The central theme in Rasselas is the choice of life, or as I will call it, the pursuit of happiness. This is a topic as old as time itself, no one seems truly happy with the cards they are dealt in life and are always trying to improve their situation. What it takes to be happy; wealth and luxury, imagination and solitude, or happiness is even real. Prince Rasselas is determined to find the answer to this question. This essay will examine the relationship between imagination and happiness, and the benefits and dangers that accompany the imaginative faculty. Rasselas knows he wants to leave the Happy Valley to find happiness, but this dream in itself shows one of the downsides of too much fantasy. “I watched the sun rise and set for twenty months, an idle observer of the light of heaven… only I made no progress, but I am still helpless and ignorant… I sat feasting in intellectual luxury” (15). He spends hours alone imagining what the outside world must be like. Rasselas suddenly realizes that he is wasting time that could have been used ...