![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyLewis, C.S. The Last Battle. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. [1956]
I can't believe this book won the Carnegie Medal. There, I said it.
I said in my post on The Silver Chair that Caspian and Rilian seem spoiled to me, and on rereading this book, I have to say that some of the same feeling lingers about Tirian (whose best friend is a unicorn, for maximum symbolic significance), too. He's not quite spoiled, but he's definitely rather impractical. I keep comparing his reaction to the news of the felling of Lantern Waste with Peter's matter-of-factly taking charge of Caspian's war against Miraz and finding Tirian greatly wanting. If nothing else, I think we can all agree that Tirian is fatally unprepared to confront the challenge that Shift presents; he's a good man, but he lacks truly effective leadership and has an entirely mistaken notion of honor and justice and truth, with fatal consequences. He doesn't quite lack all conviction, but he does lack all sense of politicking, and--are you listening, Suzanne Collins?--I've said before that I don't think that the answer to the wrong side getting political is for the right side to withdraw from politics altogether.
I don't think it's an accident that Tirian's being tied to that tree recalls Uncle Andrew being imprisoned in that bush--and as the text explicitly reminds us, Lantern Waste is the same ground in which the trees of silver and gold and thewhite Tree of Protection were planted. Narnia ends where it begins: the first time is tragedy, the second time is farce. Have the Talking Beasts actually gotten more naïve since the Creation? Why are they all so easily taken in? I find the implied moral/intellectual hierarchy to be really distasteful, actually (sorry, Augustine). (If Aslan had been around more, of course, they might have had a better sense of his reality, rather than an all too desperate thirst for his presence.) The other thing I really, passionately dislike is how mean Narnia has become. I think a little of it is visible even back in Prince Caspian, but it's in full flower here; the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs. This isn't the Narnia I love, not at all; it's all come apart.
What I want to know is whether it was ever possible, on a Watsonian level, to avert Narnia's destruction. Why does Aslan stay away so much after Caspian's reign? I think in TSC someone comments that Aslan loves heroes best, which is certainly true, and Narnia by the time of TLB is notably lacking in true heroes. Too, I keep coming back to the curse brought down on Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum for eating of the flesh of that Stag in Harfang, and having just seen a musical of LWW, I keep coming back to the Deep Magic too, for it binds Narnia and Aslan is bound to it too. The Witch insists that if she is not given her due of the blood of traitors Narnia will be destroyed by fire and water, which is what happens in this book, and I wonder who is the (biggest) traitor to Narnia? Whose blood going unspilt brings about the land's destruction?
The obvious candidates are Shift, Tirian, and Susan, and in a weird indirect way I actually sort of want to see Susan's no longer being a Friend to Narnia as the reason for its destruction: if the Kings and Queens of the Golden Age had remained united, what had Narnia to fear? That would in some ways feel more organic than what actually goes on, which is ridiculously overdetermined. Let me put it another way: as TMN and TLB make clear, Narnia lives and dies at Aslan's will.
At this point readers will object that by the time the Pevensies et al. are killed in the railway 'accident' (let's be honest: they're basically murdered by Aslan) and brought to Aslan's country Narnia's destruction is a foregone conclusion, which is certainly true, but as I said, I'm concerned right now with Watsonian theories, and I like that one. Someone ought to have died, or to have remained true, and that lack has consequences. In any case, Susan's betrayal of Narnia happened before its destruction became inevitable, unless everything was predetermined, which I don't think it is. If everything were predetermined, the choices of everyone over the previous six books would have no moral significance, and one thing I love about Narnia is that decisions have consequences, and that Lewis doesn't shy away from depicting them, even if things do have a tendency to turn out right (until this book, when they all go wrong).
Whenever I bring up the Problem of Susan there's a good chance that people will insist that she isn't exiled from Narnia because of lipstick and nylons but because she stops being a Friend to Narnia. Which is true enough and well and good, but I say to them, once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen--and she and Peter were told that they wouldn't be coming back while they were still in Narnia, which for me deprives the "exiled because she stopped being a Friend" theory of some of its weight--though note, if Aslan was telling them the truth (which is a good question), then his decision to end Narnia was obviously undertaken after Caspian's restoration. (Though if to Aslan all times are soon, the idea of "after" loses some of its coherency.) Furthermore, Lewis and the rest of the Pevensies et al. immediately collapse that rather fine distinction between cause and effect in Susan's case:
This doesn't sound to me like Queen Susan of Narnia, but what do I know, I just read these books. I refer everyone to Sarah Monette's post about the sexual politics of Narnia, because she says a lot of insightful things in there that I agree with about Susan and Jill and Lucy and girlhood and being grown-up. (I also reccommend her posts on Daughters of Lilith and on Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan".) What strikes me right now is that Susan didn't fall; she was pushed. She was, after all, older than she is now when the Pevensies were forced out of Narnia at the end of the Golden Age, and if being/having been an adult in general were enough to disqualify people from Aslan's country, none of the seven except Eustace and Jill would be eligible. So it's society in England that is the deciding factor, by process of elimination (think of it like interference patterns), England in which Susan was told she would stay forever. Her biggest fault seems to have been taking Aslan at his word.
I could go around and around about the problem of Susan; there are as many different interpretations as there are Narnia fans, some more or less favorable to Lewis and Aslan, and I'm taking a hard line on both in this particular post. For me, though, I don't think there's anything that justifies losing your entire family all at once in a railway accident. And yes, there's every reason, even in-text, to think that she could come to the England in Aslan's country eventually, but that's not the point at all. I can only talk about this side of the divide between the living and the dead, and it's on this side, the side of England and of the Narnia that died, what happens to Susan is unconscionable--and that Lewis either didn't think of it or wasn't bothered by it is in some ways even more so.
Anyway. The other thing that's interesting reading this book again is how much there are multiple wheels turning in it until the end when the wheels lock up: Digory and the other six all get together on their own initiative, and Tirian's vision of them ("I am Peter the High King") and Peter and Edmund actually go dig the rings up from under the house in London, and I for one wouldn't wager much on Peter's having stayed out of Narnia forever once they had the rings, even if they had planned to send Eustace and Jill ahead first. It's really hard to avoid the impression that Aslan takes matters into his own hands--paws--to forestall the Pevensies doing what they think they ought; it almost seems like Aslan ends the world of Narnia to keep Peter and his siblings out of it except on his, Aslan's, terms. The Pevensies are older now, and as someone said to me at one point in these comments, the single thing about children is that they grow up and start thinking for themselves--and Lewis' story is letting, showing them do that.
Footnote on Jill: she was a Girl Guide, ha ha! As a Girl Scout myself, I have to think that is awesome, though I think that they should just knight her for the stable caper rather than jawing about how she's a girl and can't be knighted.
Also, okay, footnote on Tirian: this is a fandom brain thing, but the language of courtly romances that he and Jewel use totally reads like interspecies slash subtext. I don't have any problems with reading it as textual, either.
Speaking of text versus subtext, however, I don't think Lewis really liked Unitarians, given that it's pretty much impossible for me to read the "Aslan and Tash are both names for you know Who" passages as anything but an anti-Abrahamic religions' unity screed, in light of the outright racism that characterizes all the description of the Calormenes except Emeth, the good one (and I'm just going to note Tirian actually using the phrase "white Narnians" (69) after he and Jill and Eustace put on brownface, and later the Dwarfs calling the Calormenes "Darkies", and move on). I'm fairly certain that the Dwarfs refusing to be taken in is some sort of commentary on atheism and materialism; obviously Lewis is not a fan. My one roommate has reminded me several times that the stable malarkey is proof that Lewis thought that even non-Christians could be saved, but as we both agree, Lewis' conviction that non-Christians needed Christian saving is quaint at best. (Also: it looks like the entire stable thing is just an excuse to set up a Jesus reference. Really, C.S. Lewis? Really!?)
The other thing about the Dwarfs in Aslan's country is that, well, I wouldn't call myself a materialist, but Lewis clearly passionately hates materialism and it seems to me to be a rather unfair portrayal. And this is my fundamental philosophical quarrel with Lewis, where he and I will never agree: I don't think that this world is less valuable or real because it's this world where we grow and live and experience and suffer; as Roy Mustang says in the last episode of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, "This world is imperfect; that's why it's beautiful." I don't think this world is worthless because it's imperfect; I think the imperfections are what make it worthwhile, despite the pain that too often accompanies them. It's not wrong to mourn for the Narnia that died, which for me is the more important, the real Narnia, but for Lewis the "real" Narnia of Aslan's country is vastly superior, and I disagree. It'd be nice to be immortal, for a while at least, but stories are made out of experience, out of reversals and accidents and danger and things going wrong and right, and there will be none of that in Aslan's country, because everything only ever goes right there. At the end Lewis leaves the real story unwritten because there is no story in it, and he knows that at least.
I've led myself back into the aspect of this book that for some people is its most important feature, namely the religious allegories--which I suspect are for what it won the Carnegie Medal, because in all respects TVDT and TSC are much better, more coherent books. Given how many people have said to me that they didn't realize the Christian aspects of the Narnia books until other people pointed them out to me--which was my own experience--I'm inclined to agree withepershand's assessment that Lewis didn't actually succeed in writing a Christian story. Compare Narnia with such leaden dogmatism as G.P. Taylor's books, for instance, and you'll get a sense of what I mean--which is not to say that these books aren't fiercely ethical, because within their own bounded parameters they are, and that was one of the things I loved best about them even as a child, and still is.
I think Lewis succeeded, obviously, in writing a story that can be read as Christian with a great deal of success and ease, but there are any number of stories and works of art to which this applies--why is Virgil permitted to accompany Dante through Hell and Purgatory, after all? Nor do I mean to slight people for whom the Christian interpretation of these books is important, because there's certainly enough room in Narnia for all of us to be comfortable (further up and further in). For me, what grates most on rereading these books isn't the supposedly Christian elements--I have very little quarrel with them, except perhaps a few things out of this book--but rather things like what happens to Susan and why all the adult women in Narnia are evil or dead. But I do want to answer explicitly a question that I've only heard directly a few times, but which is one of the straw men that irks me most about anti-atheism arguments, namely the supposedly burning question of how someone can be moral without religion. (Note this assumes that religious people are more moral than areligious people, which is another assumption that I find utterly false, but we'll let it stand for the sake of this argument.)
In the first place, even before my ethical college education I was inclined to distrust 'morals' as the sort of knee-jerk mental bric-a-brac inherited by all of us from society that, when push comes to shove, will inevitably be abandoned for whatever is easiest or most pleasing to the person in question. For me, ethics are and always will be superior to morals in that ethics are closely examined, strenuously contested and firmly held principles of how we as human beings are supposed to relate to each other, and as far as I'm concerned it's perfectly possible to get a superior ethical education out of reading a ton of books as a kid, books like Narnia foremost among them. I am a person who constructs her self-narrative out of books, and it is absolutely the case that people like Jill and Lucy and Edmund were role models I consciously cited to myself when I was trying to figure out just how to act at that age. Completely fictional people still are that important to me, in many ways, which is why I absolutely believe that there needs to be in all types of fiction much more representation of people from all conceivable backgrounds and walks of life than is currently the norm. I was able to find people enough like myself to take as role models in fiction as a child because I had at least as much privilege as I did imagination, but not everyone is automatically endowed with as much of either as I was, through no particular merit of my own.
Which is also why, in the end, I've undertaken this reread. Narnia was central to my reading experience as a kid, as it was for many other people, and I've been concerned here to investigate both what Narnia was and is and what it absolutely wasn't. Lewis falls short by many of the rubrics I now use to judge the stories I read, but his influence on all of us is undeniable--I think everyone in the room raised their hands at FOGcon when, in the Rhetorical Argument in SFF panel, someone asked who'd read the Narnia books. If you try to imagine how your reading and the possibilities it opened up might have been different if the Narnia books had been different, you'll get a sense of the potential and the necessity, I think, of doing better, and of not giving Lewis a pass just because most of us read him in childhood. For all my criticism of the Narnia books on multiple levels in these posts, I haven't managed to diminish their own appeal to myself or to anyone who's read them, I'll wager. And as much as I still love Narnia--in some ways, I love Narnia all the more for having done this reread; the books really are fiercely good overall, but when Lewis falls down, he falls hard--and I would unhesitatingly recommend the Chronicles to just about anyone from age eight to one hundred and eight, we owe it to future readers to see if we can't do Lewis one better.
Prior posts:
TMN | LWW | HHB | PC | TVDT | TSC
I can't believe this book won the Carnegie Medal. There, I said it.
I said in my post on The Silver Chair that Caspian and Rilian seem spoiled to me, and on rereading this book, I have to say that some of the same feeling lingers about Tirian (whose best friend is a unicorn, for maximum symbolic significance), too. He's not quite spoiled, but he's definitely rather impractical. I keep comparing his reaction to the news of the felling of Lantern Waste with Peter's matter-of-factly taking charge of Caspian's war against Miraz and finding Tirian greatly wanting. If nothing else, I think we can all agree that Tirian is fatally unprepared to confront the challenge that Shift presents; he's a good man, but he lacks truly effective leadership and has an entirely mistaken notion of honor and justice and truth, with fatal consequences. He doesn't quite lack all conviction, but he does lack all sense of politicking, and--are you listening, Suzanne Collins?--I've said before that I don't think that the answer to the wrong side getting political is for the right side to withdraw from politics altogether.
I don't think it's an accident that Tirian's being tied to that tree recalls Uncle Andrew being imprisoned in that bush--and as the text explicitly reminds us, Lantern Waste is the same ground in which the trees of silver and gold and the
What I want to know is whether it was ever possible, on a Watsonian level, to avert Narnia's destruction. Why does Aslan stay away so much after Caspian's reign? I think in TSC someone comments that Aslan loves heroes best, which is certainly true, and Narnia by the time of TLB is notably lacking in true heroes. Too, I keep coming back to the curse brought down on Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum for eating of the flesh of that Stag in Harfang, and having just seen a musical of LWW, I keep coming back to the Deep Magic too, for it binds Narnia and Aslan is bound to it too. The Witch insists that if she is not given her due of the blood of traitors Narnia will be destroyed by fire and water, which is what happens in this book, and I wonder who is the (biggest) traitor to Narnia? Whose blood going unspilt brings about the land's destruction?
The obvious candidates are Shift, Tirian, and Susan, and in a weird indirect way I actually sort of want to see Susan's no longer being a Friend to Narnia as the reason for its destruction: if the Kings and Queens of the Golden Age had remained united, what had Narnia to fear? That would in some ways feel more organic than what actually goes on, which is ridiculously overdetermined. Let me put it another way: as TMN and TLB make clear, Narnia lives and dies at Aslan's will.
At this point readers will object that by the time the Pevensies et al. are killed in the railway 'accident' (let's be honest: they're basically murdered by Aslan) and brought to Aslan's country Narnia's destruction is a foregone conclusion, which is certainly true, but as I said, I'm concerned right now with Watsonian theories, and I like that one. Someone ought to have died, or to have remained true, and that lack has consequences. In any case, Susan's betrayal of Narnia happened before its destruction became inevitable, unless everything was predetermined, which I don't think it is. If everything were predetermined, the choices of everyone over the previous six books would have no moral significance, and one thing I love about Narnia is that decisions have consequences, and that Lewis doesn't shy away from depicting them, even if things do have a tendency to turn out right (until this book, when they all go wrong).
Whenever I bring up the Problem of Susan there's a good chance that people will insist that she isn't exiled from Narnia because of lipstick and nylons but because she stops being a Friend to Narnia. Which is true enough and well and good, but I say to them, once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen--and she and Peter were told that they wouldn't be coming back while they were still in Narnia, which for me deprives the "exiled because she stopped being a Friend" theory of some of its weight--though note, if Aslan was telling them the truth (which is a good question), then his decision to end Narnia was obviously undertaken after Caspian's restoration. (Though if to Aslan all times are soon, the idea of "after" loses some of its coherency.) Furthermore, Lewis and the rest of the Pevensies et al. immediately collapse that rather fine distinction between cause and effect in Susan's case:
"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend to Narnia."
"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"
"Oh Susan!" said Jill. "She's interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."
"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can." (169)
This doesn't sound to me like Queen Susan of Narnia, but what do I know, I just read these books. I refer everyone to Sarah Monette's post about the sexual politics of Narnia, because she says a lot of insightful things in there that I agree with about Susan and Jill and Lucy and girlhood and being grown-up. (I also reccommend her posts on Daughters of Lilith and on Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan".) What strikes me right now is that Susan didn't fall; she was pushed. She was, after all, older than she is now when the Pevensies were forced out of Narnia at the end of the Golden Age, and if being/having been an adult in general were enough to disqualify people from Aslan's country, none of the seven except Eustace and Jill would be eligible. So it's society in England that is the deciding factor, by process of elimination (think of it like interference patterns), England in which Susan was told she would stay forever. Her biggest fault seems to have been taking Aslan at his word.
I could go around and around about the problem of Susan; there are as many different interpretations as there are Narnia fans, some more or less favorable to Lewis and Aslan, and I'm taking a hard line on both in this particular post. For me, though, I don't think there's anything that justifies losing your entire family all at once in a railway accident. And yes, there's every reason, even in-text, to think that she could come to the England in Aslan's country eventually, but that's not the point at all. I can only talk about this side of the divide between the living and the dead, and it's on this side, the side of England and of the Narnia that died, what happens to Susan is unconscionable--and that Lewis either didn't think of it or wasn't bothered by it is in some ways even more so.
Anyway. The other thing that's interesting reading this book again is how much there are multiple wheels turning in it until the end when the wheels lock up: Digory and the other six all get together on their own initiative, and Tirian's vision of them ("I am Peter the High King") and Peter and Edmund actually go dig the rings up from under the house in London, and I for one wouldn't wager much on Peter's having stayed out of Narnia forever once they had the rings, even if they had planned to send Eustace and Jill ahead first. It's really hard to avoid the impression that Aslan takes matters into his own hands--paws--to forestall the Pevensies doing what they think they ought; it almost seems like Aslan ends the world of Narnia to keep Peter and his siblings out of it except on his, Aslan's, terms. The Pevensies are older now, and as someone said to me at one point in these comments, the single thing about children is that they grow up and start thinking for themselves--and Lewis' story is letting, showing them do that.
Footnote on Jill: she was a Girl Guide, ha ha! As a Girl Scout myself, I have to think that is awesome, though I think that they should just knight her for the stable caper rather than jawing about how she's a girl and can't be knighted.
Also, okay, footnote on Tirian: this is a fandom brain thing, but the language of courtly romances that he and Jewel use totally reads like interspecies slash subtext. I don't have any problems with reading it as textual, either.
Speaking of text versus subtext, however, I don't think Lewis really liked Unitarians, given that it's pretty much impossible for me to read the "Aslan and Tash are both names for you know Who" passages as anything but an anti-Abrahamic religions' unity screed, in light of the outright racism that characterizes all the description of the Calormenes except Emeth, the good one (and I'm just going to note Tirian actually using the phrase "white Narnians" (69) after he and Jill and Eustace put on brownface, and later the Dwarfs calling the Calormenes "Darkies", and move on). I'm fairly certain that the Dwarfs refusing to be taken in is some sort of commentary on atheism and materialism; obviously Lewis is not a fan. My one roommate has reminded me several times that the stable malarkey is proof that Lewis thought that even non-Christians could be saved, but as we both agree, Lewis' conviction that non-Christians needed Christian saving is quaint at best. (Also: it looks like the entire stable thing is just an excuse to set up a Jesus reference. Really, C.S. Lewis? Really!?)
The other thing about the Dwarfs in Aslan's country is that, well, I wouldn't call myself a materialist, but Lewis clearly passionately hates materialism and it seems to me to be a rather unfair portrayal. And this is my fundamental philosophical quarrel with Lewis, where he and I will never agree: I don't think that this world is less valuable or real because it's this world where we grow and live and experience and suffer; as Roy Mustang says in the last episode of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime, "This world is imperfect; that's why it's beautiful." I don't think this world is worthless because it's imperfect; I think the imperfections are what make it worthwhile, despite the pain that too often accompanies them. It's not wrong to mourn for the Narnia that died, which for me is the more important, the real Narnia, but for Lewis the "real" Narnia of Aslan's country is vastly superior, and I disagree. It'd be nice to be immortal, for a while at least, but stories are made out of experience, out of reversals and accidents and danger and things going wrong and right, and there will be none of that in Aslan's country, because everything only ever goes right there. At the end Lewis leaves the real story unwritten because there is no story in it, and he knows that at least.
I've led myself back into the aspect of this book that for some people is its most important feature, namely the religious allegories--which I suspect are for what it won the Carnegie Medal, because in all respects TVDT and TSC are much better, more coherent books. Given how many people have said to me that they didn't realize the Christian aspects of the Narnia books until other people pointed them out to me--which was my own experience--I'm inclined to agree with
epershand's assessment that Lewis didn't actually succeed in writing a Christian story. Compare Narnia with such leaden dogmatism as G.P. Taylor's books, for instance, and you'll get a sense of what I mean--which is not to say that these books aren't fiercely ethical, because within their own bounded parameters they are, and that was one of the things I loved best about them even as a child, and still is. I think Lewis succeeded, obviously, in writing a story that can be read as Christian with a great deal of success and ease, but there are any number of stories and works of art to which this applies--why is Virgil permitted to accompany Dante through Hell and Purgatory, after all? Nor do I mean to slight people for whom the Christian interpretation of these books is important, because there's certainly enough room in Narnia for all of us to be comfortable (further up and further in). For me, what grates most on rereading these books isn't the supposedly Christian elements--I have very little quarrel with them, except perhaps a few things out of this book--but rather things like what happens to Susan and why all the adult women in Narnia are evil or dead. But I do want to answer explicitly a question that I've only heard directly a few times, but which is one of the straw men that irks me most about anti-atheism arguments, namely the supposedly burning question of how someone can be moral without religion. (Note this assumes that religious people are more moral than areligious people, which is another assumption that I find utterly false, but we'll let it stand for the sake of this argument.)
In the first place, even before my ethical college education I was inclined to distrust 'morals' as the sort of knee-jerk mental bric-a-brac inherited by all of us from society that, when push comes to shove, will inevitably be abandoned for whatever is easiest or most pleasing to the person in question. For me, ethics are and always will be superior to morals in that ethics are closely examined, strenuously contested and firmly held principles of how we as human beings are supposed to relate to each other, and as far as I'm concerned it's perfectly possible to get a superior ethical education out of reading a ton of books as a kid, books like Narnia foremost among them. I am a person who constructs her self-narrative out of books, and it is absolutely the case that people like Jill and Lucy and Edmund were role models I consciously cited to myself when I was trying to figure out just how to act at that age. Completely fictional people still are that important to me, in many ways, which is why I absolutely believe that there needs to be in all types of fiction much more representation of people from all conceivable backgrounds and walks of life than is currently the norm. I was able to find people enough like myself to take as role models in fiction as a child because I had at least as much privilege as I did imagination, but not everyone is automatically endowed with as much of either as I was, through no particular merit of my own.
Which is also why, in the end, I've undertaken this reread. Narnia was central to my reading experience as a kid, as it was for many other people, and I've been concerned here to investigate both what Narnia was and is and what it absolutely wasn't. Lewis falls short by many of the rubrics I now use to judge the stories I read, but his influence on all of us is undeniable--I think everyone in the room raised their hands at FOGcon when, in the Rhetorical Argument in SFF panel, someone asked who'd read the Narnia books. If you try to imagine how your reading and the possibilities it opened up might have been different if the Narnia books had been different, you'll get a sense of the potential and the necessity, I think, of doing better, and of not giving Lewis a pass just because most of us read him in childhood. For all my criticism of the Narnia books on multiple levels in these posts, I haven't managed to diminish their own appeal to myself or to anyone who's read them, I'll wager. And as much as I still love Narnia--in some ways, I love Narnia all the more for having done this reread; the books really are fiercely good overall, but when Lewis falls down, he falls hard--and I would unhesitatingly recommend the Chronicles to just about anyone from age eight to one hundred and eight, we owe it to future readers to see if we can't do Lewis one better.
Prior posts:
TMN | LWW | HHB | PC | TVDT | TSC
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-30 00:35 (UTC)Very much so, and I think this is one major reason that I was so disturbed and hurt by The Last Battle. I still remember crying so hard that I threw up because they were all dead, and that meant Narnia wasn't an amazing, beautiful part of our world but another world where all their heroism really meant nothing. I don't think I could ever read it again, but I enjoyed your discussion here and yes, I think the Narnia fans can take this world in less deterministic, more human, more magical directions than Lewis chose.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-30 04:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-30 10:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-30 17:45 (UTC)I still don't really understand religious belief on an emotional level, though I wish I did.
Me neither.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-29 19:48 (UTC)Oh, god. That isn't the Susan story I want to write, but if anybody has written it, I want to read it. Not a "happily ever after" where they stay united and she remains a Friend to Narnia, but a story in which her fall (after having been pushed) is foregrounded as the betrayal that hasn't been paid for. There's something terrible in that idea, and I would pay money to see somebody explore it.
Digory and the other six all get together on their own initiative, and Tirian's vision of them ("I am Peter the High King") and Peter and Edmund actually go dig the rings up from under the house in London, and I for one wouldn't wager much on Peter's having stayed out of Narnia forever once they had the rings, even if they had planned to send Eustace and Jill ahead first. It's really hard to avoid the impression that Aslan takes matters into his own hands--paws--to forestall the Pevensies doing what they think they ought; it almost seems like Aslan ends the world of Narnia to keep Peter and his siblings out of it except on his, Aslan's, terms.
And I also want to read THAT fanfic -- the one where the Pevensies and the others break back into Narnia and take the world on their own terms. I don't know that you can do it without making Aslan into a villain, which would cause a great many people to pillory you in the square . . . but the thought of them becoming active agents in the fantasy, as adults instead of children, makes me go squishy inside.
ETA: Heck, now that I think about it, the two ideas aren't incompatible. The Pevensies et al. break back into Narnia, figure out that Aslan has set things up to destroy the place, and subsequently rebel against his will, reaching out to Susan and standing with her in an attempt to save Narnia from its own creator, who sacrificed their sister's sense of wonder for his own eschatological ends. Or something like that. It would be a damned novel by the time you were done, but it could be awesome.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-29 23:52 (UTC)Not a "happily ever after" where they stay united and she remains a Friend to Narnia, but a story in which her fall (after having been pushed) is foregrounded as the betrayal that hasn't been paid for. There's something terrible in that idea, and I would pay money to see somebody explore it.
Yeah, I do find it a really compelling idea. I think one of the things that bothers me about Lewis' treatment of Susan is how perfunctory it is; that passage I quote is literally 95% of the discussion of her in the entire book. If you're going to do this, C.S. Lewis, you should damn well have done it all the way. Someone I know is working on something similar but not quite the same, if/when she finishes it I will let you know.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-31 09:39 (UTC)I think this is very much what Philip Pullman was attempting to do, but he seemed to get caught a bit along the way.
I'd love to read a novel/fanfic that dealt with that.
(I'd also love to know what the Emperor Over the Sea thinks of Aslan's stewardship of Narnia. I'd love to see something dealing with Aslan being his Son in more of a Greek/Roman pantheon sort of way, rather than... I dunno - does Lewis intend them to be 2 persons of the Trinity in Narnia? I've never worked it out.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-31 18:51 (UTC)I think that's a good point--Pullman's Narnia influence is so amazingly strong, and he also went back to one of Lewis' major influences (i.e. Milton) and drank deeply from that well. It's kind of funny how they do the same thing but exactly opposite--Lewis collapses all of Christianity into his own personal, highly idiosyncratic, brand of it, and Pullman collapses all of (organized) religion into a nightmare vision of the Catholic Church. Neither of them are actually very representative of mainstream Christianity/organized religion.
But yeah, exactly, re: the Emperor, at one point during this reread I turned to my roommate and was like, "So...where's the Holy Spirit in Narnia?" And I still don't know where the Holy Spirit is! I mean, it seems obvious to me that the Emperor and Aslan are 2/3 of the Trinity on the Christian interpretation level, but the other third is MIA.
I've not read much Narnia fanfic, in all honesty, just that by
I'd love to read a novel/fanfic that dealt with that.
Dust in the Air and Jump in the Fire by
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-29 21:42 (UTC)Because I cannot help repeating myself, I will say that I think perhaps it gives CS Lewis too little credit to say that he doesn't succeed in writing a Christian story (or it involves a rather narrow view of what Lewis would have felt was a successful Christian story). Perhaps he succeeds in writing a Christian story, but it's better and wilder and more interesting and less dogma-driven than what we think of as "Christian stories", and so it doesn't match our mental categories.
After all, Lewis explicitly says in LB that it's okay to know god and be moral under a different name, as long as you're knowing god and being moral. So if you feel that you derived some of your moral education from the Narnia books, and if you felt some sense of "deepness" from them, if they came alive for you and gave you some sense of the numinous, and that aliveness transformed your mental landscape in a way that helped you be a better person - then whether or not you ended up seeing that as a "Christian" thing per se, I think *Lewis*, at least, would think he succeeded at it. I do really think that in the end, Christianity to Lewis was more about actions than terminology.
On the other hand, I think you might be giving him too MUCH credit as a narrative architect. I tend to think he didn't really think a lot about the broader implications of the whole railway accident thing. I suspect he just wanted all the friends of Narnia together for the big finale and to show that they were totally going to heaven(!), and given the constraints he'd created for himself, the "rocks fall, everybody dies" solution was the easiest. I mean, one, he wants to write about going to heaven, and this is the problem of writing about heaven in a YA book where your main characters are kids: you've gotta kill of a bunch of kids. And two, having Peter use the rings wouldn't actually have solved this problem; it would just have made it weirder. Either the Pevensies would then just have to have been kicked out of Narnia and back to earth when Narnia ended (in which case the big heaven finale is robbed of a lot of emotional impact because it'd just be a bunch of characters you care less about) or they'd still have had to die, just in Narnia instead.
In sum: I suspect it's more fair to say that Lewis murdered the Pevensies (manslaughter by narrative requirement) than to say that Aslan did. Also, I think the "better" version of the LB story is maybe one in which Lewis didn't feel like he had to go back to the Pevensies to give the story emotional weight, but struck out on new waters entirely and made us care about the Narnian characters enough that their story had weight by itself [I think this would be a weird but cool AU fanfic]. But, I don't think he could do that, because:
Your comments on the unsatisfactory nature of a lot of Lewis' later Narnia characters really brought home to me that I'm not sure whether Lewis considered them REAL, in a meaningful way. I suspect he was inconsistent in his own mind about this, actually. I think sometimes he did and sometimes he didn't. But given that Narnia is sort of a sandbox reality, I think there's a sense in which people who are derived from the sandbox reality are sort of sandbox people - you can love them the way you love anything in Narnia, but they have fundamental limitations to their depth. Humans in Narnia are a bit realer than everyone else there, because they have a real-world heritage from the imports. But the longer they've been in Narnia (and particularly if they and their parents were born there) the more sandboxy they are.
Possibly that's the answer to why it's not a tragedy that the Pevensies have to go back to England after "growing up" in Narnia as kings and queens. Because I will say, when they get old in Narnia, they do start to display all those tell-tale signs of sandboxyness. The young, fresh-from-the-real-world Pevensies are sharply characterized and much more convincing than the King and Queen Pevensies, who sort of get compressed a bit into archetypes of chivalry. Growing up in Narnia is only sandbox growing up.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-30 04:23 (UTC)Perhaps he succeeds in writing a Christian story, but it's better and wilder and more interesting and less dogma-driven than what we think of as "Christian stories", and so it doesn't match our mental categories.
Mm, yeah--but Lewis' Christianity is also not very much like any other Christianity. I think we're agreeing at base, but using very different words? I guess what strikes me, especially as compared to G.P. Taylor who is awful, is that even beyond the blatantly allegorical stuff that doesn't register as such to many child readers much of what Lewis would have pointed to as "Christian" I just see as good ethics. They're in that Venn diagram intersection zone.
Your comments on the unsatisfactory nature of a lot of Lewis' later Narnia characters really brought home to me that I'm not sure whether Lewis considered them REAL, in a meaningful way.
I've been convinced since LWW--I think we talked about this--that for Lewis Narnia is totally a sandbox. It's a very nice sandbox, but a sandbox all the same, and when the sandbox gets grungy you have to dump out the sand and start over. I think you're right about the Pevensies/England/Narnia from Lewis' perspective, but I just can't share that perspective.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-04 03:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-04 04:47 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-30 21:07 (UTC)As an aside, that's a nice old sentiment -- a couple Kokinshu poems all but say that.
---L.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-30 21:46 (UTC)