Come in! come in! Cathy, do come. Oh, do—once more! Oh! my heart's darling! hear me this time, Catherine, at last!

The Final Transformation

The plea's power lies in its eventual, ambiguous fulfillment. Heathcliff's obsession with Catherine's image becomes so total that he tells Ellen, 'The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!' He sees her features in the flags of the floor, in every cloud, in every tree, and even in his own face. This all-consuming vision culminates in his strange death, after which the country folk swear he walks the moors and the churchyard. The plea 'Come in!' is ultimately answered not by a ghost at the window but by Heathcliff's own dissolution into the landscape he shared with Catherine. The final image of the novel—the headstones of Edgar Linton, Catherine, and Heathcliff in the Gimmerton kirkyard—suggests a peace that the living Heathcliff could never find. The phrase, therefore, stands as the novel's most potent symbol of a love that transcends death but also destroys life, a cry that is both a curse and a blessing, and the key to understanding Heathcliff's tragic, monomaniacal soul.