John and Mary meet. What happens next? 

Romance stories generally start with two people meeting, followed by some rollercoaster of emotions, eventually resulting in “happily ever after” or more harshly “death.” The short story Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood takes the reader on a sort of a create your own story journey. The story uses this same structure six times to convey a different message: the ending doesn’t matter, instead, the journey that gets you there is more important. The author’s utilization of the second and third-person point of view makes the readers disconnected but also in charge at the same time. This encourages the reader to reflect and find the beauty of the process of relationships in their own lives. 

The story is separated into six sections A to F. The only words that come before the sections are:

“John and Mary meet.

What happens next? 

If you want a happy ending, try A.”

This shift from the third person to the second person gives the reader a sense of power. John and Mary, one of the most generic character names, are people that the reader can not relate to as they seem shallow and emotionless. Also, the readers are left wondering who is talking to them. It seems the narrator is the author herself which creates an interesting power dynamic as we generally do not expect the author to speak directly to us. At first, it may seem odd to portray herself as the overarching voice, but by the end, the author effectively bridges this ethos gap by emotionally connecting with the reader’s values. I did find it funny that part A was the only choice at the beginning, it assumes that the reader does not want anything other than a happy ending. But she also knows that our curiosity will get the best of us and we will read the other parts anyway. In part A, the story is exactly what readers would expect from a normal love story. The normality is what is so unexpected. John and Mary fall in love, buy a house, have successful children, retire, and eventually die. The next few sections are variations of such stories, just with more relationship plots but eventually ending with go back to A. If you want to know what happens to John and Mary, you are going to have to read the story yourself. 

We can conclude that a love story may start out in a variety of different contexts, yet a successful relationship only has one ending: death. Even though this is a morbid ending, it gets the point across effectively. The author emphasizes the process of the relationship rather than the end result(we can infer that the only alternative ending is breakup/ divorce). The lack of emotion from the third-person point of view shifts the reader away from the nuances of the characters to the structure of the story, a refreshing twist from the monotonous thesaurus loaded books that we are forced to read.

“So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with.” Even though the literal meaning of this statement is for writers trying to craft their own stories, showing us how formulas tend to lead to boring unexciting writing, I think that the author is providing an important message for our lives as well. The happy story is the boring one, the messes of a real relationship are what make it fruitful. Even on the cover of the book, we see a blob of spilled milk, a symbol for life’s messy but fun parts.

The lesson to be learned from “Happy Endings” is we should instead pay attention to savoring what is remaining time before it all ends. The author’s illumination of an unconventional point of view and characterization encourages the reader to reconsider their emphasis on the end of the story and instead focus on the intricacies of the journey itself. Who knows, one day we might all meet our own John or Mary and find our own lessons from this story as we strive for a blissful ending. 

Margaret Atwood, an author who is known for her poetry and dystopian novels, writes this as a fun departure from her typical writing. Reading it definitely prompted a reflection about how the annoying parts of life are indeed the fun parts, it’s what makes us humans and not robots. Overall it is a hilarious satirical piece on its own genre and I recommend you take the time to read through it.