The Princess Bride Analysis

The Hero’s Journey in The Princess Bride The Princess Bride is a film that is a framework tale about a young boy with a cold, who is visited by his grandfather. His grandfather reads him a book entitled “The Princess Bride” in order to brighten the boy’s spirits. This book unfolds a comedic, yet heroic, journey experienced by a man named Westley, which follows Joseph Campbell’s archetypal Hero’s Journey model. The character Westley is considered the hero in The Princess Bride. The story begins with him in the ordinary world, which is working as a farm boy. He falls in love with the girl running the farm, named Buttercup. Westley’s call to adventure is sailing the seas to earn money in order to marry her. A few years pass by, and Buttercup

Prior to hearing this story, the boy is annoyed with his grandfather, doesn’t want his company and is grossed out by the idea of love and kissing. By the end of the story, the boy is comfortable with the kissing parts and asks his grandfather to come back and read the story again. The book functions as a myth, in that it is a “living story” providing morals and values (Miller-Thayer 2017). The grandfather states that his father has read this story to him, making it evident that this is story is a form of oral tradition. The grandfather is informally enculturating the boy by teaching him the values in the story, helping him through a minor transition of

Although the film may not have religious influence, it does possess some tenets of religion. The characters in the story have some belief in the supernatural, since they visit Miracle Max. He can be seen as a part-time religious specialist, like a shaman, that performs “healing rituals” (Miller-Thayer 2017). All cultures have some type of religion, and therefore religious specialists, making these ideas culturally relative and reflecting cultural