Using the sentence as a paradigm of narrative structure, Brooks argues that in narratives “the revelation of meaning...occurs when the narrative sentence reaches full predication.” Just as sentences are incomplete without their predicates, narratives without closure are like sentences which include only the subject and not the “action” of a sentence. Closure, in this view, completes the meaning of a story: “[o]nly the end can finally determine meaning, close the sentence as a signifying totality.” It is the anticipation of this closure, Brooks argues, that enables us to interpret the narrative as we read through it.

- "How Do I Stop this Thing?" Closure and Indeterminacy in Interactive Narratives, J. Yellowlees Douglas

One of the many differences between hypertext and traditional print is that of closure. Most print novels have a definitive end point - even if the ending seems unsatisfactory to the reader, there is a point at which the novel physically stops, and thus the reader knows this is 'the end'. The book is over, and so the story is finished. There is no more.

Hypertext novels, on the other hand, often have no one absolute ending - they may have no ending, as such, or they may have many. If the reader is unsatisfied with the percieved end that they may have come to in the text, they can often continue exploring until they encounter an 'ending' they find more pleasing. An end point, however, doesn't necessarily signify closure. Even in traditional print novels, the discursive 'end' of the story may come long before the physical end. Hypertext novels such as Victory Garden may have multiple end points, which the reader can interpret in their own way. These 'endings' may be a node from which there are no further links to follow. The ending may come when the reader becomes stuck in a loop, cycling through the same text again and again. Or the ending may simply be a point at which the reader feels they have attained a sense of closure.

But is closure really essential in narrative fiction, or have we simply come to expect it? Is closure viewed as being so important purely because the idea of endlessness makes us uncomfortable? For a narrative to have any kind of meaning, does there need to be a point of closure or ending? And if there does need to be a sense of closure to give the narrative meaning, does that mean that literature is all about the destination, and not the journey?