User:Erodela/sandbox

"Happy Endings" is a short story by Margaret Atwood. It was first published in a 1983 Canadian collection, Murder in the Dark,[1] and highlighted during the nomination period for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize.[2]

The short story includes six different scenarios, labeled A to F, which each quickly summarize the lives of its characters, eventually culminating in death. The names of characters recur throughout the stories and the stories reference each other (e.g. "everything continues as in A"), challenging narrative literary conventions.

In addition, the story explores themes of domesticity, welfare, and success.

Though the story boasts multiple scenarios, Atwood declares in her writing the only "authentic ending" is the one where John and Mary die. This gives readers six scenarios, and one ending.

Atwood has spoken on the story saying, "l did not know what sort of creature it was. lt was not a poem, a short story, or a prose poem. lt was not quite a condensation, a commentary, a questionnaire, and it missed being a parable, a proverb, a paradox. lt was a mutation.Writing it gave me a sense of furtive glee, like scribbling anonymously on a wall with no one looking....lt was a little disappointing to learn that other people had a name for such aberrations [ metafiction], and had already made up the rules."