29 pages • 58 minutes read
Happy Endings
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Quiz
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This flexible-use quiz is designed for reading comprehension assessment and activity needs in classroom, home-schooling and other settings. Questions connect to the text’s plot, characters, and themes — and align with the content and chapter organization in the rest of this study guide. Use quizzes as pre-reading hooks, reading checks, discussion starters, entrance/exit “tickets,” small group activities, writing activities, and lessons on finding evidence and support in a text.
Depth of Knowledge Levels: Questions require respondents to demonstrate ability to:
- Recall and Understand Content (e.g., who, what, where, when)
- Apply and Analyze Ideas (e.g., how and why)
Questions
1. The third line of the story’s brief exposition reads, “If you want a happy ending, try A.” Which narrative point of view is this an example of?
A) first-person
B) second-person
C) third-person
D) first-person plural
Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to introduce or review narrative point of view and the various forms it can take. Why might Atwood have decided to use both third-person and second-person narration in her story? How do different narrative viewpoints create different effects in stories, including how realistic, reliable, distant, or immediate they seem?
2. What is the “happy ending” of plot A?
A) John and Mary get married
B) John and Mary live happily ever after
C) John and Mary die
D) John and Mary become very wealthy
3. What component of a plot structure is missing from plot A but appears in plots B through E?
A) character
B) theme
C) point of view
D) conflict
Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to introduce or review the traditionally recognized elements of a fictional plot. What becomes of a plot if it lacks any conflict? Can character development take place without conflict?
4. In plot B, Mary’s refusal to give up on her relationship with John is a sign of her refusal to give up on what?
A) her belief in the essential goodness of people
B) her belief in the romantic fantasy of marriage as a happy ending
C) her belief in her own inherent value and worth
D) her belief in the power of forgiveness
Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to begin a discussion of postmodernism and its influence on Western fiction writers in the 1980s, in particular. How does postmodernist skepticism regarding claims of universal truth inform Atwood’s critique of narrative conventions like “happy endings”? From a feminist perspective, why is it useful to question the ‘truth’ promoted through popular media that woman will achieve a “happy ending” by getting married?
5. In plot B, what “finally gets to Mary” is not that John is seeing another woman, but that he takes the woman to a restaurant. What is the likely explanation for this?
A) Mary does not like to cook.
B) Mary thinks John is embarrassed to be seen in public with her.
C) Mary realizes John doesn’t value her, because money and love are related in capitalist societies.
D) John has repeatedly broken promises to take Mary to a restaurant.
6. In plot C, John is a middle-aged man who married and “settled down long ago.” In addition to his balding head, what is troubling John about his life? (short answer)
7. The narrator reveals that Mary is in love with James in plot C, “but James is often away on his motorcycle, being free.” According to the narrator, why does Mary stay home while James does as he pleases?
A) Freedom is not the same for girls.
B) Mary is also in love with John and sees him while James is gone.
C) Mary enjoys her independence.
D) Freedom is a state of mind.
Discussion Suggestion: Use the question above to discuss gender criticism and the ways that feminist writers like Atwood challenge traditional gender roles and the social forces that perpetuate them. How do Mary’s internalized assumptions about her role as a woman limit her identity? In what ways do John and even James fall victim to the gendered expectations society imposes on them?
8. By noting in plot C that “this is the thin part of the plot, but it can be dealt with later,” what does the narrator expose about the nature of stories?
A) Stories are never really finished.
B) Stories are always open to different interpretations.
C) Stories are just vehicles for universal truths.
D) Stories are constructions that often rely on clichés or formulas.
9. Why does the narrator refer to “real estate values” in several of the plot alternatives?
A) to represent the differences between social classes
B) to satirize the idea that happiness depends on wealth
C) to symbolize the development of Mary and John’s relationship
D) to satirize the idea that real estate is a safe investment
10. Plot D is recognizable as a standard disaster story by its inclusion of what?
A) a deadly earthquake
B) a raging fire
C) a devastating tidal wave
D) a volcanic eruption
11. After admitting plots A through E may seem “too bourgeois” and suggesting more radical roles for the characters, the narrator cautions, “Remember, this is Canada. You’ll still end up with A [. . .].” What does the narrator mean?
A) Canadians are typically happy people.
B) Canadians are optimists who strive to overcome adversity.
C) Canadians tend to be cynics and don’t believe change is possible.
D) Canadians tend to hold middle-class beliefs about marriage, success, and Happiness.
12. Which story elements do each of the 6 plots alternatives focus on?
A) when and where
B) who and what
C) setting and atmosphere
D) style and diction
13. What is the only authentic ending to the story? (short answer)
14. How does the narrator describe the plot of any given story?
A) as driven by “malicious intent to deceive”
B) as comprised of “a what and a what and a what”
C) as “motivated by excessive optimism”
B) as a “saga of passionate involvement”
Discussion Question: Use the above question (along with question #8) to introduce or review the concept of metafiction, or narrative self-reflexivity. Metafictional elements are common in postmodern literature because they disrupt the reader’s tendency to unquestioningly accept a narrative’s foundational assumptions. How do the metafictional moments in “Happy Endings” nudge readers to question the ways that conventional narratives reinforce assumptions about gender, marriage, wealth, success, and happiness?
15. The narrator dismisses the significance of the endings and beginnings of stories in favor of what?
A) the how and why of stories
B) the rising and falling action of stories
C) the conflict and resolution of stories
D) the who and what of stories
Answers
1. B. Second-person narration involves a direct address to the reader, using the pronoun “you” either explicitly or implicitly. “Happy Endings” is mainly told in third-person but occasionally switches to second-person.
2. C
3. D. In plot A, events occur chronologically and narrative time passes, but there is no conflict or tension.
4. B. Despite evidence to the contrary, Mary believes that if she continues her relationship with John according to his terms, he will eventually realize how much he depends on her, and he will marry her. Mary’s goal is marriage, because conventional thinking equates happiness and success with marriage.
5. C. In the first paragraph of plot B, the narrator notes that John “doesn’t even consider [Mary] worth the price of a dinner out.” The narrator of the story repeatedly associates love and happiness with wealth and “real estate values,” but does so with such forced emphasis as to make a mockery of this correlation.
6. being “settled down” for a long time
7. A
8. D. “Happy Endings” is a metafictional story, which means it is a story that deliberately draws attention to itself as a story and to the nature of stories as creations. Each of the plot options relies on formulaic situations and characters, and, as the narrator points out, each leads to the conventional ‘happy ending’ that readers expect. By including references to its own structure, the story puts a critical distance between itself and the reader.
9. B. “Happy Endings” satirizes the pervasive assumption that happiness depends on money by depicting a cause-and-effect relationship between favorable real estate values and marital happiness.
10. C
11. D. The narrator is critiquing Canadian society and the bourgeois, or conventional, beliefs it promotes regarding gender roles, marriage, money, and happiness.
12. B. The plots are skeletal sketches of the characters and their actions, and largely forego the remaining elements usually included in stories.
13. John and Mary die
14. B
15. A
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By Margaret Atwood
