Nothing is dearer to the heart of Americans than the happy ending. It is the supporting beam underneath the pier of our satisfaction.

Is this true? Or is it just a blanket statement made, like many Americans make, trying to sum up the world, like the average pop-country singer does by song titles (and, consequently, the line that is repeated too many times in the song)? We’re all trying to uncover that one thing that will make the hearer stop walking, look thoughtfully up at the sky, and let out a wistful and epic “Hmm” just in time to see the clouds uncover a picturesque rainbow. How crude. I declare war.

“Pardon me for being cynical, but I live in a sinful world,” said my history professor today, after giving a forty-five minute tirade on entertainment and its inverse relationship to thinking skills. There on the forefront of our video-game wars, there atop our patriotic concerts, and there saturating our DVD-case shrines hovers the happy ending with its shiny streamers and office-leftover confetti, the echoing foundation of satisfaction.

What percentage of the happy ending is made up of lies? The happy ending is so popular because of its displacement of the ending. Sure, if you re-label “the end” anything can have a happy ending, provided that thing has not been miserable its entire existence.

If marriage at the end of a Shakespearian comedy is seen as the ending, it would indeed be happy. If marriage is, more realistically, seen as a happy beginning, we are closer to reality (and that is a better place to be, no matter what any postmodernist says). Things don’t work out like the Mary Kate and Ashley movies. Everything in this life ends in death, even though there are plenty of happy events along the way for many, many people. But let’s remember that the only reason we know any of this is because we’ve heard or seen stories. The enemy here is not storytelling or happy endings themselves, but the opposite of thought.

The purpose of all this talk about happy endings is to point to the center of life, which is its purpose. Without a purpose, anyone would be an antihero. Superman does not save the world just because he feels like saving the world. Indiana Jones does not risk his life at the hands of the Nazis just because he’s tired of only being a professor of archaeology. But Jake Gittes has his life pulled out from under him because he’s going through it with this attitude: “I’m just the leper with the most fingers.” He does his matrimonial investigating because it’s something to do, not because he wants to rid the world of the evil of adultery.

If Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark had ended a few minutes before it did, the audience would leave with a despondent attitude. If Chinatown had ended a few minutes before it did, Evelyn and Catherine would have been getting away from Noah Cross, and Jake would have been a little sad, but probably content that he had done the right thing.

Aristotle’s definitions of the parts of the sequence of a story, though, make sense of this all. He advocated a beginning, middle and end in a story—but the thing is that the artist creates them all. There is no mandate for realism in a story—otherwise hardly any of them would have a happy ending. But there is no room for implausibility, either.

I won’t assert that this is a matter of life and death or even about danger (aside from the emotional kind). However, most depressing stories aren’t favorites of the majority of people, I’m sure. And all this may be enough to make someone throw up their hands and surrender, saying, “Why can’t I just have my happy ending? I want to walk out of the theater with a smile on my face!” That about sums it up.

When we live our lives in the theater by the means of the characters we see, we have no time to create our own character.

Charge me; I am guilty, but repentant.

Let’s try to achieve the better half of the distinction between well-versed and no-imagination. It’s the difference between a pier supported by concrete and a pier supported by hollow mahogany. Foundations aren’t supposed to echo when you tap on them.