Summary
In version D, the narrator describes the marriage between Madge and Fred: they are well-matched together, capable of working through any problems they might have.
However, their house is built near the sea, and their town is one day destroyed by a giant tidal wave. Many people die, but Fred and Madge are fortunate enough to escape. Their life continues as in version A.
In version E, Fred has a weak heart. He and Madge are kind and loving toward one another until Fred dies, and Madge devotes the rest of her life to charity work.
The narrator remarks that this version of the story could alternatively be about Madge suffering from cancer, the two of them acting "guilty and confused" while she dies slowly, and Fred devoting his life to bird watching after Madge's death (E).
In version F, the narrator encourages the reader to make John and Mary more complex and interesting characters like a revolutionary and a counterespionage agent. These alterations, the narrator says, might lead to "a lustful brawling saga of passionate involvement" before inevitably ending up as version A because "Remember, this is Canada" (F).
All endings to all stories, the narrator argues, are the same, with the only authentic ending to this particular story being "John and Mary die" (F). The narrator concludes that endings, then, are negligible while "beginnings are always more fun" and "true connoisseurs... are known to favor the stretch in between" (F).
The story ends with the narrator encouraging readers to dispel with the "what" of a story and instead "try How and Why" (F).
Analysis
In the second half of the story, the pace of the narration quickens and words and phrases from versions A-C are recycled in these new versions. This rapid pace and obvious repetition suggest that the narrator herself is bored and fatigued by the process of generating all these ideas.
But while her plugging images and words from John and Mary's stories directly into Fred's and Madge's timeline might initially appear lazy to the reader, this repetition helps underscore the broader argument of "Happy Endings" as a whole: that endings to stories are fundamentally repetitive because, in reality, everyone dies. There is thus only one way any character's story can end – with death. The narrator confirms this argument when she, in part F, declares that no matter what personalities, professions, or defining characteristics one bestows on their characters, the story will always end in the exact same place as version A: that is, with characters dying.
This alone is a rather bleak interpretation of storytelling and reading alike. However, the narrator uses this conclusion about fiction-writing and reading as a way to argue, at the end of part F, what matters most in crafting and connecting with a particular story. "That's about all that can be said for plots," the narrator announces, "which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what. Now try How and Why" (F).
Here, in the final lines of the story, the narrator suggests that plots, while seminal for shaping a story's narrative, are less interesting and meaningful than communicating elements like characters' motivations, emotions, and conflicts.
Furthermore, this final section of the story reveals that the entire text up to this point has been regarded by the narrator as a type of "first step" to the writing process. That is, the narrator posits herself as an educator explaining the significance of plot to fiction-writing, and like this story itself, plot becomes the initial effort one must make in order to write a compelling story. The ending of "Happy Endings" suggests that there should be – and indeed, must be – more to come, and therefore more to good fiction-writing than simply recounting one event after another.
