Fantasy worlds have always been a safe space for children to explore their imagination and inner ideals. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice goes on a journey in the imaginary world of Wonderland. Carroll represents coming-of-age lessons in Alice through symbolism. She learns how to interact with others and deal with her physical identity. Similarly, Bastian enters the world of Fantastica in The Neverending Story, where his journey teaches him to treasure his relationships with others and guide him to recognise his true will. Due to Alice‘s vague and complex nature which has led it to be classified as nonsense literature, there is no clear moral takeaway unlike The Neverending Story. In this essay I will argue that while Alice has no clear moral takeaway, the imaginary landscapes of fantasy worlds provide a stage for Alice and Bastian to grow and gain life experience.
When Alice falls into Wonderland, she is forced to learn how to interact with other people through her interactions with creatures. This is most clearly seen in her awkward, stilted conversation with the Mouse. She humourously tries to speak to the mouse in archaic English, calling it “O mouse” twice (Carroll 24). When that fails, Alice further demonstrates her social ineptness when she copies a phrase from her brother’s Latin textbook, amo, amas, amat by comically saying “A mouse—of a mouse—to a mouse—a mouse—O mouse!” It is quite clear that Alice is out of her comfort zone, trapped in Wonderland and trying to speak to a mouse in Latin. She makes matters worse when she tells the Mouse: “And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you’d take a fancy to her if you could only see her and she’s such a capital one for catching mice”, causing it to start “trembling down to the end of his tail” (27). Alice displays a lack of social etiquette by committing the faux pas of talking about her cat to a mouse, who is naturally afraid of cats. While Carroll frames the encounter in a comedic light, Alice is nevertheless placed in an uncomfortable situation which she learns from: Alice does not speak of cats in the Mouse’s presence for the rest of the novel. Alice learns from her interaction with the Mouse not to mention taboo or sensitive subjects around others.
Like Alice, Bastian learns social skills in Fantastica. But Bastian’s problems are far more nuanced and complex. The fantasy world gives Bastian a stage to learn how to forget his insecurities and treasure his relationships with others.Bastian’s possession of AURYN gives him the power to make all his wishes come true, wishes stemming from “real-world insecurities” (Schaefer 5), alienating his only friends Atreyu and Falkor. The most egregious example of Bastian’s misuse of power is when he feels that his friends Atreyu and Falkor are “treating him like a child” (Ende 125), motivating him to create Xayide, a manifestation of his insecurities. Even though he has AURYN and is hailed as a saviour in Fantastica, Bastian’s old insecurities from his real life remain. Bastian in the real world is a bullied outcast, “burdened right from the start of the book with the weight of his personal experiences” (Schaefer 4). It is natural then that Xayide, a manifestation of Bastian’s insecurities, manipulates him into distrusting Atreyu, recreating his real-life experience of isolation in the real world. After banishing Atreyu, Xayide whispers to Bastian: “ou have achieved true greatness Now you’ve stopped caring for anything; now nothing can move you.” (Ende 142) As Bastian’s only friends, Atreyu and Falkor, are also his equals. Bastian’s jealousy and fear of them leads him to banish them so that nobody would be his equal and question his decisions. In the end, Bastian’s insecurities from the real world, carried over into Fantastica, ruin his friendship with Atreyu.
It is only through Bastian’s true journey, his quest to find himself, that he learns to forgo his insecurities and treasure his friendships. Tatjana Schaefer states in her essay “’Do what you wish or wish what you want?’ Michael Ende’s Fantastica and Rudolf Steiner’s Moral Imagination”:
Ende is exploring what wish Bastian will eventually be left with. Once he has no real-world memories left, we can assume that any wish he makes truly comes from conceptual thinking and intuition, like Atreyu’s.
As Bastian uses his wishes, his real-world memories disappear as well. Bastian’s bad memories from the real world, which cause his insecurities, fade away as well. By the time Bastian reaches the snowfields outside Yor’s hut, he has shed away most of his memories as well as his insecurities. When Bastian sees Atreyu, he removes AURYN from his neck, laying it “in the snow before Atreyu” (Ende 169). Bastian demonstrates Schaefer’s “conceptual thinking and intuition”, as he recognises that his true will is to be Atreyu’s friend once more. Ende writes that Bastian “no longer wanted to be the greatest, stronger or cleverest. He longed to be loved just as he was” (156). Bastian is no longer inhibited by his earlier insecurities about his body and self, hence he forgoes the fantastical power of AURYN which makes him handsome and brave. Bastian’s true wish is to be loved by Bastian as a friend. Hence we see how the fantasy world gives Bastian a stage to learn how to forget his insecurities and treasure his relationships with others.
Alice affirms her physical identity through her adventures with physical transformations in Wonderland. Alice goes through a variety of absurd physical transformations, symbolic of puberty, during her journey through Wonderland. When Alice enters Wonderland, she drinks a potion that makes her shrink to a tiny size. After that, she eats a cake which makes her “more than nine feet high” (Carroll 16). She grows so tall that she begins to talk to her feet: “Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears?” (15). Alice’s growth is so disconcerting to her that she considers her feet as a separate organism. Alice is anxious and frustrated with her body which seems to act on its own free will. The changing nature of her body causes Alice to question her identity: One of the motifs of Alice in Wonderland is Alice’s puzzlement over her identity. Alice asks herself:
How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. Was I the same when I got up this morning? But if I’m not the same, the next question is, ‘Who in the world am I?’ (19)
Alice’s body rapidly changes, making her wonder if she is “the same” person today as she was yesterday. Her questioning of “ho in the world am I?” points towards an identity crisis, common among teenagers going through puberty. Later, when the Caterpillar asks Alice who she is, she replies that she is not herself anymore because of all the “different sizes” she has morphed into in Wonderland (60), Carroll implies here that Alice has lost track of her identity, by mimicking the process of puberty where the childrens’ bodies are continuously changing. Their continuous growth makes it difficult for them to make sense of who they are, and process their consistently developing bodies, which in turn contributes to a sense of disorientation in trying to define her identity. As Alice is still a child, her sense of self is not yet fully developed. It is no wonder, then, that she experiences an identity crisis from the changes in her body.
Eventually, Alice learns to come to terms with her physical identity through her adventures in Wonderland. She learns how to control her size from the Caterpillar (68), freeing her from the anxiety of not knowing what her body will be like after another transformation. In the penultimate scene of the novel, Alice grows to her “full size” in the courtroom and defying the Queen. This growth back to Alice’s original real-world size symbolises her affirmation of her identity and acceptance of her physical form after her journeys in Wonderland.
Similar to Alice, Bastian accepts his physical identity through his journeys in Fantastica. Bastian in the real world is chubby and short, a “fat little boy” (Ende 2). Bastian is very insecure about his physical appearance. His unhappiness with his physical body is most apparent when he tells the Moon Child that he is not a suitable hero to save Fantastica because he is not “strong and brave and handsome” (83). Evidently, Bastian believes that qualities like courage and wisdom, qualities a hero should possess, must come along with a handsome exterior. His insecurity about his outward appearance leads him to believe that he is inadequate to be the saviour and hero of Fantastica, despite the Moon Child addressing him so. This insecurity leads him to wish a new appearance for himself, “slender and wonderfully handsome noble, manly – and lean” (84), an appearance Bastian considers befitting of a hero. Bastian’s cloaks his real physical form with an imaginary one. Ende makes it very apparent that Bastian loathes his short and chubby exterior, despising his physical identity. Like Alice, Bastian has problems accepting his physical identity. But unlike Alice his problem with his body is not caused by physical transformations in his body, but out of disgust for his own physical form.
Bastian comes to terms with his physical identity when he forgoes the wishes granted to him by Childlike Empress to go back to his own world (170). As Bastian enters the fountain of the Water of Life, Fantastica’s “gifts” to him fade away. Bastian, the “strong, handsome fearless hero” returns to his “small, fat, timid” self (171). It can be seen that Bastian sheds his loathing of his physical self as he is forced to give up his false appearance to go back to the real world. Even his clothes fade away from his body. Fantastica forces Bastian to adopt his truest, most basic physical form. Bastian no longer feels shame or insecurity about his body. He is filled with “the joy of being himself the very person he wanted to be. If he had been free to choose, he would have chosen to be no one else.” (171) At this emotional peak of the novel, Bastian reaches full contentment. He no longer wishes to be “strong, brave and handsome” (83). Bastian is contented with being himself. Through his adventures in Fantastica, Bastian sheds his insecurities about his physical appearance and learns to accept it. This contentment translates to Bastian’s acceptance of his real physical identity.
Both Alice and Bastian grow emotionally, taking away lessons from their fantastical adventures. Fantasies “relate us meaningfully to the internal and external world and enable us to come to terms with the past and present” (Bosmajian 2). Indeed, the fantasy worlds of Wonderland and Fantastica have given Bastian and Alice relevant lessons applicable to the “external”, real world in how they learn about their relationships with others. In Bastian’s case, his journeys in Fantastica let him accept his “past and present” in the form of his physical identity. The Neverending Story ends on a clear note, where Bastian recognises his true will.
However, while both characters grow as people and gain knowledge from their experiences, Alice in Wonderland lacks a clear moral of the story which is atypical of children’s literature. Alice stands up against the absurdity of the Queen’s courtroom as she grows to her “full size”, symbolising that she has accepted her physical identity. She tells the Queen that she is “nothing but a pack of cards” (Carroll 25), showing that Alice has outgrown the nonsense of Wonderland. Immediately she is attacked by the cards and leaves Wonderland, indicating that she has outgrown her fantasies. Carroll only alludes to Alice’s mental growth in this scene and that she is too old for childish fantasies. The ending is very abrupt as well: we are told that Alice’s adventures were only part of her imagination and that she has not actually grown up at all (25). As this essay attempts to read Alice in Wonderland as a bildungsroman, we recognise that Alice has distilled some valuable lessons from her fantasies, such as her lessons about social interaction and physical identity. Yet we cannot conclude on a “moral of the story” for Alice.
In contrast with Alice in Wonderland, The Neverending Story has a very clear central theme and moral: that one should find and follow their true will. This is reflected by Bastian’s true quest in the latter half of the novel to find his true will. The moral of The Neverending Story is “nothing less than an attempt to free man from the unredeemed repetitions of his life caught in the cycle of time and to lift him to the level of a heightened reality for the purpose of regaining his true identity.” (Schueler 4). According to Schueler, The Neverending Story’s symbolisms of the ouroboros (Ende 169) allude to infinity and endless suffering. Similarly, the humans in the City of Old Emperors repeat mundane tasks ad infinitum. The Old Emperors represent people who are unable to find their “true identity” and are condemned to an endless cycle of suffering (151). Bastian’s goal is to find his true will and break out of the neverending “cycle of time” lest he suffer the fate of the emperors before him. Bastian’s experiences with the Yskalnari, a community with no sense of self and Dame Eyola form a redemption narrative in The Neverending Story in which he is led to recognise his true will: “to be capable of loving” (162). Bastian wishes to reciprocate the unconditional maternal love he receives from Dame Eyola, not only to her, but to the loved ones he has forgotten, such as his father. Bastian finds newfound feelings of compassion for his father who is symbolically trapped in an “impenetrable block of ice” (Ende 167). Bastian recognises that his father is “numbed with grief” (Bosmajian 3), symbolised by the numbing cold ice. His grief can only be assuaged by one person – Bastian. We see him accomplish this goal at the end of the story when Bastian’s father’s eyes well up in tears and emotion (174).
At the end of Alice in Wonderland, Alice is carefree and seemingly unchanged. On the other hand, The Neverending Story ends with Bastian finding his true will and using it to help his father. We observe how Bastian navigates the “internal landscape” (Schaefer 5) of his fantasies, allowing him to realise his true will of learning how to love and be loved. Bastian’s recognition of his true will allows him and his father to break out of his neverending cycles of suffering. Hence we see that while Alice and Bastian have takeaway lessons from their journeys to a fantasy world, Alice lacks a clear moral.
In conclusion, we see that the fantasy worlds of Wonderland and Fantasia allow Alice and Bastian to navigate their inner selves and learn lessons about relationships and identity. While Alice lacks a clear moral of the story, it nevertheless teaches valuable lessons that imagination and fantasy play a key role in the learning process.
Works Cited
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Project Gutenberg, 2008. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-h/11-h.htm
Ende, Michael, and Roswitha Quadflieg. The Neverending Story. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1983. Print.
Schueler, H. J. “Michael Ende’s Die unendliche Geschicte and the Recovery of Myth through Romance.” Seminar 23, no. 4 (November 1987): 355-74.
Schaefer, Tatjana. “‘Do what you wish or wish what you want?’ Michael Ende’s Fantastica and Rudolf Steiner’s moral imagination.” Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, vol. 18, no. 2, 2008, p. 28+. Gale Academic OneFile, http://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A196018660/AONE?u=nantecun&sid=AONE&xid=47f99405. Accessed 13 Nov. 2020.
Bosmajian, Hamida. “Grief and Its Displacement through Fantasy in Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 1986, 1986, p. 120-123. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/chq.1986.0011.