StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Themes of Love and Desire in Margaret Atwoods Happy Endings - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
"Themes of Love and Desire in Margaret Atwood’s Happy Endings” paper focuses on Margaret Atwood’s work ‘Happy Endings’ which gives a realistic treatment to the concepts of love and desire. Margaret deftly shatters this façade of “everlasting love” disseminated by intellectually lazy writers…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER91% of users find it useful
Themes of Love and Desire in Margaret Atwoods Happy Endings
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Themes of Love and Desire in Margaret Atwoods Happy Endings"

Themes of Love and Desire in Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings" How easy it is to get fascinated by the happy endings of the bedtime stories cherished in one's nascent years, where the two lovers eventually end up getting access to the cherished socio-economic aspirations and "live happily ever after." The notions of love conveyed by these over-simplistic narrations, exalt them to the purity and glimmer of almost biblical proportions. People more than often grow up with a deep-seated desire to perpetuate such ideas about love in their personal lives and relationships.

The intention of the writer seems to be to boldly jolt her readers out of their crumpling perceptions about love, which instead of bolstering human relationships, abandon them in a bog of disillusionment and frustrations.

Though initially feeling disoriented after going through this seemingly simple work, the reader ultimately emerges with a more thorough and pragmatic grasp over the emotions of love and desire, that is not childishly black and white but grounded in an adult atmosphere, dominated by shades of grey. Love is a noble emotion that imbues any relationship with bliss and happiness. Though it is a different thing that many times people fail to fulfill the conservative claims of love, going by the frailty and imperfection inherent in human life.

'Happy Endings' astonishingly unravels this inevitable dilemma of love through a variety of relationships considered in the narrative. Desire is an aspect of love that if exercised in isolation, degenerates into a selfish and blind quest for self-gratification. In a practical scenario, human relationships vacillate between a nebulous mix of love and desire. The unique mix of love and desire in a relationship endows it with its peculiar nature and framework. The extremely short snippets in 'Happy Endings' though always hover around the familiar characters of John and Mary, present the relationship between them extended over a range of possibilities and outcomes, each having its shades of love and desire mixed with the accompanying emotions of confusion, selfishness, lust, despondency, abuse, and avarice. 

By doing so, the writer ultimately succeeds in her coveted objective of portraying contemporary society with all its variegations and complexities, thus coming down heavily on the stereotypical societal norms about love and desire.  

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Happy Ending Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1522461-happy-ending
(Happy Ending Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words)
https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1522461-happy-ending.
“Happy Ending Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/miscellaneous/1522461-happy-ending.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Themes of Love and Desire in Margaret Atwoods Happy Endings

Dystopian fictions and feminism. The Brave New World, The Handmaids Tale, and The Wastelands novel

On the other hand, The Handmaid's Tale of 1986 by margaret Artwood is a novel that created an anti-utopian aspect of society that had intense relations as compared to the Brave New World.... In essence, the society that margaret talked about being one that had extremists that based its view on women from the traditional values that portrayed women as people whose fate was to be home caregivers.... Tentatively, dystopian fiction may be a genre that most feminist writers any use as a way of asserting the conflict between individual desire and societal will on matters sexual....
12 Pages (3000 words) Coursework

Happy Ending

happy endings Unless we are psychic or extremely in touch with a higher spiritual world, it is almost impossible for us to be aware of what the next day will bring.... happy endings Unless we are psychic or extremely in touch with a higher spiritual world, it is almost impossible for us to be aware of what the nextday will bring.... in margaret Atwood's ‘Happy Ending', we read about six different endings to from the same story.... in margaret Atwood's ‘Happy Ending', we read about six different endings to from the same story....
2 Pages (500 words) Book Report/Review

Love in Hamlet, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, and 'We Real Cool'

However, the theme of love is not as simple as all that: The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, is one of the earliest known pieces of literature, and the main relationship in it is the presumably non-sexual one of Gilgamesh and his male companion Enkidu; in other examples, religion and faith play a much stronger role than love between humans.... There are also other ways in which literary portrayals of love have changed over time – for example, Shakespeare's works glorify love but modern works sometimes downplay its role in our lives....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

Witches and Stepmothers in Kissing the witch

In most cases, fairy tales employ happy endings of stories that could either be true or false.... In most cases, fairy tales employ happy endings of stories that could either be true or false.... Thus, Emma employs the use of popular fairy tales such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and even Snow White to further her thematic development of stigmatization and stereotyping of sexual desire (Bobby 13).... Through this process, the characters are able to discover new feelings and desires, such as the desire to relate intimately with members of the same sex....
11 Pages (2750 words) Essay

Margaret Atwoods Happy Endings

Margaret Atwood's "happy endings" is told in a fashion different from other short stories.... This helps give "happy endings" a sense of continuity, rather than the feeling that it is six separate stories.... So while in a way parts of "happy endings" seem fantastical, it is actually quite realistic and even a little dark.... tory C shows an even darker side of love, and its inevitable connection with... In version A there is a happy ending for the main characters, John and Mary....
4 Pages (1000 words) Book Report/Review

Parallels and Contrast in the Color Purple and the Handmaids Tale

This book review "Parallels and Contrast in the Color Purple and the Handmaid's Tale" focuses on and distinguishes any parallels and variations within the texts and discusses to what extent female power could be said to exist in margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Alice Walker's The Color Purple.... At this point, the themes of mental and physical enslavement are evident, even in the post Civil War setting....
8 Pages (2000 words) Book Report/Review

Margaret Atwood in Literature

It demands children to change and to be happy so that the world of tomorrow is happy along with them.... She won The socially relevant message that most of the works of margaret Atwood contains is quite evident.... Different socially relevant scenarios have been both directly and indirectly depicted in the works of margaret Atwood.... The objective of this essay is to critically analyze different poems of margaret Atwood and to explain the ways in which they have dealt with the theme ‘renovation'....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Female Characters Struggles in Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye and Devika by Shauna Singh Baldwin

Firstly, in margaret Atwood's Cats Eye, you see young Elaine Risely, at a young age as she begins to identify herself with girls and starts to want and do "girly" things.... This assignment presents a comparison between the main storylines from the short stories "Cat's Eye" by margaret Atwood and "Devika" by Shauna Singh Baldwin....
8 Pages (2000 words) Assignment
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us