Emma Cline’s latest novel was a staple in everyone’s beach bag last year. The book follows Alex, a sex worker from New York City, who spends a week on Long Island drifting and grifting until she can reunite with her rich boyfriend. In May, The Guest will be released in paperback. As new readers delve into Cline’s world of heady glamor, they are left with questions: What is that ending all about? Abrupt, ambiguous, confusing—the end of The Guest can be hard to decipher. And who knows what Cline intended for her unreliable heroine, but, to sate your curiosity, here are a few theories to explain the end of The Guest.
Theory One – Alex is dead
When she finally reunites with Simon, her wealthy older boyfriend, on the last page of the novel, he seems to be looking right through Alex. Indeed, so does everyone at his Labor Day party. Is this a class commentary? Is Alex invisible because she’s not a part of their upper-class circle? Is it a gender commentary? A pretty girl is just a prop? Or is it something more?
Only ten or so pages before, Alex and a friend get in a car crash. She seems to walk away unscathed. But does she really? Could she have perished in the crash, leaving a ghost with unfinished business to seek out Simon?
This outcome could actually be hinted at earlier in the novel. In the first few chapters, Alex almost dies while swimming in the ocean, and then gets in a small fender-bender while driving home from the beach. She survives these episodes, but her mortality is forefront in our minds. We get the sense she won’t be so lucky next time.
After the car crash toward the end of the novel, Alex struggles to wake up: “Alex could not, for a moment, move” (278). And again: “Move, she thought, her eyes rolling around her skull. Move” (278). This echoes the last page, the final, mysterious sentences: “Now, she told herself, willing her limbs to work. She didn’t move. Now” (291). Her immobility being referenced again, in such a similar way as it was after the crash, might suggest that is what prevents her from walking up to Simon at the party. She can’t join him at the end of The Guest because he is the living and she is the dead. She’s a ghost, barely even there, just as she always felt around him and his rich friends.
Theory Two – Dom is behind Alex
On the last page, Simon is looking at something “beyond” Alex. By “beyond her,” perhaps Cline means “behind her.” Is there someone coming up behind Alex, someone threatening?
Dom, a man Alex swindled out of money and drugs in the city, has been stalking her for the duration of the novel. He has tracked her to Long Island. He has made threats to approach Simon and ruin Alex’s chance at a legitimate life. Could he have shown up at the Labor Day party? Perhaps with a gun? Alex has spent the entire book being afraid of him. The reader is murky on what exactly Dom does or what he intends to do, but we know he is dangerous. And we know he knows Alex is with Simon.
Could Dom be coming up behind Alex, and that is why Simon is looking over her shoulder, “making that face” (291) at the end of The Guest? When Alex feels her heartbeat thunder in her ears, has Dom shot her? Is that why she can’t move in the final sentences?
Theory Three – Jack is behind Alex
Similar to the last one, this theory hinges on someone of note being behind Alex. In this case, we’re talking about Jack, the teenage boy Alex has been hanging around with for the past few days. She just needed a place to stay, but he has fallen in love with her. Jack is also very unstable, off his meds and with a history of erratic, perhaps dangerous behavior.
He caused the car crash that may or may not (see Theory One) have killed Alex. After they seemingly survive, Alex wanders off to get help and leaves Jack to wait for the first responders. He begins to send her increasingly desperate texts, upset that she’s left him. He knows, deep down, she doesn’t really return his feelings. We know from Helen’s dinner party early in the book that Jack has probably met Simon, or at least been in the same house as him. Jack seems not to recognize Alex from that night at Helen’s, when Alex was with Simon, but that could be a lie. Perhaps he does know of the connection, and, when Alex disappears, goes to Simon’s Labor Day party to track her down. Is Jack who is behind Alex at the end of The Guest?
Theory Four – Alex is crazy
This is my personal favorite theory. Throughout the novel, Alex muses about going insane. Each time, she comes to the conclusion that she isn’t, although it sounds nice, she thinks, to let go of reality. Perhaps, in the end, that is what she finally does.
All the stress and anxiety of surviving might have caught up to her. Trying to get Simon back and evading Dom has clearly taken its toll, but it could be even more damaging than is immediately apparent. And what of the party? Why does no one recognize her? Why does no one look at her? Because it’s not Simon’s house. Alex has gone crazy and wandered into a stranger’s party.
That would explain Lori’s non-reaction to Alex’s presence. Lori is Simon’s assistant and was the one tasked to get rid of Alex at the beginning of the book, so it seems unlikely she’d not react to seeing Alex suddenly show up again.
“What was Alex expecting? Some reaction. Even a negative one. But Lori barely acknowledged her. Her face was a mask.” (286)
Alex says to Lori that the lawn looks great, all the holes from Simon’s dog digging in the grass have been filled. Lori seems confused. This would make sense because, of course, there were never any holes in the lawn of this house.
Furthermore, when Alex heads outside, she notices the pool seems different as well: “The surface of the pool was a little choppy in the breeze, the water a murky gunmetal. Hadn’t there been a lip, before? Around the water’s rim?” (287)
She is drowning in paranoia, fearing she recognizes Dom and other nefarious figures in the crowd. She was in a car crash and has been taking recreational drugs for days, so this could be just a side effect. But Alex has a certain unhinged quality about her in these last few pages of The Guest that begets questions about her mental stability. Along with the fact her sanity has been brought up as a topic before, I think this theory is the most interesting and the most fitting.
What do you think?
Did I miss any theories? If you’ve read The Guest by Emma Cline, let me know whether you liked the ending and how you interpret it. For more book context, follow my Instagram: @calaisreads
Calais Mustoe 