![]() ![]() ![]() While Atwood doesn’t condemn happiness as the ultimate goal, she’s quick to poke fun at the cookie-cutter elements of such an ending. Having reached the end of their story, John and Mary get to live a happy life-one that is expected and unchanging. In this scenario, John and Mary have a “happy ending” consisting of jobs, children, a house, friends, hobbies, and financial prosperity. Scenario A, the first narrative presented in the story and the one to which all other narratives eventually default, concludes with a static marriage, one in which all interesting or significant events have already occurred in the characters’ lives. Once marriage happens, the story’s usually over-barring plot-worthy tragedies like natural disaster or disease-and the characters are neatly fitted into place, so similar in their endings that they can be slotted directly into any other story where “everything continues as in A, but under different names.” Marriage is always the ultimate conclusion, no matter what-an “ending” that Atwood critiques as superficial and formulaic, and which reduces the meaningful aspects of the characters’ lives to a singular focus. Atwood highlights the way in which these events function less as interesting narrative developments and more as necessary fulcrums in the plot, moving the story along inexorably toward its ending. ![]() Throughout the story, the character arcs of John, Mary, and others are all described in relation to one another, most often in terms of romance and eventual marriage. ![]()
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