![]() The audience can choose the one they like the most, ranging from the most optimistic one, A, to an extremely depressing one, C. The author begins the writing by providing the reader with several possible endings of one story, namely, “John and Mary meet” (Atwood, 1983, p. In “Happy Endings,” Margaret Atwood explains to readers that just like in life, all fictional stories have one end, everyone dies, and every author’s mastery is demonstrated through their answers to questions “How” and “Why.”Ītwood masterfully presents the essence of fiction by establishing common life scenarios which many people have observed and even experienced themselves. The only difference lies in the unique situations, emotions, and motivations individuals experience during their lifetime. A Synthesis of “Happy Endings” By Margaret AtwoodĪll people have pretty similar lives, which consist of the same elements people are born, go to school, find a job, get married, retire and die. ![]() To stop being frightened, they attempt to shift their focus toward other phenomena and particularly entertainment. The school described by the author constitutes a metaphor for society, and the children are the members of society who cannot accept death as a given because of their fears. “The School” by Donald Barthelme seeks to show the audience that death is inescapable, meaningless, and can happen at any moment. ![]() This is why the children ask the teacher to make love to his assistant in front of them. Yet, as shown in the last scene of the short story, people fear death and cannot accept it and try to escape it by watching entertainment. ![]() Finally, the scene where the children call death “a fundamental datum” demonstrates how humans attempt to attach some philosophical meaning to death which simply constitutes a set of words that do not make any sense. Thus, the author says that death is not a societal problem it is simply part of life that must be accepted. Yet this assumption is refuted by the narrator, who says that it was not the school problem since he saw ones that were both better and worse. It is interesting that when Kim dies, the students become sad and question whether there is “something wrong with the school” (Barthelme, 1974, p. The school here is a metaphor for a human society in which death is inherent. He uses absurdity to stress this notion by listing various scenarios involving death that seems disturbing for both the reader and the children. The author’s idea here is to show that death is meaningless and can occur without any reason and in any situation. His demise triggers other human deaths, including of children’s parents and some of the students themselves. Yet, then, the reader becomes confronted with the passing of Kim, an orphan adopted by the class from Korea. At first, the deaths that the reader learns about are insufficient since they mostly affect animals such as snakes and gerbils. Edgar acts as the narrator and talks about a series of events that involve deaths, beginning with trees that the class wanted to plant (Barthelme, 1974). The author starts by introducing the main character Edgar who works as an elementary teacher with a class of thirty children. Barthelme utilizes the means of absurdity which gains momentum and reaches its climax as the short story progresses, making the audience more confused with every sentence.
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