Abstract
This paper analyzes and reviews "Happy Endings," a short story by Margaret Atwood about a couple named John and Mary. Atwood presents six succinct scenes, centralized around the couple, and illustrates possible avenues their relationship may undergo. The reviewer notes Atwood's feminist perspective in this work, and Atwood's cynical and satirical tone. The writer sees Atwood as using cynicism to convey her belief in the nonexistence of fairy tale endings.

From the Paper
"Atwood's cynical attitude about the insignificance of life is evident in the third story when she explains the reason John purchased a handgun is "the thin part of the plot and can be explained later" (219). Atwood does not place impact on the events leading to death. Instead she concentrates on the "happy ending" itself, for all that matters is that the ill-fated lovers do die, it does not matter how. This reinforces Atwood's notion that life is simply a means to the "happy" end."

Tags:Margaret, Atwood, Happy, Endings, feminism

Abstract
This paper reviews and analyzes Margaret Atwood's short story "Happy Endings", showing how the different relationships between men and women can be effortlessly distinguished. The paper gives special focus to gender roles, generations, and stereotypes. According to the paper, the stories in Atwood's metafiction, or mutation, show how males and females play various roles of social interaction. By contorting the plots of all of the stories she comes out with an assortment of endings. Throughout the story she bluntly describes the reality of relationships to allow readers to view from a different perspective.

From the Paper
"During what appears to be a more present kind of moment in time, the short story brings about John, an older man, and Mary, a younger woman. John has a wife and also in love with Mary. The problem is Mary is intrigued by another younger man, James, who gives off a dream of a wild side to life that enchants Mary. One day while John is supposedly busy James and Mary get high and John finds them tangled in each other in the bed. John then shoots the two and then himself. John represents the older stable man that many women long to have; whereas James signifies the crazy, unpredictable life style that is also sought after by women of the a possible standing up for women's rights phase. These women are now taking the reins and standing up for themselves as individuals, which could be the turning point to making men and women equal. Once again there is the numbing segment of a more modern lifestyle when Madge, John's wife, remarries to a man called Fred after an appropriate time of bereavement."

Tags:Happy Endings, Margaret Atwood, gender roles, stereotypes

Abstract
This paper provides an analytical overview of Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings," in which six sketches illustrate vast differences between the beginnings and middles of six stories that end the same way. The paper explains that this premise is predicated on the fact that ultimately everyone dies, conveniently ignoring the fact that a story need not be carrying through to this ultimate conclusion to have relevance. The paper notes that Atwood's point is to stress the importance of understanding how the conclusion is reached and why; Atwood's other point in "Happy Endings" is that the story endings themselves are mere window dressing. The paper concludes that the heart of the story is in the reasons why that mutual love does not occur.

From the Paper
"The examples of B and C illustrate stories with conflict. The point Atwood makes towards the end is that it is not the actions themselves that are the main point of interest, but the reasons for the actions. The conflict that arises between Mary and John in B derives from a lack of love on the part of John. The heart of the story is not that John does not love Mary, but why he does not and why she does love him. These questions reach into the core of the two characters and are the key to insight."

Tags:cause, effect, Canadian, literature

Abstract
This paper analyzes "Happy Endings" a short story by Canadian feminist Margaret Atwood with the effect on the story if one of the characters had been involved in a gay or lesbian relationship.

From the Paper
"Further, Atwood rallies against the traditional fairly tale, where the boy and girl meet, fall in love, get married, have children, and live happily after until they die. She presents many interesting possible variations of Mary's life, all culminating in her death. Atwood almost seems to mock the traditional fairy tale (Wilson).

"This story would have been much more interesting and effective if one of the characters had been involved in a gay or lesbian relationship. Certainly, Atwood's presumed aim of shocking the audience would have been made, much more effectively. Further, the story would have provided a much richer and broader experience of the entire human romantic experience. In addition, showcasing a gay or lesbian relationship in this story would have further exposed heterosexual individuals to other romantic possibilities."

Tags:feminism, gay, lesbian, relationships

Abstract
This paper discusses how one of the basic tenets of a comedy is a neat and satisfying resolution and how, in order to achieve a happy ending, playwrights often end up hastily tying up loose ends and glossing over unresolved problems. It looks at how the ending of Moliere's "The Miser" is a good example; either as a result of sloppiness, hastiness, or just plain indifference, Moliere writes an ending that elides rather than resolves some of the play's major issues. It examines how the ending of George Bernard Shaw's "Widowers' Houses" also involves characters not only forgetting their previous gripes about society's ills, but embracing those ills wholeheartedly. Finally, it analyzes how Eugene Ionesco's "Amedee" ends more bizarrely and ambiguously, and how the same idea repeats itself.

From the Paper
"The main obstacle to characters' happiness in The Miser is Harpagon, the title character. His children, Cleante and Elise, wish to marry Marianne and Valere (respectively). They realize, however, that Harpagon will not agree because their two prospective spouses are poor. The play centers around Harpagon's miserliness and other characters' attempts to get by him. Then the ending comes out of nowhere and in one fell swoop makes everything all right. In the midst of Harpagon's attempts to catch the man who has stolen his 10,000 crowns, Marianne and Valere discover that they are siblings and that the rich Anselme is their father. This is enough for Harpagon he readily agrees that his children be married to Anselme's children. This hasty ending allows the characters to avoid the problem of Harpagon's miserliness."

Tags:amedee, bernard, shaw, ionesco, widowers, house, moliere, miser

Abstract
In this paper the author looks at fairy tales of our childhood, and argues that these were really meant as adult reading and have been tamed down over the years. He looks at the traditional fairy tale that we know, as being undercurrents for more lurid and vivid tales. He gives examples of how tales of eroticism became tales of bad children being punished for their willingness to explore beyond prescribed boundaries. The author proceeds to give specific examples from well-known fairy tales which, in his opinion, have been distorted. The author concludes that if the fairy stories would not have been distorted, then maybe he would not have grown up believing in dreams coming true and he would live a more realistic life.

From the Paper
"Each author that submitted a response to Bernhaimer's call affirms my decision to view the fairy tales of my childhood with skepticism and a renewed desire to find the "truth" in their uncensored predecessors. Grimm's Grimmest, compiled by Maria Tatar, is one of a few available texts with the most accurately translated versions of the Grimm brothers' original work and the first place I looked for a clear representation. In my quest for the "original" tales, I have come across a few more editions of the brother's tales, but most of the available texts on the market today are the Disney-esque renditions of the first works. It is frustrating, and significant, to no end."

Tags:immaturity, publishers, parents, childhood, lessons, virtue

Abstract
This paper looks at Alison Baker's "Happy Hour" as an evocation of the absurdity of the human condition. It discusses Baker's use of irony and the story's focus on end- of -life family dynamics in an institutional setting.

From the Paper
"Reinforced by a context of narrative irony, Happy Hour presents numerous closely observed details about end-of-life family dynamics in an institutional setting. The irony is not laden with humor or smugness rather taking on attributes of an absurdity ..."

Tags:Happy Hour, Absurd, Irony, Short, Story, theme, Alison, Baker

Abstract
This paper relates that the theme in Ernest Hemingway's short story, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", is that it is better to live a short and happy life with authenticity than to live a long and unhappy life without authenticity. More specifically, the paper looks at how, the character of Macomber does not live a happy life until he proves himself. The paper further explains that Macomber begins his life innocent and spoiled in a protected society, then becomes awakened to reality in the dangers of Africa, and ends self-fulfilled by achieving authenticity and happiness in a fatal world.

From the Paper
"In stage three of his initiation, Macomber achieves authenticity and happiness in a fatal world. He panics while shooting a large male, but the very fear that makes him run away from danger, teaches him, in less than twenty-four hours, how to face a charging buffalo with all the bravery of a seasoned hunter. When Macomber finds out that the buffalo is still alive, "for the first time in his life he really felt wholly without fear" for which "instead of fear he had a feeling of definite elation" (24). Ben Stoltzfus suggests that in choosing to face this challenge Macomber "asserts a new identity and, in putting cowardice behind him, he defines an authentic self". Macomber is no longer afraid; in fact he is eager to kill the buffalo. Hemingway describes Macomber's change as a "wild unreasonable happiness" which feels "like a dam bursting inside himself" (25). "

Tags:africa, hunter, life

Abstract
In "The Story of an Hour" and "Happy Endings" the demands of love and the demands of desire are aptly contrasted, even as they are compared. The writer shows that while these two stories have somewhat different takes on the situation of women (due in part, no doubt, to the difference in time periods which their writers inhabited), both deal extensively with the degree to which love can fulfill or fail to fulfill a woman's true desires.

From the Paper
"One of the greatest challenges which feminist see facing women through-out history is that of fulfilling both their loves and their desires. The forces of history and even of linguistics create a sort of trap for women, in which "desire" is inextricably linked to romance, marriage, sexuality, and love. Even feminist writers seem to focus their critiques of the structures of marriage and society on the apparent divide between women's sexual and romantic needs and the traditional strictures of marriage. "In these failed articulations of desire, the hunger for narrative, for growth and mobility, is overshadowed by the strictures of the marriage plot, stranded between a sense of the futility of romantic desire and an inability to give voice to any other kind of desire." (Wallace, 8) Definitions of desire which focus entirely around the woman's relationship to sexuality, love, and marriage overlook a vast portion of her humanity. Just like their male counterparts, women's desires are capable of extending well beyond the boundaries of such reproductive/emotional functions."

Tags:woman, desire, lust

Abstract
This paper discusses how Aristotle approached the issue of being good. He determined that a single act of goodness did was not sufficient to determine whether or not an individual was good. The paper further discusses how in committing a single act of goodness there was no true reflection of the individual's entire life as a good person. Therefore the only way to measure the goodness of a person would be at the end of life when all of the activities of the individual could be examined and a complete evaluation of goodness could be determined as reflected in the individual inner personality or soul.

Tags:good, happy, virtue