More Than This

Part 4 illustrates Seth’s emotional growth as he is depicted taking action and making significant decisions. The novel’s major themes come together and build up toward the Open Ending. The Open Ending leaves room for ambiguity and subjective interpretation, two narrative devices that are suffused throughout the novel.

Rather than narrative closure, Part 4 offers conclusions to the novel’s philosophical themes. The symbolic line between Life and Death is still blurred, but Seth’s outlook shifts radically between the beginning and end of the novel. Now that he is more open to the idea that others also deal with their own problems and complicated emotions, the young boy regains agency over his relationships. In the end, he decides to get back into his Coffin and symbolically die and be reborn once more because he realizes that the distinction between the two Worlds does not matter as much as the people he has bonded with. The narrative structure of the last chapter parallels previous moments when Seth symbolically transitioned between life and death:

Here is the boy, drowning. (6)

Here is the boy, running. (140)

Here is the boy, the man, here is Seth, being laid back gently into his coffin, the hands of his friends guiding him into place (402).

The last passage emphasizes Seth’s growth into a “man,” his renewed sense of self and purpose, and the crucial significance of his relationships. Over the course of the story, Seth has faced The Effects of Trauma and is now ready to confront his parents’ grief and his feelings for Gudmund.

The symbolism of the Horse Painting furthers the importance placed on subjectivity and individual perception. Once Seth has gained more confidence, he “looks up at the painting above the hearth, the terrified, screaming horse that has spent its life freaking him out, showing the pain he thought lay underneath the whole world [and reflects that] it’s just a painting” (339) after all. Whereas he used to project his own fears onto the painting, Seth now understands that he has the power to interpret it differently. This also applies to how he views his relationships, as he explains: “I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life. [...] And there was more. I just couldn’t see it” (367). Seth realizes that his father’s apology was an attempt to mend things and that H’s confession was an offer of friendship, but he did not understand that at the time because he was too caught up in his own issues.

The final part of the novel suggests that perceiving an experience as real makes it so. The novel argues that The Nature of Reality is individual and not absolute truth. The open ending further demonstrates this message by letting the reader decide what is “real” or not. More Than This explores deep, existential themes and argues that subjective perception is what creates meaning. Over the course of the story, Seth goes from feeling alienated to finding self-agency through compassion and empathy. This is what the novel defines as “more than this,” or the idea that life is much more complex and nuanced than one can perceive, and that shared experiences and relationships are therefore the only way to make sense of it and find purpose.