Happy Endings By Margaret Atwood

People have different perceptions of love, happiness, and life and how you are supposed to live it. Many people hope to graduate high school and move to college. Some want to possibly go to graduate school and get a degree allowing them to obtain an amazing career in hopes of meeting an incredible man/woman and possibly having a family of their own. However, not many people can sustain that life. Most people go through the hardships to get to the glory. They fall down and make themselves get back up and try again, people who have the perfect life never have to fall, so they never have to get back up, so where do they go? Do they keep going up? Or do they just stay constant, get bored, and want something more “stimulating and challenging”? People
They want to feel the heartbreak to make sure the next person they give it to guards it with their life. However, the few people who are okay with living “the perfect life” are not happy in it. In “Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood, she describes five different scenarios in which a man, John, and a woman, Mary have different lives and situations in each one. Each story is described and then always ended the same. The characters are happy and then they die. Atwood makes this point when she says, “John and Mary will die. John and Mary will die. John and Mary will die.” Using this method of repetition gives the reader thoughts about each scenario on its own. Throughout the scenarios, Atwood is very curt and her tone is very serious and witty, by using this type of tone, and creative literary elements throughout, she creates an effect on the reader and shows them the underlying meaning of the different scenarios and each of their
He uses her for her body until he finds another girl, Madge, which he wants to marry. They get married and live that “happy ending” Atwood gives to the end of each of the scenarios. She describes the ways in which John uses Mary for her body, yet never says Mary is happy with loving him. “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…” She goes through the motions every Tuesday and Thursday when John comes over. The same thing every time. Atwood uses repetition when talking about John never taking Mary to a restaurant. She says, “…you’ll notice that he doesn’t even consider her the price of a dinner out…” and “John has never taken Mary to a restaurant.” This shows that he isn’t in it for the romance or even the happiness a relationship entails. However, Mary doesn’t notice this until her friends catch John taking Madge out to dinner, to a restaurant. She is crushed and commits suicide, but before passing away she is hoping he will come and save her, he doesn’t. Again, while all this crisis is happening, “John marries Madge and everything continues as in A.” But they are still not stated to be happy, or have the “happy ending” everyone