part five: The Joker

Summary: the laughter

Looking at the card, Ed feels panic. The joker on the card seems to laugh at him. Nothing happens for two days. On the third day, he has to brake hard to avoid a rear-end collision, and the joker card flies to the floor, where it again seems to be laughing at him. 

Summary: the weeks  

Weeks pass. At the end of the first week in February, Audrey visits. Ed tells her about the joker and begs her to admit she has masterminded the whole thing but she says it’s not her. 

Summary: the end is not the end  

A middle-aged man delivers a message that directs Ed to go to the cemetery the next day, the first anniversary of his father’s death. When Ed asks the man if Gregor is responsible for the messages, he states that he doesn’t know who sent him. Daryl and Keith are waiting for Ed at Gregor’s grave. They explain Ed’s there to remember the hopeless case that his father was and to challenge him to avoid his father’s end. Keith tells Ed that Gregor was not their employer and they don’t know who it is. They just do as they are told. After they walk away, Ed belatedly thanks them. 

A few days later, Ed’s cab is waved down by a young man who asks to be driven to Ed’s address. Ed recognizes him as the bank robber from the beginning of the story. He has Ed drive him to each of the twelve addresses where Ed delivered messages, and Ed savors the moments. The man pulls out a mirror. He reminds Ed what he told him at his trial, that every time he looks in a mirror, he should remember he’s looking at a dead man. He tells Ed to look in the mirror and asks if he sees a dead man now. Ed admits he no longer sees a dead man. The man counts his jail time as worth it. 

Summary: the folder  

Ed finds his front door open. A young man tells Ed that he not only sent all the aces, but he also takes credit for Ed’s job as a taxi driver, the death of his father, and the Edgar Street man’s raping of his wife. He has brought a folder of notes on everything he invented in Ed’s world. There’s even a note predicting Ed’s next question, “Am I real?” 

The young man leaves and walks away down the street, writing in a small notebook he’s pulled from a pocket. Ed recognizes the young man is a writer and suspects he has already written Ed’s story. Ed resents that anyone else could tell his story because Ed was the one who brought the plot to life. He imagines how he would start his story, and it’s the way that the book actually started. For several days he doesn’t leave the house, paralyzed, waiting for life to begin again. 

Summary: the message  

Audrey arrives at Ed’s and asks to stay for good. Ed tells Audrey about the young man with the folder who made everything happen. Ed rifles through the folder to find her declaration of love. She gently tells him it’s not in there, that it belongs uniquely to them. Ed realizes he is not the messenger. He is the message. 

Analysis of Part Five: The Joker 

The unexpected arrival of the joker card threatens to undo the sense of accomplishment that Ed enjoys after completing all of the tasks on the four aces. In the pack, the joker can function as a wild card, becoming whatever the player chooses. The unpredictability of the looming message unnerves Ed. When the next emissary comes with the message to go to Gregor’s grave in the cemetery, he has a calm serenity and kindness. At the cemetery, Daryl and Keith are solemn. Daryl explains that Ed is like his father in his lack of hope. Their mission was to challenge Ed to resist the fate of his father, dying without being fulfilled or leaving a legacy. Keith addresses Ed’s question, by telling him the messenger was not his father. Ed’s regret that they might not have heard his thank you suggests he knows they won’t be back. 

The next messenger brings the story full circle back to the beginning. The bank robber, not truly a thief but the very first messenger in Ed’s journey, had been employed to set everything in motion. His jail sentence was a sacrifice he had to bear, not only for Ed but for the twelve interventions. Revisiting all the locales of Ed’s interventions prepares Ed to recognize he’s not the same man he was six months ago. 

The revelation of the identity of the person who sent the aces bears careful reading. Immediately the young man categorically states that not only did he send the aces, the bank robber, and Daryl and Keith, but he also manipulated the events of Ed’s life including his father’s death and making him a taxi driver. It seems the young man has not only omniscience but omnipotence, like a puppeteer. When he presents the folder containing documentation of his machinations, he’s an author who created an allegorical tale of a man who surpassed the limitations of his genetics, upbringing, and circumstances. Ed rightly questions whether he’s a real person or just a writer’s construct. The young man tells Ed that Ed’s as real as any thought or story. If Ed started as a narrative device, he became a dynamic personality. It’s what people do when they step out of their solitary worlds to connect with others.    

Ed is angered by this revelation because he has become fully invested in his good deeds. He owns the joy that he has brought to others’ lives. Ed’s transformation was conceptualized by the sender of the aces but realized by his own efforts. Ed’s proprietary sense that the story is his to tell shows he is truly his own man. Among the clues that Ed wrote his own story are the first sentence, “The gunman is useless,” and his breaking the fourth wall to appeal to the reader when faced with the moral dilemma of killing the Edgar Street rapist. But the final proof lies in the finish of the story. Ed has begun questioning his sanity as if he invented the aces. Audrey arrives ready to fully commit to a life together with him and confirms that they are together writing their story from then on into the future. Ed gives the moral of his story, that his transformation is the message that anyone can become a messenger of change no matter their circumstances.