Had the story provided a conclusion, in 2020 or any other year, it would be entirely unremarkable.
The story could, for example, have explored the issue of which way the princess might lean from the guys point of view, which covers all the same human nature angles, and then it could also have gone on to have a proper ending. I value storycraft.
I'm not saying the story should have been different back then, I'm sure it was perfect for 1882, and thats why its remembered now. I'm interested in how I differ from the 1882 audience.
edit: and koans are more about invoking mind states beyond words, like a kind of mind-hack, than they are about pondering ponderable things.
The form of this story has used widely since, and those stories have been incredibly popular with both authors and audiences for well over 100 years now. Implying that a tried-and-true technique of story-telling lies outside of storycraft betrays basic a lack of understanding of the subject.
Story tellers enjoy this form for the challenge of balancing what the omniscient narrator reveals-- too much or too strong in one direction and the whole thing falls flat. Readers enjoy the form because it feels a bit like ski jumping-- the writer provides the momentum and the reader's imagination leaps off the end with all the story's implications flying past.
In fact, Nabokov balanced this same form masterfully in the short story, "Signs and Symbols." The effect there is that the reader leaps off into a level of... well, I don't want to ruin it. :) But it's enough to say that outside of VR I don't think that story could have been effectively written without using the lady-or-the-tiger form.
Great metaphor. The story zips you down at full-speed, and then launches you upwards into the air. If you're comfortable feeling ungrounded, you'll be able to look across the horizon, in awe of the sights you couldn't see before. But if you're a lazy or cowardly person, your overriding urge will to return to the earth, to get back down to the safety of the soft slopes. Heck, later on, you might even petition the proprietor of the ski-resort to get rid of the ramp.
I think partly with this story it was because it was on the front page of HN, so I had very high expectations. The story is clearly building to something, to me in 2020 it seemed disappointing. I'm interested to hear how it was received in 1882 though.
This kind of device is used to great success in modern fiction, such as Stephen King's (non-supernatural!) short story "All that you love will be taken away", where the conclusion is not only open-ended, but also left to chance!
Two. One to change the bulb, and one not to.
Zero, change is in the nature of all things. It is natural that the light bulb itself will change.
Answer:
--
To me, the ending question is interesting. I want to know what happens! I think the princess leads her lover to the tiger, after all her temper is barbaric and she also thinks she'll reunite with him in the afterlife. That bloodshed though...
It's also remarkable in that it apparently inspired the Monty Hall door challenge, which is of obvious interest to the HN crowd.
Which is why I did not cared about how it ends. The people in story are not real enough to reason about them. They don't have psychology beyond crude stereotypes.
Like, ok, she grew with psychopathic dad, which the story author basically praises. She had likely accumulated trauma and resentment towards dad and own never met emotional needs. Is she even capable of strong emotiomal commitment? People with dads like that struggle in that area.
Maybe whole relationship was just her way to get revenge on dad by being involved in humiliating relationship for him. We really don't know whether she will be jealous or not, given that she knew she wont marry this dude from day 1. Or she hinted nothing, or she had no idea and hinted only to unparalyze him.
But the story author does not consider such option, because she is not real character. She is just literary device. She is supposed to be motivated solely by dudes body beauty, but that is not real people think.
This is the only information you really need.
> They don't have psychology beyond crude stereotypes.
Do you similarly judge a fable by Aesop? Or poetry about human emotions? Have you read Saki's masterful short story, "Sredni Vashtar", and do you similarly dislike it because its characters are not full-fledged?
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. What information would you need to decide?
That being said, I did not particularly enjoyed them. But again, they come across as more honest.
> This is the only information you really need
No it is not. Really really it is not if the puzzle is supposed to tell something about you or humans. It could have been interesting if she had actual complex personality and actual relationships. But she does not.
Well beyond "what if you are raised by abusive psychopathic dad and then someone looking down on you all writes story about it".
In the early 90's, my English teacher read this story to the class and it blew my teenage mind. It's been one of my favorite short stories ever since.
Or some forms of witch trials I suppose ("will she float or sink") but I'm never sure how much of that is true and how much is fiction, as in Monty Python's ;)
I was hoping the guy would turn around and knock on the door under the king, and the priest would come out and marry him to the Princess.
Alternatively, if “it mattered not that [criminals] might already possess a wife and family”, why couldn’t the guy marry the princess after marrying the damsel of the court?
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