Short Story Happy 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.

Most stories have very similar plots, character actions and themes. Stories become unique by having different character actions and responses. In the short stories of “A Retrieved Reformation” and “Thank You M’am”, the similarities and differences between the two stories influence the direction of the plots, character actions, and theme while making the characters into better people. The plot of the two stories help change the characters into better people.

Short stories range from fantasy to realistic plots. They give a full range of emotions and feelings that tell a story. Some short stories have a sorrowful mood, but are filled with hope and persistent characters. The short story, “The Scarlet Ibis”, has a sorrowful storyline, but throughout gives you hope. In the short story , “The Scarlet Ibis”, the brother is illustrated as selfish, devoted, and hopeful of his brother Doodle, through the use of figurative language, and diction.

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

We have been assigned many great stories to read while in this class. In this paper we will cover and analyze three different short stories and quickly compare and contrast things they have in common. This paper will analyze “A Rose for Emily”, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, and “The Cask of Amontillado”. We will analyze the different symbolism throughout all the stories such as “the elusive definition of a good man” which comes from “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, also themes in the different stories like traditions people follow, and the power that death has.

Happiness is a person who experience positive emotions, share and received love, someone who is always laughs and has a smile on his face. Not all the people has the pleasure of having those feelings. Can be hard in life finding happiness when people around, are not happy either in life. In the book “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer deals about Chris McCandless who had a long life to live but, dies in the wild pursuing his happiness. Christopher Johnson McCandless come from a wealthy family and a brilliant man with perfect grades. He had everything in life, but he was not happy at all so, he decides to leave everything behind and start on a journey. Even though he did not went into the right path to reach his happiness, at the end he died for consuming the wrong seeds to survive in the wild. Jon Krakauer identify a lot with Chris McCandless’s life that he decided to write a book about Chris’s life. Joh Krakauer applies into the book the rhetorical situation and rhetorical appeals.

Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings” is not a typical short story. With remarkable brevity, it provides readers a gold mine for discussion on the nuances of relationships and storytelling. Best described as metafiction, “Happy Endings” self-consciously draws attention to its artificiality; it is less a story and moreover an instruction manual on how to write one. From a surface level, the author parodies storytelling conventions. Upon deeper examination, however, the story is actually a satire on on the collective psyche of the middle class. This essay will explore the story’s meaning from these two levels.

The short story, as with other literary forms, is not defined by its actual parameters. Subject and theme may be as varied as those within full-length novels, just as the author's individual style plays an inevitable role in shaping the work. That said, there is a common element uniting short stories; they usually create impact due to the brevity itself, which authors typically rely on to make a more direct impression. Condensed, the form offers more overt power, and this is evident in how William Faulkner and Edgar Allan Poe employ it to achieve distinctly Gothic effects. “A Rose for Emily” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are very different stories set in very different worlds, and the tone of the narration in each is equally

Short-stories have made a name for itself through the various accomplished publications by initiating emotions, imagination and love between the characters and the reader. As Harold Goddard in The Meaning of Shakespeare stated “The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.”

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 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”.

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

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