5/25/2023 0 Comments Happy endings margaret atwoodJohn has two children and is married to Madge. Mary meets John at work but is in love with James, “who has a motorcycle and a fabulous record collection” (44). Here, John, who is older, falls in love with Mary, who is twenty-two. In Section C, we are again introduced to two characters named John and Mary, and, much like Section B, it’s worth noting that a reader could skip from the opening lines of the story straight to Section C, and have Section C be read largely independently of Sections A and B. Atwood concludes this section by stating “everything continues as in A” (44). When Mary finds out from friends that John is seeing another woman, Madge, Mary commits suicide, though leaves a suicide note for John and hopes he will find her and save her life. Mary falls in love with John, but John only uses Mary for sex. Section B-which theoretically could be skipped to straight from the story’s opening three lines-also feature characters named John and Mary, though it is left somewhat ambiguous as to whether or not these two characters are the same John and Mary found in Section A. Atwood concludes this section with the sentence, “This is the end of the story” (43). And stories that have the right realness to them are about the “How and Why”, the reasons for the way the characters act when faced with whatever comes before their eventual end.The story then moves into Section A, in which John and Mary “fall in love and get married…have jobs they find “stimulating and challenging…buy a house…have two children…who turn out well…retire… die” (43). We struggle to find a happy ending before we are close to ending ourselves. So the writer leads the reader through some of the infinite versions of the story that can come before the ending but, no matter what happens, we’ll finish the story with “John and Mary die.” Sounds really optimistic, doesn’t it? With this story, Margaret Atwood shows the reader how a “happy ending” can leave so much left unsaid: writing something like “and they lived happily ever after” only makes us ask “Okay, but what happened next?”. It’s not always obvious or noticeable but it is essential. That development may even be hidden behind the reasons why “Mary” stays awake to wash the dishes and puts lipstick before going to bed, where her lover lies. I won’t spoil what happens in every version of the story but Atwood’s point is: a character needs the right development to be interesting so that the story is stimulating. “Murder in the Dark” (anthology of short stories) published by Jonathan Cape (1984) It starts by introducing the two main characters, John and Mary, and then going through six different versions that could happen depending on what sort of personality they have, the situation they were in and what might happen to them. It explores the standards of storytelling albeit being a story. When I finished it (it took me five minutes to do it), I ended up thinking: well, this may be slightly confusing for someone who has never tried to write a story but likes to read some.īecause it is a story for writers. My first thought on this short-story formed itself in my head like this: just because a story is just three pages long, it doesn’t mean it can’t unsettle or make you feel something.
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