There are different kinds of relationships that at a young age, we were taught that if we find love, we will reach of happy ending. I support Atwood’s point-of-view of love, and happiness categorize couples into unusual scenarios: they both fall in love and have a happy life; only one loves the other and they are unhappy or a love triangle. Consequently, death is the result of any scenario.
To begin with, Atwood starts with a couple Mary and John that meets, and she gives scenario “A” as the happy ending, where the couple falls in love, and lives happily ever after. Mary and John is the average couple that we see in movies or read on books. The fairytale love that “fall[s] in love and get[s] married.” At a young age, our families inject relationship values or goals that leads to a happy ending. We believe our entire life that we will meet someone who will love us as same as we love them. Then after the marriage and both having a decent job just like John and Mary, “When they can afford live-in help, they two children, to whom they are devoted”. The next step is having kids and hope they will turn right or better than you did. Throughout this perfect type of relationship we expect “a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends”. All you need an ideal relationship is good sex and friends to spend your time or hobbies with. Because without any of these goals, love is not worth it and that’s what we were taught.
Secondly, in scenarios’ B, C and D, they couple struggles through different obstacles but at the end they end up in the “A” scenario. “Mary falls in love with John but john doesn’t fall in love with Mary”. This relationship is the one that we go through before finding our soul mate. The relationships that w...
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...terrified of being alone.
To conclude, Margaret Atwood analyzes different types of relationship’s storylines that at the end reveals that the only genuine result is death. Atwood’s “diagnosis of the sexes is presented with a bluntness that is highly unusual, if not unique, in the long history of love..”. She uses men and women to illustrate and to point out her view of love. Margaret Atwood is a magnificent writer who provides her point of view with examples that any one can relate to. She uses different life-styles of people that we know of seem about. I completely agree with her philosophy of love.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. “Happy Endings.” The Literature Collection. New Jersey: Pearson,
2013. 143. eText.
Tolan, Fiona. "On Gender, Genre, And Graphic Art." Canadian Literature 208 (2011): 181-182. ContentSelect Research Navigator. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
Human beings are not isolated individuals. We do not wander through a landscape of trees and dunes alone, reveling in our own thoughts. Rather, we need relationships with other human beings to give us a sense of support and guidance. We are social beings, who need talk and company almost as much as we need food and sleep. We need others so much, that we have developed a custom that will insure company: marriage. Marriage assures each of us of company and association, even if it is not always positive and helpful. Unfortunately, the great majority of marriages are not paragons of support. Instead, they hold danger and barbs for both members. Only the best marriages improve both partners. So when we look at all three of Janie’s marriages, only her marriage to Teacake shows the support, guidance, and love.
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, love proves to be a dangerous and destructive force. Upon learning that Sethe killed her daughter, Beloved, Paul D warns Sethe “Your love is too thick” (193). Morrison proved this statement to be true, as Sethe’s intense passion for her children lead to the loss of her grasp on reality. Each word Morrison chose is deliberate, and each sentence is structured with meaning, which is especially evident in Paul D’s warning to Sethe. Morrison’s use of the phrase “too thick”, along with her short yet powerful sentence structure make this sentence the most prevalent and important in her novel. This sentence supports Paul D’s side on the bitter debate between Sethe and he regarding the theme of love. While Sethe asserts that the only way to love is to do so passionately, Paul D cites the danger in slaves loving too much. Morrison uses a metaphor comparing Paul D’s capacity to love to a tobacco tin rusted shut. This metaphor demonstrates how Paul D views love in a descriptive manner, its imagery allowing the reader to visualize and thus understand Paul D’s point of view. In this debate, Paul D proves to be right in that Sethe’s strong love eventually hurts her, yet Paul D ends up unable to survive alone. Thus, Morrison argues that love is necessary to the human condition, yet it is destructive and consuming in nature. She does so through the powerful diction and short syntax in Paul D’s warning, her use of the theme love, and a metaphor for Paul D’s heart.
Love caused his logic and sensibility to fail him, and provoked him to commit monstrous acts that destroyed many lives. Through analysis of “Happy Endings” by Margaret Atwood, it can be concluded that one of her many intended lessons was to show the value and the powerful effects of love. Atwood successfully proved this lesson by using powerful examples of both successful and disastrous relationships to illustrate the positive and negative effects of love. Atwood truly demonstrated what it is like to follow your heart.
The stories suggest we shouldn’t be spending so much time trying to get to the “Happy Ending”, and we should be more concerned about what’s going on in the middle. The majority of us are that typical person living the typical life, and perhaps Atwood is suggesting that we strive for more.
Langer, Cassandra L.. A Working Gynergenic Art Criticism. Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology. London: UMI, 1988.
Cottino-Jones sums up love and the community in this story in her book. She says, "the lovers in this books are constantly faced with violence, death and isolation when their affairs come into conflict with society’s rigid behavior codes "(Cottino-Jones, 79). Lack of communication and social factors made everyone in the story unhappy or dead.
In Dante’s Inferno, Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the protagonists’ relationships with their companions becomes an essential subplot within each text. Their relationships are crucial in order to complete their journey and in some cases complete each other. In addition, there are many characteristics in each text that are unrealistic representations of life. For instance, the environment of hell the Inferno, Don Quixote’s fictional world, and the instant marriages in Pride and Prejudice are all things that are not typically seen in real life. These unrealistic characteristics affect how each relationship develops, however, these factors do not take away from the significance of each relationship. In each text, the lucrative ambitions of the characters are initially the motive of many relationships rather than the desire for true companionship. A major part of the relationships development is how the characters’ companionships transition from ones that are based on individual ambitions to ones that are built on the desire for intimate relationships.
Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway both convey their ideas of love in their respective stories The Lady with the Pet Dog and Hills like White Elephants in different ways. However, their ideas are quite varying, and may be interpreted differently by each individual reader. In their own, unique way, both Chekhov and Hemingway evince what is; and what is not love. Upon proper contemplation, one may observe that Hemingway, although not stating explicitly what love is; the genius found in his story is that he gives a very robust example of what may be mistaken as love, although not being true love. On the other hand, Chekhov exposes love as a frame of mind that may only be achieved upon making the acquaintance of the “right person,” and not as an ideal that one may palpate at one instance, and at the another instance one may cease to feel; upon simple and conscious command of the brain. I agree with Hemingway’s view on love because it goes straight to the point of revealing some misconceptions of love.
In Margaret Atwood’s short story, “Happy Endings,” the central theme of fiction provides several different kinds of marriages and relationships that ultimately result in the same ending. The “Happy Endings” shows that it’s difficult to have complete control over day-to-day events. No matter how hard society tries to achieve the perfect life, it does not always go as planned. It doesn’t matter if the characters are bored and depressed, confused and guilty, or virtuous and lucky; the gradual path of version A is not always in reach.
In this essay I would like to emphasize different ideas of how love is understood and discussed in literature. This topic has been immortal. One can notice that throughout the whole history writers have always been returning to this subject no matter what century people lived in or what their nationality was.
Happiness is the main focus in life and should always be held most high according to Aristotle. He spends a great deal of time explaining how to achieve this we will see that, Aristotle was sure a genuinely happy life required a combination of many things. Which included physical and mental health? Bringing about a scientific way to look at happiness in its entirety.
When we find a love interest and have an opportunity to commit to him or her, we usually do, not noting the consequences we may face by doing so. The first few times around, however, the outcome is usually not the one we had expected and hoped for. Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God portray two young women on their trek to find the perfect love. Even though Carrie Meeber and Janie Crawford have almost nothing in common, they both shared the impact of the same consequences. Carrie and Janie show how people of countless numbers of backgrounds can share the same experiences and consequences through their journey of love.
Many marriages attested to the consequences of splendid and poor marital choices. These marriages exhibited themselves as either “a marriage compared to bearing the cross. A union compared to a foretaste of heaven.” The author, Gary Thomas, focused on Matthew 6:33 as a good example of purposely striving for God’s best within marriage and finding a blessed marriage. Many people disregarded Matthew 6:33 when searching for a marriage partner and dated on the basis of love and attraction. However, this verse, when abided by, showed a respectable guide for objective dating. When someone first fell in love, they tended to lose reason due to infatuation. This purloined their reasoning abilities and proved dangerous in dating. Instead, Mr. Thomas suggested that overlooking their infatuation to evaluate their reasons in dating and marriage based on godliness, character, and purpose proved far better. As people sought for a closer relationship to God, they developed a proper perspective of marriage.
In life, it certainly seems that for most people, happiness is the end goal. People do what they do for many reasons, but quite often their motives are simply fueled by their desire to be happy. However, happiness is attained in many different ways. As Aristotle points out, happiness is achieved through goodness, which is also very complicated. After all, life is not black and white, and our actions are not just good or bad. Rather, our actions can have ends that are intrinsically good or instrumentally good. If they are instrumentally good, then they will allow us to attain something that we can "trade" for something else that will bring us happiness. For example, if we win tickets at an arcade, they would be considered instrumentally good because although they don't bring us happiness, we can trade them in for a prize that does. On the other hand, some things are intrinsically good. We want these things simply because we want them; they bring us pleasure or security. When we obtain these things, we are satisfied with them and we experience happiness.
Love is deep, intense, true and passionate, but all too often ends tragically seemingly to always leaving one person behind who carries the burden of the love. The stories I am comparing all have tragic love as a common theme. When exploring the relationship of young lovers Veronica and JD in Heathers, the passionate love of Ludmila and Theodor in Worthy, or follow the love story of John Keats and Fanny Brawne we get a glimpse of how each of these love stories ends in tragedy and how our survivors of those relationships deal with the aftermath.