The Title
The title of the story, "Happy Endings," is fundamentally ironic because through the various versions of the story relayed to the reader, "Happy Endings" actually argues that happy endings do not make for good stories. The narrator maintains an ironic relationship to the title throughout the story, showing how it is not the ending of a story but the moments in between beginning and end that make it worth reading.
The Structure
"Happy Endings" maintains a unique structure, in that it is divided into six different versions of potential stories rather than arranged as a single narrative. Characters themselves shift and change between versions, as if the entire story is composed of different parallel universes. This structure is ironic because in arranging the story this way, the author draws readers' attentions to a multitude of other stories and possibilities, therefore undermining the expectations of the short story genre.
