![]() ![]() Without crisis, there’s no character development. ![]() Here the couple does not face any conflict, crisis, or tension. (Heck, their sex-life together doesn’t even fade!) Atwood offers Plot A as the stereotypical, cliched “happy ending.” The problem with Plot A, at least as far as storytelling goes, there’s no drama. “Happy Endings” primarily consists of 6 different bare-bone plots stemming from the very basic catalyst: “John and Mary meet.” Plot A – the one recommended it we want a “happy ending” – presents the ideal married life of Mary and John: they enjoy well-paying, fulfilling careers the value of their house skyrockets, their children “turn out well ” they go one vacation and even get to retire. ) Atwood’s goal is for the reader to contemplate what is the essence of a story. Did you notice those moments in “Happy Endings” when Atwood comments on the story she is writing? (For example, in plot C, the voice of the author mentions, “…this is the thin part of the plot, but it can be dealt with later”. With metafiction, the author becomes self-reflective about the act of writing. To clarify, in metafiction, an author writes a story in order make the reader think about the nature of a story. You may want to think of metafiction this way: it is a writer writing about writing. ![]() “Happy Endings” is an example of metafiction. In fact, we could even raise the question of whether it actually is a short story or not. So you may have found that this week’s reading left you with quite a few questions, such as, “What did I just read?” Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings” is not a typical short story. ![]()
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