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July's People | Beyond the Interregnum. A Note of the Ending of July's People
Visser offers his interpretation on the ambiguous ending of July's People.
It is hardly surprising that the ending of Na-dine Gordimer's July's People should have occasioned a fair amount of puzzlement. As Maureen Smales runs towards the helicopter, neither she nor the reader has any way of knowing 'whether it holds saviours or murderers; and—even if she were to have identified the markings—for whom.' And not knowing that, we are left uncertain what to make of the conclusion.
One impression readers may gain from the final pages of the novel is that they constitute what Russian Formalists called a 'zero ending', an ending in which the...
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