How It All Ended

Well, I finally finished the book and the ending left me slightly confused.  I was not confused because of the plot but rather I was confused by the message that Ivey was trying to send through the novel.  But before I go into that, I will sum up the ending.

After Faina ran away, some time passed but eventually she came back.  Then, Garret and Faina became good friends and fell in love.  Mabel and Jack were alerted by this and Jack decided to follow Faina and Garret into the woods in order to spy on them.  Jack was horrified of what he saw: Faina and Garret were having sex.  Jack became angry and punched Garret in the face, later that day.  However this did not end Garret and Jack's friendship like one may have imagined.  Instead, they put the incident behind them and continued on with their lives.  Yet the incident was reintroduced when Faina unexpectedly discovered that she was pregnant.  Jack insisted that Faina and Garret get married and he built them a cabin near his and Mabel's cabin so they would always be close by.  After the wedding, Faina gave birth to a baby boy who was healthy and thriving.  But Faina always longed to return to the snowy forest.  Shortly after the birth Faina became very sick and on one night in particular she was especially ill.  Mabel and Jack rushed over to Faina and Jack's cabin in the middle of the night to find Faina with a high fever.  Jack and Garret built Faina a makeshift bed in the snow and Mabel sat outside with her until she fell asleep.  This is when things got strange.  Hours passed and eventually Mabel fell asleep as well but when she awoke to Jack's frantic shaking she discovered that Faina was gone.  Jack and Mabel instantly knew what had happened.  They looked under the pile of blankets and the bedding but the only found Faina's clothing.  She had vanished into thin air.  She had melted under the love in her new life.  After this revelation in the novel, the story jumped a head quite a few years until Garret's boy was a young child, anywhere between 5-10 years old, and Jack and Mabel were old enough to need canes to walk.  The story ends with all of their lives were going well but they still morn the loss of Faina every day.  So it leaves me wondering, what should I take away from this?

Throughout the novel, Ivey had made it clear that one of the main themes was the importance of human connections.  Yet she also posed the question can does one have any control over his or her future? Or are destinies truly unchangeable? Ivey first posed this question when Mabel's sister suggested that The Snow Maiden's ending was ambiguous and Mabel could "chose joy over sorrow." (Ivey, 129) Mabel believed that if she took good care of Faina that she could save her from her almost certain demise.   That led me to believe that Mabel was capable of changing her future.  In addition, Ivey had me believing that Mabel, Jack, Faina, Garret, and the rest of the characters would all live happily ever after Faina had survived the summer, the new found love, the wedding, and the birth.  At that point, I thought that Ivey's message was that one could in fact change his or her future and sorrow did not always have to be the outcome.  Yet, Ivey threw readers a curve ball when she chose to have Faina die, or vanish, after all.  This is when I became confused.  Why did Ivey fill me with false hope if she knew all along she was going to have the story end as previously predicted?  Why did she choose to bring her characters more pain of another lost child? What was the point of trying to save something one knew he or she could never save?  What should I take away from this? Well, Ivey eventually gave me the answers to these questions.  "[Mabel] had thought of Ada's words about inventing new endings to stories and choosing joy over sorrow.  In recent years she had decided her sister had been in part wrong.  Suffering and death and loss were inescapable.  And yet, what Ada had written about joy was entirely true.  When [Faina] stands before you with her long, naked limbs and her mysterious smile, you must embrace her while you can." (Ivey, 336)  

The point of the story is that you must love the people you have while you are still able.  Pain and loss will never go away so it is pointless to try to stop them completely.  Sometimes things do not go as planned and terrible things happen to the people you love.  But all you can do is value those people and cherish the good times that you have with them right now.  It is hard to grasp how lucky you are until you lose the people you love most.  Ivey sent this message by showing readers that friends and family are priceless, and you should never take them for granted because one day they might be gone.  Ivey sent the message that life goes on after pain and suffering, as well.  Mabel, Jack,  Garret, the Bensons, and the baby boy all survived the loss of Faina despite the feeling that their world was ending.  It is never impossible to find happiness again, and with love, family, and time every broken heart can heal.  So in the end, I think the Faina's passing was necessary in order to send this message.  It made me sad but I understand it.