed alongside her kinder self. Watching her come to terms with herself, slowly but surely, in fits and starts, was a deeply moving experience and, at times, quite painful too.

Bennett · Answer

The last scene of 'Olive Kitteridge' was that of someone giving us permission to enter Olive's private world of feelings. And what we saw there was a woman with a lot of room for regret and for small mercies. And she's tough. But she's tough with a soft center that we've not yet seen. And that softness is so much better than any redemption. It makes her so much more real to me than any full redemption would.

What lingers with me is that ordinary human behavior, in checking in on others from time to time, in showing up, in noticing people, can bring about the greatest change of all. I will think of this in my own life, as I am sure that for all the people in my life who have grown and changed in recent years, the growth came not from big declarations, but rather from a thousand small actions, done consistently. I am left feeling quietly moved and even hopeful.

Melani Garcia · Answer

This is a masterful “show not tell” moment. We don’t learn that Olive has changed in this short story. Rather we see her doing something that the older Olive probably wouldn’t do. She might even do something that the older Olive would do but without the snark. We have to understand what has happened to Olive by comparing this version of her to the versions we encountered earlier in the book. That the reader will have to do the work to understand this moment with Olive is part of what makes it so powerful. It reveals as much about the reader’s growing understanding of character as it does about Olive herself.

gvnddmslmn · Answer

It underlines her accidental role as witness. Throughout the stories Olive is a viewer from the outside; she watches Crosby and its inhabitants get into all sorts of tricky situations. Most of the time she has harsh things to say about them. When we meet her at the end of the stories she is no longer judging Crosby and its inhabitants in a harsh and crushing way. Instead she is witness to the tragic story of a young man and the simple beauty of nature. She does not try to criticize or solve either of these things, but merely to be present. Her engagement with things is no longer negative, it is more powerful than that. It comes from a place of silence and respect, and shows that she values their existence.

Jess Zulueta Gabriel Rosario · Answer

This reinforces the accidental salvation theme of this short story. While on her daily walk, Olive wasn’t searching for any sort of spiritual enlightenment. In fact, this wasn’t a particularly special or pilgrimage-like sort of journey for her. But sometimes, salvation finds us in the form of connection and beauty. And sometimes growth and peace come in the form of gifts to us instead of us spending years searching for them in relation to all of the different ways that we try to pursue them. Her entire life has been comprised of learning the lessons that life brings to her in all of the various ways, and many of those lessons have come in the form of sideways encounters with people as opposed to head-on, “I am going to finally confront my son about all of my guilt and have a perfect reconciliation” type of events. That being said, the biggest lesson that she learned of all time came in the form of a stranger and a bunch of weeds.

Aider Kwin · Answer

It reveals that people are multi-dimensional and that at any given time they can be so many different things. For so much of the book we have seen Olive as difficult, sharp and at times even cruel. But the ending of the book does not erase these aspects of her character. Rather, it reveals new ones, ones of delicate perception, of quiet kindness, of of even of of joy. The ending is realistic in that it portrays a person becoming more themselves rather than someone entirely different. As we have seen Olive grow and develop throughout the novel, the ending forces the reader to grow and develop as well, to gain a new understanding of Olive and how she views the world around her. We must be able to hold in our minds the harshness of her and the softness of her as well. This is the real revelation of the ending of the book.

Dominguez Tamara Claudia · Answer

These wildflowers are uncultivated. They are not growing in a garden that Olive had tended with loving care. Rather they are growing wild by the river. I think that here Olive is given to appreciate things that are to thrive without the control of man, without her control. All her life she had tried to cultivate Henry, to cultivate Christopher, to cultivate her students. For the most part her results had been mixed and often disastrous. But these wildflowers were beautiful just as they were. Her joy in them was her joy in the unmanaged, the unexpected, the independent. It was a joy that told her that perhaps all along her controlling instincts had been wrong and that beauty and goodness do thrive on their own without her help. This is a huge lesson for her.

Devi Larepos · Answer

What I see in this scene is the proof of Olive’s need for narrative. She always constructed a story about the people she knew, usually not very favorable. When meeting a young man for instance, she immediately enters his story (the girlfriend has left him, he is sad) but does not ever use this to expose his weakness. The flowers she picks on her way back to her hotel are simply there. They have no story to tell. That they are beautiful or that she needs them is completely beyond her control. For the first time in her life Olive experiences something without immediately making up a story about it. This is a tremendous step for her. She grew up using stories in a most negative way, but also as a defense mechanism. Her ability to experience something without immediately starting to interpret it in a most negative way is peaceful.

Shee Tanqueco · Answer

I see Olive finally getting the concept of impermanence in the ending of this film. For so long she was determined to fight against the changes in her life – her son growing up, Henry’s decline, her own old age. But she fought against it all with such anger and resentment. These little wildflowers by the river are impermanence. They’re beautiful. They’re wild. But they’re here and then they’re gone. And they’re so much better because they’re gone soon. In this brief moment of time Olive can appreciate these to be their most perfect. She’s finally earned the wisdom to appreciate something because it’s fleeting and only exists in this one perfect moment in time. She’s finally stopped fighting against time and is able to appreciate its beauty even if it’s only for a minute on a riverbank.

Maria Ana Aballe Pasudag · Answer

I was cemented in my mind as a tragicomic figure in the classical sense. The reader has followed this very flawed and often enemy-like person and gotten her. The last reveal to understand about Olive is that her inability to express softness to those she loves in her life is a limitation that is not absolute. She can be soft. But she shows softness to a stranger and a bunch of flowers. It is funny. It is ironic. The gap between how she feels and what she can express to others even at the end of her life is heartbreakingly large. And that is a very private, lonely space.

What Does Olive Kitteridge Ending Reveal About Olive?

16 Answers

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