The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

[starlady]

Lewis, C.S. Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. New York: Harper Collins, 1994. [1951]

Though my copy of this book is also well-read, I recall clearly not liking it very much until eighth grade, when my second grade reading partner insisted we read it because it was her favorite, and I came to see its good points--namely, Pevensies in Narnia! But despite some things about it that I like very much, I have real problems with it on multiple levels.

swan_tower mentioned that the book has serious structural problems, and it's true; to wit, way too much of the action is told in reported discourse, it takes the Pevensies too long to join up with Caspian (though the delay, I suppose, lends a degree of inevitability to their triumph), and most importantly of all, wandering around in the woods is bloody boring. I can think of multiple fantasy epics that suffer from this truth--Harry Potter, The Sword of Shannara (oh jebus I wanted to gouge my eyes out in that section); heck, even The Hobbit, the Mirkwood sections are rather long and depressing--and really, I think it's probably just better, if you're ever tempted to have your characters wander around pointlessly in the woods, to just say no. Though Lewis obviously didn't think it was pointless, and this is one of the places where his didactic goals interfere with his storytelling.

To continue the discussion of Susan, though, reading this book I realized that it wasn't just Susan (though she doesn't come off at all well here; Lewis does not like Susan) but adulthood in general that bothers him--at the end, when the older two Pevensies are told that they'll never go back to Narnia, it's summarily because they're getting too old. Now, being me, and reading this as I am in the throes of fannish obsession, I incline to a Watsonian explanation for this that does not reflect well on Aslan, but on the Doylist level, Jack Lewis clearly is deeply suspicious of adults and adulthood in general and adult women in particular. He likes children best, even if he isn't so suspicious of adults as to believe in the automatic moral purity of all children (viz. Edmund). I tend to find this a deeply mistaken and false dichotomy, but I find myself wanting to write a series of children's fantasy books arguing with Lewis, too.

Speaking of arguing with Lewis, rereading these books, it's rather shocking just how much of the architectonics of His Dark Materials that Philip Pullman lifted out of Narnia and transformed for his own purposes, starting with the multiverse theory--Diggory comes out in favor of it in LWW, since of course in TMN he experiences it for himself, and of course he's right. I also feel like Lyra, in a lot of ways, is a conglomeration of traits that in the Pevensies, especially Edmund, are downplayed or denied, starting with the fact that she's a liar and that she betrays her best friend. Edmund comes off fairly well in PC, which I like (EDMUND I <3 YOU), but one feels that's almost because Lewis wants to weight the scales against the older Pevensies. And given the climax of this book, it's clearly not a coincidence that Lucy and Susan were kept out of the battle in LWW, too. For that matter, Mrs. Coulter is clearly an argument with Jadis and the Witch, too.

I was talking with my roommate, who made the invaluable observation that for Lewis, for the Pevensies, Narnia is like a really awesome video game--no matter how enthralled you are playing it, eventually there comes a time when you shut the system off and go back to the rest of your life. Maybe like me you cried at the end of FFX and you've had some emotional catharsis or learned a few things about determination and ethics or what have you (more on that anon), but it's still fundamentally a game, a secondary or dependent reality. And I think that it's pretty obvious, both here and at the end of LWW, that that's the assumption that Lewis is working off of, and thus for him there's no cruelty in either ending, and the Pevensies would have no problem with being called back and forth, because they always know which world is more real. I can't really accept that on an emotional level anymore, but I don't think it ever gave Lewis any trouble. For me, I tend to think that people sort of just become more and more who they actually are over time, so that personal development looks sort of like a spiral, and the idea of becoming who you were as an adult and then being summarily transformed back into a child is just fundamentally, well, destabilizing and awful, and I don't think there's any way that having been an adult wouldn't show in your behaviour even after you became a child again. Lewis disagrees with me here, obviously.

But you know what? REEPICHEEP, that's what. And also, what is up with Bacchus and the Maenads?

Also, for what it's worth and for your information, the semi-official Narnia chronology.

Okay, actually, I have more to say about Reepicheep, because I've already mentioned Tolkien and Pullman and Croggon in these posts and epershand brought up Oz in the comments to the last one and really, at this point I'm actively looking for ways to connect the canon of children's fantasy with itself--for instance, I'm developing the conviction that J.K. Rowling is having an argument with Tolkien, though not as pointedly as Pullman is with Lewis. But on the specific topic of Reepicheep, and the importance of food in these books and particularly here and in LWW, which I wouldn't have twigged to if not for jennifer_gale's comment--these books are clearly the locus classicus not only for Watership Down but for Brian Jacques' Redwall books, which pretty much are all about mice (and the occasional squirrel) with swords. A Sword in particular, actually. And let me just say, if you haven't read the Redwall books, and you enjoyed the high adventure of HHB, you really should read the first seven of the Redwall books (going by publication order). They're fun, and ethical[*ETA see below], and have lots of food and song and swashbuckling, and are better on gender issues than Lewis. I ♥ Mariel.

Also, if you haven't seen the two Narnia festivids, Never the Same and The Greatest Day, you should, because they're both pretty damn awesome.

Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

And I think that it's pretty obvious, both here and at the end of LWW, that that's the assumption that Lewis is working off of, and thus for him there's no cruelty in either ending, and the Pevensies would have no problem with being called back and forth, because they always know which world is more real. I can't really accept that on an emotional level anymore, but I don't think it ever gave Lewis any trouble.

I think this is the main reason why finding out about the books' Christian allegory was such a cruel betrayal for me, and why I've never been able to reread them since: it told me that Narnia was realer to me than it had ever been to Lewis. And once I'd seen that, I couldn't unsee it; it really is all over the text.

[holyschist]

I am really enjoying these posts, although I remember Narnia rather poorly and don't have much to say about them specifically. Would love to hear about how Rowling is arguing with Tolkien.

I am a little surprised by your description of the first seven Redwall books as "ethical." I mostly enjoyed them as a kid, but I was always deeply, deeply bothered by the whole concept of "vermin", and birth/species dooming you to be evil/gross/mean/generally despicable. I gave up on the Redwall books many books ago, but I don't remember Jacques ever making more than a token attempt to subvert that (I even vaguely recall one token attempt with a "vermin" character trying to be good but ultimately failing because his vermin nature kept taking over), and that's a huge sticking point for me in recommending the books to anyone.

I really...just can't find a non-nasty way to read that pattern. (it probably doesn't help that I am personally extremely fond of rats and ferrets and so on, and find the concept of kind cuddly badgers fundamentally hilarious and wrong-headed--but regardless, fantasy being about animals or aliens or vampires or whatever does not to me justify intrinsically evil species).

...wow, I have a lot of Redwall issues. This is only the main one.

[lnhammer]

Redwall I see, easily, but I'm not catching the Watership Down connection here.

---L.

[recessional]

The problem with PC, that I've always felt, is that it's actually a relatively ugly, normal-world story about how a set of conquerors move into Narnia and then get bogged down in vicious dynastic squabbling, and then it is a story of that ordinary-world crashing headfirst into the wild-world of the living woods and Bacchus and Aslan and everything else, and then Lewis went off and wrote mostly about the Pevensies and tried to make them the center of the book.

They aren't. Caspian is the centre of this story. It's a story that should be about the mediation of that wild-world and the Telmarines-ordinary-world that doesn't end up in mass slaughter for both, personified by this thirteen year old child who was very nearly locked up in a tower his whole life (Caspian may not have REALIZED that he was a prisoner in his own life, but he clearly was), who goes from that to being dumped head-first into, well, EVERYTHING ELSE.

But it's not, because instead (and it's very much "instead", not "and") Lewis decided to mostly tell the story about how growing up is bad, and faith is good, and add a mild bunch of boys-own-adventure stuff in having the Pevensies treck across Narnia.

Re: Edmund - for all the problems I have with, well, EVERYTHING about the metaphysics of this 'verse, the moment where Aslan looks at Edmund and says "well done" in PC will make me tear up every. damn. time. Because whatever I think about Aslan as a god-thing, it is very clear that he is Edmund's god-thing, chosen and devoted, and so the level of vindication for Edmund Pevensie in that moment has to be unbelievable.

And I would agree that if Narnia had any influence on Watership Down, it was only in a sniff of disgust at how thin and ridiculous it was as an idea, and going on to paint over it in large strokes. (WD is . . . an interesting book. I would not class it as a children's book, unless you feel that all thinking-animal books must be children's books. It has rather too much sex and bloody violence for that.)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Before the movie of PC came out, I re-read the book, and it squarely hit a button I had recently formed because of the game I was running. (Memento, the game that gave rise to the Onyx Court books.) Bear with me while I give some background; I promise I'll get back to Narnia.

Memento was a Changeling game, and in Changeling, humans can't see faerie things unless they're enchanted; also, once the enchantment ends, they forget most of what they saw. But fae-blooded humans can have faerie gifts, and so when I was making Nicholas Merriman, the last scion of a family that had been helping the faeries for hundreds of years, I gave him the gift that lets you remember everything from while you were enchanted.

Not until later did it occur to me what a hideously cruel thing I had done to Nicholas. The characters enchanted him several times -- which was tantamount to taking him to Oz or Narnia for a few days, where everything is more colorful and magical and amazing, and then kicking him out again. Leaving him with a perfect recollection of what he had lost, the wonder all around him . . . that he was incapable of seeing for himself.

So when I re-read PC, I instantly thought about what that would do to the Pevensies, and Susan in particular. It made me so very happy that the film brought it up explicitly, with Lucy asking Susan if she isn't happy to be back, and Susan saying yes . . . but how long will it last? Because I'm with you: after how much the characters go on about the simultaneously numinous and real feeling of Narnia, the idea that pulling the plug doesn't scar them forever is just impossible for me to believe. The movie also flat-out changes the reason Peter and Susan don't come back, in my opinion for the philosophical better; how horrible would it be to hear it's just because you're too old? (Especially when you became an adult in Narnia, before getting demoted to childhood once more?)

If I ever write my "problem of Susan" story, that experience is going to be at the heart of it.

I'd love to hear the stuff in your last graf, both the Reepicheep and Rowling parts.

[juniperphoenix]

This book is my favorite of the series, but I'm not really sure what to say about it in the context of this discussion. Let's see...

One of the things I love about it is that of all the books, it most directly deals with the Pevensies trying to reconcile their adult and child identities. I wish, as I think a lot of us do, that it had gone much further in exploring that, but we get more of it here than anywhere else. The Pevensies have a dual nature in this book that has always intrigued me. It also hits my competence kink hard; they've been through this once and know what to do this time, and they become more competent the longer they're there.

recessional made the point that this is really Caspian's story, and I think the interesting thing about that is that it's Caspian who provides the child POV in this book — he's the one who's discovering Narnia for the first time — whereas the Pevensies represent a hybrid child/adult viewpoint and are already at home in Narnia (and, in fact, are themselves an important part of the Narnian culture into which Caspian is being initiated).

It strikes me that every book in the series, with the exception of TLB, is somebody's Narnian initiation story.

I love the emphasis on the amount of time that has passed in Narnia and how they have to mentally reconstruct Cair Paravel like archaeologists to recognize it as their home. (I loved that there were illuminated manuscripts and cave paintings of the Pevensies in the PC film.)

And because I am one of those people who enjoys loving descriptions of food in literature, I love the part about roasting bear meat with apples. :) I've always thought that sounded delicious, even though I would never be able to eat it in real life.