Having A Strong Imagination In The Neverending Story

The Importance of Having a Strong Imagination
Michael Ende’s allegorical novel, The Neverending Story, uses symbolism to convey the theme that retaining one’s imagination throughout life is vital. Michael Ende conveys his theme in The Neverending Story by using symbolism. Ende uses both characters and objects to convey the theme that retaining one's imagination throughout life is vital. Michael Ende uses Bastian and his father, the book in The Neverending Story, AURYN, The Nothing, and Fantastica to portray the theme.
Ende uses Bastian and his father to show that humans lose their imagination as they get older. Bastian Balthazar Bux is a chubby, shy boy who gets bullied at school for being abnormal. Bastian often has nobody to talk to, so he

The Nothing starts to destroy Fantastica and all of Fantastica's citizens are worried. The Nothing spreads as the Childlike Empress grows up. The Nothing represents the decrease in the Childlike Empress' imagination as she grows up. Atreyu goes throughout Fantastica in search of a cure for the Childlike Empress and to find out how to stop the Nothing. Uyulala tells Atreyu, "The Childlike Empress is sick, And with her Fantastica will die. The Nothing will swallow this place, It will perish and so will I. We shall vanish into the Nowhere and Never, As though we had never been. The Empress needs a new name To make her well again" (116-117). Once Atreyu hears this, he immediately goes back to the Ivory Tower to tell the Childlike Empress the news. Michael Ende uses The Nothing to symbolize that once childhood is gone, so is the mystery and excitement of being a child.
Michael Ende uses the character Bastian to show that there is a link between Fantastica and the human world. Bastian was thinking, "Thus far he had been able to visualize every incident of The Neverending Story...These pictures, however, existed only in his