Happy ending

For other uses, see Happy ending (disambiguation).

A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the protagonists, their sidekicks, and almost everyone except the villains.

In storylines where the protagonists are in physical danger, a happy ending mainly consists in their surviving and successfully concluding their quest or mission. Where there is no physical danger, a happy ending is often defined as lovers consummating their love despite various factors which may have thwarted it. A considerable number of storylines combine both situations.

A happy ending is epitomized in the standard fairy tale ending phrase, "happily ever after" or "and they lived happily ever after." (One Thousand and One Nights has the more restrained formula "they lived happily until there came to them the One who Destroys all Happiness" (i.e. Death); likewise, the Russian versions of fairy tales typically end with "they lived long and happily, and died together on the same day"). Satisfactory happy endings are happy for the reader as well, in that the characters he or she sympathizes with are rewarded. However, this can also serve as an open path for a possible sequel. For example, in the 1977 film Star Wars, Luke Skywalker defeats the Galactic Empire by destroying the Death Star, however the story's happy ending has consequences that follow in The Empire Strikes Back. The concept of a permanent happy ending is specifically brought up in the Stephen King fantasy/fairy tale novel The Eyes of the Dragon which has a standard good ending for the genre, but simply states that "there were good days and bad days" afterwards.

Features

A happy ending only requires that the main characters be all right. Millions of innocent background characters can die, but as long as the characters that the reader/viewer/audience cares about survive, it can still be a happy ending. Roger Ebert comments ironically in his review of Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow: "Billions of people may have died, but at least the major characters have survived. Los Angeles is leveled by multiple tornadoes, New York is buried under ice and snow, the United Kingdom is flash-frozen, and lots of the Northern Hemisphere is wiped out for good measure. Thank god that Jack, Sam, Laura, Jason and Dr. Lucy Hall survive, along with Dr. Hall's little cancer patient."

Examples

Shakespeare

The presence of a happy ending is one of the key points that distinguishes melodrama from tragedy. In certain periods, the endings of traditional tragedies such as Macbeth or Oedipus Rex, in which most of the major characters end up dead, disfigured, or discountenanced, have been actively disliked. In the eighteenth century, the Irish author Nahum Tate sought to improve Shakespeare's King Lear in his own heavily modified version in which Lear survives and Cordelia marries Edgar. Most subsequent critics have not found Tate's amendments an improvement. Happy endings have also been fastened to Romeo and Juliet and Othello. Not everybody agrees on what a happy ending is.

An interpretation of The Merchant of Venice’s forced conversion of Shylock to Christianity is that it was intended as a happy ending. As a Christian, he could no longer impose interest, undoing his schemes in the play and ending the rivalry between him and Antonio, but more importantly, contemporary audiences would see becoming a Christian as a means to save his soul. (Cf Romans 11:15)

Similarly, based on the assumptions about women's role in society prevalent at the time of writing, The Taming of the Shrew's concluding with the complete breaking of Kate's rebelliousness and her transformation into an obedient wife counted as a happy ending.

Novels

A Times review of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold strongly criticized John le Carré for failing to provide a happy ending, and gave unequivocal reasons why in the reviewer's opinion (shared by many others) such an ending is needed: "The hero must triumph over his enemies, as surely as Jack must kill the giant in the nursery tale. If the giant kills Jack, we have missed the whole point of the story."

George Bernard Shaw had to wage an uphill struggle against audiences, as well as some critics, persistently demanding that his "Pygmalion" have a happy ending, i.e. that Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolitle would ultimately get married. To Shaw's great chagrin, Herbert Beerbohm Tree who presented the play in 1914 had sweetened the ending and told Shaw: "My ending makes money; you ought to be grateful. Your ending is damnable; you ought to be shot." The irritated Shaw added a postscript essay, "'What Happened Afterwards," to the 1916 print edition, for inclusion with subsequent editions, in which he explained precisely why in his view it was impossible for the story to end with Higgins and Eliza getting married. Nevertheless, audiences continued wanting a happy ending also for later adaptations such as the musical and film "My Fair Lady".

See also

• Eucatastrophe
• Once upon a time