Scenarios In Happy Endings By Margaret Atwood

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.

Reading this story you are given background information and details about the main story unlike “Popular Mechanics” therefore giving it more of a classic short story feeling. This story is about a woman by the name of Mrs. Louise Mallard who receives word that her husband has died in a trainwreck while away on business. In the opening of this story you are told that Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition and that any emotional breaking news would be bad and to be caring and gentle. When she received the news that her husband had passed and the news was a shock, she went to her room alone to weep and sorrow over his passing. As the news became processed, she became less sad and more relieved of her husband's passing. Mrs. Mallard felt as though she had been set free and the weight of the world was let off of her shoulders. She finally left her bedroom and returned to her sister’s company after this. But after leaving and walking downstairs that weight of the world fell onto her as her husband entered the front door. The shock of her husband’s presence and her failing, weak heart killed her and similarly to the other story, it ends with great irony, reading, “When the doctors came, they said she had died of heart disease- of joy that kills,” (Chopin

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

Women are taught from a young age that marriage is the end all be all in happiness, in the short story “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin and the drama “Poof!” by Lynn Nottage, we learn that it is not always the case. Mrs. Mallard from “The Story of an Hour” and Loureen from “Poof!” are different characteristically, story-wise, and time-wise, but share a similar plight. Two women tied down to men whom they no longer love and a life they no longer feel is theirs. Unlike widows in happy marriages Loureen and Mrs., Mallard discover newfound freedom in their respective husband’s deaths. Both stories explore stereotypical housewives who serve their husbands with un-stereotypical reactions to their husband’s deaths.

When you begin every story, anyone knows there will always be three common factors. A beginning, a middle, and an end. No matter how complex the story. It is up to the author or poet to decide how they decide to organize their story. Margaret Atwood decides to break the story into five sections. The first sections speaking about the creation of God. The second

My first art portfolio, my favorite keychain, my broken bike…1.2.3. No one ever speaks to you about your own ending. How you die is left up to your own imagination. To you, your death can maybe either be due to a glorious, heroic act in which you met a righteous end or a pathetic closing to what you may believe to be a pretty uneventful existence. No one speaks about endings in general, though. Endings only tend to make us feel anything but content. Yet we dream on, foolishly writing silly ends to our lives, forgetting that the ends we create may be plausible one day. College, family, career…1.2.3. My breaths get weary, my heart slows from boisterous thuds to faint, lethargic thumps. Bright rays gleam above, showering me in what is meant to be warmth, but all I feel is cold. My freezing limbs waft slowly within the water, my feet dangling below, my hair flowing behind. My mother’s laughter, my father’s tears of joy, my friends’ bright smiles…1.2.3. I never dreamt my foolish imagination would collide with the inevitable so soon. My days of compiling were over, my good days, my sad days, my sweet, sweet mundane days, would soon come to an end…Air, air, air, air,

Rampell opens the article with an brief yet intriguing hook. She draws the reader in with the possible outcome, the supposedly “happy ending” that did

Story A of Happy Endings, is the ultimate story of love. Everything is smooth throughout the whole story and both characters are happy and live happy lives. We as the readers find out that John and Mary go on “fun vacations” and that their children “turn out well”. This is by far my most favorite story out of all six. I find it interesting and funny that Atwood uses

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 the story “Happy Endings” the author Margaret Atwood gives 6 scenarios in alphabetical order from A to F of how a couples life could play out over the span of their lives. In these six scenarios Atwood uses satire to emphasize how interchangeable and simple each couples life is. In this story Atwood uses character, style, and point of view to chastise the desire for the everyday common life and the concern for only the “whats” in life and not “how or why”.

“Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway and “Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood share a gender-oriented theme. They both show women struggling to attain equality against their male partners. This theme is depicted through the use of symbolism, point of view and plot conflict.

Relationships can be difficult, but a lot of couples work through the difficultly by supporting and helping each other. In the short story “Hills like White Elephants”, written by Ernest Hemingway, an unnamed American and a young woman, named Jig, are waiting for a train to arrive. Set in the mid-1920s, the couple are sitting at a bar drinking beers, and awaiting to travel to their next destination. Talking vaguely with each other, Jig describes the hills as “white elephants”, meaning an unwanted gift. During the story, the couple discuss an ‘operation’ that the man wants the girl to have, but she doesn’t to want to, symbolizing wanting to keep their unborn child. In this story, “Hills like White Elephant”, the theme is the ending of a relationship, by the of lack of communication, selfishness and choices.

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

In Alasdair Gray’s “Pillow Talk” there is only one ending. The ending never changes because it has only one plot. The couple in the end ultimately stays together because the wife does not believe she could ever find someone better, nor the man does not want her to leave. Unlike “Pillow Talk” the story by Margaret Atwood's “Happy Endings” has several different ]endings because it is nothing like a traditional story. The endings in “Happy Endings” go from the couple living happily, to one dying, or one loving the other and the other does not feel the same way, and one of the spouses finding the other with another person and killing them