How Does The Story Of The Stone End And What Happens?

2026-07-24 20:15:44
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5 Answers

Quinn
Quinn
Ending Guesser Electrician
Honestly? I've read a few different versions and reconstructions of the ending, and it's famously messy because the last 40 chapters might be by a different hand. The gist everyone agrees on: Jia Bao-yu, after losing Lin Dai-yu (who dies thinking he betrayed her), marries Xue Bao-chai in a cruel trick where he's led to believe he's marrying Dai-yu. When he finds out, he's shattered. The family's fortunes completely collapse, their properties confiscated.

Bao-yu eventually passes the civil service exam—a final act of filial duty—but immediately afterward, he renounces his family and worldly life. He's seen walking into the distance with a Buddhist monk and a Taoist priest, presumably returning to his true nature as the Stone from the mythic beginning. Bao-chai is left pregnant with his child, a bittersweet thread of continuity. The mansion is deserted, the dream is over. The feeling is one of immense melancholy and release, like watching a magnificent, intricate sandcastle finally be taken by the tide.
2026-07-25 00:35:54
6
Matthew
Matthew
Insight Sharer Editor
The ending is famously incomplete and debated, as Cao Xueqin didn't finish it. The common 120-chapter version has Bao-yu marry Bao-chai in a switcheroo while Dai-yu dies heartbroken. After the family's ruin, Bao-yu passes the exams then becomes a monk, disappearing into the snow. Bao-chai is left behind, pregnant. It's a tragic dissolution of the Great View Garden world, emphasizing the novel's themes of illusion, transience, and the cost of earthly attachment. The stone returns to its mythical realm, inscribed with the tale we just read.
2026-07-25 01:41:33
8
Kai
Kai
Responder Pharmacist
For all the talk about that final page, I still don't think the conclusion is meant to be taken at pure face value. We watch Bao-yu, after the devastation of his family's fall and the loss of Dai-yu, just walk off into the snow with the monk and the Taoist. The text says he passes the imperial examinations first, leaving a son for his wife Bao-chai, then essentially renounces the world. It's framed as an enlightenment, a return to his stone origins after the dream of life.

But the gut-punch isn't the mystical departure. It's the quiet, devastating domestic aftermath. Bao-chai is left widowed, raising their child. Wang Xi-feng's daughter Qiao-jie is married off to a simple, kind farmer. The once-opulent Rong-guo and Ning-guo mansions are empty, overgrown, their treasures scattered. The final image isn't of Bao-yu on a mountain, but of Zhen Shi-yin, that early peripheral character, tying up the ledger of karma, suggesting the whole saga was an illusion recorded on a stone. The emotional truth feels less like transcendence and more like a beautiful, profound sadness for a world that was always already fading, with real human wreckage left in the wake of its protagonist's escape. It leaves you sitting with the empty house long after the monk's bell fades.
2026-07-26 05:51:15
12
Finn
Finn
Longtime Reader Consultant
Reading that final volume feels like a long, slow exhalation of all the novel's vibrant energy. The parties are over, the gardens are silent. Dai-yu's death scene—burning her poems, calling out Bao-yu's name with a last bit of bitterness—is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read. It sets the tone for the unravelling. Bao-yu's marriage to Bao-chai isn't joyful; it's a duty performed in a fog of grief. His exam success feels hollow, just a box to check before he can leave.

What sticks with me isn't the philosophical 'return to the stone' bit, which always feels a bit distant. It's the smaller human endings. Xiang-yun's miserable marriage, the fate of the maids like Qing-wen already gone, the once-powerful Xi-feng dying abandoned on a tatty bed. The ending spreads the tragedy around; it's not just Bao-yu's story concluding. The stone gets its adventure inscribed and goes home, but the people left in the world of dust have to live with the aftermath, which feels truer to the book's spirit than any neat transcendence.
2026-07-27 03:00:03
17
Xander
Xander
Plot Detective Police Officer
The core tragedy is the love triangle's resolution. Dai-yu dies in despair during Bao-yu's wedding festivities, believing he abandoned her. He's tricked into marrying Bao-chai. The familial decay accelerates with confiscations and deaths. Bao-yu's eventual departure into monkhood feels inevitable, a rejection of the false world that caused so much pain. Bao-chai's pregnancy is the only hint of a future, but it's overshadowed by loss. The stone's journey ends where it began, under Greensickness Peak, its story now complete.
2026-07-29 17:19:26
14
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