Ragnarok in the Hall of Presidents: The Ending of Alexandra Petri's US History Explained

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Literal Account of the Climax

The final chapter, “Ragnarok in the Hall of Presidents” (Chapter 75), is not a conventional plot resolution but an apocalyptic parody of presidential legacy. The Epcot Center collapses, the sun sets for the last time, and the animatronic presidents at the Hall of Presidents awaken for a final battle.

George Washington rises and pulls out his false teeth one by one, hurling each tooth to create soldiers. He shouts the origin of each tooth (hippopotamus bone or pulled from a living mouth). The last tooth is his real one. John Adams cowers, apologizing for the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson releases a wolf he had been holding, which devours him; Jefferson laughs, relieved that punishment finally comes. James Madison is torn apart by hands from the floor. Monroe and John Quincy Adams fight the tooth army but Andrew Jackson is slowly killed by bullets he carried in his body his whole life. A pit opens; John Quincy Adams falls in, and the National Bank—now a tentacled monster—catches Jackson and drags him below.

Martin Van Buren mutters in Dutch, William Henry Harrison succumbs to rain, John Tyler stands alone, Zachary Taylor flees a bowl of raw cherries, Millard Fillmore turns into a duck. Franklin Pierce hears a train. James Buchanan sinks into lava. Abraham Lincoln fights valiantly with a chair but is shot by an animatronic John Wilkes Booth. Andrew Johnson tries to escape but is pulled into the pit by Buchanan’s arm, dragging McKinley with him. Grant fails to surround himself with good men. Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and James Garfield are consumed by whiskers or killed by doctors.

Theodore Roosevelt goes berserk. Woodrow Wilson’s glasses fog up; light spews from his mouth and eyes and he splits open. Edith Wilson springs from his body, but Roosevelt impales her. Taft tries to join Roosevelt but is spurned. Warren G. Harding melts from embarrassment when his private letters (referring to his penis as “Jerry”) are revealed. Calvin Coolidge silently fights the monstrous “Jerry” into the pit. Later presidents meet symbolic fates: FDR commands workers, Richard Nixon drowns Dwight Eisenhower, Clinton plays saxophone as walls crumble, George W. Bush reads The Pet Goat, Obama tells Trump “I don’t think that you have been very good for the country,” and Joe Biden calls for a train that does not go where he wants.

Major Character Outcomes

The fates of the presidents are not victories or defeats—they are absurdist punchlines that reflect each leader’s historical or personal flaws. Below is a summary of key outcomes:

No president emerges as a hero. The only figure who seems at peace is the animatronic Jimmy Carter, who remains seated. The battle is chaotic and unresolved; the hall collapses with no victor.

Resolved and Unresolved Threads

The book has no overarching plot or character arcs. Each chapter is a self-contained parody of a historical figure, event, or cultural artifact. The “ending” does not resolve earlier vignettes—instead, it functions as a final, maximalist joke about the absurdity of treating history as a linear story with meaningful conclusions.

• Resolved: The book’s central theme—that historical authority is a performance—reaches its logical extreme. Every president is reduced to a cartoon death, showing that even the highest figures are subject to farce.
• Unresolved: No character learns a lesson or changes. The book’s earlier satires of greed (Spanish conquistadors), political hypocrisy (the Corrupt Bargain, gerrymandering), and myth-making (the Lost Cause, presidential branding) are not settled; they are merely reenacted in the finale.

Theme Resolution

The ending satirizes myth-making and selective memory by taking the idea of a “history” to its apocalyptic conclusion. The Hall of Presidents—a real tourist attraction that presents a sanitized version of the presidency—becomes a battlefield where each leader’s symbolic baggage literally kills them. Political hypocrisy is exposed when Harding’s letters destroy him, when Nixon drowns Eisenhower, and when Obama’s criticism of Trump is the only moment of direct honesty.

The theme of satire of historical authority and construction is fully realized: the entire book has been a series of fabricated documents and parodies, and the finale is a fabricated apocalypse. No real history is presented; instead, the reader is left with the sense that all historical narratives are fictions that collapse when examined too closely.

Is There an Epilogue?

No. The book ends with Chapter 75. The final lines show Biden calling for a train that does not go where he wants, then the droning grows louder. There is no coda, no moral, no characters returning from earlier chapters. The effect is a deliberate anticlimax—the apocalypse happens, but nothing meaningful follows.

Reasonable Interpretations

Given the book’s satirical nature, there is no single “correct” reading of the ending. However, several plausible interpretations emerge:

1. Nihilistic: The ending suggests that all human efforts—especially political ones—are doomed to end in absurd, meaningless violence. No matter how grand the legacy, it can be undone by a bowl of cherries or a bullet from Booth.
2. Cyclical: The Ragnarok references Norse mythology, where the world is destroyed and reborn. The collapse of the Hall of Presidents could imply that American history is a repeating cycle of hubris and fall.
3. Critique of Historical Prestige: By turning presidents into animatronic toys that fight comically, Petri undermines the reverence paid to the office. The deaths are silly because the real historical figures were often silly, corrupt, or cruel.
4. Meta-Fictional: The ending mirrors the book’s own construction—a chaotic collection of jokes that cannot be resolved. The “Ragnarok” is a final joke that acknowledges the impossibility of writing a coherent history.

Reader Questions and Answers

1. What happens to George Washington in the ending?

Washington does not die. He becomes the catalyst for the battle by throwing his false teeth, each tooth spawning a soldier. The last tooth he pulls is his real one. His fate is left ambiguous—he is last seen leading an army, but the chapter does not show his death.

2. Why does Teddy Roosevelt kill Edith Wilson?

In the narrative, Woodrow Wilson’s body splits open and Edith Wilson springs out. Teddy Roosevelt, in a battle rage, impales her. This is a surreal exaggeration of Roosevelt’s historical aggression and of Wilson’s controversial legacy (including his stroke and Edith’s shadow presidency). It satirizes the way male historians often ignore women’s roles, only for those roles to be violently reasserted.

3. Is there any hero in the final chapter?

No. The closest to a heroic figure is Abraham Lincoln, who fights bravely with a chair, but he is promptly shot by Booth. Calvin Coolidge silently defeats the “Jerry” monster but is never celebrated. The lack of a hero reinforces the book’s argument that history is not a morality tale.

4. What does the ending say about American history?

The ending suggests that American history is a collection of foolish, violent, and embarrassing episodes that we have whitewashed into a noble story. The presidents—even the revered ones—are shown as absurd figures destroyed by their own flaws. The book argues that the only honest way to represent history is through parody and destruction.

5. How does the ending relate to earlier chapters?

Earlier chapters satirize specific moments (Columbian Exchange, D-Day, the Constitutional Convention) and figures (Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, the March sisters). The ending gathers all presidents into one scene but does not directly connect to those vignettes. The connection is thematic: every chapter, including the finale, uses absurdity to question how we remember and teach the past.

6. Is there a moral or takeaway?

If a moral exists, it is that history is too strange and contradictory to be captured in a single narrative. Petri’s book as a whole, and especially its ending, rejects the idea that history has a point. Instead, it offers laughter as the only appropriate response to the chaos of the past.

Explore Further

• Main book page for an overview of all chapters
• Character guides: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison
• Theme analyses: satire of historical authority, greed and exploitation, gender roles and domesticity, political hypocrisy, myth-making and selective memory