Summary:
In her short story "Happy Endings," Margaret Atwood uses creative, blunt anthologized plots to express the existence and the actuality of others that develops ideas of escape, but that there is no escape and that death is inevitable.
There Is No Where To Run or Hide
What if a story was over in the first paragraph? Often times, when reading something the mind gets caught up on focusing what is going to happen next, what characters will be introduced, and how they relate to the story. Instead of looking ahead, maybe the point or idea the author is trying to make is in the beginning. In "Happy Endings" Margaret Atwood uses anthologized plots to express the existence and the actuality of others that develops ideas of escape, and to show that there is no escape, that death is inevitable.
The short story consists of six plots, A-F. In plot A, John and Mary are introduced, a traditional middle-class couple who fall in love and end up getting married. They are both successful with their jobs and find them stimulating. They have two beautiful children who turn out well. The sex life is challenging and they have worthwhile friends. Eventually they die. Looking at just this first plot, it will serve as he happiest and most flourishing in the story. " This is the end of the story." Atwood creates the idea that in a perfect relationship, when death arrives, it is less painful if the love of another is present.
Insecurity plays a very powerful motive in life. It pushes individuals to go to great links to please others. Men have often been stereotyped as being chauvinist. Some women on the other hand, have been portrayed as being weak or needing someone to cling onto. Atwood shows this in the middle of the story. "He comes to her apartment twice a week and she cooks him dinner, you'll notice that he doesn't even consider her worth th price of a dinner out, and after he's eaten the dinner he fucks her, and after that he falls asleep, while she does the dishes so he won't think she's untidy, having all those dirty dishes around,
and puts on fresh lipstick so she'll look good when he wakes up, but when he wakes up he doesn't even
notice, he puts his socks and his shorts and his pants and his shirt and his tie and his shoes, the reverse order from the one in which he took them off." Mary is running away from herself. Insecurity has caused her to live her life now around John, hoping that one day John will look at her as a woman that has devoted her life to trying to make him happy and is worth marrying. Unfortunately this will not be. John find Mary's insecurity as being weak. Then finding another woman who is not as weak, then marries her. Mary dies insecurely and alone.
Age can effect how someone lives their life. Some things such as success, job stability, and family, pertain to an older generation, where as adventure, freedom, and variety is something a younger individual seeks. In this plot the tables have turned. John is older and Mary is 22. John though is married to another woman, whose name is Madge. John and Mary only meet once a week, but it seems to be considered a relationship. Margaret Atwood introduces James on the contrary. "Mary is impressed by James, who has a motorcycle and a fabulous record collection. James is Mary's age and has more in common with her. " James is often away on his motorcycle, being free." Although James has more in common with Mary than John, Mary uses her mind and young body to manipulate John, just for sex. "Older men can keep it up longer on the whole", Atwood says. Realizing how alive and young Mary makes him feel, John leaves his wife to be with her. Leaving everything behind, John arrives at Mary's apartment to find Mary and James stoned and in bed together. He then purchases a hand gun, and shoots the two of them and himself in the head. Madge on the other hand forgets John and marries again. Everything continues as in A, but under different names.
It does not matter fast or how slow someone is, death eventually catches up. Running and hiding from it, is a lot of times, the only way of coping with the fact that there is no escape from it. Atwood delivers creative and blunt plots to show us that there is no escape, even through escape, from death.
This is the complete article, containing 730 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
