‘Humiliations Galore’: Adam Smith meets Miracle Max

William Goldman’s novel The Princess Bride has become something of a cult classic, particularly in the film version helmed by director Rob Reiner. The original book was published 50 years ago, and the epic tale of “true love and high adventure” has some fascinating connections to Adam Smith’s understanding of virtue and commercial exchange. A full Smithian analysis of The Princess Bride is beyond the scope of this short essay, and like a sequel to Goldman’s original, it may never come. But there is a key scene in both the book and the film in which the truth of Smith’s most famous passage about market exchange is memorably demonstrated.

 

This interaction occurs in the second half of the book, as the Spaniard Inigo and the giant Fezzick seek to engage Westley, the Dread Pirate Roberts, to spoil the plans of the dastardly Prince Humperdinck and his lieutenant, Count Rugen. (The basic action of the scene is the same in the film and the book, although some specifics differ and the book adds a bit more detail and psychological exposition concerning the motivations of all the involved parties.) Humperdinck is set to marry Buttercup, who is Westley’s true love. Humperdinck has captured Westley, however, and using Rugen’s Machine has tortured Westley to death, sucking away his life in a maelstrom of pain. Inigo and Fezzick are not so easily deterred, however, and having recovered Westley’s corpse, they are in need of a miracle.

 

Miracles are the purview of miracle men, professionals in the land of Florin who can provide miracles both great and small in exchange for money. And so Inigo and Fezzick seek out a miracle man, but are faced with some difficulty. There is, it seems, only one miracle man still alive in Florin, and he’s retired. In this way, Miracle Max enjoys a kind of monopoly. Well, enjoys is too strong of a word, since, being put out of royal service, he was forcefully retired. Max, while eking out an existence with his wife Valerie, has been lingering on his shortcomings and the disrespect he endured from Prince Humperdinck.

 

Inigo and Fezzick come knocking on Max’s door, desperate for a miracle. But the challenges to coming to an agreement are legion. Max’s confidence is deeply shaken; he hasn’t worked for years and being summarily dismissed has hurt his pride. Inigo and Fezzick don’t have much to offer. They’ve scrounged together some money, but it isn’t an amount that would typically cover the kind of resurrection miracle they need. And Max is generally grumpy and antisocial. He’d rather be left alone to grouse about the injustices he’s endured than help anyone. But practical considerations do play a role, and Max’s wife Valerie convinces him to at least entertain the idea of helping the desperate heroes.

 

Max and Valerie agree to ask for a price of 50, but when Inigo and Fezzick offer 60, Max’s difficult disposition kicks in. He pretends to be insulted by such a low offer, even though it is more than he was willing to take just moments before. Still, he is intrigued enough to take the possibility back to Valerie, but he lies and says that the adventurers only offered 20. Valerie knows better, but she works to influence Max to take on the job. She knows they need the money, and more than that, Max needs the dignity of work. “Maybe if it was a good cause you could lower yourself to work for twenty,” Valerie advises. 

 

So Max returns to Inigo and Fezzick again, this time to close the deal. Money isn’t enough to motivate Max, however. He’s working with wounded pride and a distinct lack of confidence. He needs some other, non-material motivation to get to work on the miracle. Inigo has to find some way to convince Max to take on the job. 

 

In this dilemma we see the central dynamic of market exchange elucidated so famously by Adam Smith in that significant passage from The Wealth of Nations:  

 The negotiations between Inigo and Max walk through each of the possibilities covered in Smith’s analysis. Inigo tries talking about why they need the miracle, the nobility of their cause, their “own necessities.” When asked why Max should attempt the miracle, “Inigo was about to say ‘So he can tell me how to kill Count Rugen,’ but that didn’t quite sound like the kind of thing that would strike a cranky miracle man as aiding the general betterment of mankind, so he said, ‘He’s got a wife, he’s got fifteen kids, they haven’t a shred of food; if he stays dead, they’ll starve, so– …’”

 

Max sees through this fabrication immediately: “Oh, sonny, are you a liar,” Max said. Max, having lied throughout the scene already, knows a falsehood when he hears one. Appealing to Max’s benevolence gets the adventurers nowhere. In an entertaining interaction that follows, Max uses his professional techniques to get the truth from Wesley’s body. But when the corpse utters the reason, “Tr … ooooo … luv …,” Max pretends to have heard something other than “true love.” He evades this compelling ideal by contending that “what your friend said was ‘to blove,’ by which he meant, obviously, ‘to bluff’–clearly he is either involved in a shady business deal or a card came and wishes to win, and that is certainly not enough reason for a miracle.”

 

At this Valerie bursts out of the back and excoriates Max. Even if she is not an entirely impartial spectator, Valerie functions as a kind of conscience for Max throughout this scene. True love, says Valerie, is the greatest possible reason for Max to help, and it still isn’t enough to motivate him, which speaks to his defective character. Max is not benevolent enough and too self-interested and to be moved to action for even this lofty reason. 

 

And here is the key turning point of the exchange. Inigo realizes that appealing to Max’s benevolence will never work. Instead, he has to appeal to his self-interest. Humperdinck is engaged to marry Buttercup, but the dead Westley is Buttercup’s “true love.” Inigo implores Max: “If you bring him back to life, he will stop Prince Humperdinck’s marriage.” 

 

Appeals to Max’s charity (Westley has a wife and fifteen children), to his lofty ideals (true love), or even to his material well-being (60 pieces of money) are not sufficient. Inigo has to discover what Max thinks of as what will be to his “advantage,” as Smith puts it, or a “noble cause” as the film describes it. In this case, Max is motivated by a desire for revenge of his own on Humperdinck, and the promised “humiliations galore” that the prince will experience are enough of a “noble cause” to move Max to action. 

 

In this memorable scene from The Princess Bride, we have a keen illustration of the insight into human nature captured in Adam Smith’s most famous passage. And if the appeal of knowing the truth of that passage is not enough to motivate us to take it to heart, perhaps knowing what works to motivate market exchange and ways that might help us turn such interactions to our advantage will lead us to pay heed to Smith’s wisdom.

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