Who doesn’t want a happily after?
Yesterday, I wrote about the reasons we love “Happily Ever After” in stories, and why we are drawn to fairy tale endings.
While I do love and need the occasional fairy tale ending, most of my favorite novels–including Les Miserables and Don Quixote–have endings that are bittersweet, if not downright tragic. Sometimes, a writer just can’t write Happily Ever After.
I’ve always preferred Shakespeare’s tragedies to his comedies. I like stories with weight and substance, stories that make me think and reassess things. As a general rule, and in my personal case, stories that are bittersweet in tone do that to a greater extent than lighthearted comedies.
But why?
LIFE LESSONS
I connect with bittersweet endings because they ring true to me. After all, real life tends to be bittersweet most of the time.
We all have to deal with illness and with grief, some of us at a…
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