Happy Endings

The story I have chosen to write about in this blog post is Margaret Atwood’s “Happy endings”. Of the three short stories chosen for class today, this one undoubtedly my favorite. Though it is rather sad, it exemplifies many of the conundrums (or perhaps lack there-of) that I face during the occasional existential crisis. The quote that I feel best represents many key themes of the story / stories is “…and everything continues as in A” (Atwood 1). “A”, in the context of the story, is the scenario in which the two lovers, with interchangeable names irrelevant back stories live their lives in harmony until the day they finally die (the most important part of scenario A). As the scenarios progress, more characters are added and the circumstances change. Many of these characters, such as Mary in scenario B or John in scenario C, come to a rather tragic end, while their happy counterparts live comfortable lives with their happy counterparts “and everything continues as in A”. Throughout the scenarios, Atwood entertains different scenarios and circumstances, all the while implying that none of the details really matter, evident by quotes such as (addressed to the reader) “If you think this is all too bourgeois, make John a revolutionary and Mary a counterespionage agent and see how far that gets you” (Atwood 2). The language implies that the people and their circumstances are rather arbitrary. However, the former quote can be interpreted in a few ways. At first, I thought that scenario A implied that someone would always be happy and someone they know will always be miserable because of it. In that respect, it seemed plausible to assume that everything would always “continue as in A”. I thought it was interesting that when Atwood references scenario A, the names, words, and context of the actual scenario become interchangeable as well, evident by the line (in reference to scenario A “If you like, it can be "Madge," "cancer," "guilty and confused," and "bird watching"” (Atwood 2). This might defeat the purpose in everything “continuing as in A” if “A” were to take on the theory I have provided previously. I believe that everything “continuing as in A” means that all stories and the people in them will undoubtedly come to an all-encompassing, unimportant end. The only important notion of any ending would be that the story did, in fact, end. The quote that I feel best represents this notion and is appropriate to put at the conclusion of this analysis is when Atwood states “You'll have to face it, the endings are the same however you slice it. Don't be deluded by any other endings, they're all fake, either deliberately fake, with malicious intent to deceive, or just motivated by excessive optimism if not by downright sentimentality. The only authentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.” (Atwood 2). Once again existential in nature, the quote seems to suggest that the whether an ending is happy or sad, it does not matter, because it is simply an ending, just as death is an ending that seemingly negates the purpose (or brings to light the purposelessness) of life. This makes “the stretch in between” (the beginning and ending, that is) rather interesting, because it too becomes meaningless, making it “the hardest to do anything with” (Atwood 3).