Possible Scenarios In Happy Endings By Margaret Atwood

In the end, everyone dies. People will be either buried six feet under ground or turned to ashes but what matters is how those people lived their lives. Margaret Atwood expresses this theme in her short story “Happy Endings.” She writes six different possible scenarios in which a couple, John and Mary live through their life until either one dies. In one of the scenarios two new characters are presented, Madge and Fred, where Madge is married to John until he dies, then with Fred until he dies, and then lives as a widow.
Each scenario is different in the way John and Mary lived life before one of them died. For example, in the scenario A John and Mary are married and have the perfect life as Atwood describes, “John and Mary have a stimulating …show more content…
Like in the scenarios described above, the love was so powerful that it consumed them to death. Mary took her own life for the love she had for John and John took his life for the love he had for Mary. The love was so intense that they wasted the chance at living a better life by killing themselves. They could have went on finding someone better to love who would actually love them back but they never had the chance since the love they felt is what killed them. These endings might not seem so “happy” as the title of story says but they all actually end the same way, happy like scenario A.
Atwood titled these scenarios “Happy Endings” because even though that the life of some was full of problems and sadness, after the death of one, life went on as a happy one until death as they found someone else. For example, Madge married Fred after John killed himself and they lived happily until Fred died of a bad heart. Madge went on to live her life volunteering for charity until she died. All these deaths do not seem like a happy ending but in reality, the one person who is left finishes their life good, like in John and Mary did in …show more content…
In the scenarios of “Happy Endings”, the idea ultimately ends up with John and Mary dying. All scenarios fall back to scenario A, the “perfect” life even though the middle of the journey was not so wonderful. Throughout the rest of the scenarios, there was suicide, adultery, murder, and natural death all ending with one person living with a good life until death like in scenario A. As mentioned before, Atwood is trying to give the lesson that the climax of life is what matters because during the downfall, it is all the same until the resolution of death. People should live life to the fullest in whatever manner they would like because when the ride is over, they will end up in the same manner as the person left to them who committed suicide and wasted their chance at life and the person on the right of them who had the “perfect” life until natural death got to