Narnia: Oral Traditions of the Church of Aslan

Narnia Recap: The children have made their way to the home of the Beavers and prepared a sumptuous meal to serve with a side of exposition.

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Chapter 8: What Happened After Dinner

   "AND NOW," SAID LUCY, "DO PLEASE TELL us what's happened to Mr. Tumnus."
   "Ah, that's bad," said Mr. Beaver, shaking his head. "That's a very, very bad business. There's no doubt he was taken off by the police. I got that from a bird who saw it done."

This is completely off topic, but I was a little shocked this week to see the Witch's cadre of wolf thugs referred to in the text as "police", especially given how much text is spent analyzing the non-legitimacy of the Witch's reign.

This got me thinking that maybe there's a trend that I've only subconsciously noticed in modern books and movies to refer to the Bad Government Enforcers as, well, something other than "police". I can think of several movies where the BGEs are "agents" or "militia" or "security" (including the Deathlands "sec men") or "enforcers", and then of course there are the made-up-to-fit-the-story names like "monks" and "priests" in various religious dystopias, but I can't off-the-top-of-my-head think of any bad "police" in anything I've read lately. Is this some new trend that "police" are de facto legitimate authorities, and illegitimate authorities require a different name, or is my brain incorrectly engaging in a selection bias?

And, yes, not only did I just derail my own Narnia blog post, I did so in the first paragraph. *fail*

   "It’s no good, Son of Adam," said Mr. Beaver, "no good your trying, of all people. But now that Aslan is on the move --"
   "Oh, yes! Tell us about Aslan!" said several voices at once; for once again that strange feeling -- like the first signs of spring, like good news, had come over them. [...]
   "Aslan?" said Mr. Beaver. "Why, don’t you know? He’s the King. He’s the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. [...] No, no. He'll put all to rights as it says in an old rhyme in these parts:
   Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
   You'll understand when you see him."


Now we come back to the question of what makes a legitimate ruler. Aslan is the "Lord of the whole wood" but he's not been in Narnia for years. Google tells me that Beavers live for 16 years, but I somehow suspect that Animals live longer than animals. Even if they don't, however, we can probably give a mid-point for Mr. Beaver at 8-years-old, which means that Aslan hasn't been in Narnia for a decade or two.

Except even that isn't true. The White Witch's winter has been going on for one hundred years. That means that Mr. Beaver's statement, while correct, should be something more like never in my time or my father's time or his father's time or his father's father's time or... hold on, how many fathers is that? Except for a few exceptionally long-lived races in Narnia like (presumably) the river gods and goddesses and of course the Witch herself, no one exists in Narnia who has ever even seen Aslan.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that this fits the Messiah analogy. Jesus Aslan is not with us now, but he will come to save us and set all the wrongs right and we just need to be patient and hang on until then. However, when world-building a story, you can't just appeal to your analogy and hope that no one asks the obvious questions.

This is Prince Charles. He's the son of The Queen and the true ruler of America. You have most likely never seen or met him, but you've heard him described by people who have. And once he comes to America and stands at the base of the Statue of Liberty and sings God Save the Queen with his powerful voice, the budget will be balanced, universal healthcare will be instated for all, and global warming will be halted forever.

Getting past the fact that a good half of you are going to be stubborn enough not to believe me (and don't get me started on you eternal winter global warming doubters), at least a few of you are going to get a little shirty about this and ask if this is true, why doesn't Prince Charles get off his tushy and get down here and *do* all this wonderful fixing. I mean, people are dying with the way things are right now, and all this instability in the finances of the country is having serious ripple effects on other countries. What is His Royal Highness waiting for, a signed invitation?

You can kind of get away with this with a god because gods are on a different plane from the rest of us. The omniscient ones understand all possible outcomes of an action, and if they say now isn't the best time to act, it's hard to argue with them because you don't have a complete set of data points to start with. And this may well be the case with Aslan -- but! The other reason you can get away with this with a god is that usually there's something of an implied contract whereby (a) your god helps out a bit on the day-to-day sufferings and (b) your crappy mortal life will pale in comparison with your awesome immortal afterlife.

With regards to the latter, Narnia does have a heaven fleshed out in later books, but it doesn't seem to be a driving theological force in the way you'd expect for a land that is regularly conquered, oppressed, and told to essentially wait it out until their patron deity makes room for them in his busy schedule of faffing about elsewhere. And with respect to the former, I do not think we'll ever see anyone praying to Aslan for a good parking space for their horse -- he doesn't seem to be seen as an arbiter for the tiny day-to-day sufferings.

So, quite frankly, I'm astonished that the "good" Animals of Narnia are all so pro-Aslan when none of them have ever seen him before and he's not been bothered to come help out with that whole Witch thing for one hundred years. I'm additionally astonished that the MASSIVE ECOSYSTEM CHANGE of having spring for the first time in living memory doesn't cause more than a few serious psychological boundaries for the Animals, especially given that a fair few of them will be experiencing shedding for the first time in their lives.

And to top all that surprise off with a surprise cherry and maybe some chopped nuts, I'm surprised that the Animals all have a fairly clear consensus on who Aslan is, what he does, and what his prophecies are, seeing as how I'm still not sure that the Animals have a written language or any kind of information transmission besides oral history. Oral history passed down over multiple generations of Animals. If "a generation" for humans is 20 years, then a "generation" for Animals is, what? 4 years? So their oral history of Aslan has been passed down over 25 generations? It's pretty impressive that they've managed to keep his oral history so uniform -- and under an oppressive regime that "disappears" anyone caught openly teaching about him.

And now lets look at another "article of faith" apparently held by the Church of Aslan:

   "That's what I don't understand, Mr. Beaver," said Peter, "I mean isn't the Witch herself human?"
   "She'd like us to believe it," said Mr. Beaver, "and it's on that that she bases her claim to be Queen. But she's no Daughter of Eve. She comes of your father Adam's" -- (here Mr. Beaver bowed) "your father Adam's first wife, her they called Lilith. And she was one of the Jinn. That's what she comes from on one side. And on the other she comes of the giants. No, no, there isn't a drop of real human blood in the Witch."
   "That's why she's bad all through, Mr. Beaver," said Mrs. Beaver.
   "True enough, Mrs. Beaver," replied he, "there may be two views about humans (meaning no offense to the present company). But there's no two views about things that look like humans and aren't."
   "I've known good Dwarfs," said Mrs. Beaver.
   "So've I, now you come to speak of it," said her husband, "but precious few, and they were the ones least like men. But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."

This is, of course, utter poppycock. The river gods and naiads "look like humans and aren't", because the first humans in Narnia inter-bred with them. You don't get to be an immortal water nymph of Greek myth and fall under the designation of "human" just because you're capable of inter-breeding with a human. And I don't think we'll see any Animals in the Narnia chronicles "feeling for their hatchet" when interacting with a pretty water nymph or the Star-Daughter that actually becomes Queen of Narnia by marriage and bears an heir to the throne.

No, pretty women who look human but aren't are not the issue here... as long as they don't have names and all they do is have children for human men. Those are okay. It's the women who don't have babies (clearly, Jadis should have just married her way into the Narnian legitimate ruling class), and the giants and dwarves that should be treated with suspicion, loathing, and a disposition towards violence.

I'm going to admit that I don't know why this discussion is even here. Is it a nod toward Plato and his perfect forms? Is it a reference to that one Bible verse that fantasy authors like L'Engle like to interpret as fallen angels having sexy times with human women? (If I had a penny for every judeo-christian fantasy novel that trotted that verse out...) Is because Lewis wanted to work Lilith -- a figure traditionally wrapped in male insecurity about female sexuality -- into the myth of Jadis, a character who may-or-may-not have sexual connotations herself?

I suppose it may be just another "she's not the true ruler" but that can be as simple as "because Aslan didn't appoint her". There was no need to delve into this bizarre statement about humanoids being bad and evil and dastardly... when, demonstrably in this very novel, they aren't. We're going to see non-human humanoids a few chapters from here, and if you count Mr. Tumnus as humanoid (and I see no reason not to), then the McGuffin for much of the novel is a non-human humanoid who isn't automatically an Always Chaotic Evil monster. Explain this to me, I beg you.

   All the children had been attending so hard to what Mr. Beaver was telling them that they had noticed nothing else for a long time. Then during the moment of silence that followed his last remark, Lucy suddenly said:
   "I say -- where's Edmund?" [...]
   "The reason there's no use looking," said Mr. Beaver, "is that we know already where he's gone!" Everyone stared in amazement. "Don't you understand?" said Mr. Beaver. "He's gone to her, to the White Witch. He has betrayed us all." [...]
   "Then mark my words," said Mr. Beaver, "he has already met the White Witch and joined her side, and been told where she lives. I didn't like to mention it before (he being your brother and all) but the moment I set eyes on that brother of yours I said to myself ‘Treacherous.' He had the look of one who has been with the Witch and eaten her food. You can always tell them if you've lived long in Narnia; something about their eyes."

Adajkhkdjfhsuyissbhknaksdanda.

Well, thank you so much for mentioning that, Mr. Beaver. Maybe -- this is just a thought -- maybe you could bring that up next time before we spill important information in front of a potential traitor and then take our eyes off of him long enough to not notice him open the door of a warm, cozy house into a blustery, freezing winter night and somehow magically sneak out without so much as any of us feeling a draft. And, just thinking out loud here, if you did think to mention that important fact before all that happens, it's just possible that we might be able to get him help and keep him from running off to his doom. Seeing as how he's our brother and all and -- oh yeah -- an integral one-fourth of the prophecy that's suppose to fix everything around here.

*cough* Jerk. *cough*

   "All the same," said Peter in a rather choking sort of voice, "we'll still have to go and look for him. He is our brother after all, even if he is rather a little beast. And he's only a kid."
   "Go to the Witch's House?" said Mrs. Beaver. "Don't you see that the only chance of saving either him or yourselves is to keep away from her?" [...] "Why, all she wants is to get all four of you (she's thinking all the time of those four thrones at Cair Paravel). Once you were all four inside her House her job would be done -- and there'd be four new statues in her collection before you'd had time to speak. But she'll keep him alive as long as he's the only one she's got, because she'll want to use him as a decoy; as bait to catch the rest of you with."

I suppose we should be grateful that the Beavers have magical narration powers, because this is very much not what *I* would expect the Witch to do.

Now, see, I'd want to get out into the snow post-haste and gather Edmund up now before he reaches the Witch's palace. This shouldn't be hard, even with his head-start -- the Beavers should know the way to her house and know the surrounding forest and the paths through it better than a little boy (who isn't even wearing a coat) who has never been there before. And I would want to collect him not just because he's my brother, but also because I would expect an immortal and powerful Witch-ruler to understand the concept of Why Don't You Just Shoot Him.

I mean, "use him as bait"? What?? The Witch doesn't need to kill all the four siblings to throw a monkey wrench in the prophecy -- she just needs to kill one of them. Unless there's a fifth sibling somewhere, she should be pretty good at that point.

   "It seems to me, my dears," said Mrs. Beaver, "that it is very important to know just when he slipped away. How much he can tell her depends on how much he heard. For instance, had we started talking of Aslan before he left? If not, then we may do very well, for she won't know that Aslan has come to Narnia, or that we are meeting him, and will be quite off her guard as far as that is concerned." [...]
    "Oh yes, he was," [Lucy] said miserably; "don't you remember, it was he who asked whether the Witch couldn't turn Aslan into stone too?"
    "So he did, by Jove," said Peter; "just the sort of thing he would say, too!"

Okay, this is just unfair. In a conversation about the White Witch turning all opposition to stone but there's this wonderful new opposition who is going to fix everything, I don't think it's evidence of EVIL to reasonably ask what makes this new opposition immune to the previous barriers preventing meaningful resistance. It's risk assessment, people!

   "Worse and worse," said Mr. Beaver, "and the next thing is this. Was he still here when I told you that the place for meeting Aslan was the Stone Table?" [...] "Because, if he was," continued Mr. Beaver, "then she'll simply sledge down in that direction and get between us and the Stone Table and catch us on our way down. In fact we shall be cut off from Aslan."
   "But that isn't what she'll do first," said Mrs. Beaver, "not if I know her. The moment that Edmund tells her that we're all here she'll set out to catch us this very night, and if he's been gone about half an hour, she'll be here in about another twenty minutes."
   "You're right, Mrs. Beaver," said her husband, "we must all get away from here. There's not a moment to lose."

I throw up my hands. Mrs. Beaver is psychic and really the rest of the novel needs to just be her narrating and then Aslan will do thus, and Edmund will say this, and then there will be cake. And the last line in the novel after that can be And it was just as Mrs. Beaver had predicted. The End.

158 comments:

depizan said...

When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

How this could be part of an old rhyme - unless this whole endless winter thing has happened before in Narnia - always bugged me, but I think your theories about Beaver lifespan help a bit there. The rhyme is many generations old. And weirdly specific because it's about the current problem.

Of course, that doesn't help with how there can be accurate stories about Aslan, why anyone still believes in Aslan (shouldn't he be more like King Arthur than Jesus - some few kooks might think he'll come back, but most people forgot about him ages ago), or, alternatively, why there aren't ten different versions of believing in Aslan.

Maybe the psychic powers explain it all.

Ana Mardoll said...

The psychic powers are ESPECIALLY grating to me because they don't even know for sure if the Witch is turning people into stone. They tell the kids that people just... go to the Witch's house and don't come out and that "people say" her yard is full of stone statues (it is).

And then, not a minute later, it's Miss Cleo -- "If I know her..." But they DON'T know her! They don't even know she turns people into stone. *headdesk*

redcrow said...

>>>Is this some new trend that "police" are de facto legitimate authorities, and illegitimate authorities require a different name, or is my brain incorrectly engaging in a selection bias?

Oh, so *that's* why we're getting our militia renamed to police?! Finally, some explanation...
(Yeah, still think it's ridiculous.)

Amy said...

I suppose it may be just another "she's not the true ruler" but that can be as simple as "because Aslan didn't appoint her".

I do think in part this is a desperate attempt to explain why four foreign school children whose political acumen extends about as far as 'But Mum - he started it!!' have more right to rule the country than any of the natives. Narnia clings to its allegory when its setup starts to look shaky - Adam and Eve were given dominion over the animals and Lilith was not; Jadis is literally illegitimate - the descendant of a woman who ran off on her husband and had lots of extra-marital angel sex. You might think Aslan could just install a particularly wise and noble Giraffe as a monarch, but no, it's humans or nothing. Giants and dwarfs are all right in their place, but because they look so human there's always a chance they'll forget it - and that Animals will follow them because, well, close enough for government work, right? Yes, it's okay to be the non-human wife of the king. It's even okay to be regent with the king's blessing (Trumpkin the dwarf was). But if you're not human, don't go thinking you've any right to the top job. That's for humans only. Aslan says so. Er. I must admit I don't like Aslan very much. :)

I also think it's a way for Lewis to stick to his naming conventions. The boys are consistently called Sons of Adam and the girls Daughters of Eve, even though it might be reasonable to point out that the boys are just as much Sons of Eve and the girls Daughters of Adam. The White Witch serves as a devil figure, but calling her a daughter of Lucifer would break the pattern, so he pulls out a convenient maternal ancestor. For his purposes Lilith does just as well - she's someone who looked God in the eye and said 'no'.

What puzzles me is that it's not just that there are plenty of perfectly nice non-human characters, or even that, unlike most of his siblings, Frank and Helen's second son must have married one of his sisters to keep the nymph blood out of the royal family if what Lewis says is true, but that he doesn't even really stick to the idea with Jadis's family. When they finally delve into her backstory it turns out that many of her ancestors look 'kind and wise' - things don't start looking bad until Digory and Polly reach the midpoint of the hall of ancestors. Jadis's world is old and languishing under a dying sun - it doesn't seem too surprising that people would fight over the dwindling resources. Certainly Jadis's genocide is horrifying - but I still think there's something a bit poignant about being born into a world you can't even see the point of saving because it won't last long anyhow. She knows that's how it is, too - she can't think of a time when her sun wasn't like that, but she knows what it means when Digory says earth is different. Aslan may have turned out the lights on Narnia while it was still green and fertile, but he (or the local equivalent) seems to have left a lot of perfectly normal people to rot on Jadis's world - and then retconned the whole race as evil when, amazingly enough, the planet's last survivor wasn't too keen on the divine plan.

Also hi. I follow your blog avidly, and I hope you don't mind me descending on you and rambling at you. I was always rather fond of Edmund myself. :)

Ana Mardoll said...

Amy... wow! If we had some kind of weekly award for "Best First Post for a Lurker", I don't see how you wouldn't be a shoo-in. I can honestly say I've never thought of Jadis' home planet in that light and now... I'm a little sad now, but I want to stress that I'm "sad in an AWESOME way". You've actually made me look forward to decon'ing The Magician's Nephew and I kid you not that I was saying just this morning that I wasn't and never would. Wow. o.O

Thank you!

Kit Whitfield said...

t the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

What happened to Jesus as Lamb? What happened to the Prince of Peace? Nope, it's got to be about power, and about overpowering, and about threat and might and badassery.

There are few sights unseemlier than a person of faith inverting its teachings to humour their own power fantasies. And considering the revolting cornucopia of essentialism this section is busily stuffing down our throats, making Christ (or, pace hapax, the Second Person of the Trinity) all about threat and potency becomes even less edifying.

Dav said...

Something that leaps from Unfortunate Implications here is that Jesus is one of those not-really-human humans. Oh, sure, born of Mary, but the paternity, the one that's discussed most often, is that he's son of God. Which . . . I guess we can handwave, but still, to my mind, that makes him less human than Jadis.

The Prince Charles example didn't totally resonate for me; I think Teddy Roosevelt might grab the emotions of Americans a bit more. Soon, Teddy will come riding over Capitol Hill, blow his trumpet, and bring down the walls of Jericho. (What? Myths get a little distorted in the retelling.)

depizan said...

Aslan as the Left Behind Jesus?

...

Sadly, after making that connection, I can't help noticing a few others. The heroes may be a little more likable than in Left Behind, but we've got the same problem with the characters we're not supposed to like. That is to say, they aren't nearly as unlikable (or wrong) as the author would like us to think. Messed up world building, particularly when it comes to not thinking through the effects of global events. Oh dear.

Ana Mardoll said...

The Prince Charles example didn't totally resonate for me; I think Teddy Roosevelt might grab the emotions of Americans a bit more.

Heh. That would also have been very cool.

I kind of wanted to go with someone (a) currently alive and (b) foreign. Because IF Aslan exists, he's that to me: a foreigner who hasn't cared to come over and visit and fix things like he supposedly can. From my Ana-the-Narnian POV, he's not a legend that can only visit when Fate lets him; he's the son of our distant Emperor who can't be bothered to get his arse over here and help us sort things out.

But the Aslan Legend of King Arthur and Teddy Roosevelt is awesome for a wholly DIFFERENT reasons, which is to say it would capture him as (a) ancient and mythical and therefore (b) not likely to show up and only the fringes of society believe in him.

Comes back, I guess, to the "why do they all have the same view of Aslan" question. Why isn't he King Arthur AND Prince Charles AND Teddy Roosevelt and much more to boot??

Dav said...

I also got the vague impression from the Beavers that they had actual memories of pre-superwinter Narnia, which caused me to speculate that as a side-effect of eternal winter, 'time' in general is passing more slowly, i.e. slower rates of age.

That's terrifying. I love it. What if you only age three months over the winter, no matter how long it is?

Ana Mardoll said...

The most reasonable thing to conclude here is that they're making it all up - the Beavers are pathological liars

Oh, Will, I do so love your comments. I actually thought about ending the post on this suggestion but decided it might make me look too "over the top". I'm so glad you've introduced it to the comments. :D

Now that it's fair game, it's mentioned at least once that Mr. Beaver is rather stiff and proud. (And he taunts Jadis.... from behind Aslan, of course.) I really thought that whole "oh yeah, I knew all along" thing there was 100% BS. Mrs. Beaver's riffing on it to go into full-on HERE IS WHAT WE MUST DO is just icing on a delicious compulsively lying cake.

Redwood Rhiadra said...

What happened to Jesus as Lamb? What happened to the Prince of Peace? Nope, it's got to be about power, and about overpowering, and about threat and might and badassery.

He does bear a certain resemblance to LeHaye's TurboJesus, doesn't he?

Steve Morrison said...

AIUI, traditional theology states that Christ was both fully human and fully divine at the same time; two natures in one person. Possibly Hapax can explicate it, or correct me if I'm wrong?

Morgan said...

I'm additionally astonished that the MASSIVE ECOSYSTEM CHANGE of having spring for the first time in living memory doesn't cause more than a few serious psychological boundaries for the Animals, especially given that a fair few of them will be experiencing shedding for the first time in their lives.

"You may find you lack hair in places where you always had hair before..."

anything that's going to be human and isn't yet

This sounds weird enough to intrigue me. How would anyone know that something they encountered "is going to be human but isn't yet"? Is this a reference to some type of thing we actually see in the book that I've forgotten?

chris the cynic said...

Of course, that doesn't help with [...] why there aren't ten different versions of believing in Aslan.

My people, I say unto you that this was all foretold. As it was written in the books of Chipmunk and Parakeet, so it is today. I ask you, hasn't the winter of youth served it's purpose? Hasn't aging slowed to a crawl? Isn't it time for us to emerge immortal into the spring?

Our noble Queen Jadis, servant of Aslan has taken care of us through the long winter. She has kept us well fed, butter and marmalade for everyone. But now that the time has come for spring some are resisting her, and this is preventing Aslan's return.

When wrong is made right, Aslan will come in sight. When the rebellion is ended and all obey his servant Jadis, Aslan will return. At the at the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

A spring of eternal life, with aging, slowed to a crawl during this long winter, finally stopped for good.

-

Something like that? Stealing from Will, of course.

Ana Mardoll said...

is a bit of unfair, since the exact same sentence that has "the boys married nymphs" goes on to say "the girls married river-gods", so wherever else Lewis is being sexist, it isn't in this bit.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to reach for the sexism card except insomuch as it seems implied in text that Jadis *could* have been a legitimate queen if she'd just gone the marriage route. (And, again, apparently a dwarf could be king... as long as he married a human woman.) I find that problematic, but not so much from a sexism issue as...well, I'm not really sure where it's coming from. Racism, I suppose.

hapax said...

Mmm. I guess that I was thinking more along the lines that the "should be human but aren't" line was partly a nod to Platonism*, but mostly a tipoff of the Beavers' unreliable bias. As I said, VERY much like my grandparents: "I have nothing against [insert particular group here], so long as they stay in their place and don't ape their betters." Who knows, maybe Lewis was actually endorsing such an opinion; it never read that way to me, though, and his later retconning (as others have pointed out) completely subverts this principle.


*every X should be the best X it should be, which means to be the most X-iest X possible -- the doggiest Dog, the centaur-iest Centaur, the most human Human -- and not seek to adopt even the admirable qualities of Y group.

Except that this doesn't make sense even within this narrative; the "Best of Beavers" are clearly the "best" not because of their superior swimming or dam-building or whatever it is that is peculiarly beaver-ish qualities, but precisely because they are rational, they can talk, they cook and sew and live in a snug little house, they take sides in religious / political disputes -- in other words, because they approach as closely as they can to "Human".

Perhaps it's the issue of deception that's involved? After all, Shift the Ape (in LB) is irrevocably damned once he claims to be a Man. Similarly, the dwarves who tried to pass as human under the Telmarines are looked down upon by the "true" dwarves, although there's some ambiguity there (witness Caspian's tutor, the "part-dwarf", who is nonetheless clearly "heroic" (and, the text points out ironically, more skilled in the traditionally "dwarfish" skills than his more pure-blooded cousins)

Dav said...

I think I could make a good case for it being colonialist. "You people who live in your country aren't the best rulers for it; we Real People have a mandate to come in and fix everything, and if you don't agree or try to rule yourselves, at best you'll be going against God and everything will be horrible. I guess we could have a native overseer or something, if approved by the proper authorities, but never forget who's the legitimate ruler of you."

Dav said...

BAH. Disqus ate like 3/4 the comment, which did some extrapolation that I don't think I'm going to retype because the bus is coming. Still, it was totally persuasive and stuff.

Ana Mardoll said...

Aw, I'm sorry Dav. I can't see any sign of it in the Disqus moderator board. :(

I totally believe you that it was Persuasive and Stuff. :D

Julezyme said...

Perhaps Prince Charles could be the equivalent of Aragorn trotting into the White House, whipping out a scepter and bellowing, "Right-ho, well, I say, the thing is chaps ..."

Julezyme said...

Argh, yes!!! The Beavers, and all the Animals, are non-humans that are creepily or uncannily like humans in that they do human-like things but are not actually even humanoid. Mister Beaver is like that seemingly pleasant but ignorant taxi driver who feels the need to explain the Euro, the Monarchy, the Trouble With Spain, and Asylum Seekers Getting the Best Houses to his captive audience.

Silver Adept said...

Well...the prophecies of Aslan, being about Aslan, have a quality to them that allows them to stay uncorrupted through the generations, because they're Aslan-inspired and guided. If you happen to find textual drift or the possibility of interpretation away from the Church of Aslan, that's either heresy, Lillithian influence, or you're simply wrong because you don't see it the way you should.

Actually, I should probably just say there's a tradition of textual incorruptibility in Christian traditions, starting with the Septuagint and continuing on through the KJV to some of the more fundamentalist strains. (Some of the more moderate strains can allow for drift in the idea that perhaps the humans didn't get all the words lined up exactly, but the idea itself is still pure and incorruptible.)

As for Jadis being Genre Savvy and Trope Aware, well, Lewis doesn't really permit it. Jadis has the secret network of enforcers, which always produces a Plucky Resistance that never gets stomped out. If she were up in her Genre Savvy, Jadis would have either had her lineage adjusted so that she presents as a legitimate ruler (and then used a giant PR attack to refute any claims that she is somehow Secretly Foreign or a Muslim bent on destroying America - [recordscribble] - Narnia, or she would have done as Ana suggests and married into the family, ruling from behind the thrones or as one of the equals, biding her time until she could make her husband and the others disappear or have tragic accidents. Genre Savvy Jadis is Lady MacBeth in the early acts.

And then there are the Beavers, who have the same problem Isabella Swan does in Twilight - characters are always right about everything when they get to exposition, even when they have no reason to be anywhere close to the truth without authorial omnipotence.

(There's also that this description is of a Time That Never Was at this point in the story, and that all of the complexities of determining whether someone is good or evil have been reduced to whether they're ACE or whether they have corrupted eyes. Have Edmund's pupils disappeared or his irises changed color since he's had the Turkish Delight of Doom? So much arghflail here...)

Ajh said...

Another lurker making a first comment, on the subject of "risk assessment":

'"So he did, by Jove," said Peter; "just the sort of thing he would say, too!"'

Excusing Edmund on the grounds of risk assessment is impossible here. Why, isn't it clear to see that having experienced the Numinous Shiver (R) on hearing Aslan's name, all right-thinking Decent Chaps instinctively know that Aslan is Our Lord And Savior -- so even raising the possibility that some half-Jinn baggage might be able to turn him to stone is Blasphemy and an indication that you're Not Playing The Game, what.

That Edmund is capable of thinking this way, even after the Numinous Shiver (R), shows how completely degenerate and full of vice his soul is; that Peter recognises this and accurately diagnoses Edmund's sin shows that Peter is a Sound, Virtuous Chap and the Right Sort!

(hopefully unnecessary disclaimer - the above is tongue-in-cheek)

Ana Mardoll said...

@Ajh, welcome lurker!! :D

I *love* that the Numinous Shiver (R) is a registered trademark of the Church of Aslan. Do they have a bevy of lawyers? Oh pray tell that they do!!

Brin Bellway said...

when you meet anything that [...] used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."

Amazing the stuff you don't notice. I read this book several times when I was younger, and I don't think it ever once occurred to me "Hey, I fit that description. He basically just accused me of being Always Chaotic Evil. This is horribly bigoted and I should be offended."

hapax: After all, Shift the Ape (in LB)

*snort*
(I find this abbreviation amusing.)


*refreshes to check for new comments before posting*
...
*minutes later*
Damn you, slow hotel Internet! Going to a different hotel tomorrow (visiting relatives in Massachusetts). That one had better have good Internet, because we're staying there for five days.

hapax said...

Do they have a bevy of lawyers?

Of course they do. What else do you do with your Talking Sharks?

Josh G. said...

Regarding Narnian memories and the lifespans of Talking Animals, Lewis never gives any specific numbers for this, but he does drop some hints. In Last Battle, Roonwit the Centaur says that "we Centaurs live longer than you Men, and even longer than your kind, Unicorn." I suppose that if some Talking Beasts have lifespans longer than humans, others might be shorter. In Magician's Nephew, we get a description of the pairs of regular animals being transformed to Talking Beasts, and are told that the smaller animals grow larger, while the larger ones (elephants, etc.) become smaller. Perhaps just as their sizes converge on something closer to the human norm when they are gifted with sentience, so too do their lifespans.

There is also an interesting bit in Prince Caspian where one of the Centaurs (I don't recall his name) says "I watch the stars, Badger, for it is mine to watch, as it is yours to remember." This seems to imply that specific races of Talking Beasts have specific roles to fulfill, and preserving the oral tradition of Aslan is among these roles for some of them.

About the seeming disapproval of interbreeding by the Beavers: based on later canon, we have to assume that they're simply wrong. It's not as if it is Aslan himself saying this, after all. Lewis had to have his human monarchs interbreed with local humanoids in Magician's Nephew to avoid incest. And as early as the second book, we see a human-Dwarf hybrid (Doctor Cornelius) who's portrayed as a hero, and when the pureblooded Dwarf Nikabrik looks down on him for it, this is shown as a discredit to Nikabrik and not Cornelius.

graylor said...

I'm wondering if the Animals, having gained sentience but without eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, somehow lack the qualities they would need for self-governance. Seen in that light the Beavers here could be providing an example of Animals and an argument for human leadership in Narnia. They are quick to relate supposition and gossip as fact, careless with children and their allies in the resistance for noting but not mentioning Edmund's bewitched state until after he ran off, and not deep thinkers, given the known existence of good humanoids in Narnia.

Of course, colonialism is probably more likely, but this is the place for reading too much into things, isn't it?

D9000 said...

If you guys would like Charles as your new Lord and Master, I'm sure we can cut a deal. We don't want the b*gger. Bit difficult to imagine him doing anything as awesome as that, though.

Anyway, what I always thought about this scene was, how did Lilith get to Charn?

Bificommander said...

Wow. I haven't read the Narnia books, and I had assumed they were well written books with unfortunate subtexts, but this... even for a children's novel it's pretty bad. The Beavers knew Edmund couldn't be trusted and did not think to mention this, nor to be a little more carefull about spilling the beans on Aslan without checking if he was there? "He is your brother." Yes, and you think they wouldn't like to know that their poor brother is being mind-controled by the witch, so they could, y'know, help him?

I first thought the Beavers turned into Bruce Barnes there, spoiling the plot of the book, but on second though I think indeed Bella Swan is a better comparison. Bruce's spoilers were bad because they made Left Behind more boring than it already was, but at least he had an in-universe justification as to why he knew all those things.

Also, "cut off from Aslan"? So what? Can the all-mighty Aslan not be bothered to walk for a bit, and kick the Witch's ass on the way to the kids? No? You want your underaged proto-kings to risk getting killed by dangerous beasts first?

Well, at least the Witch is apparently trying to subvert the prophecy that says she'll be destroyed. She doesn't put the kids on the trone for no other reason than to make Aslan appear as prophecised so she can fight him, ignoring that those same prophecies say she'll lose. So she still isn't quite as stupid as Nicky Everest. Still, I agree with Ana, if the prophecies say there'll be four siblings on the throne, killing one should work just fine.

Amaryllis said...

Aargh., sorry Ana. I shouldn't hav ebeen in quite that much of a hurry. Will this still be italics?

Amaryllis said...

No, at least it's not as bad as Typepad.

Anyway, since I'm still here...
Why did the Witch think she had to kill all four children? Because tyrabnts are never secure enough...."What if they can mange it with three" What if any of the thrones has a human occupant, is that enough to topple me? Better be safe and cut this prophecy off at the root..."

Chris said...

Yeah, I'm fairly sure the "things that look human but aren't" is a nod to the Platonic forms.

Great post as always, Ana!

Ana Mardoll said...

Of course, colonialism is probably more likely, but this is the place for reading too much into things, isn't it?

Yes! And it's very cool that in your post, it worked out in Lewis' favor. :D

If you guys would like Charles as your new Lord and Master, I'm sure we can cut a deal. We don't want the b*gger. Bit difficult to imagine him doing anything as awesome as that, though.

I KNEW there would be doubters! Don't you want into Narnian heaven?? :P

Also, "cut off from Aslan"? So what? Can the all-mighty Aslan not be bothered to walk for a bit, and kick the Witch's ass on the way to the kids? No? You want your underaged proto-kings to risk getting killed by dangerous beasts first?

Why -- WHY?? WHY!? -- did I not think of this, too? If Aslan is a Narnian god-figure and not just, well, Prince Charles or King Arthur or whatever, he would presumably *know* that the children are in Narnia, where they are, and if they're in need of help. I get that Lewis' version of god doesn't hand everything to you on a silver platter, but... Well, just wait until we meet Aslan. You'll like that, too, I think. ;)

Or maybe, in this cosmogony, Earth is the source world, the oldest creation, and every other world is a spin-off, n some way incorporating some of Earth's original denizens.

I really agree that TMN suffers from prequel syndrome and makes the whole story so much more murky and confusing. I was quite aghast when I saw that the new box sets encourage children to read TMN first -- I never would have stuck with the series, to be honest. But... well, I'll save those thoughts for later, I suppose.

I like the source world idea, but it can't work if Charn's sun is so much older than Earth's sun. Perhaps Adam and Even and Lilith happened on some OTHER world -- Alpha World -- and every planet since then has had Eve/Lilith children imported into it. (Although why only one culture on our Earth remembered the "correct" names is... well, I'm not going to touch that.)

The Eve/Lilith issue does bring up sexism, although I said I wasn't going to reach for that card, but -- seems to me that if boys are Sons of X and girls are Daughters of Y with "Y" being a choice between Eve/Lilith, ALL boys are going to be Sons of Adam, regardless of the mother. If having the woman-who-wouldst-not-be-subjugated is that corruptive to the blood-line, it seems that ALL things should be Child of Y. Peter and Susan would be 'Child of Eve' and Jadis would be 'Child of Lilith'.

Except that doesn't work because we have good giants and good dwarves in canon and (as was mentioned earlier) Charn had good kings and queens too.

So... yeah. Either the Beavers are full of it, but... Aslan is going to use this Son/Daughter thing, too. And I'm hesitant to say that Lewis intended his Aslan to ever be wrong about *anything*. o.O

D9000 Alycidon said...

Quoth Amaryllis: He wasn't writing a single story, he was writing a library.

Um, yes and no, and indeed, no and yes. When CSL began writing TLTWATW he was just writing a single story: a fairly simple fairy story, with added lumps of Christian symbolism. (Not terribly well mapped to the actual Christian story, which didn't matter for his immediate purpose). Once it proved popular he wrote a sequel, still pretty much divorced from any wider context (whether in-Universe or without). It was only at some point after that (and I don't know when) that the concept changed from more or less stand-alone fairy stories/parables into a calque of the Bible. I suspect that the point of change was before writing TMN and TLB, both of which map clearly and unambiguously to their Biblical analogues. Those two books are part of a larger story, theoretically coherent, but TLTWATW isn't, because the larger story did not exist at the time of writing.

Lewis was by no means the only author to find that his originally intended one-off ended up having elements discordant with the later fully-realised 'verse: Redwall has been mentioned, and we might add Over Sea, Under Stone in relation to the rest of the The Dark Is Rising series, and I'm sure other examples can be thought of. Tolkien, of course, had a different problem: his 'verse already existed, and The Hobbit and LOTR introduced discordant elements into it.

All of which makes you wonder what TLTWATW would look like if it were re-written to make it consistent with the final version of the 'verse ...

Ana Mardoll said...

But I *think* that's consistent with what Amaryllis was saying, which was -- I think, with the mention towards the Bible -- that the series grew organically and wasn't planned out carefully beforehand.

Or, to frame it another way, Genesis wasn't written with Revelation in mind. ;)

Casus Belli said...

Hi Ana,
I've been reading your excellent blog for a while but am delurking for the first time.

Re: Police
I confirm what Will has said. It is still customary, in some countries with a totalitarian government, to refer to the "secret police" or, more colloquially, "the police". So the term would not necessarily grant legitimacy.

Ana Mardoll said...

Delurker! Grab zim and give zie handshakes! :D

Thank you Casus, I admit I hadn't thought of existing totalitarian governments, and that's a very good point. I'm actually kind of relieved that "police" isn't some kind of super-legitimate power now -- it's not good when words pick up connotations like that.

(Although I have to say that "SECRET police" doesn't sound good in ANY case. Unless they have to be "secret" because otherwise people would swarm them with hugs or something. But...yeah. That doesn't sound good at all.)

D9000 Alycidon said...

Well, what I understood Amaryllis to mean that he was writing 'a library', i.e. not parts of a single story, throughout, whereas (IMO) when writing TMN and TLB, at least, he *was* writing them as part of a single story: thus, TMN was written to a different purpose than TWW (fed up typing the whole acronym) was. Eh, you probably all know this already.

An interesting question, though is exactly at what point the writing changed from a library to a single story: is it before TMN and TLB, or can it be placed earlier?

Ana Mardoll said...

Oh! Ok, I see what you mean -- Magician and Last are kind of written together as a single story. Hmm, there's a thought. To mis-handle my earlier analogy, it's like he wrote Genesis and Revelation last so that they'd be consistent and smashed them on either side of a bunch of somewhat consistent-in-a-different-direction stories.

If we're looking at tonal shifts in the series, I think Lion-Prince-Voyage-Silver belong to one group and Horse-Magician-Battle belong to another. It's my personal feeling that Horse marks the point at which Lewis stopped liking his characters. But I'll have to justify that feeling later. :)

Ana Mardoll said...

This is what happens when I post before coffee - I forget that the Lilith myth requires more sperm sources than just Adam. You are correct, and now I shall have my coffee. :)

D9000 Alycidon said...

Have geneticists determined an approximate date for the mitochondrial Lilith?

Ana Mardoll said...

Also, I have so much love for the proposed Edmund-Sijda fan fic. :D

Ana Mardoll said...

I look forward to a spirited discussion. :D

Confession: Am I the only one who finds the acronyms confusing when they all start with 'T'? (Except Price Caspian, of course.)

Will Wildman said...

it gives a lot of heft to Aslan's claim to being All That when just saying his name apparently is pre-programmed into everyone's endorphin centers

To quote Jack Harkness: "I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now." ...But in its mildest form it involves couples finding out-of-the-way places to whisper to each other: AslanAslanAslan. It only gets worse from there.

---

(Although I have to say that "SECRET police" doesn't sound good in ANY case.

I think that's exactly the decision the moviemakers made - they saw the text referred to 'police' and thought 'that's a little too legitimate to sound (to most North American audiences) like an evil tyrant's goon squad', and so appended 'secret' for automatic sinister connotations.

Although I suppose there are places in most countries where 'police' is plenty sinister on its own if you're the wrong race/religion/other demographic factor.

Unless they have to be "secret" because otherwise people would swarm them with hugs or something.

I love this. Following the Pevensies' coronation, the wolves retire and are replaced with the Secret Kitten and Bunny Division, known in whispers as the Fist of Lucy.

---

chris has said everything I've thought regarding the Eve/Lilith descendancy dichotomy, and some things I hadn't even gotten around to thinking yet.

chris the cynic said...

You make many good points in your very nice post, and yet my main reaction is to respond to you saying, "Thomas Jefferson, Immortal Zombie Hunter," with a joy that is far too great to be a reasonable response to the mention.

D9000 Alycidon said...

Yeah, It was beginning to bug me, too. Perhaps we could dispense with the Ts and go for LWW, PC, VDT, SC, HHB, MN and LB (in which Susan is Left Behind)?

Will Wildman said...

Meh. It makes as much sense as any other naming convention. USA standard is you are named for your father's father's father's etc. hometown or occupation or distinguishing feature or HIS father or whatever

Or, in my case, for the fact that one or more of my ancestors was part of the guerilla resistance against the Norman invasion. I thus generally claim to be a descendant of Robin Hood. (The timelines are mixed up if you believe Robin was active during the Third Crusade, but that's plainly revisionist history.)

It certainly makes more sense than the Narnian Animal convention, in which the entire species apparently shares the same last name, which doesn't seem to address any imaginable confusion

It could help when talking about a non-present third person. "So I say to Leslie, what you need to do is climb up to the top of the tallest tree you can find, maybe on a cliff edge, and just whip it at the ground as fast as-" "Hang on, how could Leslie climb a tree? And why not just crack it with one hoof?" "What? No, no, Leslie's a squirrel. Leah is a moose."

I recently read a novel set during the siege of Leningrad and had to get used to characters referring to both patronymics and surnames as standard things, and I would tend to think that the same thing would be ideal for Narnia. Mrs Beaver shouldn't just be Mrs Beaver, she should be Meredith Beaver Lake-By-The-Lamp, or something.

Gelliebean said...

But in its mildest form it involves couples finding out-of-the-way places to whisper to each other: AslanAslanAslan.

Ooooooooh.......*shudders* Do it again. It tingles.

Ana Mardoll said...

hf, that was like Narnia mixed with the Cthullhu mythos mixed with... I'm not even sure. I'm impressed. :P

Ana Mardoll said...

Not that I think this is what Lewis was going for, but I like slightly-dodgy-recent-converts-to-the-rebellion Beavers a little better than weirdly omniscient ones. :)

Now we just need a fan fic of the Beavers 'fessing up when the children are older. :D

Ana Mardoll said...

chris has said everything I've thought regarding the Eve/Lilith descendancy dichotomy, and some things I hadn't even gotten around to thinking yet.

It really is uncanny how he does that. :D
(Going through the comments backwards, obviously. Heh.)

chris the cynic said...

[chris has said everything I've thought regarding the Eve/Lilith descendancy dichotomy, and some things I hadn't even gotten around to thinking yet.]

It really is uncanny how he does that. :D


I can do that? Awesome. I always thought that was reserved for other people.

Kit Whitfield said...

for once again that strange feeling -- like the first signs of spring, like good news, had come over them.

I find this a rather insulting conception. You know how some Christians cling to the idea that everyone deep down knows that Christianity is true, and that people who say they don't believe in it are either lying or, like Edmund (who, if I remember right, feels bad at the sound of Aslan's name) in flight from God?

...Yeah. That.

Lewis takes a lot of opportunities to insult non-Christians, and this is one of his more ignorant ones.

D9000 Alycidon said...

Now we just need a fan fic of the Beavers 'fessing up when the children are older. :D

Narnian Truth & Reconciliation Commission, Preliminary Report (extract):

... the case of Minor River God Fluvius v. Beaver & Beaver illustrates the many conflicts that beset Narnians during the dark years before Liberation. It has become clear that many, if not most, citizens had to come to some sort of compromise with the illegal Jadist regime in order to survive, and once that compromise had been made, the potential for further corruption then grew exponentially. In this case, the Beavers had from the beginning tacitly accepted the support of the Jadist authorities, as it was only the suppression of the minor god Fluvius by the Jadists that allowed the Beavers to build their dam in the first place. Once this breach with Narnian loyalism had been made, the Beavers were further seduced from the Aslanist cause by presents of food, drink, and ultimately sewing-machines. The Commission is not minded to uphold Fluvius' case against the Beavers on the grounds that the said rodents had atoned for their partial treachery by significantly aiding and abetting the rightful rulers of Narnia during and after Liberation. However, a number of security breaches associated with their involvement indicates that further re-education is still called for, and it is the judgement of the Commission that the Beavers shall attend a six-week course of de-Jadisification (class III), and also participate in a victim support encounter group with the plaintiff Fluvius, to be chaired by an independent moderator (N.B. - no squirrels!).

In the further case of Augustus Perch v. Beaver & Beaver, regarding illegal fishing contrary to the Eating Sentient Animals Act, ....

Ana Mardoll said...

I have spent a truly astonishing amount of time this morning wondering what de-Jadisification would entail and which direction up the number chart the classes go in terms of...severity.

D9000 Alycidon said...

I daresay it would consist of much the same thing as de-Nazification did, although possibly without the harrowing films of concentration camps. Perhaps personal testimony from innocent Narnians whose health had been ruined by the Long Winter, or from victims of the torture chambers of the Secret Police, followed by discussion groups in which participants were encouraged to confess their crimes against Narnianity. Longer and more ... emotional ... courses might be prescribed for hardened cases.

The numbers could go either way, depending on how you feel about beavers in general and the misdeeds of this pair in particular.

Alternatively, they could be agents of La Resistance all along, only seeming to operate a collaborationist lodge as a cover for their real activities in helping refugees over the Archenland border (floating them down the river in cunningly hollowed-out logs), and this fact would only come out in a dramatic scene where Peter rescues Mrs. Beaver from being shaved by a baying mob of Narnians intent on revenge on the supposed collaborators.

Yes, it is a very boring day at work today, why do you ask?

hf said...

and that people who say they don't believe in it are either lying or, like Edmund (who, if I remember right, feels bad at the sound of Aslan's name) in flight from God?

Now, now, we'd expect people in the grip of the Emperor's mind control to think this.

Ana Mardoll said...

Kit, I think your instinct is right that there's an implied insult in there towards atheists, intentional or not. I'm actually not a fan that the "good" children feel the endorphin surge at the name of Aslan and the "bad" child feels uncomfortable.

It's one thing, I suppose, to write a god-being into your story such that the sound of his name is a universal Good/Evil Detector test, but the analogy aspect creates the unfortunate implication that anyone who doesn't feel lovely at the name of Aslan/Jesus is clearly quite evil.

And even if we don't go that far and allow that one can feel wonderful at the name of Tash and still get into Narnian heaven, there's still the obvious problem for atheists -- what if you don't feel lovely at the sound of any deity's name? What if you feel uncomfortable at their names not because you're evil but because you've had a bad experience with his followers, the Aslanians?

Eliezer Yudkowsky said...

From Ch. 64 of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, "The Other Fanfictions You Could've Been Reading", following LORD OF THE RATIONALITY and just before MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS SCIENCE:

THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE

With a critical eye, Peter looked over the encamped Centaurs with their bows, Beavers with their long daggers, and talking Bears with their chain-mail draped over them. He was in charge, because he was one of the mythical Sons of Adam and had declared himself High King of Narnia; but the truth was he didn't really know much about encampments, weapons, and guard patrols. In the end all he could see was that they all looked proud and confident, and Peter had to hope they were right about that; because if you couldn't believe in your own people, you couldn't believe in anyone.

"They'd scare me, if I had to fight 'em," Peter said finally, "but I don't know if it's enough to beat... her."

"You don't suppose this mysterious lion will actually show up and help us, d'you?" said Lucy. Her voice was very quiet, so that none of the creatures around them would hear. "Only it'd be nice to really have him, don't you think, instead of just letting people think that he put us in charge?"

Susan shook her head, shaking the magical arrows in the quiver on her back. "If there was really someone like that," Susan said, "he wouldn't have let the White Witch cover the land in winter for a hundred years, would he?"

"I had the strangest dream," Lucy said, her voice even quieter, "where we didn't have to organize any creatures or convince them to fight, we just walked into this place and the lion was already here, with all the armies already mustered, and he went and rescued Edmund, and then we rode alongside him into this tremendous battle where he killed the White Witch..."

"Did the dream have a moral?" said Peter.

"I don't know," said Lucy, blinking and looking a little puzzled. "In the dream it all seemed pointless somehow."

"I think maybe the land of Narnia was trying to tell you," said Susan, "or maybe it was just your own dreams trying to tell you, that if there was really such a person as that lion, there'd be no use for us."

Will Wildman said...

The question at the heart of THIS story, is therefore NOT "Do you believe in Aslan?" but "Are you on Aslan's side or the Witch's side?" There aren't any such thing as neutrals.

Why not? No one is allowed to think that Aslan is no better a ruler than Jadis? There's no third side in favour of forming an Animal republic and rejecting autocracy entirely? I can be of two minds regarding Aslan's say-my-name power, but it seems sketchy that we get right into 'you're with me or you're against me' territory. Then you've got the narrative referring to Aslan's name coming upon them "like good news", and Lewis's whole 'surprised by joy' conversion theme...

Ana Mardoll said...

Going backwards again. Eliezer, that was *awesome*. I loved the moral of Lucy's dream. And I have to say that's a much more vivid description of the Narnian army than I feel we get in the source material. Hats off to you. :D

chris the cynic said...

What are the differences one would expect in a prelapsarian world according to the theology Lewis was using?

Ana Mardoll said...

I'm sorry that my and Kit's feeling that the Aslan name thrill could be seen as a veiled insult to atheists seemed like unjustified bashing of Lewis. :(

I will say, that when I deconstruct a text, I deliberately do not take into account what the author meant because I do not believe that anyone can say with any assurance what an author meant. If I see a trend of societal sexism in Twilight, I speak to it without discussing whether or not Meyer herself is sexist. If I see a trend of societal religious discrimination in Narnia, I speak to it without discussing whether or not Lewis was a participant in religious discrimination.

I don't know that it's the best way to conduct a deconstruction, but I do know that I can't speak to authorial intention, nor do I consider authorial intention to be particularly relevant -- "isms" creep into our speech and writing all the time, even when we don't mean for them to.

(I do not know what to make of some of the statements in your post, particularly the one that Aslan isn't omnipotent. I see no evidence in the series for or against that statement, just as I didn't understand the statement that all Narnians accept Aslan's existence as empirical fact. I think it's reasonable to assume that at least some of Jadis' supporters do not believe Aslan exists.)

But I want to reiterate what I said when I started the Twilight posts, which is that the deconstructions here are not meant to be personally directed at the author. I'm sorry if it seemed otherwise. :(

Ana Mardoll said...

And everybody knows exactly who is meant by the name "Aslan", and they are proven objectively correct. Any nonbelievers are flat-out WRONG, in the context of that world. It is no more "insulting" to atheists than TWILIGHT is "insulting" to people who don't believe in the existence of vampires.

And I hope I can explain why I agree with Kit on this issue. I would consider this insulting to atheists because it *could* be construed as a Christian wish fulfillment world. A world where Jesus objectively exists and the good people feel a thrill at his name and the bad people feel badly at his name...just like in the Real World, only more so!

The other problem is that the books of Narnia are set in the Real World, our world. In the books of Narnia, English atheists are objectively wrong because Aslan/Jesus DOES exist. And if Narnians instinctively know what the name 'Aslan' means, one could assume that English people know what 'Jesus' means. That's a potential problem. :(

hf said...

He makes his own arguments against atheists, lots of them, in later books. They aren't GOOD arguments. I'll be happy to join in the pummelling when they come up. But they aren't THESE arguments.

I agree for the most part. Do you see the part with the dwarves in LB as different because they don't include all atheists (just all the atheists in that particular book)?

D9000 Alycidon said...

"This is, in fact, a criticism I have seen leveled at atheists -- that their pretense that god doesn't "obviously" exist is as silly as pretending that gravity doesn't exist. Any battle-hardened atheists want to chime in here? I'm fairly sure I've heard this on religion boards, but I could be mis-remembering. "

Oh, yes, I've seen that one. It's fairly common currency in certain circles. It's usually phrased in the formula 'atheists are in rebellion against God' - of course, it's always assumed that the atheists were brought up in a Christian milieu, and the rebellion is against Jesus. An atheist Jew like myself tends to confuse the issue.

And, no, I can't say I feel insulted by the thrilling at the name of Aslan business. I regard it as a literary device, to hammer home the idea that Aslan is Jesus (good news) rather than any sort of polemic. But then I'm also entirely unbothered by Lewis' later overt swipes at atheists, so perhaps I'm not the best person to judge. I'm not one of those who lives in a permanent state of indignation about other people's opinion of my beliefs or lack of same.

Will Wildman said...

hapax, among the many reasons I hope you stay in these conversations, one is that I always find your thoughts meaningful and insightful, regardless of whether I agree with the premise or conclusion. Also because marmalade rolls represent wisdom that comes from experience.

---

I'm also entirely unbothered by Lewis' later overt swipes at atheists, so perhaps I'm not the best person to judge. I'm not one of those who lives in a permanent state of indignation about other people's opinion of my beliefs or lack of same.

Really? I mean, really. You're going to do the passive-aggressive superiority thing at people who are trying to have a discussion about things that are important to them? What for? Did you think "Ah, now that I've snidely dismissed them, they'll realise how silly they are and stop talking about it"? Does that normally work?

---

There's a parallel that keeps coming into my head regarding 'this is just how Narnia factually is'. It's not, to me, in any way an issue of similar scope, and I don't want to conflate the two as if I think they're equally bad, but the idea that the only options are pro-god/Aslan and rebelling-against-god/Aslan keeps making me flash back to the time some minor authority at LucasArts declared that 'there are no gay people in the Star Wars universe'. (This person got the kind of searing response from fans that one might hope for, and apparently later books put gay couples into the expanded canon.) I just don't find "It's not insulting to you because people like you don't exist at all in here" to be a really compelling argument.

Ana Mardoll said...

There's a parallel that keeps coming into my head regarding 'this is just how Narnia factually is'.

I had a lot of thoughts about this last night before I went to sleep and I'm trying to get them straight in my head.

The world of Narnia "factually is" certain things. So is the world of Twilight. To a certain extent, if "it just factually is that way" is a reason for things to happen in books, we should pack up the deconstructions entirely because, well, it's just factually true that Narnia has been in a state of winter for 100 years, but that the marmalade trade is thriving.

The thing is, authors are not chroniclers. Narnia does not exist in our objective reality, observed and reported on by the author. If Narnia "factually is" something, it is that way because the author wrote it that way. If the world of Narnia has a conversation about Lucy being a Liar-Lunatic-or-Truth-Teller, I believe it's fair to correlate to a similar real world argument rather than just say "that's the way the Professor factually is". If the world of Narnia has a (never again used) convention that the name-of-the-local-god is instantly recognizable as true and valid by all hearers, I believe it's fair to discuss real world parallels and why the author might have made that decision.

Or to steer back to the safer area of Twilight, we could say "it just factually is" that vampirism makes black people whiter during the prettification process. But Meyer isn't a chroniclers; the world of Twilight is a fictional world and anything written about it is (presumably) a choice that she (or her editors) decided to make. I think it's appropriate to discuss the possible Unfortunate Implications of this statement without saying that, no, that's just what vampirism objectively does.

But in the case of the latter, well, I mean... we kind of don't have anything to talk about anymore. And that would be sad. :(

Ana Mardoll said...

But then I'm also entirely unbothered by Lewis' later overt swipes at atheists, so perhaps I'm not the best person to judge. I'm not one of those who lives in a permanent state of indignation about other people's opinion of my beliefs or lack of same.

To piggy-back off of Will, I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but it kind of sounds like a binary choice set up here: that one is either unbothered by the topic at hand or alternately one lives in a permanent state of indignation. You probably didn't mean to sound binary, but it's worth noting for the sake of the discussion that there are more choices than that, and the people engaging here probably don't fit in the latter category. ;)

D9000 Alycidon said...

"I'm also entirely unbothered by Lewis' later overt swipes at atheists, so perhaps I'm not the best person to judge. I'm not one of those who lives in a permanent state of indignation about other people's opinion of my beliefs or lack of same."

"Really? I mean, really. You're going to do the passive-aggressive superiority thing at people who are trying to have a discussion about things that are important to them? What for? Did you think "Ah, now that I've snidely dismissed them, they'll realise how silly they are and stop talking about it"? Does that normally work?"

Ah, I see. You enjoy your indignation, now. I'm out of here. I don't do fights, not on the internet or anywhere else.

Ana Mardoll said...

The other problem is that the books of Narnia are set in the Real World, our world.

This I do not follow. The good news is that I think I can explain why fairly quickly.

As far as I know (and if you know differently please share) our world does not have magical portals to other worlds.


I'm sorry, I wasn't being clear last night when I said that. I didn't mean that the books of Narnia are chronicles of our real world, portals included. I mean that within the setting of the books, the real world -- our world -- exists just as it is right now, but with the inclusion of magical portals.

A real world setting where Jesus objectively exists is fine with me. I also have no problem with real world settings where Thor objectively exists ("Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul"). But a real world setting where Jesus objectively exists, and people who hear his Other-World name instinctively thrill or chill at the sound of His name is problematic because, as Will and Kit have pointed out, there's very little room for middle ground: you're either With Him or Against Him and the only way you can be "legitimately mistaken" is if you were With Him All Along and you just *thought* you were a Muslim/Wicca/Atheist all this time.

If the explanation for the one-off thrill/chill is that the Narnians are closer to God because they never experienced the Fall, that's a possible explanation. Only (a) that shouldn't apply to the English children in their midst and (b) for a world that never experienced the Fall, there sure is a lot of evil in it! We'll see lots and lots of "bad Narnians" in the series, and this can't be explained away by saying that all of them are actually demons.

I'm not claiming I'm right or wrong about the thrill/chill being a dig. After long deliberation, I decided not to even bring it up in post because it's *such* a one-off that I'm not sure anything can be really said about it. We will never see it again, and much of the world-building simply doesn't make sense if it's true. And it reduces villains further into cardboard cut-outs because now they all KNOW they're horrible, evil people for backing Jadis and there is no room for pointing out that maybe they might have more complex motives than that.

But since it was brought up within the comments, I will confess that my exact thoughts upon reading the thrill/chill was that it very closely resembled certain real-life arguments about how people like Edmund simply *must* know what they're doing is wrong and simply *can't* be honestly mistaken about who the legitimate ruling power is.

And since that is the context in which it's used once in the book -- as a throw-down on Edmund, and not as a nice world-building fact about how the Aslan name is such an endorphin rush -- I think the context is important.

But maybe I'm just reading too much into things. :) I do deeply apologize for seeming like I was bashing anyone. :(

chris the cynic said...

But don't we also have to take into account the material the author started with?

If I write a story about Thomas Jefferson immortal zombie hunter, it's probably not going to be all that meaningful to ask why I chose to make him the third President of the United States. If I chose for him not to be that president then that would be a thing that would be ripe for deconstruction, but if I go with the expected then isn't it like trying to analyze why the author didn't break into Swahili for no apparent reason in an otherwise English text?

If Meyer had written her vampires as being made whiter because she was writing based on myths that said that was how it worked, we wouldn't necessarily judge her work less harshly, but we would judge her work in a different way. It stops being about what is meant by having that be factually true in the story, and what is left is the reaction to it being factually true. It becomes about how it is presented by the author, and how it is treated by the characters. Is it presented as a good thing, is it presented as a bad thing? (These are important question's anyway, but I think they're somewhat more important if the thing being presented and reacted to is not of the author's invention.)

We seem to be ignoring that second part here entirely. We're not asking why the children don't react to a supernatural force altering their emotions with a sense of violation. We're not asking why Lewis doesn't present this emotional manipulation as a bad thing. We're instead talking about how this example applies to the real world when it seems to me that the only thing most of us know for sure is that this isn't supposed to be the real world. A Beaver will not speak the name of God to you.

If the idea is that the difference between Narnia and here is built on a pre-postlapsarian divide, then I want to know what differences one would expect before I judge whether or not a specific aspect of the relationship between people and the local god can reasonably be interpreted as applying to this world.

It's a lot easier to see how the trichotomy applies to this world because it's set in this world and thus does not make use of anything that might plausibly be different between this world and that. There's nothing exclusively Narnian about the trichotomy argument, and so it would make absolutely no sense to say that it doesn't apply because in the absence of a Fall things would be different.

-

By the way, what is the religious background of the children? Can we expect that they've heard the name Jesus on occasion? If we can, then the fact that this feeling is strange rather than familiar makes me think that hapax is right, this is something Lewis is bringing up as something that makes Aslan in Narnia different from Jesus on earth. If we can't, then ignore this bit.

Ana Mardoll said...

We seem to be ignoring that second part here entirely. We're not asking why the children don't react to a supernatural force altering their emotions with a sense of violation. We're not asking why Lewis doesn't present this emotional manipulation as a bad thing. We're instead talking about how this example applies to the real world when it seems to me that the only thing most of us know for sure is that this isn't supposed to be the real world. A Beaver will not speak the name of God to you.

We have mentioned some of this -- upthread, the theory was floated that the thrill/chill is emotional manipulation and that the "pain" that Edmund experiences is that of his resisting the Emperor's mind control. I think I responded positively to that (if I didn't, I certainly meant to), and I also responded to Kit's suggestion that the phenomena closely resembles one that some Christians claim to occur in the real world.

I'm afraid I can only speak to what I think of at the time when I write. If I've missed something or failed to talk about something else or focused on one possibility to the detriment of the other, then I apologize. That's one reason why I like the comments so much -- because you all point out a rich tapestry of other opportunities.

I can honestly say that nothing I said on this subject was meant to bash Lewis. I mean only to say what the text reminds me of. And while I recognize that my intent isn't magic, I do mention my intention here anyway in the hope that it will serve as an apology if my written words did not match my starting intention.

---

Regarding the children and Jesus, we will see this in Dawn Treader:

"You are too old, children," said Aslan, "and you must begin to come close to your own world now."
"It isn’t Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -- are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

chris the cynic said...

Only (a) that shouldn't apply to the English children in their midst and (b) for a world that never experienced the Fall, there sure is a lot of evil in it!

Generally speaking whenever it comes time to talk about the Fall I get distracted by the talking snake. For one thing, he's a talking snake. For another, I feel like there's a story there that we're never let in on. He's the most superlative [word that gets translated variously as clever, cunning, crafty and whatnot]. He's smart. He's a thinker. So what was his plan?

If you're a talking snake in a lush garden what is it that you want and how does getting the woman to eat the fruit she wasn't supposed to have get that for you? If he's such a thinker he must have realized that God wasn't going to be happy with it, so what was his plan?

I get distracted by that, and tend to miss out on the details. I get broad strokes, separation from God, cherubs posted at the entrance of the garden, that sort of thing. The exact details I tend to miss while thinking about the snake.

That said, I'm pretty sure from what I didn't miss that the idea of the Fall is that it has to be internal. If Martians had landed and started shooting up the garden then converted half of the beasts of the field and birds of the air to their side and waged long war upon the rest, the world wouldn't be Fallen. The Fall only happens if the Martians convince Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Also, I think that the idea is not only that human beings are Fallen but that the world as a whole is Fallen. Living in an unFallen world would be different from living in a Fallen one even if you yourself were Fallen, living in a Fallen world would be different from living in an unFallen one even if you yourself were unFallen.

I do deeply apologize for seeming like I was bashing anyone.

I can't speak for anyone else, but given that the first thing you said on the subject included, "intentional or not," I never felt you were bashing anyone.

Will Wildman said...

chris, I think there may be a qualitative difference in that, for most people, belief in the existence of vampires is not a key part of their identity. (I think there are some such people, and they tend to have intense reactions to assertions that vampires aren't real, but anecdotally they tend to be young, credulous, and/or unwell.) Whereas belief in the existence of/importance of divinity often does play a central role in personal identity, a complicated one, and in reality there are people who believe and assert that the only two positions that can be taken are 'pro-god' or 'rebellious'. We've already had Lewis bring out the Trilemma for us, so whether he intends to preach or not we can state with some certainty that he has intentionally included features also found in real-world preaching. This is shaped like another one. I agree with you that it's not a good idea to try to extend to what Lewis was intending as he set the words down, but I think there's still room left over to discuss the implications and impact.
---

Ah, I see. You enjoy your indignation, now. I'm out of here. I don't do fights, not on the internet or anywhere else.

1) I'm really not feeling the indignation, me; I responded to you because I saw you taking a shot at Kit and didn't feel like letting bad behaviour go just because it was aimed at a friend instead of my personal magnificence.

2) Your statement is factually wrong, as proven by your insults. You manifestly do 'do fights', you just don't do fights in which other people defend themselves.

---

I think the context is important. If a fact is added simply to vilify the in-story non-believer, I do not think it is an unfair leap of logic to note that the same criticism has been used in the real world to vilify other non-believers.

Today it is Ana's turn to say what I'm thinking in a concise and elegant way.

Ana Mardoll said...

Of course if hapax is wrong and it has nothing to do with Narnia being prelapsarian then forget all this.

I would say it's not that I think the prelapsarian theory is 'wrong'; it's that I don't think that the books are written for rigorous internal consistency.

Today it is Ana's turn to say what I'm thinking in a concise and elegant way.

Thank you, Will. *grins* It's like a hat we all keep passing back and forth. :D

Oh, and l've lost the quote, but someone asked me where there are indications in the text that Aslan isn't omnipotent (or, better, voluntarily constrains his omnipotence)?

That was me. I edited it out of my comment because I didn't want to see I was ganging up on you on multiple issues. *sheepish* I do believe that Aslan is omnipotent, and that the examples given are "real world" examples of god/jesus choosing to limit his omnipotence. However, I also believe that "limited omnipotence" and "choosing to limit one's omnipotence" are so similar from the outside that to argue about it would have no valuable result.

Having said that, I do not interpret the text to say that Aslan has been barred from Narnia by Jadis' magic. If he comes because four English children have arrived, but if the children have arrived at his or his father's pleasure, then there was never any real barrier to him bringing four children over at an earlier time.

Kit Whitfield said...

At the beginning of MN, Lewis says it takes place "when Mr Sherlock Holmes was still living on Baker Street and the Bastables were still looking for treasure" -- that seems to me a pretty good clue that it ISN'T our world, but an explicitly fictional one.

That's a difference of interpretation, I'd say: to me, it seems to me more about himself and his intended audience than Narnia. It's a way of saying 'I'm speaking to children who like the same children's classics that have influenced me (and whose company I'm aiming to join'. When he's trying hard to sound like E. Nesbit he sometimes does put on a conspiratorial tone, though he tends to carry it far more heavily than Nesbit ever did, and this reads to me like another case of the same. To put it in terms he would have hated, it feels to me less about showing the reality or otherwise of Narnia and more about positioning himself in the marketplace.

--

After all, Edmund and Lucy are told at the end of VDT : "That's why you were brought to Narnia, that by getting to know Me here, you could learn to find Me there."

See - well, guess what? I read that totally differently. I know, I know, it's astonishing, but when you've got over the shock... ;-)

Again, that feels to me more, well, meta. I see it as a nod to the audience, because the books bring the audience to Narnia, imaginatively speaking at least. Lewis himself stated that he didn't intend to write an allegory, but as a writer he had a natural didacticism which gets into the story, and he does seem to be a writer who passionately believed in the imaginative journey, the fantasy world that you could enter into and ennoble yourself by so doing.

And the more Christian Narnia gets, the more it feels like he's working heavily to ennoble (and the worse the books get as a result). But to me, that statement feels like a tribute to the value of fantasy - an implication that the books themselves are an introduction to Christian ideas in palatable form that should help children become Christians in the real world.

This may not be what Lewis intended to write when he started out - but if you'd written books that had some success while being explicitly Christian, by gosh it's a tempting thought that couldn't help but occur to you. In a way, I see the Narnia series as marred by Lewis succumbing more and more to spiritual pride as the excitement of the opportunity to preach got the better of him. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is at least an imaginative fairy-tale of a book, but they get meaner and heavier-handed in later books.

This may be attributing to him thoughts he never had - but at the very least, it's a frequent temptation to artists of all kinds to slip from creating works of art to creating manifestos about the kinds of art they want to create. Many a writer finds a section on the importance of the imagination or something similar creeping its way into their work. You know how the Turkey City Lexicon refers to a 'SIgnal From Fred', meaning one of the characters makes a comment on how the plot seems cliched or nonsensical because the author's subconscious is trying to tell them something? There's a similar phenomenon when the author's artistic aspirations butt in. And to me, that comment feels like one of them.

Just a theory.

Ana Mardoll said...

That reads to me as saying that the experience of Aslan's name in Narnia is completely different from the experience of Jesus' name on earth. I'm guessing you interpret it differently.

I interpret Dawn Treader as a book written a few years after Lion/Witch/Wardrobe by an author who did not rigorously set out to write a seven book series characterized by tight internal narrative and theological consistency.

I realize that sentence sounds like I'm trying to be a smart aleck, and I swear I'm not, but if we take the Dawn Treader statement to be true, then it means that all the sufferings of Narnians over the 100 year winter in Lion/Witch/Wardrobe and the oppression of the Narnians in PrinceCaspian were set up entirely by a god-being who wanted to use the world as a Special Moral Lesson for four English children.

Since I would presume that this is probably not what the "take-away" of the Dawn Treader quote is supposed to be, I will fall back on "not internally consistent" and say that the Dawn Treader quote seems to me like a nice little salve ended to adjust the shock to the reader that his reader insert characters are pretty much forever barred from the remaining books. "You don't get to go to Narnia anymore, but you still have Jesus!"

Kit Whitfield said...

I believe she thinks that Lewis thought his [various] models not only perfectly described reality, but was how things OUGHT to work.

Not exactly. He's fantasising, no question. But fantasies are very revealing things. And in his fantasies, Lewis is spiteful about things I consider innocent, comfortable with things I consider malign, simplistic about things I consider complicated - and seems to be enjoying his spite, comfort and simplicity when they all have serious problems that stand to hurt real people. Which I why I find him unseemly as well as someone I oppose politically.

Ana Mardoll said...

Atheism as a free rational choice DOESN'T exist in Narnia.

I don't understand why not. Say I'm a Narnian. I've never seen Aslan. I've never seen the Emperor. Neither have ever interfered meaningfully in my life. The thrill/chill people hear at the name of Aslan is an auditory quirk of our hearing -- the same way that music sounds lovely to some and ugly to others.

Now, maybe some talking lion shows up calling himself Aslan. God knows we have LOTS of talking lions in these parts. But that doesn't mean I suddenly believe he's king of Narnia, or that his opinion that 4 children who came from who-knows-where would make a better ruler than anyone else.

In the context of the story, yes, I would be wrong. But I would still exist, and I would still be a neutral third party in this Aslan/Jadis war. Does anyone like this exist in Lewis' book? No. But -- and mind you, this is pre-coffee -- I'm not sure I agree with this statement that atheism isn't *possible* in Narnia.

chris the cynic said...

I think I may have narrowed down what's not making sense for me.

The trilemma is a simple do it yourself at home test for divinity which will quickly convince you that Zeus is real. In it Lewis is presenting us with something that we can do ourselves in the here and now.

There are a lot of things like that in all kinds of books. Redwall might be about talking mice, but we can be brave and loyal in our own lives and thus can learn from Redwall in that way.

There are also things that don't apply. For example Redwall contains a section where one of the characters accidentally ends up in the mouth of another of the characters and is then spat out so the two can have a conversation*. I'm not sure that you'll ever find yourself in a situation where that scene applies to you.

The reactions to Aslan's name seems to me to fall into the second category. It is not something you can apply to your own life. Magic names you've never heard before do not cause feelings of (in the order of the text) mysterious horror, brave adventurousness, delicious smell/delightful music, the first day of the holidays/summer. You never get to use it in your life. (If you were to try you'd have to conclude that Jesus isn't really divine and that you just have to wait around until you come across a name that hits you like that the first time you hear it.)

It is an element of the fiction that can't be applied to real life any more than being told that setting 2428D is to re-attach barbed wire.

A lot of the rest of the stuff can be applied. We can absolutely assume that anyone who raises reasonable objections is a traitor, for example. That's something from Narnia that we can apply. We can also assume that everything type of animal that is good in stories must be good. We can take all kinds of bad lessons from Narnia and apply them to the real world and I have little doubt that many of the lessons we can take are ones that Lewis intended us to take.

I'm just having trouble seeing how the one that can't be applied in the real world would be something that we assume is meant to.

-

The quote Ana pulled from VDT seems to state very clearly that it's very different on earth. That's two "very"s and yet I feel like I'm understating things.

Recognizing Aslan's earth form is much harder, something you have to learn to do where recognizing Aslan's Narnia form is something you can do just by hearing his name. It even states that the reason that they're in Narnia is that it is so much easier in Narnia. Now I haven't read that book, all I know of it is the quote Ana gave, so maybe there's something before or after that puts it into a different light and means that this is all wrong, but based on the quote it looks like from the stuff we've read here indicating that experiencing Aslan is quite different from experience Jesus, to that dialog two books later, there is a consistent theme that Jesus is a hell of a lot harder to recognize as divine than Aslan.

Given the apparent lack of consistency in the rest of the setting, that seems to me like an indication that the idea that recognizing Aslan is not like recognizing Jesus is an important point for Lewis. He stands by that when other stuff is tossed overboard.

-

This is a fast thread. It's been hard to keep up.

-

*Does anyone else feel like cats in Redwall should have been treated like dragons from the perspective of the mice? I feel like scale tended to be underplayed.

Ana Mardoll said...

Home Divinity Test! Only 30 seconds before results! + means you're not religious, ++ means you are!

Verify all results with your doctor. Home Divinity Test is not responsible for actions taken in response to an incorrect diagnosis. Your results may vary.

Ana Mardoll said...

Magic names you've never heard before do not cause feelings of (in the order of the text) mysterious horror, brave adventurousness, delicious smell/delightful music, the first day of the holidays/summer.

I'm just having trouble seeing how the one that can't be applied in the real world would be something that we assume is meant to.


I would say that I'm applying this to the real world because my experience as a Christian for the first 20 years of my life led me in contact with people who claimed that they *do* experience specific feelings upon hearing the name "Jesus" and had extrapolated from that sensation that ALL people experience those-or-similar-feelings.

This also shows up in some of the God-shaped-hole-in-your-heart sermons I've heard -- that we all instinctively long for God but that some people are just really very stubborn and refuse to submit to his authority. This is insulting to atheists because it claims to know more about their internal thoughts, feelings, and motives than the atheist zimself does (or will admit).

Tl;dr: if something is shaped like a duck to me, I think it not apropos to point out the shape just because there are a few fantastical additions to the duck-form. (That was a tortured metaphor if I ever wrote one!)

chris the cynic said...

So much to catch up on. This is what I saw first.

if we take the Dawn Treader statement to be true, then it means that all the sufferings of Narnians over the 100 year winter in Lion/Witch/Wardrobe and the oppression of the Narnians in PrinceCaspian were set up entirely by a god-being who wanted to use the world as a Special Moral Lesson for four English children.

I'm guessing there's some kind of context I'm missing here. The quote says that it was the reason that the children were brought to Narnia*, not that it was the reason Narnia went through all of the stuff it did. Where is it indicated that, "The very reason you were brought to Narnia," is the same as, "The very reason Narnia needed someone brought to it"?

"The very reason you were hired," usually isn't, "The very reason we had a job opening." I mean it can be, but generally speaking the reason that a task needs to be completed is different from the reason that a certain person, or certain people, were chosen to complete it.

Having not read Voyage I didn't realize that in this case the two seemingly different reasons are one in the same. Sorry.

-

*Which itself has some pretty damning implications. Why just four kids? If this is salvation we're talking about how come they get a leg up on it while everyone else flies or falls based on their own merits alone? If it is possible to give people a clearer path to salvation, it seems like not giving it to more is just playing favorites with people's souls.

Dav said...

If he comes because four English children have arrived, but if the children have arrived at his or his father's pleasure, then there was never any real barrier to him bringing four children over at an earlier time.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if he had, and it had gone very, very badly for them. Four kids, dumped into a strange forest full of spies during midwinter? Narnian winters don't seem to be as serious as Midwestern US winters, but the odds of the kids running into Tumnus first and befriending him, or the Beavers, are somewhat lower than them freezing to death, starving, falling through the ice on the pond, running into the secret police or Jadis, or any one of a hundred sticky ends. I think those four thrones have been unoccupied a very long time. Especially if the Beavers are right, and Aslan can't/won't swing by to pick them up on his way in.

Ana Mardoll said...

Where is it indicated that, "The very reason you were brought to Narnia," is the same as, "The very reason Narnia needed someone brought to it"?

Well, there's the question of the prophecy that the winter will end when the 4 humans come. Hapax has even theorized (I think, correct me if I'm wrong?) that Aslan has been powerless to aid the Narnians *until* the 4 humans of prophecy arrive. If the 4 humans were brought to Narnia to Learn A Lesson About Jesus rather than because Narnia Needs Help, then one would be hopefully be forgiven for assuming that the Emperor had his priorities a bit out of order.

---

Skimming through Lewis quotes this morning, I found an interesting on in "A Severe Mercy". Note that (a) I hated this book intensely in college and (b) the veracity of the book is apparently somewhat in question -- there are those who accuse the author of using and/or misconstruing Lewis in order to further his writing ambitions. However, there is this:

You say the materialist universe is 'ugly.' I wonder how you discovered that! If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don't feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. ('How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up and married! I can hardly believe it!') In heaven's name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something about us that is not temporal. Total humility is not in the Tao because the Tao (as such) says nothing about the Object to which it would be the right response: just as there is no law about railways in the acts of Queen Elizabeth. But from the degree of respect would the Tao demands for ancestors, parents, elders, and teachers, it is quite clear what the Tao would prescribe towards an object such as God.

But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you'll get away!

Yours,
C.S. Lewis


Whether this is germane, I cannot say. I feel like Lewis is saying that we are surprised at time because there is a part of us that is non-temporal, and I presume he means a soul. I am slightly moved to hazard that this is something of a statement of belief dressed up to look like a logical statement of fact.

chris the cynic said...

I would say that I'm applying this to the real world because my experience as a Christian for the first 20 years of my life led me in contact with people who claimed that they *do* experience specific feelings upon hearing the name "Jesus" and had extrapolated from that sensation that ALL people experience those-or-similar-feelings.

I think this is where context comes in though. The context of the Aslan thing is, "None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different."

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that none of those idiots are hearing Jesus for the first time. In fact I'd guess that most of them can't remember the first time they heard "Jesus."

I've tried to think of a way that someone who is already Christian could run this test, and the best I can come up with is that they could have someone look up alternate names for Jesus and then read them in monotone mixed with names that are in no way associated with Jesus. If they feel something jump in their insides at the names of Jesus and only the names of Jesus, then Jesus passed the test.

This posits that Jesus has enough names unfamiliar to to the Christian for the test to be run, and that the reaction occurs in response to the alternate names as well. I'm not sure either of those ideas is supported by Lewis' text.

I didn't see it as being all that plausible when I wrote my response to Will, which is why I didn't mention it then. I suppose that you might be able to make it work in the real world. I still maintain that if you did you'd conclude that Jesus wasn't divine.

Double blind would be the best. Someone makes the list of names, hands it off to someone who doesn't know which are which, that person reads them to the Christian, the Christian's responses are noted, the things that got the Aslan response are checked against the Jesus names. If there is a one to one correspondence then Jesus passes the test, otherwise Jesus fails.

Ana Mardoll said...

Really, the only thing that doesn't work AT ALL is the whole "Christmas" bit. I know we'll be getting there soon, but there is simply NO WAY to introduce "Christmas" -- even the very word -- into Narnia that doesn't blow any potential consistent worldbuilding to smithereens.

I like Christmas presents too, but Lewis -- that whole scene is complete FAIL.


I loved your entire comment, Hapax, but especially this. I want to print it out and snuggle it because... yeah. The Father Christmas scene is 100% bizarre. It would have been better to just have Aslan hand out the gifts. "Hi, welcome to Narnia, here's your sword."

Kit Whitfield said...

It even states that the reason that they're in Narnia is that it is so much easier in Narnia.

Granted ... but then we get back to the Problem of Susan, don't we? And to characters like Uncle Andrew, who have the opportunity to recognise the Way and the Truth in Narnia but somehow spectacularly fail even when it's 'so much easier' that it's really, really hard to credit that anybody could be that stupid.

To me, it smacks of trying to have it both ways. Lewis stated that he didn't write The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to be an allegory (he called the idea 'all pure moonshine', with his characteristic insulting tone towards those he disagreed with), but instead it occurred to him as having 'all began with images' and the Christianity later 'pushed itself in of its own accord.' So arguing the children were brought to Narnia to get better acquainted with Christ is, well, imposing a logic on the story that Lewis himself resisted on some occasions. It's a suggestion he added later in the story. At the time of writing The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, it seems present neither in the book itself nor in Lewis's intentions that Narnia exists to give an easy path to Christ.

Lewis himself stated that he didn't plan the book as an allegory, and the shifts in tone throughout the series seem to support that. But if that's the case, then we can't really say that Narnia exists to be easier than the real world, because it doesn't. It's just an imaginative voyage.

Either it's a fantasy land to explore, in which case we're back to fantasies being revealing, or it's a deliberately smoothed path, in which case the books are merely being horrendously spiteful in assuming that people would still fail to see the truth even when it was staring them in the face.

I just don't think the book consistently supports that interpretation. I think it's messier than that. I think the Narnia series is full of thoughts of the moment and whims and improvisations, and hence hard to defend on the grounds that it has a consistent safety net. The safety net is full of holes.

Ana Mardoll said...

Will, sometimes when you post, I remember that you're reading Narnia for the first time with us. And that gives me a feeling of UNADULTERATED GLEE. May I request that no one spoil Christmas for Will? We're almost there in text anyway. :D

Kit Whitfield said...

The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you'll get away!

Ugh. If there's anything worse than being threatening and smug, it's being threatening, smug and cutesy.

Ana Mardoll said...

Ugh. If there's anything worse than being threatening and smug, it's being threatening, smug and cutesy.

In fairness, I should note it was a personal letter between friends. Probably my personal correspondence isn't all I would want it to be for public consumption. :D

Ana Mardoll said...

And now I must step away from this seriously awesome discussion (hugs to you all!) because OMG WHERE DID MY MORNING GO?!?

chris the cynic said...

I think I asked badly.

I get that Narnia apparently needs four humans. What I do not follow is how, "You were brought here because X," means, "Narnia needs four humans because X." Narnia needing four humans represents a job opening.

If Aslan-Jesus selected the children for their trip to Narnia then it implies that he could have selected someone else. A selection you have no control over is no selection at all. The mere fact that there was a reason for them to be brought there implies a selection process. They were brought for 'this very reason', not because they happened to be in the house with the wardrobe by random chance.

In which case the question becomes, "Why them?" Why not Philip and Jacob and Alice and Jessica? If Aslan is the mastermind behind them coming into Narnia, then it seems like he could have picked any four children to come and sit on the thrones. Why those four? Was Peter going to grow up to be the Antichrist unless he got a healthy dose of Aslan in his life?

As far as I know the books never give a good reason why they were brought to Narnia, only saying that it was so that they might get to know Aslan. Then again I only learned about the so that they might get to know Aslan thing here, so maybe a good reason is described elsewhere and I just don't know of it.

The books seem to give a slightly better reason for why someone had to be brought to Narnia (thrones, witch, prophesy, thingy, magic) but I don't think that ever specified a reason why it should be those four.

Kit Whitfield said...

In fairness, I should note it was a personal letter between friends.

If a friend of mine wrote that to me, I would seriously reevaluate our relationship.

Ana Mardoll said...

If a friend of mine wrote that to me, I would seriously reevaluate our relationship.

The whole book is very fraught with problems. I can't even write a comment on it without getting into seriously controversial territory, but I will say that in the context of this particular letter, Lewis' "playful" tone is probably justified -- Sheldon wants to be convinced into Christianity, essentially, and Lewis seems to be trying to console him that he's almost there.

I've thought about deconstructing it as a non-fiction piece on the blog, but the book is VERY controversial and I hate the thought of alienating any readers.

Will Wildman said...

Will, sometimes when you post, I remember that you're reading Narnia for the first time with us. And that gives me a feeling of UNADULTERATED GLEE. May I request that no one spoil Christmas for Will? We're almost there in text anyway.

...Well, my interest is piqued. As noted, I have seen the movie a couple of times (not counting half-remembered scenes from when my brother watched the BBC series years upon years ago) so I know the general outline of the plot - the things that startle me are the areas where the book and movie differ. Dinner with the Beavers has had several such moments. Now what's Father Christmas going to pull...?

Ana Mardoll said...

...only a sewing machine from under his red suit. :P

Alas, I forgot you'd been movie-spoilt. I was hoping we'd get to Father Christmas and you'd give a Flat What.

Kish said...

[blockquote]
Atheism as a free rational choice DOESN'T exist in Narnia.
[/blockquote]
[blockquote]
I don't understand why not.[/blockquote]
It seems to exist in Prince Caspian, where Trumpkin openly scoffs at the idea of Aslan existing until Aslan throws him into the air to prove he exists.

hf said...

I do believe that Aslan is omnipotent, and that the examples given are "real world" examples of god/jesus choosing to limit his omnipotence.

Well, the Emperor restricting Aslan seems different from God the Father restricting Jesus (in my understanding, perhaps not in Lewis'.)

While it seems credible to say that Aslan and the Emperor each can't exist without the other (because Lewis portrays their world as a Platonist one), it does not follow that they agree about everything. Nor does it follow that they would agree if Aslan didn't (say) restrict his own knowledge by taking a physical body. This matters because I see Aslan as a relatively ethical agent of universal destruction or absorption. You know, like an Englishman.

hf said...

but I think that Lewis was attempting to portray what he perceived as the dilemma of the radical empiricist, who literally COULD not see God (or anything supernatural) even if it appeared.

I know you didn't clearly endorse this, but I want to point out that it seems flatly untrue unless Lewis can't see God either.

Rikalous said...

Thus establishing that Aslan is a force of nature that you can have a conversation with. If you can't get 'em young, a la the Amerricaine, worship is a safe response.

Ana Mardoll said...

[booming voice] Hi. I'm...Bob. I'm a...squirrel. Like you.

Squirrels: .....................Sure. Whatever you say, Bob. *anxious grins*

Rikalous said...

The trouble with these long comment threads is by the time I've gotten to the end, I've forgotten the comment at the beginning I wanted to respond to. When people were talking about the thrill/chill people get from hearing a lion's name, it made me think of this:

Banzai: Oh, Scar, it's just you.
Shenzi: We were afraid it was somebody important.
Banzai: Yeah, you know, like Mufasa.
Scar: I see.
Banzai: Now that's power.
Shenzi: Tell me about it. I just hear that name and I shudder.
Banzai: Mufasa!
Shenzi: Ooooh! Do it again!
Banzai: Mufasa!
Shenzi: Ooooh!
Banzai: Mufasa, Mufasa, Mufasa!
Shenzi: Ooooh!
[breaks into laughter]
Shenzi: And it tingles me!

I think I'm going to be hearing Jadis's lines in Jeremy Irons voice from now on. That should be fun.

chris the cynic said...

Nah, Redwall critters are all basically human size.

The reason that I single out cats is that there is a scene where Matthias is inside of Jullian's mouth. I can accept that the sizes of most animals have been altered to make the discrepancy less impressive, I can accept that that alteration is to make them human sized if you like, but a human sized cat wouldn't be able to fit a human sized mouse in it's mouth.

Even if everything else has been made to fall into a much smaller range there still has to be a massive gap between the size of a mouse and the size of a cat. Or, you know, the cat has a detachable jaw like some kind of furry snake.

Ana Mardoll said...

Laughed so hard at The Lion King reference. :D

Rikalous said...

Redwall the book also has apparently-unintelligent horses, and the Solitary Beaver, species which never show up again in Redwall the series. I think one of these threads made mention of the way that first books can be inconsistent with the rest of the series (There's a Trope For That(TM), incidentally). From what I remember, there was an implication in that first book that there was human-made infrastructure around, and the critters just never ran into any of them (and could build societies and churches safely out of sight). Then the other books came out, where it was clear that the characters were essentially furries trapped in a perpetually Medieval world.

I find the image of a furry snake hilarious.

Ana Mardoll said...

Revisiting this for the Slacktiverse blog-a-round promotion for the week, I wanted to thank everyone for being so awesome and civil and awesome in the comments this week. I do apologize for the dust-up and I particularly apologize for anything I may have said that was out of order, but I'm so glad to see everyone conduct themselves so well and I'm grateful that we can have spirited discussions without spite or (I hope) lingering bad feelings.

Consider yourselves all given great big hugs for being so dang awesome. :)

Toby Bartels said...

>shouldn't he be more like King Arthur than Jesus - some few kooks might think he'll come back, but most people forgot about him ages ago

Let us note that Lewis was himself one of these kooks. Aside from the throw-away line near the beginning of VDT (I think, unless it was SC, anyway one of the Eustace books) that it was bloody well time that Arthur showed up, That Hideous Strength (last and worst of the Space Trilogy) is all about that. I'm not sure that Lewis *literally* believed in the once and future king, but considering the myths that he did literally believe in, I wouldn't put it past him.

Another Chris said...

And thank you, Ana! I know I'm not contributing much, but I'm enjoying this conversation immensely.

(For the record, I may have posted as just "Chris" up above. It was still me, though. I'm using this login to distinguish myself from all the other Chrisses.)

chris the cynic said...

You still show up as "Chris" in the comments, but as "Another Chris" in Current Comments and in your profile. Disqus seems to be insisting on being weird.

Makabit said...

OK, this is out of nowhere, but after my brain chewed on it for weeks, it suddenly occurred to me why Jadis's name always starts a vague memory of a poem rambling in the back of my mind.

"Au temps jadis" is French for 'in days of yore' or 'once upon a time'. "In the time of Jadis..." OK. OK. I get it.

The poem, I worked out, is the piece from the end of "The Princess Nobody".

"Au Temps Jadis!" As Perrault says,
In half-forgotten fairy days,
There lived a king once, and a queen,
As few there are, as more have been...

Has everyone else known this forever, and if so, why didn't you tell me before I was half earwormed to death?

Anna said...

Firstly, I apologise for always showing up 100+ posts into discussions, when everyone else has got bored and moved on to a newer thread. I'm trying to work through the Twilight and Narnia deconstructions from the beginning, because it's good stuff, and am gradually catching up to where the blog currently is :P

Secondly, it seems to me that there's a fairly obvious solution to the issue of "How are the Aslan myths preserved?" that nobody's yet mentioned. This is a world in which you have sentient trees, and said trees are capable of communicating with other species. Trees can live for thousands of years - surely they'd be the perfect oral historians of Narnia? Also, "all the trees over on that ridge met Aslan last time He was in Narnia, and they've told me all about Him" is probably going to be a more compelling argument for Aslan's existence than "it's said that my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather once met Aslan, but He hasn't been around since then".

chris the cynic said...

Oh my god, you're right.

You just stick your usb connection into the one of the trees of voices and they'd tell you everything you want to know.

Ana Mardoll said...

Anna, that's an AMAZING idea! (Now I feel very ani-centric for not thinking of the trees.)

One wonders why Jadis didn't burn down the historian trees. Clearly, overt massacre of that kind would not be tolerated quietly, so she had to avoid obvious measures. Thus, the eternal winter, which would presumably make the trees very sleepy and stupid and which will eventually kill every last one of them off. She's playing the long game here. Brilliant!

hapax said...

Holy crow, Makabit, you are right! I never made that connection before.

And I am especially kicking myself because the most famous reference to the phrase is in Villon's Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis, which is of course, the source of the elegiac refrain, "Ou sont les neiges d'antan?"

Well, now we know where the snows of yesteryear have gone -- the Lady Jadis brought them to Narnia, where they lay still and beautiful and eternal, until Aslan had to show up and shake his frikkin' mane....

Makabit said...

Oy--and I didn't even make the connection with Villon, even though I found the poem last night while chasing my earworm from the Lang book around. "The snows of yesteryear" indeed!

Thanks. Literary references are better hunted in teams, I suppose.

Ana Mardoll said...

Now I'm trying to remember if "Jadis" is used in LWW, or if the name doesn't appear before Magician's Nephew...

Will Wildman said...

In addition to the glorious multilingual wordplay, I am loving the idea that Jadis has collected past winters to combine them into one long permawinter. Although this causes me to think there should be other places that are now using the other seasons of yesteryear; places that are scorched by relentless summer or soaked with endless spring rains. Autumn is a bit trickier, since most of the things we associate with it necessarily require summer - the falling leaves, the harvest of crops, both of which need to have already grown. What would permanent autumn look like?

hapax said...

Yep. It's in the arrest letter found in Mr. Tumnus's cave "By the order of Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Empress of the Lone Isles" etc., or something like that.

(aside -- "Fenris Ulf" is like the Best Character Name Ever, and I am torqued that Lewis wasted it on such a throwaway character. )

chris the cynic said...

My temptation is to say that the leaves are frozen mid fall like some sort of impossible three dimensional sculpture*, but I suspect it would be more like autumn colored leaves (still on the tress) all the time.


*

With an explanation as to how they stay suspended stolen from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I suppose.

ARTHUR: Ah. Look, the statue, how did you get the cup bit to stay where it is unsupported?
WISE OLD BIRD: It stays there because it’s artistically right.
ARTHUR: What?
WISE OLD BIRD: The law of gravity isn’t as indiscriminate as people often think. You learn things like that when you’re a bird.

chris the cynic said...

My temptation is to say that the leaves are frozen mid fall like some sort of impossible three dimensional sculpture*, but I suspect it would be more like autumn colored leaves (still on the tress) all the time.

-

* With an explanation as to how they stay suspended stolen from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I suppose.

ARTHUR: Ah. Look, the statue, how did you get the cup bit to stay where it is unsupported?
WISE OLD BIRD: It stays there because it’s artistically right.
ARTHUR: What?
WISE OLD BIRD: The law of gravity isn’t as indiscriminate as people often think. You learn things like that when you’re a bird.

Ana Mardoll said...

How very bizarre. I can delete the first one, but that's about it -- the "guest" status of the first and the incorrect "in reply to" on the second I don't seem to be able to remap. Huh.

chris the cynic said...

Go ahead and delete the first one. It's easy enough for me to add to the second one that it should be in reply to Will.

Anna said...

I mean, "use him as bait"? What?? The Witch doesn't need to kill all the four siblings to throw a monkey wrench in the prophecy -- she just needs to kill one of them. Unless there's a fifth sibling somewhere, she should be pretty good at that point.

I had a flash of inspiration about this point while I was riding my bike this morning. The prophecy itself actually says "When Adam's flesh and Adam's bone sits at Cair Paravel in throne, the evil time will be over and done", right? The prophecy doesn't specify how much of Adam's flesh and bone is required, so even if common interpretation says that it has to be 4 humans - one for each of the thrones - I can imagine the Witch not wanting to take any chances. After all, if she kills 3 siblings but Susan (for example) survives and gets crowned, then Adam's flesh and bone - in Susan - will still be sitting at Cair Paravel, which might still spell defeat for the Witch.

Of course, if I were the Witch I'd try to have it both ways: kill Edmund AND use him as bait for the remaining siblings. I'd find the best evil sculptor I could and get them to make me a statue of Edmund, while killing the real Edmund. Then I'd allow the siblings to "discover" the existence of the Edmund statue - possibly apparently carelessly tossed out into the middle of the forest beside some sleigh marks in the snow - and make sure that one of the cuter, cuddlier animals in my employ was "coincidentally" nearby at the time of discovery. I'd get said cuddly animal to tell the siblings that the Witch must have turned their brother to stone, but don't despair, everyone knows her statues will come back to life when she dies, so you'd better get yourselves off to her castle and fight her. No, no, quickly, no time to wait for Aslan - don't you know that if the statue gets damaged and loses a hand or something, your brother will come back with his hand still missing? So the children scurry off to the Witch's house and death.

(This also got me wondering - if the statues are in the courtyard, presumably there is some damage due to weathering. Do they have similar damage on their bodies when Aslan brings them back to life?)

Ana Mardoll said...

Anna, that is BRILLIANT. You would make a great Evil Overlord, and I mean that as a compliment.

'Course, my brain is WEIRD, so when you mentioned the "flesh and bone" prophecy, I somehow imagined Susan sitting on the throne with the remains of her siblings assembled beside her. Ick.

depizan said...

Good point. The Witch would be best off turning the lot of them to stone for real, just in case their bodies work for the prophecy. (Or killing them and utterly destroying the bodies.)

Ana Mardoll said...

Turn to stone, grind to dust, scatter into the ocean? This seems like the best bet.

chris the cynic said...

My first thought was of dismemberment. Yeah, Edmund belongs to the witch and she can presumably keep his remains from coming near the throne, but they could still chop off one of Peter's limbs to set on Edmund's throne. So the witch, assuming that everyone else thinks of things in evil ways, presumes that that's just what they'll do if they find out Edmund is a lost cause.

Thus she concludes that she's gotta catch 'em all, and decides to use Edmund as bait.

Because, as Ana points out, flesh and bone doesn't sound like it has to be alive.

Irina said...

I think there's actually a fanfic story about that. Don't have enough recall to find it, of course.

Irina said...

King Frank and Queen Helen according to The Magician's Nephew, and if the queen wasn't pregnant already they won't have waited long.

Anna said...

You would make a great Evil Overlord, and I mean that as a compliment.

I took it as a compliment, and am very happy to be called a great (potential) Evil Overlord. Just for that, you can be my chief henchman.

Because, as Ana points out, flesh and bone doesn't sound like it has to be alive.

Brr. This sentence gave me chills.

Anton_Mates said...

How would anyone know that something they encountered "is going to be human but isn't yet"? Is this a reference to some type of thing we actually see in the book that I've forgotten?

Clearly, C.S. Lewis believed that abortion should be not only legal but mandatory.

Peter said...

I've not seen this many

Phil_Malthus said...

<> Let me introduce you to the concept of external plumbing, or outhouses.

Brenda said...

I don't see Edmund's reaction to Aslan's name as atheism-hate. I see it as, he's been poisoned and hypnotized and is having a bad reaction to the Queen's enemy, just like he could no longer enjoy normal food.

Will Wildman said...

I bought the 2005 version of TLTW&TW this weekend and watched it Sunday - I'm impressed by the way they elided a lot of the highly problematic stuff (zero mention of Lilith) or found other ways of making things less diagreeable to me. As one point, I will note that Jadis' wolves are called the Secret Police, which is very efficient: police good, secret police bad. I had forgotten that the Professor uses the 'lying, crazy, or true' trilemma in the movie, but he's played up as being highly eccentric himself, which made it seem less like the movie was saying this is solid logic on which to make your theological decisions, and more like it was saying that there is an interdimensional portal in the spare bedroom to a land where beavers eat marmalade during eternal winter, so maybe logic is less important than genre savvy right now.

I also got the vague impression from the Beavers that they had actual memories of pre-superwinter Narnia, which caused me to speculate that as a side-effect of eternal winter, 'time' in general is passing more slowly, i.e. slower rates of age. But there's certainly nothing in the text quoted here to support that.

Also, regarding Beaver choosing to not mention that Edmund was magicked up: What? WHAT?! What.

The most reasonable thing to conclude here is that they're making it all up - the Beavers are pathological liars spinning yarns in which 'brother has stepped out to use the bathroom tree' immediately leads them to yell 'TURKISH MIND CONTROL DELIGHT EVERYONE HIDE IN THE BASEMENT'. They're making up everything - Jadis' lineage, Aslan's prophecy, etc - and by sheer narrative power they will prove to be right. I want Susan to turn around and see a Lilith Fair poster on the wall next to a New York Giants pennant and a bottle of gin.

Anna said...

AND when the white-haired professor found him alone among the wood cabinets of the pantry and offered him hot chocolate, he took some without asking his siblings if they wanted to share.

hapax said...

Now, maybe some talking lion shows up calling himself Aslan. God knows we have LOTS of talking lions in these parts. But that doesn't mean I suddenly believe he's king of Narnia, or that his opinion that 4 children who came from who-knows-where would make a better ruler than anyone else.

Actually, this does very well describe one character in the series: Trumpkin the dwarf. Who is so reasonable and likeable and unanswerable in his skepticism yet nonetheless Moral and Good and On the Right Side that Lewis has to basically cheat and have Aslan show up and physically abuse him (although the reader is reassured that "Aslan liked the dwarf very much" thank you) in order to convert him to the One True Church of Aslan.

(Yes, the adult me would have very much liked it if Trumpkin had stood back up and said, "Well, I guess I was wrong and lions are real, and you seem to have the power to be the High King of Narnia, can't deny that, but you aren't the kind of King I'm interested in serving. So Caspian, if you can accept my service without my bowing to that thug over there, I'm yours; but if you can't, I'll just be on my way, no hard feelings, thanks for the dinner."

That would have been AWESOME.

However, alas, that wasn't the book that Lewis wanted to write.)

But I think Ana has a very good point, that trying to find perfect internal consistency in the series is a mug's game.

I am pretty wedded to my notion of Narnia -- particularly LWW Narnia -- as prelapsarian. It is the only thing that makes sense to me of so many otherwise puzzling contradictions and narrative motifs. It requires the Beavers to be unreliable narrators (which, as I said in an earlier comment, I've always believed, even when I wasn't trying to work out any sort of sophisticated criticism) and requires Aslan to voluntarily subject his omnipotence to limitations in obedience to "the rules" that many can justifiably consider unbelievably cruel and unfair*, but it is consistent with various Christian traditions and speculations that I know Lewis was familiar with and found attractive.

Really, the only thing that doesn't work AT ALL is the whole "Christmas" bit. I know we'll be getting there soon, but there is simply NO WAY to introduce "Christmas" -- even the very word -- into Narnia that doesn't blow any potential consistent worldbuilding to smithereens.

I like Christmas presents too, but Lewis -- that whole scene is complete FAIL.

-------

*I could probably go on an extended geeky "compare and contrast" of Lewis' depiction of Aslan and Wagner's portrait of Odin when presented with a similar dilemma, including the way that both of them "solve" the trap by importing an outside agent -- in Lewis's case, "Fallen" yet innocent aliens who can be used to rules-lawyer and subvert the contract legally, in Wagner's case an innocent conceived *outside* the rules (and thus truly "free" of the cage of Law) who can be used to break the stranglehold of contractual obligations -- but both leading ultimately to the utter destruction of the world that those rules undergird -- but that wouldn't be relevant, now, would it?

MODERATED TO FIX BLOCKQUOTE. :)

Amaryllis said...

Anyway, what I always thought about this scene was, how did Lilith get to Charn?
I'd forgotten that Jadis was supposed to be a descendent of Lilith. It just goes to show you that The Magician's Nephew was a total retcon, and Lewis would have been better to leave Narnia's early history a bit murkier.

Or, if he absolutely had to have an origin myth explaining that evil existed in Narnia because a Son of Adam invited it in, he shouldn't have dragged Lilith into the first book.

Maybe Mr. Beaver was speaking metaphorically. Or maybe he just doesn't know what he's talking about; he doesn't seem to very reliable, right?

Or maybe, in this cosmogony, Earth is the source world, the oldest creation, and every other world iis a spin-off, n some way incorporating some of Earth's original denizens. What way, exactly, is unexplained.

But I still say that Lewis doesn't seem to have been concerned, in any particular book, with consistent overall worldbuilding. He wasn't writing a single story, he was writing a library. And in each book he was interested in what he was interested in for that particular tale, without worrying too much about any of the other stories. Anyone raised on the Bible wouldn't boggle too much about a few contradictions between the stories that go to make up the One Story.

Eh, that's awkward, but you know what I mean, and I have to go to work now. Which, today, is going to be much less interesting than hanging out in Narnia, but so it goes.

MOD: Edit to fix italics. :)

hapax said...

Although this causes me to think there should be other places that are now using the other seasons of yesteryear; places that are scorched by relentless summer or soaked with endless spring rains.

Have you ever been to Dallas or Seattle?

hapax said...

traditional theology states that Christ was both fully human and fully divine at the same time; two natures in one person.

That is traditional theology (or rather, it is the traditional handwave against the alternate possibilities, which all lead to serious problems akin to those we're going to hit when we get to the "Is Aslan a *true* Beast?" issue).

However, I can't explicate it; it's considered a Paradox and Mystery on the same scale as the Trinity.

This:
No, pretty women who look human but aren't are not the issue here... as long as they don't have names and all they do is have children for human men.

is a bit of unfair, since the exact same sentence that has "the boys married nymphs" goes on to say "the girls married river-gods", so wherever else Lewis is being sexist, it isn't in this bit.

As far as

I'm surprised that the Animals all have a fairly clear consensus on who Aslan is, what he does, and what his prophecies are, seeing as how I'm still not sure that the Animals have a written language or any kind of information transmission besides oral history.

welp, this is a pretty huge YMMV, but even as a kid, I never thought they *did* have any such consensus. Even as a kid, I remember thinking that the Beavers were nice and all, but hugely unreliable sources of information, and the more sure they were about something, the less likely it was to be accurate.

To start with, the prophecies quote are flippin' WRONG; Spring returns to Narnia well before we see any overtly aggressive or threatening moves on Aslan's part (he is all about the negotiation and diplomacy until well after SPOILER -- ROT13: ur qbrf uvf Pbea Xvat npg, to the point that my bloodthirsty child-self was yelling "get on with the smiting already!"), and the Witch's death comes well before the "four thrones" at Cair Paravel are filled.

Secondly, although we see all sorts of "good Animals" on Aslan's side, we aren't given any hints as to what their legends and prophecies and agendas are. I had always assumed that the main thing that drew them together was their pleasure at the numinous "thrill" at Aslan's name (a lovely conceit that I wish that Lewis hadn't dropped in the later books; I can see why it would give him huge narrative difficulties, but on the other hand, it gives a lot of heft to Aslan's claim to being All That when just saying his name apparently is pre-programmed into everyone's endorphin centers); I never felt that there was the One True Church of Aslan.

(In fact, we *do* see that sort of splintering and competing traditions and even "apostosy" in the very next book, and I always kinda assumed the the Telmarine Interregnum lasted about as long as the Long Winter).

And thirdly ... well, this is of course all personal history, but boyhowdy did the Beavers remind me of my paternal grandparents, who had the habit of repeatedly attributing the-way-they-thought-things-OUGHT-to-be with scientifically verified facts that *everybody* knew. (Not that they weren't nice people but... well, no, actually, they weren't. But I digress).

In short, I always saw the Beavers as a bit of unreliable blowhards. But that may well have been an idiosyncratic interpretation.

(As to why Aslan didn't show up sooner -- well, I think my understanding of that was always a bit uglier than yours. In brief, Narnia, Charn, none of these alternate worlds really "count", except insofar as they impart Important Life Lessons to English schoolchildren. No doubt Lewis would fiercely deny this (and he did indeed attempt to grapple with the metafictional issues a bit in his Space Trilogy and TWHF), but it's pretty much an inescapable conclusion when it comes to Narnia)

Amaryllis said...

Holy crow is right. I can't believe I never noticed the Jadis thing before. And of course the snows of yesteryear have been piling up in Narnia-- that explains everything.

And Amarie is probably right about the trees, too. You people are brilliant.

Edited the morning after: it was Anna who came up with that convincing theory about the trees. She may be brilliant, but clearly I'm not. Apologies all round.

chris the cynic said...

As Ana says, it is a reference to the movie Avatar, in which certain trees (called trees of voices) could be communicated by using a neurological connection we tend to refer to as a usb port. Not a lot of detail was gone into what communication with the trees was used for by the native culture, but it was made clear that by communing with them you could hear the voices of generations past, hence the name.

Basically I was referencing another work of fiction in which talkative trees could be used to get information about people who lived before your lifetime.

The reference wasn't the point though. The overall point was that you're absolutely right. That makes perfect sense. Now that you say it, it seems completely obvious.

Ana Mardoll said...

Aslan exists, empirically, without question. He is the son of the Emperor-Beyond-Sea; nobody disputes that.
[...]
It would be a remarkably stupid one, at any rate; Lewis was well aware that in real life, "at the name of Jesus, every knee" does NOT bow, and there was no objective and empirical proof of the existence of God.


I'm sorry, but I do not understand this fully. :(

I'm not immediately sure why we can say that Aslan exists empirically without question as the son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. In the context of the story, no one has seen Aslan in over 100 years... and as best I can interpret the series, no one has *ever* seen the Emperor. (Indeed, this fits with the Jesus analogy: when the Messiah came/comes, no one alive had/will-have met him before; and no one alive has seen God.)

So while we meet no "non-believers" in Narnia (whether they doubt Aslan's existence, his royalty, or his parentage), I do not understand why we can say that non-believing Narnians most definitely cannot exist. (Or perhaps some of Jadis backers don't believe in Aslan.)

I also do not understand why the fact that atheists do not bow to Jesus is a reason for Lewis to not mean this as a dig at atheist. I've run into the opinion before that all atheists "know" that X religion is true, but that the atheist just hates Y deity with all their heart and refuse to admit that they know Y (and X) to be real and true. This not-unusual opinion isn't based in a believe that there is objective and empirical proof of God, but rather a faith/belief that everyone "knows" the truth and some people just refuse to admit it -- this is most often applied as a hand-wave for why otherwise-good non-believers in X are going to hell (or wherever) for a failure of the professing the right beliefs.

Maybe I'm missing something. If so, I do apologize.

EDIT TO ADD:

But nonetheless, you can't simply pretend that gravity doesn't exist.

This is, in fact, a criticism I have seen leveled at atheists -- that their pretense that god doesn't "obviously" exist is as silly as pretending that gravity doesn't exist. Any battle-hardened atheists want to chime in here? I'm fairly sure I've heard this on religion boards, but I could be mis-remembering.

I do not think, though, that Aslan can be compared to gravity within the text. Gravity has not taken a leave of absence from Narnia for 100 years. :)

hapax said...

Okay, let me put this another way.

Is it a sensible criticism to make of TWILIGHT that "Vampires do not sparkle. Plenty of people deny that vampires exist. To describe vampires as sparkling is to insult everyone who thinks that vampires don't exist, and to pretend that they're only saying that because they don't think sparkling is pretty"?

No. In the world of TWILIGHT, vampires objectively exist. They empirically sparkle. If we read the story, we are left to make sense of that or not.

LWW was not written to answer the question "Does God exist?" It wasn't even meant to answer "Is God like the Christian God (that Lewis believed in)?" It is written explicitly to answer the question, "If God exists, is like Lewis's God, how might the Incarnation story work out in an unfallen world of Talking Animals and other mythical creatures?"

In this world, the name of the Incarnate Word objectively exists. Its name empirically creates a numinous experience. If we read the story, we are left to make sense of that or not.

It is perfectly possible that there are "nonbelievers" in Narnia. We don't see them in the text. There isn't a hint of them in the text. And everybody knows exactly who is meant by the name "Aslan", and they are proven objectively correct. Any nonbelievers are flat-out WRONG, in the context of that world. It is no more "insulting" to atheists than TWILIGHT is "insulting" to people who don't believe in the existence of vampires.

Aslan hasn't "taken a leave of absence" from Narnia. Aslan has been BARRED from Narnia. The Witch's winter serves exactly like a force field against gravity. Aslan is explicitly not presented as omnipotent in LWW (or in the Narnia books in general). Lewis viewed Incarnation as a voluntary limitation upon omnipotence.

I also do not understand why the fact that atheists do not bow to Jesus is a reason for Lewis to not mean this as a dig at atheist.

I'm sorry, I was taking a poetic license there, and must have been misunderstood. Lewis was quite aware that the name of "Jesus" does not automatically call an instinctive thrill, either of joy or revulsion. To claim that it does, and that atheists are just stubbornly denying it, would be a STUPID argument. He was aware of this because he used to be an atheist. He KNEW that he was not "secretly believing" and "just pretending not to."

I'm sorry that these arguments have been made against atheists. But Lewis isn't making these arguments against atheists. He makes his own arguments against atheists, lots of them, in later books. They aren't GOOD arguments. I'll be happy to join in the pummelling when they come up. But they aren't THESE arguments.

Why do I care so much about this? Because I like these deconstructions. I'm interested in these discussions. I think there are valid and important criticisms to be made of Lewis in general and the Narnia books in specific, both in literary terms (worldbuilding, consistency, characterization, style, etc.) and more generally (theme, theology, etc.) And I think it is valuable to have someone who is an unapologetic fan of both Lewis and the Narnia books participate.

But honestly, if these are just going to become an exercise in "Let's bash Lewis for everything any Christian ever did that pissed me off", I don't see any point in my participating.

hapax said...

What are the differences one would expect in a prelapsarian world according to the theology Lewis was using?

That's ... an interesting question. And I don't know if Lewis ever addressed that question precisely. (If anyone knows, I'd like to hear)

Looking at the theologians that Lewis admired and drew from... The primary effect of the Fall was to corrupt the "image of God" in which humans were created, which in this scheme is the rational capacity (and, by extension, the Will, truly free because subject to Reason).

So, to start with, we have the Animals who Talk (which symbolizes their ability to reason). We know that this is a sign of the prelapsarian nature of the world, because we are explicitly warned by Aslan that the loss of this is a sign of the Fall (in MN), and we see it happen (temporarily) under the rule of the Telmarines in PC* and permanently in LB.

The same scene in MN suggests that the visibility and freedom of these mythological creatures -- the dryads, the satyrs, the river-gods, etc. -- somehow expresses an ability to see the "Divine nature" behind all Creation ("walking trees", "living waters"). Once again, these either "fell asleep" or were "chained" under fallen human rule.

So, uncorrupted rationality and the innate ability to recognize the hand of God in Creation (this would also imply the automatic recognition of and unquestioning acceptance of Aslan as the "True" King). What else?

I'd add free will -- by which I mean that in a fallen world, the will is not ever TRULY free, because under true freedom we would all naturally and spontaneously express our truest selves. That is, centaurs would watch the skies and badgers would remember and horses would run and beavers would build dams and moles and dwarves would dig not because somebody *told* them to but because that's what they *wanted* to do, that's what they were *designed* to do. Only in a fallen world do "bridles" and 'spurs" exist, only in a fallen world do dwarves "shave off their beards" and wear elevator shoes.

There's a lot of speculation and extrapolation there. I'm kind of spinning this out of straw right now, because it's late and I'm very tired. I'm pretty sure that if I went and dug through my Lewis books, though, this would hold up pretty well.

*In some ways I see the history of Narnia as a constant struggle between its innate prelapsarian state and an artificial "Fallenness" imposed by humans imported from *our* lapsed world. That these periods are unnatural and infrequent is why equally alien humans -- children, who in their innocence are closer to prelapsed humans -- to correct the intrusion. (In this model, Archenland also serves as a sort of an intermediate "buffer" between prelapsarian Narnia and the fully corrupted Calormene.) It isn't a perfect model, but it works if you accept that Lewis was fudging for the sake of being able to tell a story.

Makabit said...

Lucy's stuffed lion doesn't like nylons and lipsticks.

My heart breaks for Susan. What Lewis does with her in Last Battle is unconscionable. Why was it all right for her to become a grown woman in Narnia (complete with implied affair with a Calormene prince), but when she tries it in the real world it's treated as turning away from God?

At least Wendy Darling's betrayal in growing up is only from the point of view of a child. Susan's is apparently from God's.

(I only read Last Battle a couple of years ago, in my thirties, and it has rather tainted my tolerance for the rest of the books, which I loved as a child.)

Anna said...

As long as Susan doesn't want to play dress-up. Lucy's stuffed lion doesn't like nylons and lipsticks.

Will Wildman said...

Really, the only thing that doesn't work AT ALL is the whole "Christmas" bit. I know we'll be getting there soon, but there is simply NO WAY to introduce "Christmas" -- even the very word -- into Narnia that doesn't blow any potential consistent worldbuilding to smithereens.

I don't mean to jump ahead either, but as I seem to recall, there was a theory in a previous thread that the fundamental need for human rulers in Narnia was built in through Deep Magic because there were humans present when Narnia was formed - is it possible that they were also the vector through which Christmas was introduced as a fact of the world? It seems to me that 'Christmas' could very well be a nonsense word to Narnians that just means 'midwinter feast when the immortal brings children presents', completely divorced from its Earth roots except as filtered through a human mind. (I have no idea who the original humans in Narnia were, but I have a vague impression that at least one was a small child.)

I found the presence of Christmas in Narnia deeply jarring, but if there's one thing I like more than deconstruction, it's reconstruction. =)

hapax said...

More stuff jammed together:

I do not understand why we can say that non-believing Narnians most definitely cannot exist. (Or perhaps some of Jadis backers don't believe in Aslan.)

Well, we can SAY that they existed, and it makes for a pretty good foefiction. But it works roughly like the fics that say that "everybody in Forks knew that vampires existed and that the Cullens were vampires, and they're just denying it out of fear or to mess with Bella's head." It makes a certain amount of sense, but there isn't anything in the text to support it.

The other problem is that the books of Narnia are set in the Real World, our world. In the books of Narnia, English atheists are objectively wrong because Aslan/Jesus DOES exist. And if Narnians instinctively know what the name 'Aslan' means, one *could* imagine that English atheists know what 'Jesus' means.

Is it our world, though? At the beginning of MN, Lewis says it takes place "when Mr Sherlock Holmes was still living on Baker Street and the Bastables were still looking for treasure" -- that seems to me a pretty good clue that it ISN'T our world, but an explicitly fictional one.

However, even if it is our world, Lewis indicates that the "instinctive" knowledge of God attainable in Narnia isn't necessarily an option in England. After all, Edmund and Lucy are told at the end of VDT : "That's why you were brought to Narnia, that by getting to know Me here, you could learn to find Me there."

(That of course raises all sorts of other problems -- why do the Pevensies get to visit Narnia and obtain that special clarity of knowledge and the rest of us don't? I'd argue that the rest of us *do*, but that would be a) getting into all sorts of metacritical blather about the nature and purpose of fiction and b) definitely imposing MY views on what Lewis was doing, rather than saying anything that could be supported by Lewis's own writings)

Oh, and l've lost the quote, but someone asked me where there are indications in the text that Aslan isn't omnipotent (or, better, voluntarily constrains his omnipotence)?

In LWW, he cannot "work against the Emperor's Magic" -- he *must* fulfill Jadis's claims, and the only reason he can win in the end is NOT by overcoming the "magic", but by knowing the "magic" better than she does -- cosmic "rules-lawyering", as it were. (This is a straight-up translation of the Christus Victor doctrine of the Atonement, if anybody cares)

In VDT, Aslan is again compelled to appear by the "rules of Magic" in the Magician's house. Also, we learn that "no-one is ever told what Might Have Happened" -- although it is ambiguous whether or he *can* not tell or *will* not tell, I tend to see it as the former.

In MN, Aslan is continuously constrained by the "rules" again -- he cannot keep the Witch out of the garden, he cannot keep the apple from working as it is designed to do, he cannot make that outcome positive or negative for the eaters of the apple -- that is all determined by their own choices. Similarly, he cannot make Uncle Andrew see or hear him when Andrew chooses not to be able to.

Again in LB, "let me show you what I can and cannot do" -- no power of Aslan is able to overcome the dwarves's choice not to believe in him. It is also strongly implied that all worlds are designed to eventually decay and die (except for Aslan's own country) and he has no power to keep them from coming to an end.

These are just off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure that there are more examples, but that they follow the same pattern: Aslan cannot break the "rules of magic" (= roughly "natural laws) that he / the Emperor set up, and he cannot override free will.

hapax said...

I just don't find "It's not insulting to you because people like you don't exist at all in here" to be a really compelling argument.

I'm responding to this as both yours and as a beautiful summation of what I think is Kit's argument (I hope that if I'm wrong about that, Kit will correct me).

This I will buy as a fair cop. It *is* depressing and insulting to realize that the clear implication of the rules of a fantasy, people like me aren't simply WRONG in that world, we can't even EXIST.

This should be pointed out and criticized. Women who aren't fulfilled by being wives and mothers DON'T EXIST in Twilight World. Atheism as a free rational choice DOESN'T exist in Narnia. Poor and disadvantaged as unjust victims of society DON'T EXIST in John Galt's America.

I will say that it's a problem with almost all fiction (and frankly, most narrative non-fiction). When you create a narrative, you impose a pattern on reality that is going to exclude things that don't fit the pattern. Things that don't fit our patterns are things that we don't like to think "really exist" -- that's how our brains are wired to work.

I don't think that is necessarily a *problem* with fiction, really. I think it's a feature, not a bug. Where it becomes a problem is when the author or reader tries to insist that the pattern is the reality, and where reality doesn't fit in with the fictional model, reality is wrong and must change.

(It seems to me that this is the foundation of Kit's and my disagreement about Lewis. I believe she thinks that Lewis thought his [various] models not only perfectly described reality, but was how things OUGHT to work. I disagree, so completely and deeply that I have to work hard to be civil about it. I doubt we will ever change each other's minds)

So yeah, it's important to point out those inconvenient unpleasant bits where the fictional model falls short. And yes, it's valid to say, "Hey, I'm someone who doesn't, CAN'T exist in the Star Wars universe / Narnia / Twilight / Atlas Shrugged / etc. and I don't particularly appreciate a playground that erases my identity."

But it's also important, I think, to say "Well, why might this particular model exclude these bits?" Sure, it could be pure prejudice or even spite; it could be ignorance. It could also be a simple failure of the imagination. It could be laziness. It could be fatigue. It could be an interest in brevity. It could be because the author was more interested in THIS story than THAT one, and one can't include everything. It could be deliberately playing with the exclusion, to see how things work out.

In the case of LWW, I think a lot of what is being seen as deliberate exclusion is more a problem that the premise is implicitly tautological. If you imagine an unFallen fantasy world, of course it is going to end up one where everyone is inherently and automatically Christian; because the Fall itself is a concept that only makes sense in a Christian context.

hapax said...

Why not? No one is allowed to think that Aslan is no better a ruler than Jadis? There's no third side in favour of forming an Animal republic and rejecting autocracy entirely

Because that's not the way this (fictional) world is set up.

Of course, one is "allowed" to think that Aslan isn't preferable as a ruler. That's why Jadis has followers, after all.

But that's like thinking that you don't like gravity. You can put a lot of effort and thinking into defying the effects of gravity. If you're smart enough and strong enough, you might succeed. You might actually fly, and that's AWESOME.

But nonetheless, you can't simply pretend that gravity doesn't exist.

The world that is presented in LWW* has the existence and lordship of Aslan built into it as a natural fact, as indisputable as gravity. Nobody denies it. Nobody ignores it. Some (like Jadis) try to build force fields against it, work around it, bargain with it, even overcome it. And plenty of people -- here and elsewhere -- have made excellent cases that this was the brave and smart and even MORAL decision.

But she was never foolish enough to just deny it. Because that's not the way that world worked.

---------

*This definitely shifts in the later books, which is the only thing that permits Lewis to make any arguments (such as they are, I'm not defending them [or at least, not here {g} ]) against "atheism" at all

hapax said...

Do you throw up your hands and say, "This naming convention makes no sense"?


Meh. It makes as much sense as any other naming convention. USA standard is you are named for your father's father's father's etc. hometown or occupation or distinguishing feature or HIS father or whatever -- hence Jack London, Samuel Smith, Stuart Little, or Thomas Jefferson, Immortal Zombie Hunter.

It certainly makes more sense than the Narnian Animal convention, in which the entire species apparently shares the same last name, which doesn't seem to address any imaginable confusion: "Hello, I'm Zunita Beaver." "Oh! And all along I thought that you were a SeaCucumber! Well, that clears THAT up!"

To stop being Watsonian for a second, I suspect that Lewis liked the whole "Son of Adam / Daughter of Eve" bit mostly because it had (probably deliberate) echoes of the Messianic title "Son of Man." I will give him credit for this -- an *awful* lot of Christian tradition makes "Adam" and especially "Eve" to be curse words, focussing on that ONE TIME they screwed up; "Daughter of Eve" could well be (and has, in plenty of literature, even now) presented as a condemnation, a reminder that females are genetically disposed to treachery and guile. Lewis here always remembers that the human race was created in the image of God* and therefore treats BOTH putative progenitors with deepest honor and respect.

*admittedly, a problematic notion in Narnia!

Ana -- HaHB was always my favorite, mostly because I thought it had the BEST characterization. I think we're going to clash a lot when we get there!

hapax said...

she would have done as Ana suggests and married into the family, ruling from behind the thrones or as one of the equals, biding her time until she could make her husband and the others disappear or have tragic accidents. Genre Savvy Jadis is Lady MacBeth in the early acts.

Or she might be the Lady of the Green Kirtle from THE SILVER CHAIR.

Her clever manipulation sending the children to be eaten at Harfang does show Genre Savvy. And love it or loathe it, her brilliant subversive attack on their faith demonstrates a magnificent grasp of Christian tropes (notice the success of Puddleglum's rousing Moment of Awesome depends entirely on how thoroughly one is emotionally invested in precisely those tropes, not in any sort of rational defense)

AnnaLK said...

Usb connection? Trees of voices? Is this some kind of cultural reference I'm not getting?

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