The Neverending Story

“If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the character with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless – If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won’t understand what Bastian did next.”

Here, the power of stories and the pull of The Neverending Story in particular is explained. This section gets to the heart of one of the novel’s central themes—the idea that reading can be immersive and meaningful and can have a profound effect upon individual experiences. Bastian’s experiences as a reader of the story will further highlight this philosophy as he ultimately becomes an agent who is free to act and influence the very story that he is reading.

“Staring at the title of the book, he turned hot and cold, cold and hot. Here was just what he had dreamed of, what he had longed for ever since the passion books had taken hold of him: A story that never ended! The book of books!”

The Neverending Story functions as an escape for Bastian. As the boy experiences loneliness, the trauma of losing his mother, and the need to fulfill his wishes for adventures and life beyond his school and home, the book becomes a coping mechanism that is all the more powerful because its very title promises endless fulfillment, and this promise ultimately leads Bastian to engage in an ever-more-immersive experience of the adventures within its pages.

“Because one thing he was good at, possibly the only thing, was imagining things so clearly that he almost saw and heard them.”

Bastian, while an awkward and unathletic child, has been gifted with an extraordinary imagination that allows him to enter into the reading experience in a fully immersive way. This passage highlights the most powerful aspect of Bastian’s character—his imagination—as being the attribute that will carry him through the novel as he provides the inhabitants of Fantastica with stories and brings tales back to the human realm.

“Her life isn’t measured by time, but by names. She needs a new name.”

Morla the Ancient One answers Atreyu’s questions about the Childlike Empress’s illness and cure. This passage points to the importance of names throughout the novel, and accordingly, providing objects, landscapes, and creatures with names will become Bastian’s work in Fantastica. The Fantasticans are threatened by their inability to come up with names and stories and need humans to give them life and substance.

“Even if Atreyu had wanted to turn back and had known what direction to take, it would not have been possible. He had gone too far and could only keep on going. If only he himself had been involved, he might have sat down in a cave and quietly waited for death, as the Greenskin hunters did. But he was engaged in the Great Quest: the life of the Childlike Empress and of all Fantastica was at stake. He had no right to give up.”

This quotation reveals the strength of Atreyu’s character. Although unsure of his path, Atreyu accepts his role as hero and views his mission as important to the whole kingdom of Fantastica rather than to just himself. In many ways, Atreyu is presented as an epic hero—a nearly perfect citizen who is determined to save his culture.

“From now on you’ll succeed in everything you attempt. Because I’m a luckdragon. Even when I was caught in the web, I didn’t give up hope. And as you see, I was right.”

Falkor, the luckdragon, here exemplifies his outlook on life and provides his perspective on Atreyu’s mission. Because Falkor believes he is lucky and because he refuses to admit defeat, his hopeful values influence Atreyu’s endeavors, allowing the young hero to view his world and his role in it as blessed and fortunate.

“He had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest—he had seen beautiful things and horrible things—but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.”

In this passage, Atreyu reacts to the sphinxes that guard the first gate on his route to the Southern Oracle. While Atreyu primarily functions as the archetype of a hero, here his humanity and growth as a character shine through as he realizes that not all creatures or objects can be defined in binary terms.

“What he saw was something quite unexpected, which wasn’t the least bit terrifying, but which baffled him completely. He saw a fat little boy with a pale face—a boy his own age—and this little boy was sitting on a pile of mats, reading a book.”

This quotation is an example of anagnorisis, or a moment in literature when the protagonist discovers their own identity or realizes the true nature of their situation. In this case, Atreyu realizes that the boy he sees in the mirror is the key to curing the Empress. Likewise, the scene represents the first true inkling that Bastian receives regarding the possibility of his active role within the story. Although Atreyu is baffled by his vision, this moment thus marks Bastian’s physical entry into the story world that he has been reading about.

“Fear gripped the luckdragon and his rider, and at first they changed direction to avoid looking at the horror. But, strange as it may seem, horror loses its power to frighten when repeated too often. And since the patches of Nothing became more and more frequent, the travelers were gradually getting used to them.”

Here Atreyu and Falkor describe their increased desensitization to the Nothing. Their inability to feel full horror, far from suggesting that the danger is becoming less potent, actually serves to emphasize that the threat is growing. It also represents yet another moment in which Ende comments upon one of the many aspects of human nature in the real world: in this case, the tendency of humans to become accustomed to even the most terrible of situations when exposed to such horrors too often.

“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.”

Gmork tells Atreyu that his fear of Fantastica resides in his and the Manipulators’ inability to control human imagination. The destruction of human creativity would allow for him and his kind to alter ideologies and enforce their own agenda. This statement establishes Gmork as the antagonist, for his views conflict with not only Bastian’s creativity and Atreyu’s attempt to allow magic’s continued existence, but also with the author’s own philosophy that imagination as a key component of human power and beauty.

“Enfeebled and trembling, the innermost heart of Fantastica was still resisting the inexorable encroachment of the Nothing.”

This quotation is a classic example of personification. By endowing the kingdom of Fantastica with a heart, fear, and an individual identity separate from the creations who populate it, Ende renders the danger of the Nothing even more apparent and emphasizes that the death of this world is akin to the death of a living, breathing entity.

“I am well aware of what I owe you. All your sufferings were necessary. I sent you on the Great Quest—not for the sake of the message you would bring me, but because that was the only way of calling our savior.”

Here, the Childlike Empress explains Atreyu’s mission and sufferings as the means through which she called Bastian to their world. This moment is an epiphany for Atreyu, allowing him to understand his past actions as being necessary to save Fantastica, despite the Empress’s knowledge of how she could be cured.

“Just as our two worlds can injure each other, they can also make each other whole again.”

The Empress’s words point to the connections between Fantastica and the human realm. However, this statement also functions as an allegory, as Ende intends for readers to grasp the links between the human imagination and what happens in our contemporary world. If Fantastica symbolizes creativity and invention, the loss or flourishing of these talents will alter human society and culture.

“In that moment Bastian made a profound discovery. You wish for something, you’ve wanted it for years, and you’re sure you want it, as long as you know you can’t have it. But if all at once it looks as though your wish might come true, you suddenly find yourself wishing you had never wished for any such thing.”

In this quotation, Bastian has an epiphany and realizes that often what people long for might not be what they really want. In the first half of the novel, he knows that he wants to give the Empress a name but is scared to do so. Likewise, his adventures in the second half of the novel illustrate the various ways in which his own wishes lead him astray and cause him to lose all sense of who he is and what he truly wants from life.

“‘No,’ [Grograman] said in his deep, rumbling voice. ‘It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.’”

Here Grograman provides Bastian with his own interpretation of the amulet’s directive. The mention of the difficulty of discovering what Bastian truly wants also functions as foreshadowing, allowing readers to discern that the boy is on a difficult journey of self-discovery that will put the boy through many perils before he is finally able to resolve his own inner conflicts.

“The amulet gives you great power, it makes all your wishes come true, but at the same time it takes something away: your memory of your world.”

AURYN is represented here as a paradox. Each time Bastian wishes for something, he must rely on his knowledge of himself and his memories. Yet, as each wish is fulfilled, Bastian loses those memories. Therefore, the more he wishes, the less likely his wishes are to be clear representations of his true, innermost desires.

“He wasn’t innocent, he wasn’t harmless, and he’d soon show them. He wanted to be dangerous, dangerous and feared. Feared by all—including Atreyu and Falkor.”

At this point in the narrative, Bastian’s desires have led him so far astray that he wishes to develop a new personality that inspires fear. He wants to control his environment, and his new wishes, rather than helping others or innocently altering his physical appearance or character, highlight his growing selfishness.

“Atreyu was fighting not for himself, but for his friend, whom he was trying to save by defeating him.”

This sentence clearly reveals Atreyu’s selflessly heroic character in contrast with the growing darkness of Bastian’s desires and actions. Although Bastian believes that Atreyu fights him because the Fantastican boy wants to control AURYN and the kingdom, Atreyu puts his own desires aside in order to stop Bastian from destroying himself and losing his opportunity to return to the human realm as a more loving and self-aware individual.

“Thus the little boy made a long journey from one wish to the next, and each one came true. And each fulfillment led to a new wish. There were not only good wishes but bad ones as well, but the Childlike Empress drew no distinction; in her eyes all things in her empire are equally good and important.”

The Empress here is characterized by her acceptance of all aspects of her kingdom, even those which human codes of ethics might deem to be “evil.” She does not sit in judgment on Bastian and his decisions; instead, she views all actions and occurrences as valuable. This same idea is expressed through her symbol, AURYN, which contains a black snake and a white snake and emphasizes that both the dark and light sides of all beings are necessary parts of the whole.

“‘No,’ [Dame Eyola] said. ‘I don’t believe so. You went the way of wishes and that is never straight. You went the long way around, but that was your way.’”

Dame Eyola here responds to Bastian’s self-doubt and belief that his actions harmed Fantastica. She disagrees and reiterates one of the central ideas of the novel—that people need to be free to use their imaginations in their own ways. While Bastian’s wishes did not always help him on his path homeward, she asserts that one of the most important things aspects of his journey was his determination to make his own choices.

“‘Nothing is lost,’ [Dame Eyola] said. ‘Everything is transformed.’”

Dame Eyola’s promises to Bastian hint at the final events in the novel, for Ende uses this character’s very existence as a plant that cyclically dies and regenerates to foreshadow Bastian’s loss of memories and regeneration in the Water of Life. Similarly, her continually shifting house, which grows and changes in accordance with Bastian’s changing needs as her surrogate “son,” symbolizes the ways in which human children shift, change, and grow as they mature into adulthood.

“All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams.”

Yor’s description of the geological layers of Fantastica functions as a representation of human creative endeavors. While Yor literally speaks of the underground that makes up his world, these forgotten dreams are often what writers and artists attempt to find and reimagine in the human world. Thus, imaginative creations are often based on the real-life desires and wishes of people. The forgotten dreams of Fantastica, which are represented as isinglass pictures, symbolize the buried creative spark in humans that needs to be unearthed in order to be fully realized.

“He saw tears in his father’s eyes. And he knew that he had brought him the Water of Life after all.”

For Bastian, the tears of his father represent healing and the ability to express and release feelings of grief. Just as Fantastica’s Water of Life symbolizes both renewal and love, the renewed capacity of Bastian’s father to cry shows that the relationship between the boy and his father is restored.