11/17/2023 0 Comments Happy endings margaret atwood personPaul, in II Timothy, talks about striving toward that end goal, the prize in which will be rewarded to us at the end of the race. If her point is to show that all of the scenarios end in one way, then why does she talk about life the majority of her essay? It is because life is more important. The majority of Atwood’s essay is about the lives that are lived out by man and woman rather than the ending of death. Life is the “stretch in between.” And what you do with life is more important than the ending of it. I believe there is more to why the six scenarios are presented other than to prove Atwood’s point that every ending is death. Atwood seems to be set on the fact that it does not matter what your life is like, it is just going to end up in death. This story is primarily about presenting different ways that lives are lived out, but with one ending: death. At first read, it’s just a story with a straight forward meaning, but with rereading, taking notes, pondering ideas presented in the story, posing questions, and conversing with others about the story, a whole new spectrum of meaning is revealed. All you see is a blurry brown trunk with green leaves. At glance, you do not see the tree for what it really is: teaming with life and abundant in life itself. In it you see a family of squirrels, a hole where an owl has made its home, thousands of ants running up and down carrying leaves to the anthill at the base of the tree, a cocoon that bares a beautiful butterfly, and many more things. Let’s say that you pulled the car over on the side of the road to examine just one of the hundreds of trees. To help illustrate this to be clearer, here’s an example: you are driving in a car and you pass hundreds upon hundreds of trees during a trip. Reading this story once through, I assumed I caught the gist of it, but reading it again for this post, I caught some things that can be taken to a deeper level than just surface meanings. There are many different beliefs, opinions, and so forth about life and its meaning as well as death. Anything about life and death can be taken into consideration for more interpretation. 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.This story seems very straight forward, especially in the last few paragraphs where Atwood talks about beginnings, endings, and the “stretch in between.” I believe there is more to this story. 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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