The Sundial discussion

What actually happened at the end of the novel?

I was satisfied with the ambiguous ending to The Sundial. . As Flannery O' Conner once wrote (I paraphrase from memory): "I hope for the unexpected but inevitable at the end of my stories." But I like to think this might work. The world ends for "them," the inhabitants of the house. The villagers--and the rest of the planet--go about their business while the house remains sealed and silent, forgotten, overgrown like a castle in a fairy tale, until it recedes into the past. Do the villagers or anyone ever break in to find an ancient, quarreling family, or a pile of bones with Mrs. Hallaron's skeletal remains at the sundial, pointing the way? Or is there nothing left, a void? Like Waiting for Godot I think they are still waiting for the coming of something, as we all are.

I think the question you're asking might be "what happened after the end of the novel." Because really there isn't any ambiguity with what's happening in the last few pages. At the end of the novel they're all sitting there in the house, minus Mrs. Halloran. What happens next is entirely up to you and your imagination.

They mention a crash coming from upstairs. What caused the crash? Was it the storms? Was it a villager trying to break in? (Part of me expected an ending similar to the Long Island party in World War Z. It would definitely be in Jackson's style to end it like that.)

Gloria Desmond's descriptions seemed to describe a nuclear bomb going off, and the "blackness" following a nuclear winter, but that does not explain the increasingly bizarre weather.