Up: [[Personal Essay and Memoir]] Created: 2024-04-13 Updated: 2025-04-13 Phillip Lopate, an accomplished essayist and writing teacher, says an essay can end in any way at all: image, line of dialogue, joke, question, quote, a new insight. What’s important is NOT tying up the essay with a grand pronouncement of the life lesson to be drawn or the grand statement of what the whole thing means. Because that so often turns into platitudes. I say thank goodness for that because I cannot write life lessons or deeply meaningful statements no matter how hard I try. If it’s a longer essay and you can’t write a non-platitudinous ending, Lopate suggests carrying on for a few more pages, “it almost doesn’t matter what” in order to give the reader the feeling that you’ve grappled with the problem as honestly and fully as you can.