"The Princess Bride"

Paper Summary:

William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" is a tale of time, history and love. However, because he adds an element of fantasy to the story, his characters are able to withstand all sorts of setbacks and overcome various obstacles. The paper shows that in this story, Goldman places love above all else, allowing his character to use super-human strength and unusual occurrences to fight in the name of love. There are many themes in this story that bring up the topic of ethics. This paper also relates details of Goldman's story to Immanuel Kant's philosophy of ethics.

From the Paper:

"According to Kant, beauty is the eye of the beholder. He states that only knowledge is communicable so the only thing in experience that can be exactly the same for all men is form. The sensations of representations will differ from person to person. Whether or not something is beautiful is based on the viewer's reaction. In this case, Buttercup never noticed Wesley's beauty until someone she admired saw it. Kant believed that the idea of taste simply becomes a matter of personal opinion that reflects more on the viewer than on the object itself. He said that an individual cannot judge true beauty because their judgment is too subjective and not at all universal. Buttercup's love for Wesley proves Kant's ethical theory, as she showed how her newfound interest and abrupt change in taste set the stage for her love affair."

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