The Neverending Story By Michael Ende

1345 Words3 Pages

Introduction
Why, this was all about him! And it was the Neverending Story. He, Bastian, was a character in the book which until now he had thought he was reading. And heaven knew who else might be reading it at the exact same time, also supposing himself to be just a reader (Ende 165).
The passage above comes from The Neverending Story, written by the beloved German children’s fiction writer Michael Ende in 1979 with an immediate success (Petzold 209). The Neverending Story inaugurated a pivotal paradigm in fantasy fiction for young adults in Germany. The scene in which the protagonist Bastian realizes that he, in fact, belongs to a story he was reading, is a significant moment of literary deception that transcends our previous method of one-way …show more content…

While addressing the reader-text relationship of children, Ende embraced the Romantic conception of creativity that emphasizes imaginative self amid the dehumanising modern world. The reading child is a common archetype in modern fantasy fiction in English-speaking countries, ranging from Roald Dahl’s Matilda to Lucy Maude Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. A particular subset of metafictive texts: children's self-conscious books about storytelling, is prevalent as well, as pointed out by Claudia Nelson (22); however, Ende’s The Neverending Story act as a celebration of a child’s imagination and storytelling that transcend diegetic boundaries. This is especially the case with two contemporary works of German fantasy fiction enjoying as much cult following as Ende’s novel: Inkheart (2003) and The City of Dreaming Books (2004). What distinguishes these novels from other fantastical stories of travelling between two worlds, such as the ones by Philip Pullman, J.K. Rowling, or Neil Gaiman, are the …show more content…

The bookworm protagonists have graced the children’s literature around world across all genres, presumably from the pessimistic propositions of declining children’s readership. Although child readers in these works of fiction enjoy lifelike illusions with words by their reading experience, they are only at the receiving end of the book. Their joy comes from their consumption of literature and a temporary comfort, away from the unwelcoming reality. Matilda, for instance, begins reading on her own after her boredom due to her parents’ neglecting of her. Michael Ende brought a child reader’s role to a greater

Open Document