Show of hands—who’s seen The Neverending Story? Okay, great. Now, who’s actually read the book?
An 80s children’s classic, chances are you’ve seen the movie or at least heard of it. And if you’re a child of the 80s like me, it may very well have a treasured place in the corner of your heart reserved for your favorite childhood nostalgia. While I loved the movie as a kid, it was only years later as an adult, when I chanced to pick up a copy of the book at my local library, that I learned there’s far more to the story than what I saw on the screen.
Sometimes all it takes for a book to hook us is a sentence. A phrase, a passage, or simply an idea that latches onto our minds and won’t let go. For me, that moment came a third of the way into the book, when Gmork tells Atreyu the secret of what happens to Fantasticans who are sucked through the Nothing into the human world.
“That’s right—and when you get to the human world, the Nothing will cling to you. You’ll be like a contagious disease that makes humans blind, so they can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion. Do you know what you and your kind are called there?”
“No,” Atreyu whispered.
“Lies!” Gmork barked.
It was this moment when I first realized that The Neverending Story isn’t simply an imaginative tale; it’s a tale about the nature of imagination itself. What it means for us as humans to dream, to hope, and especially to wish.
Wish fulfillment becomes a huge theme in the second half of the book. The main character, a human boy named Bastian, is given a great gift: a gem called AURYN with the ability to grant any and all of his wishes. On the back of AURYN is inscribed a single line: Do What You Wish. Armed with the gem, Bastian sets off to do just that. But what he eventually finds is that doing what you wish isn’t nearly as simple or easy as it seems.
Don’t be fooled into thinking this is merely a children’s fun adventure tale. Through Bastian, Michael Ende explores adult themes such as power—its usage, consequences, and ability to corrupt; freedom, and what true freedom really requires; the power of names, including issues of identity and memory; and the journey we all take to discover our heart’s true desires. As the great lion Grograman says:
“Only a genuine wish can lead you through the maze of the thousand doors. Without a genuine wish, you just have to wander around until you know what you really want. And that can take a long time.”
Is this not true of all of us at some point?
I often look back fondly on books I read in the past, recalling how much I enjoyed this one or that, but without really remembering much about them. Not so with this book. When I think back on The Neverending Story, I recall the haunting conversation between Atreyu and Gmork about the nature of human fantasy; the dark side of AURYN as it slowly steals Bastian’s memories away even as it fulfills his every wish; and the hopeful moment Bastian pulls an image of the father he forgot from the Picture Mine. For these scenes are embedded with ideas about the human experience, and this is what ultimately makes this story not just worth reading, but worth remembering.
Margaret Fortune wrote her first story at the age of six and has been writing ever since. She lives in Wisconsin. Her first novel, Nova, is available June 2nd from DAW.
For me, passage from this book that has always stayed with me is the part where Atreyu is begging the Yggrimal the Many (I’m sure I misspelled that) to let Falcor go so that Falcor can take him to see the Southern Oracle. He asks her “in the name of the Childlike Empress.” The response:
“You have no right to ask that…the Empress would never make such a request. She accepts us all as we are. That’s part of why we honor her symbol.”
That’s when it really hit home for me that the Empress of this book wasn’t “good” as I had always understood it, even though they had been saying so since the beginning. It made Fantastica a much wilder and more frightening place.
***
Looking back at it as an adult, I see The Neverending Story as two books with two separate themes: the first, Atreyu’s story, is about the power of imagination and how much good it can do, while the second, Bastian’s story, is about the dangers of imagination and how easy it is to lose yourself in the fantasy. That’s part of why I think the first movie is remembered so fondly while the second one largely flopped. For the most part, Hollywood did okay with Atreyu’s story and kept its theme intact (though they did scrub it those things that hinted at moral complexity, like your favorite passage and mine), but they just couldn’t handle the theme of Bastian’s story, leaving a general absence where the larger meaning of his adventures should have been.
I’m told there are sequals. In German. Untranslated. Grrrr.
@2 ad
To the best of my knowledge, there are no sequels and all of Ende’s more important works have been translated. Most of them are targeted at slightly younger audiences, though.
I think Micheal Ende’s best book is “Momo”. It deals with adult themes as well but while I read both as a kid the implications, especially of wishes in the Neverending story scared me a little. The theme of Momo is liable to hit adults, with our responsibilties and lack of time for anything a lot harder than children. Oh and the German cover is pretty too: Momo
@DemetriosX
ad didn’t mean by Ende. They are written by others at the behest of Ende’s estate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neverending_Story#Novels). This too makes me sad, or want to learn to read German. Or both.
@5 aethercowboy
I was unaware of those. I even recognize the names of a couple of the authors, but considering they cranked out 6 books in 2 years and dropped the project even though another 6 were planned is not a good sign. The fact that they translated them into a couple of languages, but never got to English and have no plans to do so (also very unlikely after over a decade) does not bode well for the quality of the books.
The thing I loved about it was it was printed in red and green ink, well the copy I had was. No one I’ve asked who have read it remembers this. I wasn’t imagining it was I?
@7 – No, you didn’t imagine it. My copy, a Dutch translation I read at age 9 or 10 before the movie came out, was printed in two colors too, although I think it may have been blue and red in that one. This book made a very big impression on me at that age, to the point where I feel it’s partly responsible for my love of fantasy, and of meta-fictional stories for that matter. There’s a lot of depth to the second half of the novel that the movie completely missed, something I realized even in my early teens when I saw it for the first time.
Lastvisibledog and Stefan: I was given a paperback copy as a gift and was really disappointed it was printed in black ink. I don’t recall why, but I seem to remember that there was a reason for the red and green printing.
I bought a hardcover copy of this for my kids shortly after the movie was out that had the stuff happening in our world in 1 color ink (red?) and the stuff in Fantasia in another color (green?).
I originally read the Red/Green edition when I checked it out of the Napa library when I was in college. It was a really nice edition and the cover was fancier than other books.
The dragon is called Fuchur and the land Fantasien.
I also liked the red and green text (in the German original). The parts in the “real world” were in red and the parts in Fantasien in green.
I never heard about the “sequels”.
I also like Momo (there is a movie, too) and can still say “Der satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch” (another book by Michael Ende) without looking it up.
According to the German Wikipedia entry for The Neverending Story, two bits by Ende were published posthumously. The first is “Der Niemandsgarten,” (“No-man’s Garden”), a fragment of a novel that can be seen as a precursor to The Neverending Story. The second is “Bastian erlernt die Zauberkunst” (“Bastian Learns the Art of Magic”) a previously unpublished chapter from The Neverending Story.
I haven’t read the shared-universe books that aethercowboy mentions, but I do work as a translator. If anyone at Tor thinks there’s a market for them, send me an e-mail!
I loved the first movie as a kid, and still do. I also read the complete book but must say I don’t remember much of the second part, because it is poorly covered by the second movie, but I recall being amazed by some of Ende’s allegories. It’s his typical style you also find in “Momo”. I also loved to listen to the audio play on cassette tape of book part I and borrowed it from the local library several times, but don’t remember seeing one of part II. There’s a third movie by the way, but don’t bother (it scored 3.0 on IMDB…).
There are some differences between movie I and book part I that imho makes it very worthwile to read the book. Though they did great work with the effects and depictions, there are some differences as the southern oracle does not have sphinxes but is just a voice as far as I recall, and Ygramul the Many (?) is missing in the movie.
As a German I also never heard about prequels or sequels to the Neverending Story, so possibly, as #7 pointed out, they might not be that great and not much of a miss.
As for the editions with coloured print, I first read a beautiful hardcover edition with red/green print, but there were also paperback editions with only black print. As I got one of those, I was not happy with it and replaced it with a red/green :) I once saw a French paper back edition that was all in black, and the English copy I got for a friend was also just black.
@birgit: Falcor and Fantastica are the names in the English translation for Fuchur and Phantasien. When I saw this the first time I was surprised about the different naming, because I thought it was quite unnecessary.
I also liked the “satanarchäolügenialkohöllische Wunschpunsch”, which is called “Night of Wishes” in English. I once read that it is one of those books that happen in real-time (time in the book passes at the same speed as you are reading it), which I find quite awesome.
My library’s copy had the multicolored type. The reason I haven’t bought my own in all these years is that the only copies I can find now are just black print all the way through, which takes something away from the experience.
Back when I taught high school English, I spent the first 10 minutes of each class reading aloud to them, all ages. One book I read was The Neverending Story. Big mistake. When I read the last few scenes, I couldn’t help crying… in front of a classroom of high school students! Was still worth it.
I require my high school advanced filmmaking students to read this book because of its dissection of storytelling and the many excellent examples of that craft, as well as a hundred other things. It’s one of my all-time favorites.
I think, here in Germany it’s more common to read Michael Ende. Despite his books for the younger audience, Ende has written several short stories for adults, which are brilliant!
Most of what I’ve retained from reading the book as a child are scenes from the Mine, and how deeply unhappy the second half of the book made me. I don’t regret reading it at all, and don’t think I did at the time either, but it’s still a very, very dark story at heart.
For those interested in Neverending Story as a grief journey, I found this article very interesting:
Weenolsen, Patricia. “The Influence of Parental Death on Identity Formation.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly (1986 Proceedings): 124-128. Web. 30 Sept. 2012.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chq/summary/v1986/1986.weenolsen.html
Taking nothing away from the great Ralph Manheim, but it’s high time for a new translation. (Momo has now had three translations into English, after all.) And I’m with @cheshirecat on name changes. What is it about English language publishers? They do this with Cornelia Funke as well.
Of the “universe” books that saw the light of day, Ralph Isau’s contribution (Die geheime Bibliothek des Thaddäus Tillmann Trutz) is his imagining of Coreander’s backstory, and it’s worth a read. (So @doug, if Tor drops you a note, lobby for that one.)
I read The Neverending Story just after the time the movie came out, so I was 8-9 at the most — and it had an enormous effect on me. I was never particularly into fantasy otherwise (so I hadn’t read things like Lord of the Rings at that age) but I was entranced by Ende’s work and its themes.
While I like the movie as a kid, I also remember quickly realising how much the movie paled into insignificance compared to the book — it had to be the first time that I’d felt that about ay adaptation. I also recall the movie only covered the first part of the book and I never saw the sequel (which I understand was bad but I also didn’t know it covered the second part of the book as mentioned above).
And surprised no mention of the theme song — so camp and dated now, but it did work for the times :)
I was around 6 when the movie came out and I saw it in the cinema. I had to go see it a second time immediately because I had been so frightened by some moments (like when Atreyu goes through the sphinx gate, or with Gmork) that I had closed my eyes and I wanted to see it whole. I loved it so much that I had to read the book right away. It took me most of a year to read it the first time as I had just learnt to read and it’s over 500 pages I think. I loved the book so much that I’ve read it at least once a year between 6 and 18, and each time I read it I found something new in it. I agree that there are two books in one, but there are so many themes in it in addition to the main ones. As a child I prefered the first half, but as I was growing up I started to love the second half more and more. Along with the already cited parts, I keep a very fond memory of the part with Graograman the multicolore death, whose story is so heartbreaking (the name in English may be different as I read it in French).
The film was quite faithful to the book except for the already mentioned differences, and the ending of course. As for the second film (I think there even was a third but I never saw it), I hated it. It took away all that made the second part of the book so interesting, making it a bad child adventure movie, devoid of any further significance.
I loved Momo too, but not to the same extent.
THIS IS A BOOK AND IT DOES THE PLOT OF BOTH MOVIES AND IT DOES THE SECOND (unlike the movie) WELL??? HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS!!! *throws things around the room like the game of thrones rereader after reading a reek chapter* Ok better now. Well I am going to have to find a copy of this. I mean my love for the first movie can not be overstated. In fact when it wasn’t the best fantasy movie from the 80s I about threw a fit – would have posted except someone else already had and I couldn’t have posted better than they did. I expect some of the fact I love it so much is that I was young when I saw it, not sure how old I was but born in 78 so at the most ten though I did see it on TV I think or video and not in the theater. How did it do in the theater in America anyway? This is one movie I plan on making sure my children watch and if it is a book I am going to have to make sure they read it now to. I mean this movie is probably the reason I am a romantic scientist and able to stay religious (though not fundamentalist) next to the works of Madeline L’engle I don’t think there was something that effected me as much (maybe susan cooper and perhaps LeGuin but I was older when I read LeGuin) as a child. Yup going to have to find a copy of this and buy a nice green and read version (if they exist in english) after I pass the law bar and find a job. (anyone need a patent lawyer or a trademark copyright one?)
What a book! I read it after reading ‘Momo’ (as a child) and I always loved the ‘Augsburger Puppenkiste’ ‘Jim Knopf und Lukas…’
The book is such an experience with the red and green print (red for reality-green for Fantasia or was it the other way round?) and when Bastian realises he has to name the Princess the red and green are all over the place!
Michael Ende should be on every school curriculum, he understood the beautiful unassuming nature of children and their intuitive grasp of what feels right and what feels wrong. It’s worthwhile reading as an adult to remind oneself of how it feels to be alive.
They should do a modern adaptation of the story
This was my favorite book as a child, and remains my favorite book today. There are lots of themes explored, many of which have already been touched on.
But the one that always makes me cry is near the end. Atreyu and Fuchur are taking Bastian into the AURYN to take him back home. Bastian is supposed to speak for himself, but he can’t because he’s lost his memories, everything that makes him who he is.
So Atreyu says: “I will speak for him.”
“By what right?” asks the power of the AURYN.
“I am his friend,” says Atreyu.
Ooof. Even now, even just recounting it. Those who love us will carry us when we’ve lost ourselves.