Derehi Alitzel Garcia Ortiz

2A
Are You Happy?

In this essay will be an explanation about how these two concepts: heteroglossia
and polyphony are implicated in the two stories that Raymond Carver and Ann
Beattie wrote. In these two stories we can see that the perspective of happiness is
different for everyone but at the same time all of those perspectives that people
provides, help us to have a more specific perspective of happiness. Are you
happy? It is a hard question to answer but the perspective of happiness that will be
describe here, can help you to answer that question easily.
According to Merriam-Webster and Oxford dictionaries, the concept of
Heteroglossia is a diversity of voices, styles of discourse, or points of view in a
text or other artistic work that is specially a novel. The concept of Polyphony in
literature, was introduce by Mikhail Bakhtin and it is about how a novel can have
many voices as the author want to write. So, according to these two definitions,
polyphony and heteroglossia can be a kind of synonym words and it could be
described in the two short stories referring to the multiple voices that the readings
have or it could be too that the definition of happiness is involve in these two
definitions.
We can interpret these two concepts thinking about how the author applies multiple
voices to his/her written; for example, we can notice that in the story written by
Raymond Carver the voices are the author and the dialogues that the characters
have between them, but the progression of ideas in the situations are unclear,
because when scotty is going to have a birthdays party, he suddenly have an
accident and the reader dont understand when the scenarios changed. We can
see that in the story written by Ann Beattie is used the voice of the author and the
characters but in this last point, Ann did not make clear when a character is making
place in the story and when another character is including in the conversation of
the characters. However, even when this interpretation about the connection of the
two concepts and the two short stories, we can say that exists another way to
interpret this connection.
We can interpret the connection between: heteroglossia and polyphony with the
stories that Raymond and Ann wrote in a weirder and abstract way including the
principal topic of both stories: happiness. If the meaning of the two concepts
heteroglossia and polyphony are similar, we know that happiness has many
perspectives from people, we can say then that the diversity of points of view about
happiness are the ones that tell us what is the most acceptable. In the story written
by Raymond, we can see that the message is about when we are passing through
a bad moment in our lives. A small good thing can makes us feel that everything in
life is not bad and evil but it also have little things that somehow helps us to pass
troubles with a little more of optimism, even when unknown people give us little
things to help our bad moment. In the story written by Ann, we see that being

happy doesnt depends on people around you, it doesnt depends on if your life is
perfect, if you dont have problems, it doesnt mean that. Your happiness depends
on yourself and the way you see the world. We saw how James was so happy
about his life even when he was a dwarf and his own mother and brother, bothered
him with the issue about the awful life that dwarfs have.
These two stories are only two examples of the millions of diversities in points of
view that people have about happiness. We know that heteroglossia and
polyphony is implicated in happiness and see that those diversity of interpretations
and points of view, help us to create a new perspective of happiness. Taking in
consideration that even when Scotty was dead, an unknown baker did a small
good thing to make feel better somehow Scottys parents through all of it.
Considering that James was a dwarf but a person that could be happy loving the
things he had and knowing how to face the bad things that his family was saying
and doing to him. Scottys parents and James knew that small good things are very
big when you are passing a bad moment; that is what makes you happy. With this,
you can answer the question easilyAre you happy?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heteroglossia
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/heteroglossia
http://home.nwciowa.edu/wacome/McConnell.pdf