Why do we think we need a happy ending for every story? Culturally, Americans seem to be very sensitive. In old fairy tales from other countries, things didn\u2019t always turn out all sunshine and rainbows. Rumpelstiltskin exploded. Cinderella\u2019s stepsisters cut off part of their feet and had their eyes eaten by birds. There was some dark and creepy stuff. Why can\u2019t we handle that in America? The protagonist always has to live and the antagonist always has to die or turn good. It\u2019s just unrealistic.
If I had a say in the way people\u2019s stories were published, I would often change things to make the readers less comfortable. Something needs to happen to make that reader put the book down and stare at the wall for an hour. Joey Tribbiani from Friends needs to get so mad at what he\u2019s reading he feels he has to put the whole book in the freezer. Books need to be less predictable. In our special snowflake season in America, everyone believes that everything needs to go their way all of the time and nothing should step on anyone else\u2019s toes.
Let\u2019s just say that the snowflakes get their way. Everyone in the world has what they want. Jen wants to go out with Brad. Brad wants to go out with Karen. There are two unhealthy relationships. Jack wants to be captain of the football team. Stacie also wants to be captain of the football team. So does Jerry. So does Alicia. Sierra wants her boyfriend to get hit by a bus. Mary wants her daughter to stop talking forever. Every little thing that everyone wants comes to be and the world is in chaos! Money has no value, cities are overcrowded, nobody has legitimate relationships, and lots of people have been murdered.
God gave people free will to make their own choices, but sometimes what they want isn\u2019t possible based on what they can do without His help. In order to get God\u2019s help to get what they want, a person needs to first figure out what God wants for them. What He knows would be best and most beneficial. He doesn\u2019t do things out of spite or because He thinks they\u2019re funny. When something happens to someone that they didn\u2019t want, there is still a 100% chance that they will be able to handle it. God doesn\u2019t throw us things that He can\u2019t help us get through. People today are just stuck in the mindset of instant gratification and they want to be satisfied.
I know that\u2019s a big step from stories having happy endings, but what I\u2019m trying to point out is that without God, a happy ending is unrealistic (And in most of this literature the characters are, if you\u2019ll pardon my generalization, not relying on God). Bad things happen to everyone. I\u2019m not saying that good things don\u2019t ever happen. Sometimes the guy does get the girl, but I promise their relationship isn\u2019t flawless. The world can be saved but someone else is still going to break the law in the next episode. Things aren\u2019t fixed permanently and I think that is where the stories are. Don\u2019t settle for a simple \u00a0ending when you have the power to make the reader think. To question everything that had ever happened in their lives. Drive them crazy. Sometimes people like to be unsettled. If they didn\u2019t, horror movies would never make money. David Lynch wouldn\u2019t have become noteworthy. Inception would never have been filmed! Take it from the success of those things that writing something less than resolved is not the equivalent of writing something that no one will ever want to read.
Lyssa Henry Why do we think we need a happy ending for every story? Culturally, Americans seem to be very sensitive. In old fairy tales from other countries, things didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[343],"tags":[369],"class_list":["post-4105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religious-studies","tag-opinion","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4107,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4105\/revisions\/4107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}