Happy Endings

In class Mr. Sexson mentioned the concept of happy endings. He had us analyze the story of Cinderella and come up with what really happened after prince charming and Cinderella were married. Did they live happily ever after? Most likely the answer is no. It is up to our imaginations to determine what could happen after the story ends, but it is inevitable that eventually the story will end in one way: they both die. I had never really thought of looking past the generic "happily ever after" and pondering how the story must really end.

Then I read Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood, and it made me think further into the issue of happy endings. It basically fillowed this question:

John and Mary meet,

What happens next?

Well, the fairytale answer is that they both fall in love and live joyous lives, eventually ending with them both dying. However, Atwood gave many alternate versions of the story, involving suicide, lust without love, unrequited love, murder, and adultery. Certainly, this is not the kind of fairytale story we all want to here, but not every story ends happily. Atwood goes on to say that the only aythentic ending is the one provided here: John and Mary die. John and Mary die. John and Mary die.

This seems morbid, but in reality it is the truth that most of us, including myself, ignore. When watching a movie and two lovers get married and walk off the screen completely in love, you rarely think about how their story will really end: most likely in one of them dying, the other one continuing to live without their love, and then dying themselves. It's somewhat depressing to think about this. When I get married and plan to spend "happily ever after" with someone, it will be sad to think that one of us will die before the other, and every story ends in death, so my happily every after will have a bitter ending.

There is one love story, however, that has somewhat of a happier ending, and that is the movie The Notebook. True, the movie ends in the death of both lovers, but they die together in each others arms. In love stories, that seems like more of a happier ending than spending ten or twenty years of your life in sadness after your lover has died, as I have seen many of my grandparents go through.

I guess we just need to accept that, however sad it may be, there is one sure ending to all of our stories, and that is death. It is up to us to make what's comes inbetween worth it.