The Princess Bride\u2019s relationship to the scriptures.<\/p>\n
Bear with me here.\u00a0 This is not one of those \u201cWilliam Goldman [the author of the book and screenwriter for the movie] was LDS\u201d things (like \u201cYoda is President Kimball\u201d or whatever from other franchises).<\/p>\n
When I first read the book (which came before the movie), it shocked me.\u00a0 I did not expect what I found. Almost everything from the movie was in there (although often in different ways \u2013 the famous \u201clife is pain\u201d quote comes from Fezzik\u2019s parents in passing during a flashback, for example), but there was so much more.\u00a0 There was a lot on \u201chis\u201d [scare quotes on purpose] dysfunctional family life, his career, his childhood, and a lot more plot in the actual tale of Buttercup.
\n
\nNow, there are at least 4 different, overlapping stories being told in the novel.\u00a0 The movie (wisely, as it is a movie and doesn\u2019t have time to cover it all) sticks to two, the grandfather reading the tale and the main story.<\/p>\n
In the novel, the four (I could identify more than 4, but as an English PhD, I may be over-analyzing) stories are:<\/p>\n
1. Buttercup, Westley, Miracle Max, the Fire Swamp, storming the castle, etc.<\/p>\n
2. His father [not his grandfather] reading him the novel at night; he sees this as his favorite childhood memory.<\/p>\n
3. As an adult, tracking down a copy of the novel for his son; his son hates it, so \u201cGoldman\u201d reads it and finds out his father \u201cedited\u201d the novel down considerably, and his attempts to edit the story down to something manageable (as the original book is apparently heavy on excessive historical detail, period political commentary, many meandering monologues, and very long digressions).<\/p>\n
4. His dysfunctional family life, with an underachieving, obese son enabled by his overly permissive and clueless wife (this relationship, if you read later editions of the book where he includes updates, did not last).<\/p>\n
Now, the first thing to realize (which I did not when I first read the book): none of this is real (even the Buttercup stuff; the novel claims Morgenstern based his tale on a true, historical story and one can find all the details in the historical archives of Florin and Guilder, which do not actually exist as countries).\u00a0 The \u201cWilliam Goldman\u201d of the novel has some shared history with our reality\u2019s William Goldman, but is otherwise distinct (in the novel, he has one son, and his wife is a child psychologist. In real life, his wife was a photographer, and he has two daughters).<\/p>\n
So, what does this have to do with the scriptures?\u00a0 While I would never claim The Princess Bride is scripture (please, no hate mail over this statement), understanding how to read it resembles how we can approach\/read scripture:<\/p>\n
1. We all come to the text with preconceptions. I came to it expecting the movie with more detail, but instead found a multi-layered story where I naively assumed some of the layers were real (Morgenstern never existed in our reality, and I wondered why Goldman was so willing to throw his wife under the bus when he talked about his family life).
\nWhen I first decided to read the Bible from end to end, I was shocked at how many details the \u201cprimary\u201d versions overlooked or left out.\u00a0 Sampson was a real jerk. Jonah ends on a very odd note (which the Veggie Tales version included, showing you can tell it to kids).\u00a0 David had to do a lot more than get anointed by Samuel to become king.\u00a0 I came expecting the versions I was familiar with, but instead found stories even more wonderful and strange.<\/p>\n
2. Like onions and ogres, there are layers.\u00a0 Like the 4 layers of narrative in the book, the scriptures often have layers.\u00a0 Think of the Book of Mormon, with Mormon and Moroni editing, summarizing, and adding commentary to older sources.\u00a0 Nephi is writing about his younger days, but many decades later as a mature adult reflecting back, with a different perspective than his younger self (somewhat like how the Goldman in the novel had a very different experience with the Morgenstern story as a child and as an adult, and how the whole thing causes him to reflect on his childhood in a new way).<\/p>\n
3. Adaptations change things.\u00a0 The movie moves quotes from Fezzik\u2019s parents to The Dread Pirate Roberts, or the kiss that surpasses all kisses gets moved more toward the beginning of Buttercup and Westley\u2019s relationship rather than near the end of the story.\u00a0 The ending of the novel is also much more ambiguous.\u00a0 Now, think of how in the OT, Chronicles repurposes material from Samuel and Kings (or other books), sometimes adding details, sometimes changing things around \u2013 or the differences between the four Gospels (such as the timing of the cleansing of the temple, or what day of the Passover the Last Supper happens).\u00a0 Sometimes, writers, editors, and redactors concern themselves more with thematic than chronological unity.\u00a0 A Rabbinic saying goes \u201cThere is no early or late in the Torah.\u201d<\/p>\n
None of this is to say that the Scriptures are fiction or made up.\u00a0 However, even as scripture they are also literary creations, and reading them like we read literature can help us appreciate them more.<\/p>\n
[And I didn\u2019t even bring up the three morons. You want them, you should read my essay in The Princess Bride and Philosophy<\/em>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Princess Bride\u2019s relationship to the scriptures. Bear with me here.\u00a0 This is not one of those \u201cWilliam Goldman [the author of the book and screenwriter for the movie] was LDS\u201d things (like \u201cYoda is President Kimball\u201d or whatever from other franchises). When I first read the book (which came before the movie), it shocked me.\u00a0 I did not expect what I found. Almost everything from the movie was in there (although often in different ways \u2013 the famous \u201clife is pain\u201d quote comes from Fezzik\u2019s parents in passing during a flashback, for example), but there was so much more.\u00a0 There was a lot on \u201chis\u201d [scare quotes on purpose] dysfunctional family life, his career, his childhood, and a lot more plot in the actual tale of Buttercup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,1254,390],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative","category-film","category-liberal-arts"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44771,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44770\/revisions\/44771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}