Derehi Alitzel Garcia Ortiz 2 AAre 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/heteroglossiahttp://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/heteroglossiahttp://home.nwciowa.edu/wacome/McConnell.pdf