During the time of a Great War or great economic despair, people seek release from their anxieties in fantasy. Movies, plays, books, and other diversions drew people out of their own lives and into a safer, more glamorous world. For instance, Horatio Alger, Frank Capra and Walt Disney were known to showcase positive, idealized, and overly optimistic pictures—fairytales, some argue—that moved and inspired audiences, hence the prominence of the traditional, fairytale genre. And a trademark of this genre is having a feel good, happy ending. This appeals to mostly children and some adults, but it does not attract everyone, for some storytellers have separated themselves and have purposefully gone against this genre of storytelling by taking the controversial “anti-fairytale” approach, ending stories with a downbeat, …show more content…
That said, Voltaire’s Candide and Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” are both good stories that play against the reader’s expectations and end off rather ironically, unexpectedly.
In Voltaire’s Candide, the titular character kept going through many obstacles and unusual situations, which conventionally builds up the reader’s expectations, but the story ends rather oddly and unconventionally with Cunegonde, Candide’s love interest, becoming unattractive and unpleasant (chapter 29), with the baron, Cunegonde’s brother, still disapproving of Candide and Cunegonde’s relationship (chapter 29), and with Pangloss no longer truly believing that this world is the best of all possible worlds (chapter 30). Firstly, had Cunegonde had the reverse effect, going from an ugly, disagreeable woman to beautiful and charming, her character would have played to the notion of a happy, conventional