62 pages • 2 hours read
A. J. FinnEnd of Story
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
San Francisco
One of the strongest motifs of the novel is the city of San Francisco, which has a strong presence in the crime story genre in both print and film. The weather, neighborhoods, houses, nature and people repeatedly appear in the novel and lend their character to the scenes. Famous elements of the city are used to create an ominous or even threatening mood and an air of mystery and suspense.
A. J. Finn uses the weather and nature associated with the city to create a mood of instability and threat that reoccurs as a motif throughout End of Story. Fog creeps in and obscures the vision of characters, mimicking their inability to see the truth, and the drama of sudden thunderstorms and the dramatic wind that comes off the ocean feel as threatening as the human characters. Famous landmarks and neighborhoods like the Golden Gate Bridge and Chinatown are shown in their cultural glory but also used to throw obstacles in Nicky’s way, literally by having a street fair with a dragon in the way while she chases Freddy, and Nicky concealing herself in the fog from the dragon’s mouth to push through the crowd in Chapter 69 is an image loaded with symbolism regarding her obscuring her true identity while in the city.
Aside from the iconic landmarks and dramatic natural influences, the city is full of history when it comes to crime and detectives, both true and fictional. Using the city as a motif sets the novel’s mood by evoking these characters and events. Classic detectives like Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon hunt criminals in an imaginary version of the city that experienced real-life murderers like The Zodiac killer. Hitchcock movies like Vertigo and The Birds further cement the city and its surrounding areas as one associated with suspense. The motif of the city comes pre-loaded with mood and associations because of these iconic crime solvers and criminals, just as the weather, nature, and neighborhoods contribute their own aspects of suspense and threat to the thriller.
Cherchez la Femme
The famous French phrase cherchez la femme (meaning “look for the woman”) is a motif that runs through the story but is used multiple ways to add psychological complexity to the text overall and a twist to the denouement.
The first way the motif is played sums up what Nicky and Sebastian are searching for the entire novel. Both are literally looking for the woman, trying to figure out what happened to Hope Trapp, one of the most important women in their mutual lives. The second way the motif is used is when Madeleine remembers that Cole and Hope use it as private joke amongst themselves, referring to the fact that Cole was really his mother’s child and would look to her for what he needed physically and emotionally. His father didn’t approve of this, and his more jaded interpretation was that Cole was a “mama’s boy.” The written phrase on the first butterfly’s wings brings this back to Sebastian and helps drive the suspense of the novel.
Cole inscribing it on Hope’s necklace for her birthday is a reference to his relationship with her, but the motif is elevated to a clue when an unsuspecting Simone and a more astute Diana find the necklace years later. The motif reappears, this time instructing any searchers to look to the woman who is the killer and who should not have the necklace, Madeleine. This time the phrase is used somewhat close to the original meaning. In traditional mystery novels, the phrase indicates that the woman at the center of the crime, usually a femme fatale, is either the killer or the motive.
The final way the phrase manifests as a motif is when it circles back to what Sebastian and Nicky are looking for, the missing family members. While Nicky is looking for her mother (the woman), the rest of the family is looking for Cole and missed figuring it out because they are not taking the advice of the phrase. Throughout the entire story, most of the family members are looking for a man when they should be searching for a woman.
Butterflies
Butterflies abound in End of Story. Sebastian Trapp keeps rare species under the glass of his writing desk, and they are Cole’s chosen shape to fold when he practices his origami. As a symbol of transformation, they develop the theme of The Power of Purposeful Reinvention. Cole’s transformation into Nicky is thus foreshadowed by the child Cole making butterflies whenever he had a moment with origami (itself a transformative artform that turns paper into something else).
His father’s lack of understanding and support come out when Cole is either making or playing with the butterflies, such as the video of the soccer match where the rest of the children are chasing the ball and Cole is creating the origami shapes. Sebastian’s demands that his son toughen-up often include the rejection of the transformative artform his son has embraced, a habit Sebastian sees as too soft for a boy to indulge in. The moment when Sebastian burns a sink full of Cole’s origami butterflies symbolizes his violent rejection of his son’s need to transform into something different than his current form and is a turning point in the novel. After this point, Hope realizes they must do something about the situation and keep Sebastian out of it. Until Cole gets out of the house, he is figuratively trapped in his current state, just like the physical specimens under Sebastian’s desk’s glass: “a dazzle of butterflies, red and cloudless blue and tropical pink, each pinned to the corkboard, wings lung wide in surrender” (19).
The stamps Nicky and Sebastian keep as a souvenir is another reference to the symbol and their complicated relationship. Both keep the stamps as mementos from a day where each had a good time at an exhibit, demonstrating that when father and child are together without the pressures of society, they enjoy each other. Nicky sending Sebastian a letter with this stamp started him searching for who she was and the stamp was an early indicator of the transformation Cole had gone through to become Nicky.
Sebastian’s butterflies under his desk are a hint that he understands that the symbol of transformation is more personal and closer than he lets on. The art of writing itself is a sort of transformation of nothing into something, and the butterflies under his desk and his interest in the different species show that he is not unaware of the creatures’ meaning. His own disappearance after his wife and son disappear is described as a sort of withdrawal into the chrysalis before coming back to live again in San Francisco to write another novel.
