50 Shad3s: Chapter 22

So this thing really ends with a whimper.

I've kind of scanned ahead a little? And it's a real bummer.

I'm going to make some plot complaints. I know I've made them before but I've been doing this for so long that I end up just reminding myself of certain things and I'm sorry but you kind of brought this on yourself by reading.

So like, usually what you try to do is try to have your character go on a journey or whatever? With an external obstacle and some kind of like, inner sitch that the character is trying to conquer. Right? So you see her improve herself as she overcomes an obstacle. Very satisfying!

Very. But see, in this book, we've got these characters and they've both got significant inner conflicts. Mainly talking about how they're both huge jealousy monsters who don't really trust each other or themselves. Bummer! And on top of that they're having a big fight about having a baby. I think it's fair to think of those things as the internal conflicts since even their fights with each other are, to a significant extent, the result of their own personal shortcomings.

And then we've got the external conflicts, which have never been significant, and have never been effectively tied to the internal ones. For a satisfying resolution, most writers would try to establish some kind of harmony between the external and internal obstacles. EL, though, does something rather odd. She connects all the external obstacles to Christian and not to Ana, even though seems fair to think of Ana as the protagonist.

Leila, who nearly shot Ana, was Christian's ex lover. And although Jack Hyde enters the picture because he starts out as Ana's boss, Hyde seems to see Ana as an avatar for Christian. His hostility to Ana, his threats to Ana--these don't really have anything to do with Ana. They have a bit to do with his general misogyny but mostly they're just collateral damage. It's Christian he cares about.

The Leila situation we've already seen resolved. Leila seems happy enough, because CG threw some money in her direction and money fixes everything. Christian didn't overcome anything. He just gave her money. I guess we could say that CG moved from a disposable relationship to a more serious one but in this book this dude is twenty-six so like. I dunno. Am I supposed to cheer about this? I'm not going to.

And we're about to see the Jack Hyde situation resolved too, and after that, we're going to sort of pretend that everything else worked out nicely too, despite the fact that Ana and CG have been going back and forth with the same problems for three books with no signs of improvement. It's the end of the book, and a baby is on the way, so EL is just going to sort of wave her hands and say, "There! Happily ever after! Print it before anyone asks any followup questions!"

Last point before we go watch the sausage get made:

Ana isn't really the protagonist of this thing. We're in her head, yes, but the protagonist is not necessarily the person from whose point of view the story is told. Ana's contributions to the plot are basically insignificant. She never does anything on her own--even her most impressive acts, like beating up Jack Hyde, are only possible because boys swoop in to provide support at the last minute.

And, as we'll see with one more reveal: Jack Hyde is a figure from CG's pre-billionaire past, and vanquishing him lets CG vanquish some old demons.

Hence, Ana tells the story, but if we want to argue that anyone goes on a journey or overcomes any internal conflicts, we have to say that that person is Christian. Not Ana.

Why bring this up? Well. No good reason I suppose, since there's not really a good reason for any of this. But, I think it's worth noting that this is another way in which Fifty Shades conforms to the most boring, patriarchal conventions of storytelling. Men do plots. Women. . . have babies? I guess so, yeah. I guess so.


Oh but where were we?