She is also a Senior Fellow of Massey College, Toronto.
Ītwood is a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Writers' Trust of Canada. Many of her poems are inspired by myths and fairy tales which interested her from a very early age. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.Ītwood's works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics".
Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Since 1961, she has published eighteen books of poetry, eighteen novels, eleven books of non-fiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. As Atwood suggests to the readers at the conclusion of “Happy Endings,” that process is achieved by understanding motivation through asking “how” and “why.Margaret Eleanor Atwood CC OOnt CH FRSC FRSL (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. but also in the author’s role as a double being, and in the writing process itself, in which the writer must not only face the darkness, but learn to see in and through it” (19). John and Mary die.” As the critic Nathalie Cooke points out, “For Atwood, writing is a fascinating but dark art-one where shadows lurk, not only in the subject matter. The only authentic ending, says Atwood, is this one: “ John and Mary die.
Still, though, they will end up at Ending A because, after all, “this is Canada” (3). Finally, for those who find Endings A through E “too bourgeois,” Atwood suggests making John and Mary spies and revolutionaries. What happens next? If you want a happy ending, try A.” (1).Įnding E follows Fred to his death of a “bad heart.” Madge soldiers on with charity and volunteer work in Ending A, until she dies of cancer-or, if the reader prefers, becomes guilt-ridden or begins bird-watching. She opens with the words, “John and Mary meet. In this unusual tale she demonstrates why “who and what” are insuff cient the reader must ask (and the writer must supply) “how and why.” In addition to analyzing the appropriateness of the six endings, the reader might profit from comparing “Happy Endings” to Robert Coover’s “The Babysitter,” in which the author offers several possibilities of what happens to the babysitter, leaving the decision to the reader’s imagination and Akira Kurosawa’s 1951 film Roshomon, which depicts the rape of a bride and the murder of her husband through various eyewitness accounts it demonstrates the near-impossibility of arriving at the actual “truth” of the events.Ītwood’s technique differs from that of Coover and Kurosawa, however, in that she fl eshes out nothing: Indeed, the six possible endings to the story of John and Mary are written as a skeletal outline.
“Happy Endings” is a story about writing a story, with thoughtful advice to both readers and would-be writers. Nischik, “a chronicler of our times, exposing and warning, disturbing and comforting, opening up chasms of meaning as soon as she closes them, and challenging us to question conventions and face up to hitherto unarticulated truths” (159). Readers, however, should not be deceived: Margaret Atwood is, according to the critic Reingard M. Intentionally written in only 1,500 words, the story contains little plot, little character development, and little motivation. “Happy Endings” was first published in the Canadian collection Murder in the Dark (1983) and then became available in the United States in Good Bones and Simple Murders (1994). Analysis of Margaret Atwood’s Happy EndingsĪn innovative and oft-anthologized story that demonstrates the arbitrariness of any author’s choice of an ending, “Happy Endings” offers six different endings from which the reader may choose.
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