What’s Up With the Ending?

Things don't turn out quite as Rojack planned. As the book ends, he's just bested Barney Kelly, one of the most powerful men in the world—as you might imagine, this little victory amps Rojack up—plus, he has Cherry waiting for him at home, and the pair is planning to run away to Las Vegas to start a new life.

Unfortunately, though, Cherry has been murdered and Rojack's dreams are squashed. He decides to leave for Las Vegas anyway, where he realizes that he Cherry "had left a gift" (E.8) of her psychic powers inside his head. After going even crazier and having an imaginary phone conversation with her ghost, though, Rojack decides to leaves Vegas for Guatemala, of all places.

So what does this all mean? Although Rojack is convinced that he deserves a happy ending, you know as well as we do that he doesn't. Rojack has done some seriously messed-up stuff over the past several days, often motivated by the belief that doing so will earn him freedom. While you could certainly argue that this new lifestyle of his is evidence of that freedom, all we see is a man desperately lost and alone. Looks like the American Dream isn't all it's cracked up to be for Rojack.