Avoid Closure Just On with the Story Towards 'Multiple Endings' as a Postmodern Technique in Barth's On with the Story

By the coming of Postmodernism into the field of literature, all previous narrative strategies are subverted and postmodern concepts of fracturing, fragmentation and indeterminacy are imposed upon the narrative to bring about particular effects in narratives and reflect postmodern ideas or concepts. One of the techniques employed is the 'multiple endings' which resists closure by offering numerous possible outcomes for a plot. Relatively, On with the Story: Stories (1996) by John Barth is the best instance of this, in a way that John Barth made an attempt to reflect the poetics of postmodernism by replacing the traditional single ending with a multiplicity of endings. Although it seems that all the twelve stories of the collection are interrelated, one is not able to find ending neither for each single story nor for the whole collection. Therefore, he introduces senses of uncertainty and instability into the book so much so that the reader seeks, in a labyrinthine plot, to find coherence and ending.

Keywords:

Postmodernism , Multiple Endings , John Barth's On with the Story , Instability