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The Princess Bride Characters and Analysis
The Princess Bride Characters and Analysis
The princess bride essay
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“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” The Princess Bride is a bold tale that starts off on a small farm, and from there takes us to a royal castle, up the Cliffs of Insanity, through a Fire Swamp, and creates excitement with sword-fighting, hunting, poisoning, and even a trip to “The Machine.” One thing it makes clear throughout is that life is not and never will be fair. William Goldman’s modern work of fiction, The Princess Bride, draws upon archetypes to render the material new. Goldman especially uses character archetypes such as Star-Crossed Lovers, Damsel in Distress, and the Devil Figure to render his material new.
Buttercup and Westley prove to be the Star-Crossed Lovers for Westley dies not once, but twice for his love. Westley faced the real Dread Pirate Roberts and even “The Machine,” dying truly only once. Buttercup was also willing to give her own life rather than to be with anyone other than Westley. They fit the archetype because they were both destined to be together, but can’t and still prove that their love will prevail. It is ...
In literature, satire allows readers or viewers to recognize how ridiculous things come about. Satire permits a reader or viewer to express a certain feeling. Usually this feeling evolves around hilarity. Within the satire category, exaggeration and irony exist. Exaggeration usually emphasizes something beyond the original intention. Irony expresses the opposite of the original meaning.
Film analysis with a critical eye can give the viewer how animation giant Disney uses literary element to relay key messages to the audience. Walt Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” is a perfect example how different literary theories like ‘the Marxist theory’ and ‘Archetypal theory’ can be embedded in the simplest of the fairy tales. The different literary elements in the movie, shows a person how characters like ‘the banker’ and the setting of the houses helps to portray the socio-economic differences in New Orleans at that time. Applying ‘the Marxist theory’ and ‘the Archetypal theory’ to the plot, characters and the setting, shows how movies can be a medium to confront social issues and to prove that all fairy tales are of the same base.
Westley is of a humble origin- a farm boy working on Buttercup’s farm. He loves her and she loves him. Whenever Buttercup ask Westley for a favor he replies with “As you wish.” He really means, I love you. However the mystery remains of what had happened to his parents, was he an orphan or did he leave his family. Westley had set sail in the seas to seek out his fortune to have enough money to marry Buttercup. His ship was attacked by Dread Pirate Roberts, which is why everyone assumed Westley was dead for five whole years. Since the love of his life was kidnapped, Westley set off to save Buttercup and on the way he encountered struggles/ trials, helpers, thresholds/tests and helpers along the
“As you wish,” said by the Farm boy,westley, a main character who ties the story of love,romance,and action together. The book The Princess Bride by William Goldman is a story of two lovers, Buttercup and Westley. After Westley dies on a boat by The Dread Pirate Roberts, the King of Florin, Prince Humperdinck, started searching for love. After a visit from the count and countess they decide that Buttercup is worthy of being the queen. Even though Buttercup says she will never love The Prince, she still agrees to the marriage. Soon after Buttercup is introduced to Florin she gets kidnapped by the Turk, the Sicilian, and the Spaniard. They all figure out that they are being followed by the man in black, which leads to the adventure part of the story. In The Princess Bride, William Goldman uses many different archetypes like the damsel in distress, the task, and the magic weapon which are archetypes that have been used for centuries and renders them new to make the story flow together and more interesting.
Westley’s dedication to Buttercup motivated him throughout the story. He admitted the following to her: "I have taught myself languages because of you. I have made my body strong because
Everyone remembers the nasty villains that terrorize the happy people in fairy tales. Indeed, many of these fairy tales are defined by their clearly defined good and bad archetypes, using clichéd physical stereotypes. What is noteworthy is that these fairy tales are predominately either old themselves or based on stories of antiquity. Modern stories and epics do not offer these clear definitions; they force the reader to continually redefine the definitions of morality to the hero that is not fully good and the villain that is not so despicable. From Dante’s Inferno, through the winding mental visions in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, spiraling through the labyrinth in Kafka’s The Trial, and culminating in Joyce’s abstract realization of morality in “The Dead,” authors grapple with this development. In the literary progression to the modern world, the increasing abstraction of evil from its classic archetype to a foreign, supernatural entity without bounds or cure is strongly suggestive of the pugnacious assault on individualism in the face of literature’s dualistic, thematically oligopolistic heritage.
Everyone has foolishly deceived themselves when reading fairy tales. Morgenstern’s satire in The Princess Bride contradicts many fairy tale elements. Prince Charming is non-existent, true love is a made up concept, and nothing ends with a happily ever after.
This essay explores the role of women in Homer's Odyssey, James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Derrick Walcott's Omeros (1990), epics written in very different historical periods. Common to all three epics are women as the transforming figure in a man's life, both in the capacity of a harlot and as wife.
Satire with a funny twist. In the novel The Princess Bride, William Goldman satirizes both fairy tales and the standard literary process through his characters and their actions. Westley, a poor farmer, falls in love with the far from perfect maiden, Buttercup, but has to sail away in order to find his fortunes. Years later, Buttercup, thinking that Westley abandoned her, is forcibly engaged to Prince Humperdinck, a cruel and calculating man. Vizzini, Fezzik, and Inigo, three mysterious kidnappers, abduct the princess in hopes of causing war between the great nations of Guilder and Florin. These events and characters mirror those in a common fairy tale, but with many twists to them. The author, William Goldman, uses both his role as the editor and writer to bring the fairy tale to new light, in order to ridicule the traditional literary structure. He is not actually editing his own novel, in fact he is intentionally including annotations that perhaps would normally be part of an editing process, but are included in The Princess Bride to mock tropes of other fairy tales and the literary process as a whole. Through the portrayal of his characters as archetypes and their flaws, in addition to his unorthodox writing style which allows his to annotate directly in the novel, Goldman satirizes both the literary process and the standard fairy tale.
Buttercup after also defies the stereotypes. She stands up to Humperdinck, and also recognized the one time when he was lying that he let it show in his eyes. She stood up for herself, which isn’t what stereotypical females do. Stereotypical females are generally weak, whiny, and dumb. Buttercup is strong, smart, and has courage. She doesn’t care what other gossipy women say,
The Hero Journey undergoes different points in someone’s life. In 1949 a man named Joseph Campbell shared Mythic and Archetypal principals with the world. Christopher Vogler fulfilled all of the Hero Journey steps. In the Princess Bride film directed by Robert Reiner is based on the book written by William Goldman. In the film Westley the farm boy leaves the farm, and goes on an adventure to provide for his true love. Westley is a Campbellion a Hero because the story has Mythic and Archetypal principals and follows most of the twelve stages of the Hero Journey.Westley begins his Hero Journey with a call to adventure out of his ordinary world.Westley is a farm boy, who works for a beautiful girl named Buttercup. The farm is filled with animals, and orders from Buttercup. The only wodds Westley says is “As you wish” (Princess Bride). Westley shows that he loves Buttercup but does not want to live on the farm anymore so that he can get a better life for the both of them. When Buttercup realizes she truly loves Westley, and wants to spend the rest of her life with him. Buttercup would tell Westley to do things just so he could say the magic words. “ Farm boy fetch me that pitcher” ( Princess Bride). This shows that Butercup loved Westley even though she did not show it, and this would send him on his adventure. Tom Hutchsion expressed in his article that “ There is a call to a new experience. This might appear like good news or bad news” (Hutchsion, Tom). Westley does not refuse the call because he wants to provide a better life for Buttercup. Westley entered his special world by getting on the ship, and starting his new life. While on the ship Dread Pirate Roberts keeps Westley on the ship as a passenger, and trains him, and he becom...
The Star-Crossed Lovers archetype is used to render the story of The Princess Bride new because, at the end of the book, it is now stated whether or not Buttercup and Westley will get to live happily ever after or not. In most stories the author writes a definite ending, but Goldman doesn't, he leaves the ending up to the reader when he writes “Did they make it? Was the pirate ship there? You can answer that for yourself, but, for me, I say yes it was" (Goldman 357). In some ways though, Goldman uses the Star-Crossed Lovers archetype more traditionally, in that Buttercup and Westley love each other and want nothing more to be together, but many obstacles stand in the way of that happening. One of those obstacles is that Prince Humperdinck will go to any length and do almost anything to prevent the lovers from being together including keeping the love letters that he told Buttercup to write to Westley, which results in Westl...
It is likely for one to assume that a classic piece of literature set in a fantasy oriented stage will have no merits to the youths of today. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, however, with its crafty of usage symbolism, displays its relevance to issues that often trouble teens. As the story progresses from a children’s tale to an epic, the main character Bilbo undergoes a series of development, his experiences often overlapping with ordinary people. Reading the Hobbit will provide teens with opportunities of exploring the importance of several common but serious topics. People may encounter many of the themes presented in the book elsewhere repeatedly, but it’s possible that they never appreciated the applications it might have on themselves. When teens read the Hobbit, they perceive it as a simple fiction of adventure. Under proper guiding, they will be able to recognize and utilize the lessons of the Hobbit, and improve their attitudes and ideas about life.
The idea of duality permeates the literary world. Certain contradictory commonplace themes exist throughout great works, creation versus destruction, light versus dark, love versus lust, to name a few, and this trend continues in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The pivotal pair in this text however, is monotony versus individuality. The opposing entities of this pairing greatly contrast against each other in Frankenstein, but individuality proves more dominant of the two in this book.
J.R.R. Tolkien's concept of too much power is summed up by Lord Acton when he once said, "Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely." In Tolkien's first book of his fantasy based trilogy, Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Rings tells a story of a quest to destroy a powerful ring throughout Tolkien's created "Middle Earth". This quest was headed by a "Hobbit" named Frodo Baggins who, in the end, becomes corrupted by power himself. This corruption begins when Frodo uses his ring to become invisible over and over again to escape certain situations. The quest to destroy the powerful "Ruling Ring" forms the basis for this story.