Response to: “The Obligation to Be Happy” by Linda Pastan

            The metaphorical imagery of struggling in “The Obligation to Be Happy” by Linda Pastan highlights the speaker’s fated attempts to achieve happiness. The speaker, who seems to be a woman because of the references to “housework” and “narrow shoulders,” notes how “onerous” it is for her to be happy, even more so than maintaining her “beauty” and “love.” She talks about how it is “expected” of her, even when the conditions are not ideal. And because of these expectations, she smiles to please others, “as if [her] own fidelity to sadness were a hidden vice,” revealing her constant connection with sadness, as if it were binding and degrading her.  The speaker continues trying to achieve happiness again, trying “to hoist it on [her] narrow shoulders again.” She compares her plight to carrying a “knapsack heavy with gold coins,” and “stumbling” through the house and through life.