Final Blog post

Did the book come to a satisfactory closure for you? Why/not?

-The ending was somewhat satisfactory for me because the hero in the story completes his heroic journey. Atillus, the hero, had to race against Mount Vesuvius, a ticking time bomb, to repair blockage to the aqueduct that he was in charge of. However, the race against time proved too tough as the eruption took away any hope that I had for his survival. But my hope was restored with the closing lines as it is implied that the hero and his lover made it out alive. Although it seems cliche that this happened, the author Robert Harris did a good job to avoid other cliches throughout the novel. Many other main characters died in the end and it wasn't a story of the underdog coming out on top. Rather a story of an underdog being the underdog the entire story and getting lucky to escape with his life at the very end. Harris mixed fiction and historical events together to form a great story that I thought ended just the way it should have. He didn't try to be cheesy by going against history and having everyone survive the blast, instead he killed the majority of them off and just kept the main character alive so there would still be a story to tell. It ended with a passage that is left up to your own interpretation, it doesn't exactly say whether or not they survived or not,which i think is good. It had me thinking after I read it and thats what good books should do. My interpretation is optimistic and I implied that they did make it out alive, and that satisfies me enough.