The appearance in 1966 of Frank Kermodess The Sense of an Ending has no doubt contributed to the revival of the interest in the problem of the endings in literary texts. As a brilliant discourse on the tension that exists between the opposing human needs to imitate the contingency of life and to impose an order on life, The Sense of an Ending demonstrates how the problem of the endings bears on the nature of literature. Inspiring as it is，the book is mainly noted for its theoretical, or philosophical, speculations; it is relatively short on practical application. By contrast, such later works as Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s Poetic Closure and Marianna Torgovnick’s Closure in the 'Novel aim at applying the concept of the endings to the study of concrete texts.