starlady | The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

As well as being Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in the States, today is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected president of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. I recommend Adam Hochschild's piece in the Times to everyone.

Lewis, C.S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. [1950]

I can remember this book not being my particular favorite when I first read the books in fourth grade, and I can see why; it's one of the shortest of the books, and on reread it's surprising to me how much of it doesn't actually take place in Narnia--not until the beginning of chapter 6 do Peter and Susan get into Narnia--and how quickly it feels like things wrap up once they do. Not that things actually do wrap up all that quickly, but I couldn't help but compare this to today's YA books, which are so much longer and more, well, not 'realistic,' precisely, but more invested in realism. I think it was

bedlamsbard who said at one point that the books read like fairy tales or legends abstracted out of real events, and that's certainly true of LWW. In particular, the utter cruelty of the final ending strikes me anew here; I just can't imagine writing this story and writing that ending. It may have been comforting to its initial audience, and intended as such on Jack Lewis' part, but it seems unspeakably violent to the Pevensies, and to Narnia. (I think at this point mentioning Cat Valente's complaint about portal fantasy, that it's always predicated on the need to return to one's original world, is relevant. Like her, I am highly skeptical of that automatic assumption.)

All that being said, I enjoyed this one a lot this time around, though I was surprised at how little screentime Edmund's actual repentance, forgiveness, and conversation with Aslan got; but I like all four of the Pevensies, though Lewis' investment to a large extent in conventional societal gender roles also grates--I much prefer Walden Media's revisionist take on that, though compared to Tolkien, the relative gender equity of Narnia--VDT is the only book in which equal numbers of boys and girls don't go to Narnia, at least initially--is remarkable. It's also interesting to read this book knowing that it was written first of all, and to see the little throwaway details and untied threads that dangle from it in places, and to try to think how they could possibly be made coherent--obviously, TMN is an effort on Lewis' part to do just that, but inevitably some things are still left dangling.

This seems like a good place to mention that I didn't understand until freshman year of high school the Christian aspects of these books, and that only then because I got my Quaker best friend to explain it to me. I think we can take this among other things as evidence of the fact that six years of CCD categorically failed to indoctrinate me into Catholicism in any meaningful fashion, or of the Christian privilege inherent in growing up even sort-of Christian; I also…well. This time around, reading about Aslan at the Stone Table seems ridiculously obvious (I do hope JRR had some scathing words for CS about the obviousness of the allegory), but on the other hand, I know it only seems obvious to me because I knew about it going in. I think it's perfectly possible to read these books and to believe, as I did, that Aslan ≠ Jesus, though this may require a certain obliviousness that probably isn't possible to sustain in the age of Wikipedia. I still don't really accept this whole 'Aslan = Jesus' thing, to be really honest. And I find myself asking, if the Emperor is God and Aslan is Jesus, where is the Holy Spirit in Narnia?

Another thing that's striking to me is the sheer blistering hatred C.S. Lewis had for school. It's a consistent motif--perhaps the most consistent motif in the books--that school is by definition awful, awful, awful. Considering that Lewis was writing the books in his later fifties, a good forty years after he'd finished that sort of school, it's quite striking how much those emotions remained with him. I know from Roald Dahl's memoirs that school was a living hell for boys of a certain temperament, or more probably most boys, but Lewis clearly never got over it entirely.

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JRR was so critical of LWW that Lewis almost didn't publish it.

It's interesting that although Lewis doesn't like school, there is also a sense (when we get to Silver Chair) of his absolute contempt for the attempts to change what people were beginning to see was horribly wrong with schools at that period.

JRR was so critical of LWW that Lewis almost didn't publish it. :( :( :(

As well as I know Tolkien, I know almost nothing of Lewis' process, or of the Inklings in general, beyond the fact that they existed and hung out.

I just started rereading VDT, and I think you can see a little bit of that even there, in the way Eustace is initially presented. Which, you know, it's a complicated question to ask, much less of the dead, but really, what would he have wanted to happen in the schools, I wonder.

As far as I can tell from the little he says in his memoir and letters about how he would have liked things to be as opposed to how they were, he was against boarding schools entirely, and mildly against day schools-- the best period of his education was with an individual tutor who basically told him what to read, argued with him about what he'd read, and went away again.

This makes a lot of sense, and is borne out by the positive portrayal of tutoring relationships between Caspian and Dr. Cornelius and Peter and Professor Kirke.

I haven't read Lewis's memoir or letters, but I get the sense from the Narnia books that he values a kind of pastoral freedom and spontaneity that is stifled by the regimentation of the school day. It seems important to him that children have the freedom to drop everything and climb a tree at any moment. :)

There are also a lot of very cruel schoolchildren in the books, and I suspect he thinks the school environment encourages them to be that way. Eustace might be a good example of this, since he begins to change after having a powerful experience outside the school environment.

This makes a lot of sense, and is borne out by the positive portrayal of tutoring relationships between Caspian and Dr. Cornelius and Peter and Professor Kirke.

Oh yeah, that's a really good point.

I was raised in a very conservative Christian family and I still did not get the Christian aspects of the books as a kid. I'm sure I might twig to it reading as an adult, but even with that background, it didn't even occur to me until some years later when someone told me. (I can't remember how old I was when I first read them, just some time in elementary school.)

Edited 2011-01-17 20:31 (UTC)

I think in some ways the Christianity has been played up by various proponents of the books as fuel for other arguments. Comparing Narnia with LotR, for instance, there's very little that you can find in the former that isn't also in the latter.

I was raised in a Christian family of the sort where I had been warned about the Christian aspects of Narnia before I'd even read the books (age eight), and, TBH, my main reaction, even then, is that it's not a very *good* Christ metaphor, in that it misses the point rather dramatically and from several different directions, and (though I wouldn't have put it this way at age eight) ignores *all* of the specifically Christian elements that make Christ distinct from any other of the dozens of sacrifical god/kings in the world. I mean, I've read *explicitly* Pagan tellings of the Solar King story that felt more Christian than Aslan did.

Jack Lewis's -- *interesting* relationship over time with Christianity and myth, and his influence on/influencing by certain 20th century Christian (and pagan) revivalist movements -- makes it something I would be really interested in analysing if I could read Lewis' theology without wanting to thump things, but yeah. The reason LWW often doesn't strike people as Christian is that it is only particularly Christian if you subscribe to one peculiar tunnel-vision version of Christianity.

The reason LWW often doesn't strike people as Christian is that it is only particularly Christian if you subscribe to one peculiar tunnel-vision version of Christianity.

Well, that makes sense. And, yeah, it is a rather blunt metaphor--I was talking with my roommmate about these books (this is a theme), and at one point I asked why Gandalf, by this symbolic logic, isn't Jesus (of course, if there's a Christ figure in LotR it's Frodo, but that's another discussion), because that's really all there is to it in Lewis, and even I know that that's not all there is to it in the actual story of the Passion. Peter or Susan could just as easily have taken Edmund's place and had the same experience, if you read the text closely, and that too seems to me to be not very close to most Christian theology I'm familiar with. But clearly you know more about this than me. :)

I might eventually write a long post on this some time, but Lewis's Christianity has a whole lot more in common with the Anthroposophy I got from going to a Waldorf elementary school than it has in common with any branch of Christianity whatsoever. I've done almost no reading on formal Anthroposophy as it's practiced by adults, but the first time I read Narnia, which was after I switched over from the Waldorf School to a mainstream public education, felt like coming home.

I don't think the parallels are intentional--Anthroposophy claims not to be Christian, and Lewis claimed to be--but I suspect that both were part of a broader move away from mainstream Christianity towards Christ-flavored spirituality in the wake of the First World War.

On the topic of how little time they spend in Narnia, I tend to think of LWW much more as a house-with-a-mystery book than a going-to-Narnia book. That the mystery winds up being Narnia, and sets up the rest of the series for adventures back and forth, is sort of separate from how I feel about the book as a whole.

*reads about Anthroposophy on Wikipedia* Fascinating. I'd never heard of it before this, but I can see at least a few parallels right away. I'd love to read your thoughts on it.

I tend to think of LWW much more as a house-with-a-mystery book than a going-to-Narnia book.

*nods* That's a good point, particularly in light of how Lewis summarily divests Digory of the house in VDT.

It's hard to be sure, because I know so VERY little about Anthroposphy--I haven't read Steiner, and I didn't study at a Waldorf school after the age of 7. But from the perspective of a very young child, there's just so much that is in Narnia that is also in the Waldorf curriculum. (For instance, I learned basic arithmetic via a series of fables about dwarves.)

For the most part, what they have in common is that they're very spiritual adaptations of Christianity that stray incredibly far from the religion as it's traditionally practiced but are nevertheless thoroughly steeped in it. No criticism of the "secret Christianity" in Narnia has ever come close to the sheer wtfery of saying morning prayers to the Sun God Who Is Totally Mithras and Not Jesus We Promise But Wasn't His Resurrection Awesome?

One of the most important books in my early development was The Seven-Year-Old Wonder Book, a series of short stories and fables about the best way to live your life. It has the exact same blend of neutered Greek myth and vaguely Christian metaphors that I came to know and love in the Narnia books. To this day, I can't always remember which series is the source of certain stories in my personal mythology. Lewis was a much better author than Wyatt, though.

the exact same blend of neutered Greek myth and vaguely Christian metaphors that I came to know and love in the Narnia books

Yup, that's Narnia. I'm still pondering what's going on with the whole Bacchus interlude in PC.

Still, wow, yeah, they sound extraordinarily similar.

I was raised Catholic (still am), and didn't see the Christian message of Narnia until my teacher pointed it out to me... I think I tended to be much more naive back then, and assume that a story was just a story, and that there were no author soapboxes.

I think that's part of it too; I wasn't really looking for messages in stories, just stories themselves. I know other people who talk about reading a lot of the same books I did and getting the message, for instance, that girls couldn't go on adventures, but I never got that message, oddly enough. When I went to make up my own stories, they always had girls as protagonists, but it wasn't until much later--high school at least--that I thought to look back and think about what the stories were saying.

They are definitely like fairy tales (much moreso than they are like legends). It's mixed with a degree of realism* that fairy tales do not traditionally have, but those and fables (and the Bible) were pretty clearly the soil out of which Narnia grew, while for Tolkien it was Norse sagas and the Kalevala.

On the whole, throughout the series, it's very startling how quickly things wrap up. I'd be curious to know what the actual word-counts are for the novels: I wouldn't be surprised if by "official" standards they're barely novellas.

*I'm drawing here on Max Luthi, who says that in fairy tales the magic lies far away, in an indeterminate land and time, but it is spiritually close; when the characters encounter talking animals or mountains of glass, they don't stand around fearing or marveling at these things, but accept them and go on. In legends, by contrast the magic lies physically much closer, in specific real-world locations and often times as well, but it is spiritually far: the characters are afraid, more like real people would be. Lewis starts by grounding the characters in a real time and place, but takes them off to fairy-tale-distant Narnia, and while they do have brief moments of disbelief or fear, they are very brief, and not what an author working today would likely do.

Yeah, just the pagecounts in my little MMPB editions are ridiculously low--barely 200 for TMN and LWW, a little more than 200 for HHB, and 240 (the longest of the books except VDT, I think) for PC. And the font of course is huge, and there are illustrations.

Going by that schema, then, LotR is more like a legend. I think in particular it's that vein of realism that gives Narnia its charm--tea and sewing machines and umbrellas and lampposts mixed up with fauns and talking Beavers and Witches. Though of course if you think about that realism too closely you wind up with something like Carpetbaggers, in which basically everyone left in Narnia collaborated with the Witch to some extent, to survive.

A more evenhanded comparison than today's YA books would be today's middle-grade books -- the books that elementary school students read, rather than older middle- and high-schoolers (who do read YA). (Yes, the terms are confusing.) By those standards, yes, they are somewhat on the small side but not nearly as much as if you compare them with books for older readers.

In fact, an excellent comparison could be made to the Imaginarium Geographica series by James Owen, which is not only a portal fantasy of sorts but has young Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams as characters. Somewhat longer, but still the same brisk pace. In contrast, Bruce Coville's works from a decade ago (My Teacher is an Alien or Magic Shop series) are even shorter and brisker.

---L.

Edited 2011-01-18 00:17 (UTC)

Ah, that's a good point. One of the interesting things that you can kind of glimpse through these books is how the conception of childhood itself has subtly changed (and not so subtly) since Lewis was writing them.

Oh indeed. And then compare further back to E. Nesbit's books. And then sideways to the contemporaneous Edward Eager fantasies. (I was about to include Swallows and Amazons, but no, they're actually older, between Nesbit and Lewis. But somehow they feel as modern as Lewis and Eager.)

---L.

Edited 2011-01-18 04:59 (UTC)

I read Chronicles to my kids this summer. (A re-read for me, obviously) I remember being surprised how long it took for all four children to reach Narnia, too.

I was also a bit astonished by how the meal with the Beavers got an entire chapter. lol. Lewis, Tolkien...and the food obsession of artery-choking doom. Let's catch the fish! Fry the fish! Cook the potatoes! And, by golly, let's write poetry about butter. ;)

Did you ever read any of Brian Jacques' Redwall books? He takes the British fantasist obsession with food to its omega point, particularly in the later, lesser efforts.

I never did. His prose style didn't mesh with me when I was a kid, and I never attempted them later. Probably will when the girls are older.

More obsessed with food, though? Clearly, this is the sort of epic writing which must be consumed. (Argh. Sorry. Couldn't help myself.)

Ah ha ha, yes.

The Redwall books are great for kids and parents to share, IMO--I read them aloud with my mom and sister during our school commute in middle school (my sister being in preK/elementary), after discovering them for myself in 4th grade. Read the first seven, going by publication order; the rest are just crappy variations on a theme. Though the theme revolves around songs and descriptions of tasty, tasty food.

Good to know! My daughters are in that pre-K/elementary slot, so I might put that in my rotation. Rather than read entire series straight through, we're rotating them. I decided to do this since the characters tend to age from story to story, and I thought it would be fun for the girls to grow up with a host of characters.

What I did not expect was how quickly we'd race through the books! We're almost done with Sherwood's first Wren story. (And the girls are drawing fanart. It's rather adorable.) Anyhow, I need to add a few more series into the mix. I was thinking of reading Swallows and Amazons next.

Brian Jaques. They're about mice, right?

Yup. Mice with swords. Sort of like Reepicheep, actually.

:) Excellent.

I suspect they'll take to Swallows and Amazons like, well, kids messing about with boats. Your kids strike me as decidedly non-duffers.

---L.

"Better drowned than duffers. If not duffers, won't drown"

My best friend and I used to write letters back and forth (sometimes in code) as Nancy and Peggy. Nancy is still my fictional idol. She was too damn cool for words.

Best telegram in fiction ever.

---L.

Hey, if you lived in Britain at the height of rationing, you'd be writing poetry about butter too! (And it's not as greedily obsessed with unobtainable foods as "Brideshead Revisited" - but wallowing in nostalgic memories of meals past is a minor feature of British literature of the period...)

Thank you so much for linking that article. I started weeping on page 2 and I haven’t stopped. My parents have told me about Lumumba and I watched a dramatization of his abbreviated tenure and assassination when I was very young. The tragedy of the injustice of his death, of the rape of Africa, of what it means to me and what it will mean to my chidren is something that I try to push to the back of my mind as often as possible. But reading that article brought it all back and even though it was painful, it is necessary.

You're welcome. If you haven't read them, Hochschild's books are also searing and excellent.

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

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