Summer Session 2010 Phillips Academy Andover English as a Second Language Essay 1 - The Princess Bride Name: Ricardo

o L. Borges Growing up directed by William Goldman Each culture has its own peculiarities; so there are different conceptions when people talk about growing up. For some people growing up is dedicating yourself the most at school, getting a great job and earning a lot of money; for some people growing up is mind improvement, it involves becoming more responsible, it is getting married and having an honest family; but, for all of them, the definition of growing up that unites all the cultures in one opinion is that growing up is life changing. Sometimes (maybe always) we are facing changes and we do not even know that. It is happening right now with us, the writer and the reader, we are both breathing; we are both changing, and we both are growing up. Throughout the humankind history, everyone looked for excellence and the process of growing up is also strongly related to that. Every man and woman, even if it is only inside themselves, live looking for growing as people, for self development. It happens constantly in our lives and William Goldman uses his characters to show this process to the reader in different situations, such as childhood experiences, difficulties in life and the contrast between failure and success. Therefore, in The Princess Bride Goldman demonstrates, the same as in real life (well, almost the same, with a little bit of passion), that the process of growing up changes peoples personality, so by changing the characters throughout the story he shows that no one is perfect and absolute like in Fairy Tales, but they change as in real life.

At first, as an important item about the process of growing up debated by Goldman in The Princess Bride, there are the significant conceptions that each one matures in his own time and childhood experiences influence in adult life. The process of growing up begins when people start to wonder about things that happen around them, in the world they live in. There is not an age for the beginning of the process, because it is not an event, it is not something that happens suddenly. Some people face the process sooner than others, but after it starts, it never ends; every minute in life people are changing. For this idea Goldman shows the reader an example about himself. In the beginning of the book the author remembers his childhood and shows how the process of growing up had begun with him, he did not like books and he only wanted to play sports when his teacher Miss Roginski showed him that he was just a Late bloomer, that would all be fine for him in the future. Furthermore, when Goldman starts the real story about The Princess Bride, he introduces Buttercup, and she is, such as the author, a Late bloomer. With this, Goldman makes a link between real life and the world of the fictional characters, this is not clearly debated in the book, but the reader can conclude this by knowing Buttercup. The boy who did not study and only thought about sports and the silly (and a little bit stupid) girl, who only liked to ride her horse and to insult the farm boy who worked in her fathers farm. Moreover, about the relationship that this book has with the idea that the childhood experiences can influence in adult life, there are two interesting examples: Inigo and Fezzik. Both of them had their lives completely changed by a childhood experience. When they were children they became the people they would be for their whole life. Inigo became a killer because he saw his father being killed and Fezzik became a killer and a sensitive and weak person both, intellectually and emotionally, because he was pressured by his parents. They wanted him to fight as a professional when he was only a little child, just because he was stronger than normal. Again, Goldman uses his characters to describe the process of growing up.

Although there is a great influence of childhood experiences in the process of growing up, this is not the only attribute discussed by William Goldman in The Princess Bride; there is also the notion that a difficult life and hard work makes people stronger, makes the characters grow as individuals. When people suffer, they learn and try not to do many wrong things again, that is human nature. When people have a difficult life they will try to improve themselves, so they wont live in the same situation anymore or they will give to their children a better life opportunity. Westley is a very good example for this. Westley was nothing more than a farm boy, and throughout the story, by the process of growing up, Goldman turns him in the great hero in The Princess Bride. Westley was a slave; he had a difficult life, even if he was near his beloved Buttercup. In those circumstances he decided to change his destiny. With hard work, Westley becomes another person; he becomes a character which combines all the strength of the other characters, Vizzinis smartness and Fezziks strength, for example. In these conditions Westley grow as a person, both physically and mentally, which proves that a difficult life influences the process of growing up. Unfortunately, the problems that we have are not always a good thing for our growing up process; they are not always going to make people stronger or to make people grow. It depends on the persons personality strength. If the person has a weak personality, the benefit of the difficulties can become a serious problem. If we do not know how to deal with our problems, they will come against us, but we need to put them playing on our side. In conclusion, instead of being a challenge, something that can improve the process of growing up, the difficulties in life will only bring weakness. The perfect example about it is the Prince Humperdinck, who becomes weaker in each defeat. When he loses Buttercup, for example, he completely loses the sense of his acts and kills Westley. Afterwards, when Westley comes to save Buttercup, Prince Humperdinck shows his weakness again by surrendering to Westley. It also demonstrates that he is the only important character which

does not show a growing up process, or rather, he presents the process inside out, because he becomes a worse person compared to who he was before. Besides the influence of the difficulties in the process of growing up; success is also a great motivator in the peoples growth, so William Goldman also shows the contrast between failure and success, both victory and defeat can change the process of growing up. When people want to achieve something they will work to do it, to make it become true and it will influence in their process of growing up. After the accomplishment, the process continues, because not only the pursuit of success makes people grow, but after the people succeed they will have to learn how to deal with a successful situation. With this, we can conclude that people who seek for success grow up, people who fail grow up and people who succeed grow up. Growing up is strongly present in these situations. In The Princess Bride we can see that through the example of Inigo. Inigo changed when he was a child with a failed situation. When Count Rougen killed his father and he challenged the Count to a duel, he failed. After this experience, Inigo dedicates his life to revenge his father, and to look for success by killing the murderer, so we can see how both failure and success can influence in Goldmans characters process of growing up. Buttercup fails after the fire swamp. When she chooses to leave Westley and to go with the prince Humperdinck she makes the wrong decision. However, this failure comes up as a good thing for her, because she changes since that moment. With a failure her process of growing up is changed. Since this moment, Buttercup was not the silly (and a little bit stupid) girl anymore. When she realized that she was going to lose her lover she started to be different. She became a more humble person by admitting she could not live without love. In this contrast between success and failure, we can also talk about Humperdinck and say that the rampant pursuit of success can change the person negatively. Goldman uses him to show that the pursuit of success can also fail, for example, when the person who is looking for success does not think about the feelings of the people
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who are around him or her. The process of growing up in this kind of situation does not exist, as I said it before, Prince Humperdinck is not growing up, but becoming worse.

To conclude, we can see from these examples in the book that William Goldman is giving us an important message about the process of growing up: growing up is tough and it is this hard process which is going to make us who we are. People change every time, since they are engaged in the process of growing up. Things that happened in our lives will influence who we are going to be, how we are going to behave. It is the same in literature. Goldman uses Westley, Buttercup, Fezzik and Inigo to show us that changes happen and these characters change by things that happened in their lives, such as hard obstacles or their pursuit of success. All of these aspects can change the process of growing and Goldman shows that using his characters from The Princess Bride, and if somebody has someday changed, he or she will, in some way, surely love this book.