Death: The Inevitable Ending of Every Story

892 Words2 Pages

Ending Happy Every life story ends with death. Everyone knows this without thinking about it. In Margaret Atwood’s short story Happy Endings she puts forth that all stories end in death, insinuating there is no such thing as a happy ending. To prove this point, she gives examples of the possible relationship scenarios of John and Mary. Some are happy, some are tragic, and each end in death, reinforced with the words, “John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.” The fact that everyone dies does not need proving. It is a fact and not a happy one Ms. Atwood is recently joined by a vast number of authors writing dystopian style stories that foreshadow a very bleak future for mankind indeed, namely mass destruction and death. Yet …show more content…

It allows for understanding, therefor eliminating any reason for anger, judgement, or assumptions, leaving nothing to take offence to and making it easy to be kind. With understanding and learning, better decisions can be made and if sometimes not, there may be sorrow, but not self-loathing or regret as mistakes or misunderstandings are never intended. With practice, looking into the truth of everything eventually becomes unnecessary as over and over again, every found truth proves to be good. In “Happy Endings” there is not a lot of real happiness felt by the majority of the characters partly because so few truths are exchanged. John and James are both restless and bored. Mary never expresses herself and is extremely insecure. Only Madge and Fred appear to have a level of appreciation and satisfaction and manage to have some measure happiness. The others are only people going after what they think they want, or what they think will make them happy, discovering later that their happiness is short lived. For them, there is little hope for real and meaningful happiness, as for fear, they do not bother to seek what is true. Instead, they assume and guess at, inaccurately, the intentions of others, then feel pain or anger, hopping things will change for the

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