The Neverending Story: Michael Ende on Imagination and the Price of Wishes
A boy steals an old book, hides in a school attic and starts to read — and the story begins to read him back. Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, first published in German in 1979 as Die unendliche Geschichte, is often remembered through the 1984 film, which tells only its first half. The novel goes much further, and it is darker, stranger and wiser than the film suggests.
Author: Michael Ende (1929–1995)
Title: The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte, 1979)
Format: English paperback (Penguin), 384 pages, translated by Ralph Manheim
Scope: Fantasy novel in two movements: Atreyu’s quest to save the Childlike Empress, then Bastian’s own journey through Fantastica and back
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0140074317 (ASIN 0140074317)
Atreyu’s Quest and the Nothing
Fantastica is ruled by the Childlike Empress, and she is dying. At the same time the Nothing is spreading fast, swallowing everything it touches; if it wins, Fantastica and every creature in it will be gone. The Empress chooses Atreyu, a young warrior, to find a cure. Carrying AURYN, her amulet of two snakes — one light, one dark — each biting the other’s tail, he crosses desolate lands such as the Dead Mountains, and at last reaches the Southern Oracle, which tells him what the Empress really needs: a new name, and only a human child from outside Fantastica can give it.
That child is Bastian, the boy reading Atreyu’s adventure, who realises — without quite believing it — that he is the only one who can save her. In the original German edition the two worlds are even printed in different colours, red and green, so the reader always knows which side of the book he is on.
Bastian and the Price of Every Wish
Once Bastian gives the Empress her name, he becomes the new hero and is rewarded with a stay in Fantastica. His looks and abilities change spectacularly and every wish he makes comes true. But each wish costs him a memory of his old life, and he drifts further and further from who he was. He takes AURYN and, with it, power.
This is where the book shows its bitterer side. What began as a blessing turns into a burden. When Atreyu asks for the amulet back, Bastian refuses, betrays the Empress and destroys the Ivory Tower, and Atreyu is badly wounded. Falkor, the luckdragon, stays with them throughout — and, being a luckdragon, brings everyone some good fortune.
The Way Home
In the end Bastian must choose: stay in Fantastica forever with his new body and gifts, or go back to the human world and be ordinary again. Atreyu, still his friend, urges him home. By now Bastian has lost almost all his memories, and the last part of the book follows him through a house where he learns to want to be loved rather than admired, and down into a mine where he must dig for a single forgotten dream — the picture that will let him return.
Ende’s Other Worlds
Ende had already written the children’s classic Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver (1960) and Momo (1973), a fable about grey men who steal people’s time. Readers who love Bastian’s story often find Momo the natural next book: shorter, gentler, and just as insistent that imagination and time are things worth defending.
Why Imagination Needs Practice
It is a story packed with adventure, danger and feats of courage, and it is a pleasure to read at any age. Above all, it shows how important imagination is: a skill that, if we do not cultivate it, we lose very easily. Ralph Manheim’s English translation, first published in 1983, keeps the book’s playful, fairy-tale voice; read it even if you think you know the story from the film, because the half the film leaves out is where Ende says the most.
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