SPOILERS!!!
Its interesting that in 1882 the authors refusal to give an ending would have been seen as challenging and innovative but to me in 2020 it seems like a cop-out. I don't need the undercurrents made clear to me - I can already see all that. I want an ending to the story.
The more interesting angle is that the guy should realise that the princess might direct him to the wrong door. His thought process about it is much more interesting to me than my own as the reader.
A 2020 version needs some extra twist at the end. The King, perhaps, knows his daughter all too well, and has put a wedding behind both doors. Or the Princess has loftier aims, and has secretly trained the tiger to attack the King, and usher in a new era of civility, but to do that (somehow or other ) she has to allow her love to marry someone else etc etc
Still, I love that things people wrote in 1882 are now being zinged accross the world by a huge world-spanning machine made of billions of devices that people in 1882 would barely have been able to imagine.
edit: drewzero1, elsewhere in this thread, reminds me of the They Might Be Giants song that looks at the situation from a much more 21st century perspective: http://tmbw.net/wiki/Lyrics:The_Lady_And_The_Tiger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nQemVw2Lb0
Its interesting that in 1882 the authors refusal to give an ending would have been seen as challenging and innovative but to me in 2020 it seems like a cop-out. I don't need the undercurrents made clear to me - I can already see all that. I want an ending to the story.
The more interesting angle is that the guy should realise that the princess might direct him to the wrong door. His thought process about it is much more interesting to me than my own as the reader.
A 2020 version needs some extra twist at the end. The King, perhaps, knows his daughter all too well, and has put a wedding behind both doors. Or the Princess has loftier aims, and has secretly trained the tiger to attack the King, and usher in a new era of civility, but to do that (somehow or other ) she has to allow her love to marry someone else etc etc
Still, I love that things people wrote in 1882 are now being zinged accross the world by a huge world-spanning machine made of billions of devices that people in 1882 would barely have been able to imagine.
edit: drewzero1, elsewhere in this thread, reminds me of the They Might Be Giants song that looks at the situation from a much more 21st century perspective: http://tmbw.net/wiki/Lyrics:The_Lady_And_The_Tiger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nQemVw2Lb0