The Never Ending Story Taught Me Everything I Know About Life, Loss and Capitalism

The following is a series of terribly exaggerated metaphors — in the form of 80s fantasy animatronics, underscored by swirling ink clouds and cheesy keyboard music — about life, loss and capitalism. I also want to tell you something very important up front: refusing your daughter’s request to name your golden retriever Falkor is a crime against humanity. Fair warning dads, this will never be forgiven.

The Never Ending Story has had more of an impact on my life than perhaps is cool to admit, but here it goes. You all remember in elementary school when you could quote every single Simpsons episode that existed? Remember how that made you kinda like a phenomenon among your classmates? Remember how being able to draw Bart saying, “Don’t have a cow, man!” was absolutely the only cool thing about you? Me neither. I do remember, though, that using quotes from The Never Ending Story, like my favorite, “We don’t care whether or not we care.” in exchanges with other kids on the playground had the opposite effect.

Remember reading books for grown ups that were thicker than the width of your kid head, which was always spinning fantasies about being a knight and daring friends to duels with dowels you found in your parent’s moldy basement? Remember when your grandma taught you the longest insult in Shakespeare and you thought it was a super great idea to use it against your arch nemesis Tommy? Remember screaming at him, “You nave! You rascal! You eater of broken meats!” Me neither.

Remember believing in magic and dreams and the innocent hope that what you imagined, what you dreamed, what you loved mattered? I do. And I remember seeing Bastian, the main character in The Never Ending Story, bullied by a bunch of boys, stumbling into a bookstore and thinking, Oh. My. God. This is it. This is where the magic happens. This is where we matter — the hopelessly nerdy Lit kids who read books the size of their heads.

Either you were legitimately traumatized by: 1. The evil wolf Gmork, or 2. The scene where Artax, the hero Atreyu’s trusty horse, is sucked into a vat of muddy, black, existential sadness. And, I totally get that. I admit, Artax’s death still plunges me into a crippling fear of loss. But, hopefully you can put this all aside long enough to hear what The Never Ending Story has to say.

In the opening scenes of the movie, when Bastian, a pre-teen boy (who I acknowledge, as a 40 year old lesbian, I kinda dress like?) wakes from a dream about his dead mother, he wanders into the kitchen. He hopes to find solace in telling his father he’s dreamed of her again. His father is drinking eggs, raw eggs mixed in a blender. He lovingly exerts on Bastian the capitalist pressure to be realistic, productive and conform despite his pain and loss. In his raw egg eating, capitalist dad’s eyes, Bastian’s dream of his mother is far less important than the practicality of “getting on with it” and doing elementary school homework.

“You have to keep your feet on the ground,” his dad says, trying to wrench Bastian from a world where dreams, loss and pain have meaning and transformative power.

My kid self watching this movie, held tight to Bastian’s dream, like it was a sacred parcel he and I were carrying. I knew the unicorns he drew in his notebook, which of course drew negative attention from his teachers, immediately threw me in his lot. The dreamer, the creator — sometimes afraid of our own creations — looking for the courage to believe in ourselves. To believe that even though the world, bent on conformity and productivity might try to tear us apart, our imagination had value.

Even mysterious bookstore owners that apparently are skilled in reverse psychology will look at the Bastians of the world with squinty eyes after quizzing them about the kind of books they read, and tell them that “This book…” This magical book that is scary and real and dangerous, “is not for you.” But we know better, little Bastian fresh out of a garbage can, put there by bullies, knew better. In what is a surprisingly brazen act of theft, Bastian steals this scary book (but don’t worry, he will return it..I think).

At the heart of The Never Ending Story, which is the book Bastian steals with an emblem of two shiny snakes eating each other’s tails on the cover, is this: The Childlike Empress in a world called Fantasia is sick. The Empress can be seen as a metaphor for your soul — your childlike, purest, soul. And the soul of our world, too. It is The Nothing that is making her sick. The Nothing we find out later is what’s left when people have no hopes and dreams and hairy hedge fund managers like the wolf Gmork want control and power.

Basitan’s world (aka our world) is sick because a bunch of capitalists are drinking eggs, freakin’ raw eggs, and trying to tell you that your dreams are not practical or productive — your suffering is meaningless against the gears of progress, and movies like The Never Ending Story shouldn’t be looked too deeply into. Granted, I just added that last one. But, I swear I’ve heard someone say that.

The Hero’s journey became popular in the 70s and 80s, brought to the forefront of culture by people like Joseph Campbell. So it is not surprising that The Never Ending Story screenplay uses this story line a little maddeningly formulaically sometimes. But I am able to accept this because there is a character called the Rock Biter who eats rocks like they were delicious sushi. This makes me less angry about everything.

When we meet the mythical hero of the book Bastian is reading, Atreyu (who is also a young boy) a man with a pointy head surrounded by circus elephants on the top of the Ivory Tower (that looks like an LED cake topper) asks him on a quest and say’s this, “You must go alone, you must leave all your weapons behind.” To strip a hero of their weapons is no small thing. What hero movie do you know of where they say, Rambo, give me your guns and be on your way to save the world? This is a nod to non violence against others and against self. If you are to save your soul, the soul of the world, the Empress, and do it right, there’s only one way: compassion.

Trigger warning for those ages 35–45: We’re gonna talk about the horse. The loss of Artax, Atreyu’s trusty horse, in the Swamps of Sadness is something that has stuck with a lot of people of my generation. It awakens an ancient and collective human understanding of the deep pain of watching someone you love lose hope. It was, for me, a representation of a truth, the truth of grief. It is also a reminder that in many ways we must go alone on these kinds of journeys. That no one is the key to our success but us.

Morla, the wisest being in Fantasia who resides in the center of the Swamps, has always stayed with me in the depths of my own despair in life, as I faced my own capitalist, raw egg eating father in modern psychiatry. It is no mistake that the wisest being in all of Fantasia exists within the deepest knowledge of suffering, grief and aloneness. That her endurance through what feels like eternity, has been a great teacher.

We’ve gotta have some real evil with a face, unlike The Nothing which is apparently swirling ink clouds and ridiculously strong wind? The wolf Gmork delivers. This little hairy shit has decided that embracing and helping the destruction of The Nothing in favor of power, control and violence is the way to go. That sounds eerily familiar to me. Gmork’s near miss of Atreyu in the Swamps, just avoided by the Luck Dragon’s appearance (who is a flying elongated Golden Retriever), reminds us how close we are to oblivion when all feels lost and we have 10,000 miles still to go.

I’m going to avoid reminding you once again of the horrible crime of not naming EVERY golden retriever (elongated or not) Falkor, and move on to the magical dog/dragon’s message for us. It is simply this, “Never give up, and good luck will find you.” I know, this isn’t always true. You can have shit luck for eternity, no matter whether you give up or not. But, it’s a good thing to say to a kid like me who would face quite a lot in her life, and be known by most people in her adult life as the girl who’s just really bad at giving up.

There are several gates that stand between Atreyu and knowing how he is going to save the Empress, his soul, his world’s soul. Each of these gates are such great containers for what happens to us day in and day out. We may face the Sphinxes that can “see straight into your heart” and whether you believe in yourself, while presenting a project at work or sharing a deep truth with a friend.

Now, the Sphinxes and the Southern Oracles have a significant amount of boobage, which I think was entirely lost on me as a kid. But, as oracles go, the ladies are the divas in the domain of connection with the universe and of judging character and intention. Except of course, the Magic Mirror gate, which is a mirror with no boobs involved.

You know when you see yourself, in all your glory and ugliness, and the challenge is to forgive? To have compassion for your mistakes? The Magic Mirror gate represents this challenge. The scientist, Engywook, says of it, “Kind people find that they are cruel, brave men find that they are cowards. Confronted with their true selves most men run away screaming!” There have been many occasions in my life, almost as many as there are to quote the Simpsons, to say “most men run away screaming!” And Atreyu? Our hero? He is just a scared little boy in a world trying to convince him he doesn’t matter.

We learn from the Glowing Blue Boob Ladies, I mean, the Southern Oracle, that the Empress needs a new name which can be found beyond the boundaries of Fantasia. The two worlds must meet and honor each other with a name. In the book, by Michael Ende, the Sea of Possibilities, which is where Falkor and Atreyu end up in the last leg of the movie, is the land of fallen dictators. I remember vaguely that these dictators were doomed to repeat meaningless actions, like threading needles. Because, as we all know, power is never enough.

It’s here that Atreyu sees behind the curtain of The Nothing, the force destroying his world. A force that even raw power like that of the Rock Biter can not escape. The Rock Biter says to Atreyu as he mourns losing his best friends, “They look like big strong hands, don’t they?” His despair mirrors the despair of our failed hero. They both know that power will never be enough.

Gmork, who reveals he is the power behind The Nothing, tells him the truth of Fantasia and that his journey is doomed because Fantasia has no boundaries. It is the world of human imagination — The Nothing is the emptiness left when people lose their hopes and forget their dreams. Atreyu asks this hairy capitalist Wolf, why he is trying to help The Nothing? Gmork says, “Because people who have no hopes are easy to control and whoever has the control has the power.” I knew it to be true as a kid, I saw it happening around me, this love of power, this loss of hope.

After The Nothing rips through Fantasia and then some floating in space (80s space) Atreyu must face his soul, the Empress — alone, as we all must. And the trials he endured were the only thing that prepared him, even though these trials started to feel like a cruel trick in the end. Couldn’t somebody have just given her a new name in the beginning? Or couldn’t someone have just told me it was cool to just like myself as a kid? And believe in myself? That would have saved a lot of time, folks. But, it does not work that way, you don’t know until you know, and you’ve got to walk between a bunch of gold and blue boobs with laser eyes that can see straight into your heart before you find out. In the end, the empress says, Bastian just “Can’t imagine that one little boy is that important.” Well, yes, he is, and so are you.