Margaret Atwood - "Happy Endings"

Autobiographical Essay

Autobiography

(Her early life as an writer)

• Due to her father's profession, she "did not spend a full year in school" until she was in "Grade Eight."
• "At the age of five," she began writing "poems, 'novels', comic books, and plays."
• "I had no thought of being a professional writer until I was sixteen."

(The Story)

• "I did not know what sort of creature it was. It was not a poem, a short story, or a prose poem.”
• “It was a mutation. Writing it gave me a sense of furtive glee, like scribbling anonymously on a wall with no one looking.”
• "It was a little disappointing to learn that other people had a name for such aberrations [meta fiction], ans had already made up rules."

pg. 20

Scenario A

John and Mary fall in love and get married.

• A lovely house.
• Two successful children, great sex, and close friends.
• Go on beautiful vacations.
• Retire and have interesting hobbies.
• They eventually die.
• "This is the end of the story." - Narrator concludes.

Scenario B

• Mary loves John, John.. hmm.. not so much.
• She cooks for him, and all he do is use her for sex.
• "He comes to her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner, you'll notice that he doesn't even consider her worth the price of a dinner out, and after he's eaten dinner he fucks her and after that he falls asleep" (20).
• Mary becomes self-conscious, where she feels she's not good enough for John.
• Mary's friends tell Mary he is good enough for her; tells Mary John was caught with another woman at an restaurant.
• Mary is more upset about John taking the woman out to eat than the woman herself.
• Mary attempts suicide by taking aspirin and sleeping pills, hoping John would rescue her.. He doesn't.
• Mary dies.

Scenario B

Scenario C

• John fell in love with a younger woman named Mary.
• Mary feels pity for him because his hair is falling out.
• Mary is not happy in the relationship and is in love with another man that she works with named James.
• Mary likes James more because he is a younger man who goes out and rides motorcycles. James just isn't ready for a relationship.
• At first John refuses to leave his wife (Madge) because he refuses to break his commitment to her and they have what many people would consider a happy life.
• John eventually confesses his love for Mary
• He caught James and Mary high in the bed together.
• John killed them and then kills himself.
• Madge went on with her life after a while and got married to a man named Fred.

Scenario D

• Fred and Madge live a happy life together with no issues.
• They solve any problem they have within their relationship.
• The trouble comes in when a tidal wave hit the beach that they live by and thousands of people died.
• They were lucky enough to survive and the ending continued like Scenario A.

Scenario D

Scenario E

• Fred health has declined.
• The rest of their love story is about how kind Madge and Fred are until the death of Fred.

Scenario E

Scenario F

• This scenario is all about Atwood reflecting on all the endings.
• She believes that no matter how you want to put the ending it will most likely always turn out the same as Scenario A when John and Mary die.

Scenario F

Meaning of the Story

Breakdown of the Meaning

• This short story illustrates the idea that the ending of a story is always the same, but only the middle matters.
• Based on the fact that eventually everyone dies, ignoring the fact that a story will not be carried through to this ultimate conclusion to have importance.
• Atwood's point is to focus the reader on the importance of understanding how conclusion is reached and why.

GOAL: to inspire self-reflection from within the reader.

• It's clear everyone wants a life like Scenario A, but Atwood is trying to make readers “self-reflect” in a way, to show that they can pass through challenges and disappointments in relationships.

Scholarly Sources

"Feminist Theory and the Body"

• This source goes into detail about exploiting the sexualization of the female body and also how feminist theory can be looked through a character such as the Mary presented in Scenario B. (A woman to cooks for her man and treats him well.)

Scholarly Sources

"Literary Analysis : IMAGERY, CHARACTER ANALYSIS, PLOT, AND SETTING FORM AND TONE

OF THE SHORT STORY “HAPPY ENDINGS” BY MARGARET ATWOOD"

• This source describes the literary elements that we have already discussed.

Irony

Irony

Situational

- The contrast between the title of "Happy Endings" and the ending shows how this technique works.

No matter which scenario you read, experience, or can think up, they will always end the same, with death.

• "So much for endings. Beginnings are more fun."

*Also, to add.. it's ironic how no matter what these couples did, their lives all ended the same.. with death. *

Foreshadowing

In Scenario B, John isn't interested in Mary from the start and Mary's friends were telling her she's too good for him. This foreshadows the end of Scenario B, where Mary finds out John has been cheating on her with Madge.

Foreshadowing

Imagery

Imagery can be seen throughout the story multiple of times, but the most important idealistic image can be seen in Scenario A: where John and Mary have a horse, get married, and have two children together.

This is important because it represents the type of life almost everyone wants to have, highlighting elements can bring someone happiness and fulfillment.

Feminist Theory

• Atwood is described as a “feminist writer”.
• Female characters represent the typical women in romantic novels: shallow, eager to please a man, depressed, and selfless.
• Written during the feminist movement in the early 1960’s.
• The collection of stories shows how the women played an inferior role to the men.
• Shows flaws of the relationships between the women and the men.
• Shows how Margaret Atwood tried to depict how women were treated and react to certain situations, and how men can affect the way they think, and be viewed in society.

Feminist

Marxist Theory

Marxist

• The entire story is a reflection of society at the time and what was expected.
• Everything revolves around Middle Class Values.
• All of the characters are like the typical middle class couple.
• professional jobs, make good money, and embody the standard of middle class.
• (Can be seen in Scenario F) where she says the reader can make the characters " a revolutionary and a counterespionage spy."
• Writing the characters this way, Atwood reinforces the absurdity of romantic fiction.

Psychoanalytic Theory

• Both Mary and John commit suicide which shows sign of psychological mental issues that were going on in their personal lives.
• The majority of Atwood's poems and stories all have characters that deal with mental illnesses.
• Although Atwood's work is usually based on a feminist point of view, there is always a form of psychological problems.

Psychoanalytic