The Princess Bride Themes

Throughout The Princess Bride, author (and character) William Goldman sets out to tell two different stories—neither of which are entirely true, yet both of which are presented as factual history. The first is the “classic tale” of The Princess Bride, which Goldman claims was originally written by a writer named S. Morgenstern from the country of Florin (both Morgenstern and Florin are entirely fictional, though Goldman refers to them as if they truly…

The core story of the novel, that of The Princess Bride itself, revolves around the fight for the hand of Buttercup, the most beautiful woman in the world. After being told that her beloved Westley has met his untimely demise at the hands of the Dread Pirate Roberts, Buttercup agrees to marry the evil Prince Humperdinck—who, in the months before their marriage, concocts an elaborate plot and hires Vizzini, Fezzik…

Through Goldman's asides to the reader throughout The Princess Bride, he aims to provide a sense of what the “original” book is like: overly complex, far too long, and in all ways unreadable to anyone but a Florinese scholar. Goldman sets out to remedy this by abridging the story and whittling it down to the “good parts,” or the parts that relay Morgenstern’s narrative and which Goldman insists are the book’s only…

One of the points that Goldman makes to the reader over and over again is that life isn't fair. He suggests in one of his asides during The Princess Bride that this is one of the most important lessons that children must learn, and that one of the best ways to learn this lesson is through exposure to stories like The Princess Bride, in which the “right” or expected thing doesn't happen. By drawing…