![]() In each of the scenarios, then, Atwood lays bare the empty goal of the “happy ending” of marriage, suggesting that marriage as an end-point is an artificial, perhaps even harmful construction. Whether this means John and Madge in scenario B after Mary has killed herself, Fred and Madge in scenario C after John has committed a murder-suicide, or any of the other iterations is irrelevant. While the other scenarios may have more twists and turns, they eventually end up at scenario A: a man and a woman fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. While Atwood doesn’t condemn happiness as the ultimate goal, she’s quick to poke fun at the cookie-cutter elements of such an ending. Having reached the end of their story, John and Mary get to live a happy life-one that is expected and unchanging. In this scenario, John and Mary have a “happy ending” consisting of jobs, children, a house, friends, hobbies, and financial prosperity. Scenario A, the first narrative presented in the story and the one to which all other narratives eventually default, concludes with a static marriage, one in which all interesting or significant events have already occurred in the characters’ lives. Once marriage happens, the story’s usually over-barring plot-worthy tragedies like natural disaster or disease-and the characters are neatly fitted into place, so similar in their endings that they can be slotted directly into any other story where “everything continues as in A, but under different names.” Marriage is always the ultimate conclusion, no matter what-an “ending” that Atwood critiques as superficial and formulaic, and which reduces the meaningful aspects of the characters’ lives to a singular focus. Atwood highlights the way in which these events function less as interesting narrative developments and more as necessary fulcrums in the plot, moving the story along inexorably toward its ending. GradeSaver, 24 August 2022 Web.Throughout the story, the character arcs of John, Mary, and others are all described in relation to one another, most often in terms of romance and eventual marriage. ![]() Next Section Imagery Previous Section Metaphors and Similes Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format GradeSaver "Happy Endings Irony". This structure is ironic because in arranging the story this way, the author draws readers' attentions to a multitude of other stories and possibilities, therefore undermining the expectations of the short story genre. Characters themselves shift and change between versions, as if the entire story is composed of different parallel universes. "Happy Endings" maintains a unique structure, in that it is divided into six different versions of potential stories rather than arranged as a single narrative. The narrator maintains an ironic relationship to the title throughout the story, showing how it is not the ending of a story but the moments in between beginning and end that make it worth reading. The title of the story, "Happy Endings," is fundamentally ironic because through the various versions of the story relayed to the reader, "Happy Endings" actually argues that happy endings do not make for good stories.
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