Sign Offs are arguably the most important part of the letter. Ending a letter leaves a lasting impression, portraying what the writer wants the reader to feel. The sign off of a letter is often the most emotional part of the letter. The last few lines the writer is trying to get an emotional connection with the reader. A common idea is to save the best for last especially when writers leave a Postscript. Ending a letter clearly and professionally is important as it is the last thing your audience will read. It sets the tone for the future correspondence, allows for next steps or instruction and helps build rapport with the reader. Elements of a letter ending include a concluding paragraph, sign off, and your signature.
In the letter of Dearest Virginia, there is much emotion shown through the ending making it a very meaningful love letter. In Dearest Virginia, Lloyd Hunnicutt writes to his wife while he is away on a two year trip overseas. Through the letters Lloyd sent a beam of love and humor across the Pacific to Texas where his wife was. He hoped that he could take his wife with him on this adventure by daily correspondence. Every single letter Lloyd finishes his letter with “I love you.” The repetition and always making it personal to Virginia gives it a more emotional meaning. Through the letters he does the same prompt of what he has been up to in a broad description but then every ending has a different importance. The first letter shown on July 17 expresses that he went out dancing but there is no one else he would rather be dancing with than Virginia. The raw love shown through that ending is all Virginia needs to have while being away and knowing that he is thinking of her. The other letter on July 17 he sends her a surprise that he will be able to telephone her and she will have no idea. Lloyd again made sure to leave her with a loving note that would make her very happy. Lloyd’s letters can also be an example of how the ending can change the whole tone of the letter. He is out at sea away from her and explaining about harsh realities that he has to face every day. But, at the end of every letter in different ways he expresses how much love he has for her and that he just wants to make her happy.
The lasting impact of a letter on the reader is a huge part of the importance of the ending. The last few sentences on rare occasions can be the last words that someone ever says. Virginia Woolf left her last letter on a mantlepiece for her husband. Virginia was a writer of many famous novels married to Leonard Woolf who also was a writer and social reformer. Virginia suffered from depression and anxiety which in the letter she left is described as “going mad again”. Virginia also was hiding that she was in love with another woman. Lots of reasons for Virginia’s depression anxiety whether it was childhood rooted issues or hiding her sexuality. Virginia and her affair with Vita can be seen through many letters that they sent each other. Through the body of the suicide letter she expresses how she is going insane and she can’t fight anymore. Virginia also says she can’t burden him anymore. But, by the end she dedicates her happiness to him. One line is “If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.” The last few sentences are incredibly powerful and will have a long lasting impact. She leaves him feeling reassured that she loved him so much and the only reason why she was happy was because of him. Now, people can see that she also loved Vita and owes a lot of that happiness to her. Virginia ends her letter with just a V, which can be interpreted as little respect for herself. This was her final letter to her husband and she doesn’t even write her full name for him. It also shows her mental state and how she was struggling with depression. Suicide letters are an example of setting a tone for future correspondence, that there will be none.
Letters have a way of making distance between people not as big of a deal. Letters written from prison can bring families together with emotional support and reassurance. Dietrich is writing Eberhard Bethge in the letter shown. Eberhard Bethge is a German theologian and pastor best known for being the biography of Dietrich. Dietrich was a German Pastor Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel prison for one and a half years. Dietrich writes to tell Bethge about his Christianity experience in prison and how it is affecting him. Firstly, Dietrich ends his paper with yours, making it more personal and getting more of an emotional connection. He expresses how his christianity has changed his life and gets really personal in how it impacted him. At the end, he says sorry for making this personal but who else would I be personal with. He leaves a more religious ending with words saying that he hopes God is on both of their sides. One interesting line he says is “In faithfulness and gratitude, thinking always of you” which gives an emotional pull because Dietrich is stuck in prison yet he is writing about gratitude. Even when there is no hope for him he is writing about it for Bethge to have hope also. He writes to say that there will be more letters on the way promising future correspondence. This letter is an example of endings giving a more meaningful part in the entirety of the letter. The ending is giving Bethge the strength and words to keep going without him.
The craft of letter writing is very unique and different because of the tone and words used as opposed to essays or novels. But, the ending of the letter is the most important because of the emotional connection and future correspondence f`or the reader. It provides a tone for future letters and makes the most impact on the reader. These three letters might seem different, but all of them are a very emotional signoff which affects the reader and receiver in this way. All of these letters show the darkness and distance into the reality but loving in the signoff. Dearest Virginia deals with the separation of a couple and having to keep their love going through words written on a paper but through the ends of all the letters it wasn’t about that. The main point of the letters was showing how much love they have for each other. Through Virginia Woolf’s suicide letter it is a reflection of how bad her mental state was at that time. She was battling so much she couldn’t even ask for help. But, through the ending she only talks about the love for her husband. She dedicated her only happiness to him even though this is her letter saying goodbye. The last letter Dietrich is trying to not mention the fact that he is in prison but rather that he is doing well mentally.
Dearest Virginia :
July 17, 1942, Camp Stoneman, San Francisco This will have to be snappy as I just finished lunch and have to fall out at 1 p.m. Incidentally, our meals are 75¢ daily in advance and are not fit to eat – except for bread and butter and sweet milk which we are served at breakfast.Hazel will be thrilled to hear that I have finally seen some scenery and some sights that have amazed me. Bill and I have. 47exactly the same ideas and have stayed together. Had a room at the Mark Hopkins on the peak of Nob Hill with a wonderful view of the harbor and within 30 minutes of arrival Bill and I were on a battleship being personally conducted by an ensign from stem to stern and bottom to top – and, by top, I mean right on up the fighting mast. Well to sum it all up, when we left yesterday we had been all over one battleship and had walked all around two others close enough to touch them and had been aboard a destroyer rand a sea-going machine shop for making naval repairs .Biggest secret of all was that the Queen Mary is in port and we got a thorough look at her. Of course, the name has been removed but I still found out. Bigger than any of the battleships by at least twice in height and about 40% longer, I judge. A really beautiful sight. All seagoing, government operated ships are painted an azure blue and it certainly makes them look pretty.The neatest ship we saw was a Swedish medium liner which had not been painted up and was only marked by their national colors striped vertically on the hull (blue, white and gold as Irecall). The rails were still in natural colors, and all the brass polished. A gorgeous sight if I ever saw one.I can’t begin to list what we saw and did. Went to TelegraphHill and up Coit Memorial Tower. That is the point from which they used to signal ships in the old days before radio. Sort of alast message proposition. Quite interesting to us, no fooling.I have to go now and will write another letter tonight.I was very agreeably surprised at finding Bill to be such a good companion. He drank very little, which suited me to perfection as you know. The two of us ended up at ForbiddenCity Tuesday night. That is a gorgeous Chinese nightclub usingall Chinese talent – and there wasn’t even a cover charge.Everyone out here knows what it means when they see officers without identification on their uniform and they’re awfully nice to you. Several fellows invited us to their tables and let us dance a few dances with their dates. It was friendly of them, but I don’t care to dance with anyone but you. I love you
MLA 8th Edition (Modern Language Assoc.)
Hunnicutt, Sam Lloyd, and Gayle Hunnicutt. Dearest Virginia : Love Letters From a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific. Texas Christian University Press, 2005.
APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Assoc.)
Hunnicutt, S. L., & Hunnicutt, G. (2005). Dearest Virginia : Love Letters From a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific. Texas Christian University Press.
July 17, 1942 – Friday, Camp StonemanIt’s peaceful and quiet around here this evening, so maybe I can get a letter off that has not suffered from constant interruption.The folks sent the pictures they took the day we left and I would like some for the boys. The one of the four of us is the best picture of you I have ever seen and I am putting it in my billfold as it is just the way I want to remember you until I get back. The boys especially want a copy apiece.Speaking of remembering you – I think now is the time to tell you that I want you to keep buying yourself clothes and “hair-dos”, etc., while I am gone as I am just going to war so I can come home to a second honeymoon and I don’t want to take any old woman with me when I go on it. I really mean I want you to stay on the beam – but don’t be practising on any other guys!! Platonic friendships are wonderful – except in our family.I have been planning to phone you before I leave but I don’t think I will now. I guess I just haven’t the courage. And I Can’t think of anything to say. This is so terribly final, somehow,that it is beyond words for me to describe my feelings.Telephoning would be sort of like taking the tourniquet off a bleeding wound just after you got it stopped a little bit.This place is particularly rumor-free. It is so obvious that noinformation is going to be put out that everyone has even quit guessing where we are going from here because nobody will waste their time listening to you.I had hoped to go to San Francisco again as I really only worked up a sightseer’s appetite this trip. However, all passescease Saturday night at midnight and I’m stuck here for any remaining time that we have. We are going on a very well knownship and have every reason to expect a happy, comfortable and safe voyage which I feel sure you will be glad to know. It is a converted passenger liner and still has the same chef that it carried before the war.We put on a final review today for the CO of the port, brigadier general, and he was more than pleased. We’veDearestVirginiaINSIDE VIRGINIA3.8.05 3/10/05 09:46 AM Page 48 49certainly shown up the other troops in this area and the colonel is awfully well pleased about everything so far.I hope you have accustomed yourself to life in Fort Worth by now and are enjoying yourself as much as possible. As I see it, itis vital that you keep calm and happy so our baby will have a chance to get off to a good start in life.I never have been able to realize how things really are and it feels as if the whole war will be over soon. I guess that’s nature’s way of protecting us from our own thoughts. I have to scram now and make some final property issues.I’ve decided to telephone you tonight but you don’t know it so I Have a secret from you until then. I love you
MLA 8th Edition (Modern Language Assoc.)
Hunnicutt, Sam Lloyd, and Gayle Hunnicutt. Dearest Virginia : Love Letters From a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific. Texas Christian University Press, 2005.
APA 7th Edition (American Psychological Assoc.)
Hunnicutt, S. L., & Hunnicutt, G. (2005). Dearest Virginia : Love Letters From a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific. Texas Christian University Press.
Virginia Woolf Suicide Note:
Dearest,
I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will know. You see, I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.
Prison Letters
Dear Eberhard, This short greeting is all I want to send you today. I think you must be so often present in spirit with us here that you will be glad for every sign of life, even if our theological discussion takes a breather for a while. To be sure, theological thoughts do preoccupy me incessantly, but then there are hours, too, when one is content with the ongoing processes of life and faith without reflecting on them. Then the Daily Texts simply make you happy, as I found especially to be the case with yesterday’s[3] and today’s,[4] for example. And then returning to the beautiful Paul Gerhardt hymns makes one glad to have them in the repertoire.[5] ¶ In the last few years I have come to know and understand more and more the profound this-worldliness of Christianity. The Christian is not a homo religiosus[6] but simply a human being, in the same way that Jesus was a human being—in contrast, perhaps, to John the Baptist. I do not mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the bustling, the comfortable, or the lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness that shows discipline and includes the ever-present knowledge of death and resurrection. I think Luther lived in this kind of this-worldliness. I remember a conversation I had thirteen years ago in America with a young French pastor.[7] We had simply asked ourselves what we really wanted to do with our lives.
And he said, I want to become a saint (—and I think it’s possible that he did become one). This impressed me very much at the time. Nevertheless, I disagreed with him, saying something like: I want to learn to have faith. For a long time I did not understand the depth of this antithesis. I thought I myself could learn to have faith by trying to live something like a saintly life. I suppose I wrote Discipleship at the end of this path. Today I clearly see the dangers of that book, though I still stand by it.[8] Later on I discovered, and am still discovering to this day, that one only learns to have faith by living in the full this-worldliness of life. If one has completely renounced making something of oneself—whether it be a saint[9] or a converted sinner or a church leader (a so-called priestly figure!), a just or an unjust person, a sick or a healthy person—then one throws oneself completely into the arms of God, and this is what I call this-worldliness: living fully in the midst of life’s tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences, and perplexities— then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather the suffering of God in the world. Then one stays awake with Christ in Gethsemane. [10] And I think this is faith; this is metavnoia. [11] And this is how one becomes a human being, a Christian. (Cf. Jer. 45!)[12] How should one become arrogant over successes or shaken by one’s failures when one shares in God’s suffering in the life of this world? You understand what I mean even when I put it so briefly. I am grateful that I have been allowed this insight, and I know that it is only on the path that I have finally taken that I was able to learn this. So I am thinking gratefully and with peace of mind about past as well as present things. Perhaps you are surprised at such a personal letter. But when I feel like saying such things sometimes, who else should I say them to? Perhaps the time will come when I can speak to Maria this way, too; I do very much hope so. But I cannot put that burden on her yet. May God lead us kindly through these times, but above all, may God lead us to himself. Your greeting made me especially happy,[13] and I am glad that it isn’t too hot for all of you there. Many more letters from me must still be on their way.] Didn’t we travel just about the same route together in 1936[15] as you’re traveling now? Be well, stay healthy, and don’t let go of your hope that we will all see one another again soon. In faithfulness and gratitude, thinking always of you, Yours, Dietrich
Works Cited:
Hunnicutt, S. L., & Hunnicutt, G. (2005). Dearest Virginia : Love Letters From a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific. Texas Christian University Press.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer
https://www.phrases.org.uk/famous-last-words/suicide-notes.html
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf_suicide_note
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-end-a-letter
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