After the story’s falling action comes another brief section that wraps up the story. This conclusion is known as the denouement (pronounced day-noo-mon).
During the denouement – which usually is only a few paragraphs and sometimes as short as a single sentence long – the loose ends of the story are tied up. Usually there are minor questions, often not directly involving the main character, that need to be solved. In addition, this part of the story can serve as a catharsis for readers, relieving tension created in the story by offering a humor or revealing the story’s theme.
A good example of a denouement is the final scene of the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”. The episode involved Captain Kirk and crew using tribbles to uncover a Klingon plot to prevent the Federation from colonizing Sherman’s Planet. During the episode, the number of tribbles (which are born pregnant) threaten to overrun Kirk’s ship and the space station containing the wheat the Federation needs to develop the planet. In a humorous concluding scene, two small yet nagging questions are answered: Will the Federation be able to colonize the planet and what happened to all of the tribbles aboard the Enterprise? A dispatch from Starfleet quickly answers the first question and then Scotty reluctantly reveals he beamed the tribbles aboard the Klingon ship just before it warped out of orbit.
Sometimes the denouement is known as the “resolution”. It also is casually referred to as the “conclusion” or the “ending”.
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(c) 2008 Rob Bignell
Tags:
conclusion, denouement, ending, plot, resolution, ritual ending
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