In the short story “Happy Endings”, Mary Atwood starts the story out with six parts, stating that if you want a happy ending, read part A, a generic “fairy-tale” ending where man meets women, and they fall in love living a happy life together where they eventually die.
Part A introduces the first two characters, John and Mary. It’s clear the characters are happy with their ordinarily happy lives but, they are not fully developed characters. Each adjective is blank, or empty, with little information given about the characters or their life. If Atwood had been developing round characters, she would have created an image through her descriptions. For example, the author never describes what the character looks like, you’re left to imagine what the characters would’ve looked like. The main point of the story is that despite what
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In part B, Mary kills herself in hopes that John, who only used her for sex, would give her the attention she craved from him and that he would come to her apartment in time enough to call the ambulance where she would be saved and they would be together. Sadly enough, John never showed up. In part C, John is a middle aged, married man who 's obsessed with younger Mary. Mary is seeing James, cafre free dude who has a motorcycle. John sees Mary and James go home together on his motorcycle. John, feeling hurt and betrayed, purchases a gun and kills Mary and James along with himself leaving his wife Madge. With all characters dead the author continues the story with widow Madge who meets understanding Fred and falls in love, “everything continues as in A, but under different names”. They get a house by the seashore that was just perfect until a tidal wave comes and takes their perfect house along with other thousands of lives. Madge and Fred survive the tidal wave only to find that Fred has a bad heart. They spend time together in love waiting for his time to