The Measure

These last three sections complete the first year after the arrival of the boxes, with the final section skipping ahead several years. The approaching anniversary is an opportunity to look back and to see how the world has changed. By skipping years ahead with the final section, Erlick gives the reader the opportunity to see how the characters are faring, and also how American society, and the world, have accepted the new normal of the boxes.

Amie’s turning point comes at Nina’s wedding, where she dances with Ben and imagines her future with him. Of course, she imagines losing him, and quickly gets overwhelmed. However, upon stepping outside, she sees the man on the bicycle, playing “Que Sera, Sera,” and the connection to her correspondence with Ben offers her a moment of clarity, where she sees that Finding Happiness requires being willing to risk pain.

In Part 6: “Spring,” Amie completes her character arc. Although she still worries about whether she is brave enough to be with Ben, she is committed to enjoying their time together. Erlick makes this clear when Amie revisits the Van Woolsey building, which had symbolized her dreams for the future. In this scene, she finally sees into the building’s courtyard, and finds it beautiful, yet empty. She understands that her future doesn’t lie there anymore, and is able to let the fantasy go. Unlike earlier, when Amie romanticized everything, she is realistic about the short time she will have with Ben, and she wonders what she will do in the future. This practicality is the result of clear vision, acceptance, and a willingness to live in the happiness of her present, rather than a fantasy of her future.

Jack, too, completes his arc in these final sections. At a New Year’s Eve party, he is given the opportunity to reconnect with Javier. He recommits to his plan to gain Javier’s forgiveness, and he gets the opportunity to do so after Javier’s death. When Jack uses Javier’s letter to expose their deception and show just how wrongly short-stringers have been treated, Javier becomes part of Jack’s political activism even after his death. Jack’s story comes to full closure after he meets one of the people Javier saved on his last mission, at Javier’s memorial. She gives Jack a different way to think about the length of someone’s string as being the way that they participate in or help the world. Jack’s story has been about navigating the tension between Fate and Choice. Though he and Javier had no choice about the length of their strings, Jack chose to switch strings with Javier so that Javier could pursue his military dreams. Later, he allowed himself to be used as a political pawn by his uncle, but in the end he chose to risk losing his family to do right by his friend. In this way Jack’s life echoes the novel’s central theme: Though people cannot control fate, they can control how they respond to the things that happen to them.

After a full year, what was initially a shocking, inexplicable rupture in the fabric of reality (the appearance of the strings) has largely been normalized. People have made their adjustments, learning to see the strings as just another fact of life. When Ben overhears the teenagers on the subway, discussing the long and short-string television shows, he realizes how quickly the world, and people, have adapted to this new normal.

When Nina reads the plaque that Amie had engraved on a bench in Central Park, reading, “No matter what happens, I still feel the same” (345), the reader recognizes the message, though, in moment of dramatic irony, Nina does not. The sentence comes from Ben’s first letter to Amie, in which he quotes a soldier’s message to his girlfriend back home. As applied to Amie and Ben’s relationship, and Ben’s short-string status, the message takes on a new meaning. The irony of Ben and Amie’s story, of course, is that because Amie never opened her box, she didn’t know about her own short string, or that her life would end at the same time as Ben’s life. Yet Nina reflects that, if Amie had known, she would have made different decisions. Nina might not now have their two children, and the life she has come to love wouldn’t exist: “Perhaps Amie’s decision to never look, to never know, had given both sisters the gift of these two precious souls” (345).

By the end of the novel, attitudes have shifted regarding short-stringers. Whereas early in the novel, society characterized them as unstable and dangerous, they are now seen as fearless and purposeful. Nina emphasizes this shift in attitudes as she reflects on a new phrase she has seen: “Live Like Your String is Short” (345).

In the final paragraph, the “Que Sera, Sera” motif returns, closing the novel on a hopeful note. The man on the bicycle returns, but “[h]is legs labored more than they used to, the wheels turned a little more slowly. But the melody played as clearly as ever” (348). This depiction of the man, tired, and worn down, but still playing his song, is a reflection of humanity’s condition at this point. After the reality of the boxes has settled in, and all the upheaval has settled, humanity is worn, but still optimistic.