It's continually fascinating to me that Aslan creates Narnia, and gives all the Narnians intelligence, and then STILL gives dominion of it all, all the beasts and birds and creeping things, to the humans that are brought in from elsewhere. In this version of the story of Eden, it's not only G-d, but the Serpent, and Adam and Eve, who are external to the world, and have their own moral and theological struggle, on the backs of the Beasts, who aren't really a part of it all. Which, from what I understand, is relatively in tune with the PL interpretation of the Garden of Eden, where the serpent is somehow more connected with Lucifer than it is a literal animal.
But still, when it comes down to TLB, it's Shift who is the central figure in the Fall. The humans are never really implicated in Narnian sin, not even Narnian humans like Tirian. The Calormenes are fallen, but they're also outsiders, and there's the whole creepy conflation of their outsider status with Shift as a proto-human being uncannily intelligent and making rational decisions that are sinful because Rationality is at odds with the Truth you can only get to by Faith. Shift, in a lot of ways, feels like a human out of The Screwtape Letters than a Narnian character.
It's sort of creepy that while (Telmerines aside) all the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve ultimately are able to square off against their temptations and choose the right side, it's the characters that Lewis seems to see as proto-humans who have the genuine struggles and make the genuine lapses within the series.
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regna
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Date: 2011-01-15 20:14 (UTC)But still, when it comes down to TLB, it's Shift who is the central figure in the Fall. The humans are never really implicated in Narnian sin, not even Narnian humans like Tirian. The Calormenes are fallen, but they're also outsiders, and there's the whole creepy conflation of their outsider status with Shift as a proto-human being uncannily intelligent and making rational decisions that are sinful because Rationality is at odds with the Truth you can only get to by Faith. Shift, in a lot of ways, feels like a human out of The Screwtape Letters than a Narnian character.
It's sort of creepy that while (Telmerines aside) all the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve ultimately are able to square off against their temptations and choose the right side, it's the characters that Lewis seems to see as proto-humans who have the genuine struggles and make the genuine lapses within the series.