The Trick
“Whatever you do, do not touch that book,” explained Mr. Carl Coreander the book store owner, “now I have to go answer that phone call.”
“Don’t worry Mr. Coreander, I won’t.”
This conversation is similar to what happened in the movie The NeverEnding Story by Wolfgang Peterson. This 1984 film is about a young kid named Bastion who takes a book from a book store that is magical, and someone in that book knows that he is reading it. Bastion has to give the princess a new name, but the Nothing is coming faster than he can speak.
The Nothing is the most important symbol in the movie symbolizing the inner death and disbelief of everyone on Earth. Another symbol is the Auryn. The Auryn is a magical amulet that the Child-like Empress can give to whomever she wants and it symbolizes infinity, hence the name, The NeverEnding Story. An evil symbol is the Swamp of Sadness which symbolizes the sadness of everyone on Earth. Then the unusual trick occurs with Mr. Coreander tempting Bastion to borrow the strange and unusual book. That book began the whole adventure and it symbolizes a quest. The last symbol is the last grain of sand of Fantasia. It symbolizes a new beginning.
A new beginning just happens to be part of the mode romance. A romance starts with a mild conflict when the Nothing sweeps over the land and destroys Fantasia. The next part of a romance is the mild conflict continuing when Atreyu realizes that the empress needed a new name and it needed to be from a moonchild, or an earthling. The resolution occurs when the Child-like Empress tells Bastion that he is the one that needs to give her a name and Bastion yells his mother’s name. Then Bastion gets to create a new Fantasia which is a new beginning.
The person that creates a new Fantasia, Bastion, is the most important character throughout the film. Bastion is a young boy that people don’t understand. He gets picked on all the time and skips school to avoid them. He loves reading, which is very uncharacteristic of boys his age, and that’s how he got to read The NeverEnding Story. Another important character is Atreyu. He is a young warrior from the Western Plains that everyone in Fantasia was counting on to save the Child-like Empress and destroy the Nothing. The Child-like Empress, as it happens, is another character. The Child-like Empress is very sick because of the Nothing and knew all along that Bastion was the one that could destroy the nothing. The next character is Falkor the Luck Dragon. Falkor is always happy, he’s lucky, and he flies; three important traits for Atreyu’s quest. The last important character is the gigantic turtle named Morla the Aged One who is regularly mistaken for an island. Morla knows about everything, but doesn’t care about it.
Morla isn’t the only one that knows about how to save the empress, the Child-like Empress herself knew about it but needed a moonchild to save her. By Atreyu embarking on his quest, he brought a moonchild with him, Bastion. Bastion gives the princess a new name and gets to create a new, more stunning Fantasia than before. So it is true that reading can sometimes take you to a whole new world.
