Introduction
Happy Endings is a narrative by Margaret Atwood that explains the nature of marriages in society. According to the author, marriages do not always end in happiness. In fact, the only happy ending is found in the first part of the story where John and Mary live their life to the fullest. Although both of them die, they die happy people. The rest of the narrative is filled with people’s desire to be loved.
On the other hand, The Open Boat is a short story by Stephen Crane that explains about four men who are stuck in the middle of the sea while trying to find their way into shore after their ship has capsized. The narrative speaks of a strong will to live and shows how we are not supposed to give up. The situation the men find themselves in makes them create a love for each other. Although both narratives are in different settings, they have many similarities between them. By looking at both narratives, we find people who are on the verge of giving up but their love, commitment, respect for each other, and hope keep them going to a point where they experience happy conclusions. (Crane)
Love and Commitment
In part one of Happy Endings, both John and Mary are committed to each other. There is also genuine love between them. The narrative tells us “they go on fun vacations together” (Atwood) meaning that there is a commitment between them. This commitment can also be found in part E of Happy Endings when Madge learns that Fred has a bad heart. We are told, “The rest of the story is about how kind and understanding they both are until Fred dies”. (Atwood) The lack of commitment is seen in part C of Happy Endings when Mary abandons John because of his old age.
Mary begins an affair with James whom she views to be in her own league. Finally, John finds out about the secret affair and kills the two of them before killing himself. In The Open Boat, we see commitment among the four men stuck in the sea. To the four men, sticking together is the ingredient that keeps them alive. They can also be said to love each other since they remain with “the injured captain, lying in the bow”. (Crane) The men could have decided that the captain was unwanted baggage and instated tossed him into the sea. If anything, it was the same captain who was in charge of the sunk ship and hence their present predicament.
We are told that the captain “was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down”. (Crane) This commitment can only be said to have come out of love for the captain.
Respect
The issue of commitment brings us to a more important theme of respect. First, we see the issue of respect in part E of Happy Endings where Fred has a bad heart but Madge still respects him up to the point where he dies. This respect can be said to be lacking in part C of the same narrative where Mary cheats on John since he is old. The same lack of respect is apparent in John’s affair with Mary. John is married to Madge and should therefore show respect for their marriage.
In The Open Boat, the oiler, the cook, and the correspondent turn to the injured captain for advice from time to time. At one point, one of the men asks the injured captain, “Think we’ll make it, captain?” This shows that despite the captain’s incapacity, the men in the boat still respected him. Commitment and respect are therefore aspects that set the characters in both narratives apart. In Happy Endings, most characters do not respect each other while in The Open Boat all characters are committed and have total respect for each other.
Hope
Perhaps the biggest aspect that differentiates the characters in both narratives is hope. In part B of Happy Endings, Mary is held up in a loveless relationship in the hope that her fiancé would sometimes change his waywardness. Even though Mary knows that her fiancé “merely uses her body for selfish pleasure and ego gratification of a tepid kind”, (Atwood) she still holds on to him in the hope that he will change. This makes her do everything from cooking him nice food to putting on “fresh lipstick so she’ll look good when he wakes up”. Although John does not notice or appreciate any of these things, Mary does not give up hope.
This hope, therefore, becomes the glue that is holding their relationship together. It is still the same hope that makes her accept to become intimate with John even though she does not like sex. Mary has this hope that “if they do it often enough surely he’ll get used to her, he’ll come to depend on her and they will get married” (Atwood). When she learns that John has been taking other women to restaurants something that he has never done to her, all her hope disappears and she decides to commit suicide.
The idea of committing suicide is itself out of hope since “she hopes he’ll discover her and get her to the hospital in time and repent and then they can get married” (Atwood) However, this does not happen and she dies.
In The Open Boat, the four men are faced with a situation, which seems like there is no way out. Stuck in the middle of a tempestuous sea with a boat that is smaller than a bathtub, the four men do not seem to have a way out. However, they are driven by the hope that somewhere in the horizon there is a lighthouse somewhere. At first, this hope makes the captain and the cook to see the lighthouse in their minds. When finally the lighthouse is located, it is so far such that it is “precisely like the point of a pin”. (Crane)
This hope makes them to keep on rowing the boat toward the spotted light an act that seems to last forever. At one point, the men are sure that they are about to be rescued and they even afford the comfort of a cigarette. Even when they are forced to row further North and their boat capsizes, they do not lose hope. To them, they believe that they have come too far to die at that point. Finally, they are rescued and “instantly the beach is populated with men with blankets, clothes, and flasks, and women with coffeepots and all the remedies sacred to their minds” (Crane) This is a clear opposite in Happy Endings where the peoples hope is rewarded with death.
Conclusion
The Open Boat and Happy Endings have both similarities and differences. The characters in both narratives seem to be held on by love and commitment to each other. This commitment and loyalty makes them to remain loyal to each other in the face of hard circumstances. The characters in The Open Boat are held on by an amazing brotherhood. This in not true in Happy Endings where some people betray their colleagues. In fact, the men in the boat who are rescued and given a chance to live again are the only real example of a happy ending.
Works Cited
Atwood, Margaret. Happy Endings. n.d. Web.
Crane, Stephen. The Open Boat. n.d. Web.