Happy Ending And Inevitable Ending

In her short story “Happy Endings”, Margaret Atwood uses different literary techniques that can alter the interpretation of the story’s theme. The story starts off with a generic “fairy tale” ending in which a husband and a wife live a happy life together and eventually die. However, as the story progresses, Atwood’s style and tone makes the alternate scenarios of John and Mary give off a sense of uncertainty of what main ideas she is trying to convey. Good opening and thesis.

In “Happy Endings,” Margaret Atwood manipulates literary techniques to emphasize how each story can have different plots yet end up with the same ending. She makes the case that, in every ending, the characters finish having a happy ending and “eventually they die” (paragraph 4). She infers that it is the contents between the beginning, and the end that bring interest and challenge to the characters, while the beginnings are more fun. The “true connoisseurs” is an important element because it is what makes up the plot (paragraph 21). The six scenarios of “Happy Endings” introduce differences in the beginning and the middle of the plot but result in the same ending. The plot in each scenario focuses on the significance of understanding how

Endings are needed to keep life moving forward. The end helps one with dedication, interpretation, and expectation. As Alexander Graham Bell once said “as one door closes another one

At the end, the characters accept their motives, ambitions, hopes and fears which determine their actions

Although they divorced it may have had its positive sides to Michael’s developments as he may have learnt to not rush into such a serious relationship and also to be completely sure that the person he decides to marry is really the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with.

The irony of each story came to light at the close of the writings. The ending turned out to be something totally different than what it would initially have thought to be, because of how the narratives

Eventually, in my early teens, I took up reading books such as The Odyssey by Homer, and various other works relating to the Trojan War. As is typical with many Greek stories, The Odyssey presented me with a hero I could look up to, but I was dealt my first shock when I realized that not all books have a happy ending. Quite the contrary in most Greek literature. While the Odyssey does have a fairly happy ending, other books on the Trojan War presented a much different picture. Achilles, another one of my heroes at the time, dies, and the city of Troy is sacked. I wasn’t sure how to take these bizarre endings. I say bizarre because as a kid in this day and age, I was presented with stories that always ended happily. The guy always got the girl. The hero always saved the day. The criminal was always caught. This was quite out of the ordinary in my world. I began to realize that the stories and movies I had previously always been presented, were in no way a honest view of reality. Bad things did happen, and that was life. Instead of turning away from this reality, I embraced it, realizing that while the stories themselves may not be true, the reality of the situations faced in them were.

What is the point of any piece of great literature? Or rather, what is great literature? Some would say that accomplished literature is a way of exceptionally telling a story. However, what is the point of storytelling? In many cases, stories are told for entertainment. However, most stories have a moral or theme conveying an important message about life or how to live it. This is the point of great literature, to convey this message beautifully. Some pieces of great literature are The Story-Teller, by Saki, Geraldine Moore the Poet, by Toni Cade Bambara, and Enemy Territory, by William Melvin Kelley. To understand the themes of great literature, you must also understand how to analyze it. The content

Happy Endings by author Margaret Atwood is a prime example of the literary device known as “a story within a story”. This short story has six different stories within itself. Due to the broadness of each story within the main story, Happy Endings can be classified as flash fiction. The two main characters, Mary and John have six different scenarios which are labeled A-F.

Happy Endings is an oddly structured, metafictional story; a series of possible scenarios all leading the characters to the same ending. Atwood uses humour and practical wisdom to critique both romantic fiction and contemporary society, and to make the point that it is not the end that is important, it is the journey that truly matters in both life and writing.

In “Happy Endings” the main symbols are how the relationships end –be it cheating, age, or health complications. Cheating is symbolic of the relationship being dominated by only one person involved in it. Age is symbolic of both partners sharing or being equal in the relationship. Lastly health complications are a way of saying that fate, be it good or bad, can be involved, or that not everything works out according to plan. These are all related to the idea that by placing a dominant person in the relationship

Stories are told through various forms of literature, and the overall point of telling a story is to convey a message, a meaning that the author wants the reader to interpret and understand. The author does

The idea of a happy ending, to the common person, is the cliche ending of a story in which the protagonist gets the damsel, saves the world, and survives near death. However, this is a very simple way to look at the concept of a “happy ending” and neglects the grand scheme of things, just as there are more complicated equations in mathematics as one progresses in school, there are more complicated elements in a story as we look to dig deeper into literature. A story that has a complex happy ending is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the story of a man seeking revenge on his family that has caused him much despair. If we look at this play in a simple manner, we will probably not look at the ending as happy ending as our beloved characters die,

Atwood uses “Happy Endings” in identifying and explaining the type of ending fictional stories should have and why. Works of fiction should have a happy ending which Atwood terms appealing to our ethical nature and therefore moral. Atwood provides a number of stories that implies different endings. However, the ending in the first story is referred in all other stories as the befitting ending. Atwood acknowledges the desires of works of fiction to bring out creativity by bring out intensity and passion, but this is only possible in the introduction and the body of a fictional story. All fictional stories have to end in the same way, a way that appeals to the human

I like to read stories that have good endings, but some of the finest lessons we can learn come from stories with unhappy endings.