
Two quotations from two of my favorite storytellers:
"Being a pessimist doesn't seem to accomplish anything...if I wanted to change the world it was no use saying how awful our society is or how stupid. The way to make things progress is to point people in the right direction, to show how wonderful life can be. Tearing things down, being pessimistic makes people simply accept the conditions that prevail. Whereas if you give them hope and point them in the right direction, things are more likely to get better."
-George Lucas, interview in Once Upon a Galaxy: The Making of The Empire Strikes Back by Alan Arnold
"The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catstrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn'...is not essentially 'escapist,' nor 'fugitive.' In its fairy-tale -- or otherworld -- setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace, never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief."
-J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"
Together, that pretty much sums up what I look for, morally, aesthetically and ethically, in a story. Every great story I've read has had that moment when darkness shadows the world and threatens everything of significance to the hero, and the hero turns about and triumphs against despair. To me, a happy ending, or in Tolkien's eloquent words, the Eucatastrophe, is absolutely essential to a great story, and it is neither naive nor contrived, if done right. It is the very existence of a powerful evil that makes the triumph of good so moving. That's why we needed Revenge of the Sith to make Return of the Jedi have so much meaning; that's why things are so bleak at the end of Half-Blood Prince. Assumling JKR follows the same prinicples, which seems to be a reasonable assumption so far, Book 7 will have the Eucatastrophe. In the end, optimism prevails. But it can't be simply sunny and cheerful throughout; that has no meaning. To say, "Yes, things are bleak, and yet I will not give up" is the core strength of every great hero.