The Neverending Story is the story of a neverending cycle of
bullying.
Bastian is a “fat, useless,
cowardly” boy of ten who is unfortunately granted near-omnipotence when he
enters Fantastica. Instantly, he begins to go mad with power, moved by his lust
for certain things which ten-year-old boys should probably never acquire.
The
first half of the Story is a simple fantasy romp for the most part – rich and
highly imaginative – at least until Gmork begins to rasp out his final words,
which are pretty dark and sobering. The first half of the Story is also what
those of us who’ve only known the film version (up till now) think of as The Neverending Story, but there is a
brilliant second half that delivers thematic devices that are both deep and
intrinsic to the vision of the author, Michael Ende – who incidentally disowned
the film entirely and demanded his name not be associated with it. Perhaps he
felt he’d been lied to.
Lies
are a major plot device in the Story, although they are so insidious and
pervasive that it is hard to imagine what one can do to thwart them.
The werewolf Gmork counsels the
adventurer Atreyu about the awful journey he must undertake if he truly wishes
to visit the human world: he must succumb to the Nothing, the awful cancer
eating away at Fantastica, and enter the human world transformed into one more
in a pack of Lies. This is what Fantasticans – beings of pure fantasy – become
if they come into the human world via the Nothing: a lie.
The
Nothing is a symbol of our human negligence, as Fantastica is sustained only by
human imagination. In our modern lives, we place very little value on
imaginative thinking beyond what it brings us for our idle entertainment, or
our commercial endeavours, and as such we are deprived of meaningful lives.
Atreyu,
on the other hand, is the opposite, and so he represents everything we like to
see in a male role model: he is brave and honest and caring. He was raised by a
hunting tribe community, and has deep, meaningful connections with all the
elements of his world.
Bastian, his mirror image and
human counterpart, is weak and cut off, a lonely victim of mass bullying –
doled out not just by his peers, but from his teachers, too, who jeer at him.
The moral of the Story is laid on thick here, iterating the vital importance of
fantasies and imagination for our spiritual development.
Grow up, the Story tells us, but,
paradoxically, we must accomplish this by staying young at heart. What I
discovered in that second half of the Story is a tale of innocence lost and
then painstakingly regained. It counsels us to preserve our sense of childlike
wonder and love – and this is represented by the oldest and wisest being in
Fantastica, its heart and soul: the Childlike Empress.
Bastian,
in his desire to finally be loved and admired, begins instantly to abuse his
powers and to willingly forget his duty, which is to return with what he has
learned. Only then can he work to undo the many lies that have flooded the
human world from Fantastica and repair the damaged relationship between the two
inter-connected worlds. He gives in to the temptation to stay and have his
every whim and wish fulfilled, much like we in our hedonistic, consumer culture
like to do. In other words, he lies to himself and tells himself that he is
entitled to whatever pleases him because he is human.
Bastian
changes his features so that he is now a handsome prince; he wishes to be
strong and admired and wise – and all these too come to pass. Yet Bastian does
see how he has been marked by his fear, crippled by it. This is the curse of
the bullied, for at the critical juncture, when Bastian is called upon by the
Childlike Empress – who is beyond a doubt communicating to him from within the
book he is reading, locked away in an attic – he shies away because he feels
unworthy. In his own world, after all, Bastian is a pariah and a joke.
The
curse that bullying bestows upon its victims – a curse I myself am encumbered
with – is an ugly duckling complex (if I can be permitted to mix fairy tales
momentarily; I think such things are permitted at least in Fantastica). What
they never tell you about ugly ducklings is that – long after they see their
own swan-like beauty reflected in the waters – they continue at all times to feel
ugly and unlovable, for they are helpless to believe anything else. They
believe the lies of others before they can believe in the truth.
Bastian’s
reinvention of himself is a fantasy we all like to entertain – how we would
look if we were slimmer or more attractive. Yet the cost of this turns out to
be the loss not only of his memory and identity, but his compassion as well.
Casting that aside is a dangerous affair for Bastian, who nearly dooms himself
by declaring himself the Emperor of Fantastica, setting himself up to usurp the
Childlike Empress that he himself had only just saved.
Given absolute power, Bastian
turns into a monstrosity – but it’s hard not to feel there was no other course
for him to take. It’s a twisted path, and the stakes get ridiculously high at
the end, but once he perceives the perils he escaped due to Atreyu’s
intervention, he goes on and perseveres like a true hero. In a sense, all his
folly is really just a series of training sessions for him to become aware, and
ennobled. His wishes almost seemed designed to backfire and strip him of
everything he’s created for himself so that he can learn real wisdom, to see
through the lies and get to the truth.
His wishes arise naturally within
him and are impossible to defend against. At one point, Bastian wishes not only
to be admired, but feared – and later on he begins issuing commands to his
friends and followers as if he is their leader, showing him as a ten-year-old
tyrant. When Bastian’s wish to be feared and obeyed as a commander arises, it’s
clear that he is reacting to how he’d been abused and teased by the bullies at
his school. He is becoming drunk on the same power, and this was based on his
choice not to return home, but to try to erase his old, unpopular self of which
he was made to feel so ashamed.
So he is drawn by his awful wish
to the witch, Xayide, who is the biggest bully in all of Fantastica. She nearly
succeeds in turning Bastian into her empty-headed pawn. He is swiftly corrupted
in a Lord-of-the-Flies-kind-of-way, to the point where he breaks his promise
and draws the heroic sword Sikanda against its will, to deliver a deadly blow
to the adversary who has risen up against him, for his own good. This is none
other than his erstwhile and spurned friend, Atreyu.
Bastian’s journey towards wisdom
is a hard one, and he comes dangerously close to losing his mind entirely and
ending up just another demented Old Emperor. He confronts all the mistakes that
he made: the misery of the Acharis, and the aftermath of the clownish Shlamoofs,
as well as the destructive wake of the dragon, Smerg, which Bastian narrates
into existence in order to give the depressed knight errant Hynreck a driving
and renewed purpose.
All of these are his whimsical
inventions, story elements he wishes into being in Fantastica, because he is a
human and that is his right and power; but none of them turn out very well in
the end, and seem to backfire on him in one way or another. So there is a very
strong theme of responsibility. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but is
there no such thing as absolute redemption?
This is the question the Story is
putting to everyone who reads it: will you succumb to the Lies, or will you be
united with those who know and seek the Truth?
To me,
Atreyu and Fantastica clearly represent community and solidarity, while the
humans in the Story – Bastian, Carl, and Bastian’s father – are all isolated,
cut off, and bound in frozen blocks of ice. Stories are what can bind us
together to help us form better communities – not just the stories we invent,
but the stories of our lives. The two truly are intertwined.
We,
like Bastian, must learn how to craft these stories into the most artfully
woven creations we can make up with our dreams, wishes, and fantasies.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Inserted in my Top 10 Fantasy Books of All Time!
No comments:
Post a Comment