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

[starlady]

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.

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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.

Comments

[recessional]

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.

[torachan]

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.)

[melannen]

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.

[epershand]

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.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

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.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

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.

[larryhammer]

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.

[jennifergale.livejournal.com]

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. ;)

[spritl.livejournal.com]

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.