Narnia: The Passion of Aslan

[Content Note: Death, Torture, Execution]

Narnia Recap: The four children have joined Aslan at the Stone Table. The White Witch has demanded Edmund as a traitor sentenced to death, and Aslan has made a secret deal with the Witch, out of the hearing of the rest of the company. The Witch's final question -- "But how do I know this promise will be kept?" -- was answered with a fierce roar from Aslan, and she fled the camp in fear.

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Chapter 14: The Triumph of the Witch

I want to say a few things before we start this chapter.

The biggest cause I had for hesitation when planning a Narnia deconstruction was Chapter 14 of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe". I hesitated because I know that this is intended to be an incredibly emotional and difficult passage, and I'm deeply concerned about extending it the proper respect. I strongly considered skipping this chapter entirely, but finally it seemed to me that the best thing to do would be to include the chapter, but to do so as respectfully as I possibly can. However, I want to apologize deeply in advance should I say or write anything inappropriate or insensitive, and I do encourage anyone to speak up to me -- either in the comments or, if you prefer, by email -- if I cause offense.

Also, I recognize that many people read this chapter as an allegory of the crucifixion of Jesus, and that many other people emphatically do not. I very much want to be respectful of the subject matter and not mock or belittle anyone's religious beliefs, and I would like that respect to permeate both this post and the comments as much as possible. It's worth remembering going in that there are almost as many interpretations of the crucifixion of Jesus as there are church denominations, and this Narnian version -- if, indeed, it is meant to be one -- is simply one man's interpretation in a sea of thousands. I hope to approach the Narnia text with that in mind.

So having said that, let's move into the text. And -- advance warning -- all this seriousness has left me a little nervous, so there will be silly pictures ahead in an attempt to lessen the tension a little. I apologize in advance.

   AS SOON AS THE WITCH HAD GONE ASLAN said, "We must move from this place at once, it will be wanted for other purposes. We shall encamp tonight at the Fords of Beruna."
   Of course everyone was dying to ask him how he had arranged matters with the witch; but his face was stern and everyone's ears were still ringing with the sound of his roar and so nobody dared.

Edmund, you will recall, has just been a topic of heated conversation. The Witch has labeled him as a traitor and Aslan has not objected to this classification. The Witch and Aslan have both clarified to the entire company that traitors were sentenced to death at the Dawn of Time by magic-rules so deeply ingrained in the foundations of the world that, should they ever be broken, the world will perish in fire and flood. It would seem that Edmund's goose is pretty much roasted.

Now Chapter 13 ended with a little teaser where Aslan and the Witch went for a little walk and had a heart-to-heart and then when Aslan came back he told the company that the Witch had "renounced the claim on your brother's blood." And there was much rejoicing.

Except... that's not quite how the debate was being framed earlier. Mr. Beaver was right (if possibly gender-insensitive) when he labeled the Witch as "the Emperor's hangman"; she's owed the blood of traitors because the Emperor or the Deep Magic or something at the Dawn of Time apparently decided that traitors needed killing. The fact that she owns the blood of traitors should not automatically mean that she can also pardon them as she pleases or accept a trade in their stead; that's generally not within the purview of an executioner.

The fact that it is within the Witch's purview here is singularly odd to me, and I think it would be considered odd to everyone in Aslan's company. In fact, I think it would be very fair to question why an Enemy of Narnia was put in charge of the execution of Traitors to Narnia, but then given the power to pardon them as she pleases. It seems like there are some conflicts of interest there.

Of course, I'm getting ahead of myself, because no one in Aslan's company knows any of this. "Everyone" positively ached to know how he arranged matters with the Witch, but "nobody dared" to ask him because the residual effect of his roar to the Witch has frightened them all. These pronouns are distressing to me, because not "everyone" has the same stake in this decision. The Narnians lose their world in an apocalypse of fire and flood if the magic-rules aren't followed; the Pevensies lose their brother depending on how this all shakes out; Edmund potentially loses his life. All of these things are Very Bad, but they're the sorts of Very Bad that I think would generate different reactions depending on which barrel one was looking down. So while I might not have noticed this if I wasn't going through this novel at a snail's pace, it's worth pointing out here: Edmund does not appear in this entire chapter.

As an authorial choice, I'm not very comfortable with the decision to leave Edmund out of this chapter. Whether this chapter is meant to be an allegory for the crucifixion of Christ or not, it is a sacrifice story, and removing entirely the person on whose behalf the sacrifice is being made runs the risk that the reader will lose sight of the point.

By removing Edmund's presence and voice from the chapter, the whole thing seems almost like a play with only three players: Emperor, Witch, and Aslan. All three of them seem to be trying to out-maneuver each other; the Emperor made rules with escape clauses that may-or-may-not have been made known to the Witch, the Witch follows the rules in an attempt to out-smart Aslan (she plans to kill both him and Edmund, and mocks him for his useless sacrifice), and Aslan hopes to save both himself and Edmund by taking advantage of the escape clause. Without the humanizing effect of Edmund, the whole thing feels like a strange game being played out by inhuman-and-unknowable beings who care more about winning than about saving Edmund, his siblings, and the Narnian people. And... I think that's probably not something you want to convey as an author, crucifixion allegory or not.

Nor is this impression helped by all the "not a tame lion!" and Aslan being narky with Susan's suggestion in the last chapter, nor by the general impression that Aslan is frightening and unapproachable and "nobody dares" ask him how he managed to save Edmund and if it will 'stick' (so to speak) or if they're all in danger of perishing in fire-and-flood tomorrow. I feel like these would be perfectly reasonable questions to ask and I further feel like Aslan should anticipate these questions and address them, so his utter unwillingness to do so sort of heightens the sense that he's on such a different plane of existence that he's unable to empathize with humans and human-like Animals. I find that portrayal unfortunate.

Moving on.

   During the first part of the journey Aslan explained to Peter his plan of campaign. "As soon as she has finished her business in these parts," he said, "the Witch and her crew will almost certainly fall back to her House and prepare for a siege." [...] He then went on to outline two plans of battle -- one for fighting the Witch and her people in the wood and another for assaulting her castle. And all the time he was advising Peter how to conduct the operations, saying things like, "You must put your Centaurs in such and such a place" or "You must post scouts to see that she doesn't do so-and-so," till at last Peter said,
   "But you will be there yourself, Aslan."
   "I can give you no promise of that," answered the Lion. And he continued giving Peter his instructions.

Peter is the eldest and therefore the chosen tactician for the upcoming battle. Over the next few hours, Aslan will give him a crash course in Narnian strategy, which I would expect would be Very Complicated, all the while darkly hinting that Peter is going to be On His Own when the fighting commences.

There are problems with this scene. First and foremost, Edmund (and the girls, but that would be expecting a lot at this point) should be here as well, given that he's a destined King of Narnia and it's crucial that the Pevensies start presenting a unified government now to stomp out any residual anger at Edmund the Traitor.

Second and possibly more important is that the best possible lesson Aslan could teach Peter right now would be how to find and select capable generals to whom a good portion of the battle planning will simply have to be delegated. The Narnian army is made up of hundreds of different species, all of whom have unique abilities, needs, and diets. Peter is never, ever going to remember every little detail about his troops -- he needs a General Swallow to whom he can turn the next time a battle hinges on knowing the airspeed velocity of an unladen Swallow.

This meme that the True Arthurian King does everything all on his own Because Bootstraps is just silly and needs to crawl off and die somewhere, please. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

Alright, enough procrastinating.

   For the last part of the journey it was Susan and Lucy who saw most of him. He did not talk very much and seemed to them to be sad. [...]
   This was the Fords of Beruna and Aslan gave orders to halt on this side of the water. But Peter said, "Wouldn't it be better to camp on the far side -- for fear she should try a night attack or anything?" [...]
   "No," said Aslan in a dull voice, as if it didn't matter. "No. She will not make an attack tonight." And then he sighed deeply. But presently he added, "All the same it was well thought of. That is how a soldier ought to think. But it doesn't really matter."

I... don't know how to approach this.

I don't really like Aslan. That's probably come through pretty clear in my previous Narnia posts. I think he's distant, unapproachable, and unquestionable -- none of which are things I personally appreciate in a god, king, leader, or boss of any kind. I think that his sacrifice for Edmund could be equally read in the given text as an act of love or an act of duty or an act of wartime maneuvering, and I wish that more effort had gone into characterizing the act as definitively one thing or another instead of leaving it all very ambiguous to the reader. And I very frankly think that if Aslan was really trying to be selfless and sacrificing, he might well have prevented exposing his suffering to these very young and extremely vulnerable children.

But! Given that I try very hard to be Not Judgmental, I still truly appreciate that for whatever reason, Aslan is giving his life in place of a small innocent boy. I fully understand why Aslan might be sad and morose in the face of his upcoming trials and tribulations, and I can't condemn him for being less than perky at the moment. He seems to be trying to do the right thing in preparing Peter for battle, and if he seems distracted, well, how can I blame him? I can't. I won't.

And yet... and yet... I still don't know how omniscient and all-seeing Aslan is or isn't supposed to be. I find it a little grating that he flat out tells Peter not to take defensive measures to protect the camp because the Witch "will not make an attack tonight". He ends up being right, of course, but does he know he's right? How long does he expect his execution to take? It seems to me that an ambitious, impatient White Witch could make a swift end to the whole business by executing him as quickly as possible and then taking the camp while all her followers are still riding high on confidence after killing Aslan. She doesn't do this, and doesn't even seem to consider it, so Aslan is right to tell Peter not to worry overly much about a sneak attack, but... it just doesn't sit well with me.

   Supper that evening was a quiet meal. Everyone felt how different it had been last night or even that morning. It was as if the good times, having just begun, were already drawing to their end.

And... I don't really understand this statement at all. Since the children have arrived in Narnia, almost nothing has gone well for more than a few moments. They tumbled into Narnia cold and hungry, found that Lucy's friend had been dragged off by the police and his house ruined and burned out, they had a warm meal that was badly spoiled by the realization that their brother had walked out to his death, they walked a forced march over several bitterly cold miles to meet a frightening god-lion who sentenced Edmund to death after ordering his companions to let Susan dangle over the jaws of a giant, vicious wolf so that Peter could risk his life stabbing it.

I'm just kind of unclear how War Starts Tomorrow and Aslan Has A Sad doesn't fit with the general tenor of Narnia. It seems like right this very moment should be the nicest time so far, seeing as how the children are reunited and no one is mad at anyone else now. There should be some sort of relief that, no matter how bad things get, at least all the children have each other. Once again, the exclusion of Edmund from this chapter just changes the whole tone for me.

   "Can't you get to sleep either?" said Susan. [...] "There's been something wrong with [Aslan] all afternoon," said Susan. "Lucy! What was that he said about not being with us at the battle? You don't think he could be stealing away and leaving us tonight, do you?" [...] Then Susan suddenly caught Lucy's arm and said, "Look!" On the far side of the camping ground, just where the trees began, they saw the Lion slowly walking away from them into the wood. Without a word they both followed him. [...] He looked somehow different from the Aslan they knew. His tail and his head hung low and he walked slowly as if he were very, very tired. [...]
   It was no good trying to run away so they came toward him. When they were closer he said, "Oh, children, children, why are you following me?"
   "We couldn't sleep," said Lucy -- and then felt sure that she need say no more and that Aslan knew all they had been thinking.
   "Please, may we come with you -- wherever you're going?" asked Susan.
   "Well --" said Aslan, and seemed to be thinking. Then he said, "I should be glad of company tonight. Yes, you may come, if you will promise to stop when I tell you, and after that leave me to go on alone."

Aslan is walking to his torture and execution. He is traveling to where the Witch's forces are camped out by the Stone Table, where there will be Animals who can see in the dark as clearly as we can in the noonday sun, and where there will be torches to cast light over the clear Narnian countryside. When last we met the Witch, she was suspicious of Aslan's capitulation to her demands, and she feared a reneging of his promise, perhaps even a secret attack while she was wrapped up in her preparations for an execution. Both she and her forces are alert for any kind of trickery, and are anxiously scanning the hills for their god-lion prey.

So, naturally, he agrees to take along Queen Susan and Queen Lucy. Two of the four humans whose lives are essential to the Emperor's prophecy of the Witch's demise. Both of whom are, apparently, unarmed.

   "Are you ill, dear Aslan?" asked Susan.
   "No," said Aslan. "I am sad and lonely. Lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there and let us walk like that."
   And so the girls did what they would never have dared to do without his permission, but what they had longed to do ever since they first saw him -- buried their cold hands in the beautiful sea of fur and stroked it and, so doing, walked with him. And presently they saw that they were going with him up the slope of the hill on which the Stone Table stood. [...]
   "Oh, children, children. Here you must stop. And whatever happens, do not let yourselves be seen. Farewell."
   And both the girls cried bitterly (though they hardly knew why) and clung to the Lion and kissed his mane and his nose and his paws and his great, sad eyes. Then he turned from them and walked out on to the top of the hill. And Lucy and Susan, crouching in the bushes, looked after him and this is what they saw.

And this starts the passion of Aslan. I'll go ahead and post the block of quotes now and then run back over my thoughts as best I can.

   A great crowd of people were standing all round the Stone Table and though the moon was shining many of them carried torches which burned with evil-looking red flames and black smoke. But such people! Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants; and other creatures whom I won't describe because if I did the grown-ups would probably not let you read this book -- Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Orknies, Wooses, and Ettins. In fact here were all those who were on the Witch's side and whom the Wolf had summoned at her command. And right in the middle, standing by the Table, was the Witch herself. [...]
   Lucy and Susan held their breaths waiting for Aslan's roar and his spring upon his enemies. But it never came. Four Hags, grinning and leering, yet also (at first) hanging back and half afraid of what they had to do, had approached him. "Bind him, I say!" repeated the White Witch. The Hags made a dart at him and shrieked with triumph when they found that he made no resistance at all. Then others -- evil dwarfs and apes -- rushed in to help them, and between them they rolled the huge Lion over on his back and tied all his four paws together, shouting and cheering as if they had done something brave, though, had the Lion chosen, one of those paws could have been the death of them all. [...]
   At last she drew near. She stood by Aslan's head. Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad. Then, just before she gave the blow, she stooped down and said in a quivering voice,
   "And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased. But when you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair and die."

My first thought is that I'm struck by the repetition in the text that Aslan could have any time in the proceedings stopped the execution and killed everyone there and yet didn't. I suspect this is meant to tie into a Christian theme that Jesus, as the Son of God, could have called down lightning from the heavens but choose not to. And yet... I feel that something has been lost in the translation.

Perhaps the difference is that (at least according to some theories of the crucifixion) Jesus was dying on behalf of the people killing him, but Aslan's sacrifice is not something that the Ogres and Hags and Incubuses can or may partake in. Somehow, Jesus choosing not to slay his executioners feels like an act of mercy and kindness -- he loves them so much, he's willing to let them kill him rather than kill in order to protect himself. Aslan, on the other hand, does not spare the lives of his executioners out of love -- indeed, he's personally assembled an army to slay them tomorrow and will show up on the tail end of the battle to help with the killing -- but rather he lets them do their brutal work because his hands are tied by the Emperor's Deep Magic. That doesn't make his self-sacrifice less noble, but it does change the meaning a bit for me.

Then, too, I'm distressed that Susan and Lucy witness this scene. It's... not a pleasant scene. (Indeed, I wonder how the book would have been received if the "Christian Allegory!" label hadn't been attached. The movie version struck me as astonishingly brutal and really drove home to me that the MPAA and I really are not on the same page at all.) You could perhaps argue that Susan and Lucy are about to be rulers of a not-always-pleasant land and that this experience is their initiation into the ugliness of adulthood in the same way that tomorrow's battle is an initiation ritual for Peter and Edmund, and yet... There's still something about it that seems fundamentally wrong. I'm not one to try to preserve the Innocence of Children over all else, and I'm always on board with the argument that when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, the faster kids learn to defend themselves the better, but this still just doesn't seem right to me.

Maybe it's that I'm still not 100% on board with the idea that the Pevensie children absolutely need to be adults just yet, when there must be perfectly good royal advisers and generals and, I dunno, Narnia cabinet members they can appoint to help them ease into the stark reality that is the Narnia justice system. Maybe it's that I can't quite shake the "this is a crucifixion narrative" monkey on my back which then leads me to the point that it's a very different thing for an adult to watch someone executed by a flawed-and-unjust human legal system than for a child to watch someone executed by a flawed-and-unjust godly legal system. Maybe it's just that I was so traumatized by passion plays in general and Carmen in particular as a child that I just can't wish the experience on any other children, regardless of whether it's necessary or not. I'm not sure.

If we approach "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" on its own terms, we find a heinous situation where an innocent adult has to give their life to save a child from execution. The situation is tragic, and the adult is noble for willingly submitting to a torturous death. I can respect that without reservation, and I do. But I fervently wish that some of this scene -- maybe all of this scene -- could have been written differently. Still, C.S. Lewis choose not to, and I'll try not to judge that choice.

64 comments:

Steph said...

IThis bit sort of jumped right out at me when I read it again:

"and between them they rolled the huge Lion over on his back and tied all his four paws together, shouting and cheering as if they had done something brave, though, had the Lion chosen, one of those paws could have been the death of them all."

There seems to be this idea throughout these books that if you're evil you're completely bad in every particular. They're baddies, so we get this little aside about them being cowardly, too. Except it doesn't make sense in the text; they're just ACTING as though they'd done something brave EVEN THOUGH Aslan could have killed them?
(Now that I've been staring at the sentence for a while, I realize that maybe the "shouting and cheering" bit is just meant as a little paranthetical and the sentence means "they tied him up, even though he could have killed them" and not "they thought they were brave, even though he could have killed them".)

Can trees move in Narnia? The idea of evil trees kind of made me giggle. What are they going to DO?
I guess they could inform on you to the witch, but I keep having this image of a forest of bloodthirsty genocidal trees that are constantly dreaming of murder, and people are still having picnics under them and kids are climbing around on them because after all, they're TREES.

Michael Mock said...

I does seem that Peter is the real king, and the other three Pevensies basically receive courtesy titles in order to fulfill the prophecy, doesn't it? And, really, why should Narnia need four rulers? For that matter, why would Narnia want four rulers? Historically, that's a sure-fire recipe for a civil war - and even granting that the Mandate of Heaven keeps them free of such ambitions, it seems like an awfully messy way to run a government. (Though I suppose it is marginally better than government based on strange women lying in ponds distributing swords...)

I wonder if how different the book would be if the prophecy included a division of labor: Peter as king, Susan as chancellor, Edmund as General, and Lucy as Court Healer or somesuch. (I'd suggest that one of them really ought to be some sort of court sorcerer, but I suspect that a lot of people wouldn't accept a protagonist learning magic as part of Christian fiction - even in a deeply and inherently magical land.)

I will defend the "shouting and cheering as if they'd done something brave," though. Admittedly, it's imprecise; but I think it's meant to show them behaving as if they'd won a great victory, when in fact their enemy simply didn't fight. It's basically bluster, or at worst false pride. The use of the word "brave" is misleading.

Rowen said...

I wonder if Lewis was influenced by the concept of the mousetrap in this. Basically, this was a medieval concept where Satan was waiting for God to do something to save mankind, and believed that this would happen through a king or a powerful priest or something like that. So, God choose a lowly carpenter and a teenage peasant girl, so Satan didn't realize what was going on, UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Mankind/Edmund is saved cause Satan/the White Witch was too busy focusing on the royalty/Deep Magic to notice a lowly peasant/Deeper magic! *note: I've always found that as being too. . . something. Simplistic? over the top? trying too hard? I'm not sure.

Steph said...

@Michael -- That actually makes a lot more sense, thank you for explaining it. I do tend to run into problems sometimes just because the style of writing misleads me. (In "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", there's an aside that a book of magic contains "a spell to give someone an ass's head, as they did to poor Bottom". When I first read the book as a child I had no idea what "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was and was left wondering when exactly "they" -- which I interpreted as "the people in this story" -- had done that.)

I like the division of labor thing, except when I was trying to think of roles for them, I realized that Narnia doesn't really seem to have a government that does much of anything. They seem to get some kind of taxes (in the form of tribute) from various holdings; does that go to anything beyond paying for the royal court's living expenses? Did Edmund's redemption include him giving up on the idea of decent roads?

depizan said...

Why does Aslan let Susan and Lucy accompany him? He admits to being sad and lonely which is humanizing (if I can use that word with a lion) but it's also really bad for morale. So is seeing him killed and hearing that Jadis still plans to kill their brother - something Aslan must surely have expected (which makes his advice about the camp even stranger)

Why not tell them his death would only be temporary?

Ugh, none of this makes any sense except in a dream/fairy tale kind of way.

Thomas Keyton said...

During the first part of the journey Aslan explained to Peter his plan of campaign. "As soon as she has finished her business in these parts," he said, "the Witch and her crew will almost certainly fall back to her House and prepare for a siege."

Why is he thinking this? Even allowing for his accurate prediction that the execution will take all night, why does Aslan think she'd run away? She's somehow gathered in less than a day a host large enough to confront Aslan's in epic final battle (either that or both armies are smaller than I've been imagining), Aslan will be thought dead and even Voldemort knew the value of putting a less-than-noble spin on the local Christ-figure's sacrifice, and the Stone Table is on a hill. And if Aslan's using his omniscience here, what advantage does Jadis have by withdrawing? Even if she hopes to delay battle long enough to strengthen her army further, can't she hold her current position long enough for the same result (and depending on where they'd be coming from, possibly catch the good army between them)?

torches which burned with evil-looking red flames

Does anyone know why both Lewis and Tolkien though fire was red? I spent three years at Oxford and fire there was the same orangey-yellow colour it usually is.

Then, just before she gave the blow, she stooped down and said in a quivering voice,

I wish I knew what was going on in Jadis' head here. She seems almost reluctant. Picking up from discussion in the last thread I'd love a Wicked-style Jadis-centric story.

Will Wildman said...

I think the part of this that I find most unjustifiable is Aslan's not telling anyone that he was expecting to come back. In Jesus' case, I don't think there's any indication that he did expect to do so. In Aslan's case, it is the secret totally-expected step in the plan, right after "????" and right before "Profit".

The best guess I can manage is that he isn't supposed to have been sure about what would happen, and he was worried that if he told anyone he might come back, they would depend too much on his return and make bad decisions. But that's sketchy at best, particularly since he's not really expecting Susan or Lucy to do jack between now and their coronation.

This meme that the True Arthurian King does everything all on his own Because Bootstraps is just silly and needs to crawl off and die somewhere, please.

Delegation and collective effort is a major (if usually unspoken) aspect of my NaNovel, and I still feel like it's not nearly enough. There's the king and his dozens of clerks who are all working out the negotiations and logistics of feeding a war-wracked nation; there's the lone general doing the job of three, and her four [unnamed] regional commanders doing the job of seven; the queen arrives* at the beginning of the story, takes a look around, and basically says "Hang on, are you people trying to run this country by yourselves? What the heck?" Despite all of that, in so many scenes I find myself thinking 'He should have a delegate for that, she should have an ensign to do that, they should have vastly more staff to handle these jobs'.

If I ever get around to finishing this thing, I may double the tertiary cast in the second draft.

*The queen arrives in the company of a substantial company of bards/spies, because controlling pop culture and the flow of information is her schtick. If the king doesn't have time to do something, he ignores it; if the queen doesn't have time to do something, she makes it someone else's problem.

Ana Mardoll said...

Between the "quivering voice" and the line Her face was working and twitching with passion, I have a hard time envisioning any of this. It almost sounds like she's in some kind of ecstatic frenzy, and it's a little hard for me to divorce the feeling I've gotten in the larger text that Lewis seemed to view Jadis as an almost sexualized character.

(The movie cut through it and just played her as largely stoic and calm, I notice.)

Ana Mardoll said...

If the king doesn't have time to do something, he ignores it; if the queen doesn't have time to do something, she makes it someone else's problem.

I like her already. :D

Will Wildman said...

It almost sounds like she's in some kind of ecstatic frenzy, and it's a little hard for me to divorce the feeling I've gotten in the larger text that Lewis seemed to view Jadis as an almost sexualized character.

(The movie cut through it and just played her as largely stoic and calm, I notice.)


The most recent movie? With Tilda Swinton as Jadis? Maybe it's just me... I definitely thought she had a strong undercurrent of Power-and/or-Evil-Feels-Good running much of the time, and that it approached Evil-Touches-You-In-Special-Places during the whole execution scene.

I think Kit's been making the main arguments throughout this decon that Lewis was big on both authority and sensuality and the mixing of the two, so Jadis has trended that way the whole time - this seems like a natural, um, climax, seeing as this is Jadis at the height of her power.

Ana Mardoll said...

She's definitely sexualized in the movie as a whole (and in the Dawn Treader movie, of all things! She's not even in that book.) but I thought the execution scene was more tame... *dashes off to watch YouTube link again*

Hmm. Well, I can see it both ways. I thought her "I'm a little disappointed in you..." speech was tamer than the book's gnashing facial expressions, but it's still not devoid of alternative implications. :/

Rikalous said...

I think the reason Aslan can predict how long Jadis will take to kill him because they've been working against each other since Narnia was created, give or take a few minutes. He knows her well enough to know that she'll make a production of his death, and that she'll trust her House's defenses so much more than open terrain.* Part of the reason he's sad and lonely (besides, you know, death sucks) is that he realizes this is the endgame. Chess with Jadis is what the lion-incarnation does, and in twenty-four hours that'll all be over, and the only other person of his generation and lifespan will be gone forever.** Jadis's quivering voice probably comes from the same source. Aslan's long lifespan is also why he can be so blase about traumatizing the girls: Hey, in just a couple centuries it'll be like it never happened, but he'll remember how comforted he felt.

Based on the royal epithets, my guess about the eventual division of labor goes thusly: Susan the Gentle is the diplomat, Edmund the Just is the Supreme Court, and Lucy the Valiant is the general/battle leader, and Father Christmas can just deal with it. Peter the Magnificent, of course, is the High King.

*Heck, she might have picked up her dislike of fighting on open ground rather than siege from some stratagem Aslan pulled in one of their earlier battles. Maybe Moles tunneled under her encampment and his main force attacked while hers were in disarray from the ground collapsing under them.

**Well, I suppose there's also Tash. It's still a big honking deal.

Ana Mardoll said...

I wish I could "Like" your comment more than once, Rikalous. :D

Randall M said...

Well, I suppose there's also Tash. It's still a big honking deal.

We don't know that Tash exists at this point. He may have come into existence after the Witch's death. Maybe he was created to fill that very void?

Of course, we never actually hear of Tash doing anything in particular.

John Magnum said...

It hasn't been a terribly long time since I read Voyage, Silver Chair, and Final Battle, but I don't remember if it was ever definitively established that Tash ever exists. I don't think I was reading super closely, so I could have missed it, but I never really dispelled the impression that Tash was a being that, in the fiction, was definitely Not Real but was (either erroneously or defiantly) worshipped by depraved violent Others.

Rikalous said...

I seem to remember Aslan telling the Virtuous Cimorene that he belonged to Aslan because he worshiped Tash in virtuous fashion, and the people who worshiped Aslan in wicked fashion were really worshiping Tash. So I think it does exist, it just doesn't seem to be as hands-on as Jadis.

@Randall, I like the idea of Tash filling the Jadis void. The creature of the desert replacing the forever destroyed creature of the snow just seems right.

Akedhi said...

I'm fairly sure that Tash is real - it (Tash doesn't get as much personality as Jadis or Aslan, for some reason, and I seem to recall Tash being referred to as an 'it' and as a 'thing' and wow this is a long parenthetical, I'll just start over.) It appears in the wood, at a distance, from Tirian and Jill and Eustace (and whoever else they have with them at that point. I think Jewel and the donkey-whose-name-escapes-me-just-now) and I think it's Jewel who says they've called Tash, Tash has come. And then later, it shows up and sort of... eats? Shift, the ape who comes up with the whole false-Aslan scam. It may eat the Calormene captain, also.

Nick said...

Did Edmund's redemption include him giving up on the idea of decent roads?

Given that the end of Prince Caspian establishes that Bridges Are Evil, I would say so.

John Magnum said...

There we go, then. Thanks.

Ana Mardoll said...

Bah. Just once I'd like it to be one of the boys who hides their face. I mean, they're no cowards for that. As You Know.

Kit Whitfield said...

Perhaps the difference is that (at least according to some theories of the crucifixion) Jesus was dying on behalf of the people killing him, but Aslan's sacrifice is not something that the Ogres and Hags and Incubuses can or may partake in.

YES! THIS! This puts a finger on something that I'd never quite been able to articulate in my own mind: Aslan's sacrifice is an act of war. It does not redeem everyone; it only redeems someone whose sin is to have temporarily sided with the Bad People. It doesn't redeem the Bad People themselves. Edmund is a sheep who briefly got lost in the goat herd, and the goats are going to stay goats. It sticks in my throat.

--

I think Kit's been making the main arguments throughout this decon that Lewis was big on both authority and sensuality and the mixing of the two, so Jadis has trended that way the whole time - this seems like a natural, um, climax, seeing as this is Jadis at the height of her power.

Apropos, I'd also call attention to the sensuality of Aslan in this chapter:

...Lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there and let us walk like that."
And so the girls did what they would never have dared to do without his permission, but what they had longed to do ever since they first saw him...


On the one hand, yes, it's not surprising that children would want to pet something furry, and that's sensual without being sexual. And on the same hand, yes, non-sexual touch is comforting when you're distressed. But on the other hand, 'lay your hands on my mane so that I can feel you are there' is ... well, it's it's a very sensuous way of putting it. 'Lay your hands' rather than 'Rest your hands', for instance, invokes touch that's very much about the physical sensation; 'so I can feel you are there' locates touch rather than sound or sight as the primary form of perception.

And the girls having 'longed' to touch Aslan - well, I think this is the first we hear of them. When they first see him, it's mostly about 'terrible paws' and about how overwhelming and potent he appears. In a non-sexual context, one does not generally respond to the fearsome with a desire to cuddle.

It's just an exchange that's very sensuous. Which wouldn't necessarily mean anything sexual, but it does stand out because Lewis isn't usually this sensual. He's enthusiastic in his writings about food, but mostly that's just lists of what gets eaten; the most sensual description, I think, is of the food that Jadis gives to beguile Edmund, which is another instance of overpowering.

It could all be argued another way, but the whole thing feels like I'm getting a more intimate witness of Lewis's mind than reading a children's religious allegory should really be considered to sign you up for.

Lonespark said...

Dude, Tash sounds awesome1. But of course I would think that.

Silly Edmund, become redeemed and give up ridiculous socialist notions like passable roads. (I...sort of see the argument. Good roads can be used by invading armies. Or tourists. Shudder.)

No someone has mentioned the idea of writing like a fairy tale, and that helps me not care about inconsistencies and dead ends. Of course fairy tales don't tend to have a single author...

Ettins! Hi ettins!

Lonespark said...

Wow, that is a lot of typoes.

chris the cynic said...

It makes the most sense to me if Aslan doesn't know he'll come back. He think he will, he hopes he will, he has faith that he will, but he's weighing that against the possibility that he's wrong. The possibility that he's wrong, and that possibility is very much in his mind. It's why he's so sad. It's why, even though he knows he should tell the girls to stay behind*, he lets them come with him. He's very aware that he might be going to his actual final death, and he doesn't want to die alone.

Now, he's going to do that anyway, but before that he wants some kind of contact, just one last little bit of the world he's leaving maybe forever. He's going off to die, alone (I'm not counting people who want him dead) but on the way it would be nice if someone would hold his hand. Of course, he doesn't have hands.

After he comes back he can say that resurrection was the plan all along, but right now not he's faced with mountains of doubt and uncertainty which are making it so he can't even walk right.

In that view you can argue that he didn't tell everyone the plan because he's weighing it against the doubt. What if he doesn't come back? What if everyone is waiting for him and it never happens?

Of course, I don't know his exact post resurrection words, so maybe that's all invalidated.

-

I think Jadis works better if we don't see her as executioner so much as having power over all evil. (For a pretty screwy definition of evil.) Traitors are her domain not because she's the the Emperor's Hangwoman but because the deep magic creates a polar system and she's the evil pole. If you fall on the evil side of the line your soul is drawn to her side so strongly that an attempt to prevent that would destroy the whole world. But, since she is a thinking being instead of a law of nature, she has some say over what is done with those who come her way, and some ability to fiddle with the rules to make a exchange. (The scales are still balanced if someone from Aslan's domain is sent into hers and someone from hers sent into Aslan's.)

In this concept she doesn't execute traitors because the Emperor wants her to, she executes traitors because she likes executions. The lives of traitors are hers, to do with as she pleases. Or something like that.

You've still got the problem of why the Deep Magic works that way. (Sort of like the thing of, even if the Devil is torturing people in Hell on his own initiative rather than God's, why is there a Hell in the first place? Why is the Devil in charge?)

And also there's a question of what Aslan's side gets out of the Deep Magic. If Jadis can claim the life of any traitor and denying her that would destroy the world, what can Aslan claim? If it is a polar system there should be some thing that Aslan could do that mirror's Jadis' claim. If Jadis had captured Peter, Susan, or Lucy, could Aslan walk into her camp and say, "You can't deny me [something] or else the world will be destroyed"? And what would that something be? Probably not their deaths.

-

* The fact that he tried to leave while they were sleeping implies that he knew it would be better if they didn't, you know, see him executed in their brother's place. So he was trying to do the right thing there, but in the moment, when faced between telling them not to come with him, and having some company for just a little while longer, he chose company.

Ana Mardoll said...

Chris, that was lovely. :)

---

Here's the relevant passage, should anyone want it:

“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward. And now—”

“Oh yes. Now?” said Lucy, jumping up and clapping her hands.

“Oh, children,” said the Lion, “I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can!”

Kish said...

So no, he didn't say it had to be done on the Table (or that there was any way for the Witch to swing it so that Aslan would stay dead, short of somehow preventing him from cooperating with the killing). Too bad.

Rikalous said...

I don't think it's so much "roads can be used by armies and tourists" as "infrastructure works differently when the stream can tell you that it doesn't want to dammed or bridged, thanks very much." If there aren't any earth spirits running around, roads might be viable.

Timothy (TRiG) said...

I think this is one of your more fascinating pieces, Ana, but I don't have much to say about it.

TRiG.

Ana Mardoll said...

I appreciate you saying so! When I wrote it, I was very worried I would be offensive, so I'm pleased you enjoyed it.

hapax said...

Oh, and by "I haven't much to add", I obviously meant "I'll take this opportunity to ramble on about my personal view of How It All Works."

Obviously.

chris the cynic said...

It didn't seem excessive in any way to me.

Ana Mardoll said...

No, nor me, either! :D Also, I REALLY like "At-One-Ment". Even if it *is* punny.

J. Random Scribbler said...

Hapax, this whole chapter did feel very Christian to me... that is, it felt like the sort of Christianity in which I was raised. There, the Crucifixion and Resurrection pretty much amounted to a magical ritual that Jesus had to go through to allow people the chance to go to heaven when they died instead of being universally doomed to hell. There was definitely the sense of a business transaction about it; Jesus was paying a price and buying salvation for us. The Deep Magic vs. Deeper Magic idea rang very true for me back then. Of course, the people who taught me this would be horrified at hearing it compared to a magic or business! It was just what Jesus had to do because things worked that way.

Younger Me: (timidly) "Um, excuse me, why do things work that way?"

Them: "Because God is perfectly righteous and just. What do you mean, that doesn't explain it? Of course it does. It's what the Bible says! You aren't questioning the Bible, are you?"

Younger Me: (automatically) "No of course not!" (worries about going to hell for having questioned the Bible.)

So, when I read the Chronicles of Narnia back then, it never really occurred to me to wonder why the Deep Magic was the way it was, or to ask why it couldn't have been some other way, and especially never to think that choosing to set it up that way was actually a pretty mean thing to do.

I do agree that the chapter isn't much like my present understanding of Christianity, in which forgiveness and reconciliation are more than just nice words, and atonement is more than just a one-time ritual sacrifice.

Kit Whitfield said...

I don't know what a woose or ettin is, but I'm snagged on 'Efreets'. Because that's a variant spelling of 'ifrit', which is to say, out of the Islamic tradition. And okay, ifrit can be villainous in that tradition, but this pick-n-mix aspect strikes me as ... well, partly it strikes me as synthetic and unconvincing, but it also strikes me as very uncomfortable considering where he goes with Islam later. He feels free to use lots of racist stereotypes about Islamic people, but he's not above pinching things from their artistic traditions. This is not nice.

Makabit said...

"Ettin" is an old Norse-derived word for a giant.

Makhno said...

... and "woose" looks like a variant of "wose", i.e. a Wild Man. Later, when Renaissance romancers like Ariosto (whose work Lewis was a fan of) started splicing Classical and medieval myths together, Wild Men were somewhat implausibly retconned as being the same thing as satyrs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_man

Tolkien also had Woses, but his Woses are a race of wood-dwelling humans who've been *mistaken* for Orc-like creatures by their narrow-minded neighbours, but nevertheless come through for the good guys.

Ana Mardoll said...

It's a funny thing about Kitchen Sink fantasy: if you're NOT maintaining problematic attitudes towards another peoples' culture, then it's kind of, "Sure, why not? Take an ifrit or three." If, on the other hand, you ARE, it's very... different. :(

Dav said...

When I was growing up, I decided a woose was a cross between a wolf and a moose - basically a pack carnivore on a moose scale, with giant shoulders, horns and the ability to eat half its weight in meat.

I think I'm going to stick with that as being scarier than either wild men or satyrs.

Dav said...

"No," said Aslan in a dull voice, as if it didn't matter. "No. She will not make an attack tonight." And then he sighed deeply. But presently he added, "All the same it was well thought of. That is how a soldier ought to think. But it doesn't really matter."

This makes me think that perhaps Aslan is part Eeyore. Dude, I know you're depressed, what with your impending death and all, but maybe you don't want to pour cold water over the budding general who's about to go into his first battle *as the general*. (Not even princes are made to be general their first time in battle, but I guess things work differently in Narnia.)

Also hilarious: it only takes part of a day to instruct a boy from another world with different rules how to run two completely different strategies with forces he doesn't know on terrain he's not familiar with against a foe that wields magic and an army full of creatures he has no knowledge of. Also, there's no mention of a way to write things down, or maps, or any kind of help at all. Mnemonics? Flashcards? A lieutenant general to cover in case Peter freezes or gets cut down? Anyone? No? I'm totally not a military type, so maybe I'm totally off base (haha), but this is sort of setting the good guys up for slaughter.

chris the cynic said...

Well he just sat Peter in the chair, attached the thingy to the back of his head, and moments later Peter said, "I know kung-fu," to which Aslan replied, "Damn. Wrong program. How about this?" Soon afterward Peter said, "I know how to command Centaurs on inclined terrain." By the end of the day, Peter had learned all there was to know about Narnian strategy.

Lonespark said...

That sounds about right, chris. Though for some reason with the boy generals my brain went all Battle School. "The White Witch's gate is down!" or something.

Thomas Keyton said...

against a foe that wields magic

Slightly apropos of nothing, but Jadis doesn't really cast that many spells. She did the always-winter-never-Christmas thing a hundred years ago, she has a wand that can do one spell* and a liquid that creates fairy food, and she can camouflage herself, but she's very Gandalfian in her magic. The wand seems to be her only form of magical attack.

Of course, now I'm wondering why she apparently doesn't try to contaminate the enemy supplies with her fairy food - maybe it can only manifest as non-British/exotic food?

*Maybe she killed a Discworld Fairy Godmother and took her stuff but didn't know how to use it?

Rikalous said...

Since Jadis has Hags that can cast magic, we know that some form of magic is available to elite troops. So Aslan's army would probably have some spellcasting units that can check the supplies for tampering. The nature spirits sound like a good bet.

I don't think it's so much that Jadis only knows one spell with her wand as that Narnia-verse magic tends more towards the ritualistic than towards Magic Missile type stuff. So being able to cast a single type of spell quick enough and powerful enough to be useful in the middle of combat is a sign that she's good, not a sign that she's lousy.

As far as Peter's strategic abilities, and indeed the four's leadership abilities in general, go, I'm going to say because rulers of Narnia. There seems to be a strong connection between Narnia the land and its rulers, with the way the climate changes when they show up.* Since the land is benefiting from the True Kings and Queens showing up, it gives back by letting them tap into the experiences with the old rulers, and/or the innate understanding the land has of itself and its peoples. The tips Aslan gives are all to do with the way Jadis specifically does things, since the Rulership Database would be more general.

*Like in Lion King. When Scar runs things, it's overcast because he's a usurper who doesn't care about his subjects. When Simba the True King takes over, the clouds break.

Dav said...

Slightly apropos of nothing, but Jadis doesn't really cast that many spells.

Her DM goes by the old rules of spell memorization, and she needs to sleep eight hours at a time in order to re-memorize her high level spells, but the DM is angry at Jadis's player and gave Jadis insomnia. She's only slept 7 hours at a time for the last month, and only has a Wand of Petrify and a couple of ill-chosen low level spells, like Comprehend Languages and Chilling Touch.

Makabit said...

"Since the land is benefiting from the True Kings and Queens showing up, it gives back by letting them tap into the experiences with the old rulers, and/or the innate understanding the land has of itself and its peoples. The tips Aslan gives are all to do with the way Jadis specifically does things, since the Rulership Database would be more general."

In Ian MacDonald's Out On Blue Six, there's a character who used to be the "Elector" of the great u-dys-topian city they're all living in, a sort of randomly selected figurehead leader.

They get you ready for the role by downloading all of the past Elector's experiences into your brain.

Happens he found out the only way to get yours for the next one is to wipe you clean.

Which is why he is now living deep under the city, as the self-proclaimed King of the Raccoons.

Whoever is on the throne now has no clue, he gleefully reports.

EdinburghEye said...

I found this post (and the comment threads) as always, fascinating, but just for what it's worth:

When I first read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe I was pretty young. About six or seven. I didn't find out until well after I'd read all of the books that Lewis was trying to do a Christian allegory: and actually I think the bits he stole from The Republic work a lot better. (Reading Plato's Republic after you have read Narnia, is a really freaking weird experience.)

When I first read this book, I loved Aslan. Perhaps because even then I liked cats, the bigger the better. I was horrified when Aslan was killed, because - I was seven! It didn't occur to me that narrative imperative strongly suggested Aslan was coming back. He was a major character, a lion that you could walk beside and bury your hands in his mane... and he was dead.

Then he came back. I hadn't expected that. I remember the experience of reading the book and understanding Susan and Lucy's loneliness and coldness, alone with this big dead cat they'd loved (my sole experience of death, up until then, had in fact been that a cat I'd loved had been killed by a car, though I only just made that connection now).

And then Aslan rises, and it's morning, and Susan and Lucy get to ride on his back into battle. All's well.

I can see exactly why it doesn't fit all that well as an allegory of Christ's sacrifice and resurrection. But that's not how I read it, the first time I read it - or really, until I knew that was what was going on in Lewis's head, nearly a decade later.

I went to see the most recent film version of Narnia by myself, partly because I tend to get a bit muttery when people make bad adaptations of books I like and this is irritating for the person sitting next to me (safer to pick a seat by myself) but partly because - well, I've always wondered if anyone could do an adaptation of that scene of Aslan being killed and coming back to life, which would in any way work for me as a visual interpretation of what I saw in my mind's eye when I read it.

Which it didn't. (I got a bit muttery about the misuse of Bible quotes in the film, too, especially "It is finished".) I'm not sure it ever will, and I suppose I have to wait another generation for another director to have a go, anyway....

Patrick Hickey said...

I've always been struck by how pagan this conception of the resurrection seems to be.

In many pagan myths, the natural order just... is. And the gods struggle against it in vain. Odin, for example, didn't create the world and its magic. He just learned to best master it, and that superior mastery of the rules of the cosmos makes him special. Greek gods, Egyptian gods, they all tend to follow this pattern. Often the universe flat out pre existed these gods, and they are simply the presently-most-powerful creatures within it.

Christianity typically rejects this idea. But its actually the best way to make sense of Narnia. The ancient laws that Aslan can't break just... exist. The "Emperor's laws" stands in for the ancient and unalterable reality that Aslan manipulates to accomplish his goals. So the ancient laws are unjust! So what? What did you expect of them? Aslan is less an avatar of the omnipotent and all-knowledgeable creator of the universe (and therefore the author of those laws, who presumably was free to write better ones) than he is a local demigod, who's superior knowledge of the laws of the universe allows him to defeat a slightly less powerful and slightly less wise opponent.

Kish said...

Of course, that leaves us with the problem: What's wrong with "work against the Emperor's magic?" Aslan might say, "No, that's impossible," but his reaction in the book is more "that's wrong. And possibly also impossible, but we're not going to try or discuss it further, because it would be wrong."

Rikalous said...

Is Aslan a creature of the Emperor's magic? I'd say he could be, at that means that the Rules are literally* part of him, which would explain why trying to break them would horrify him.

*A word I do not use lightly.

Emy said...

Perhaps not so much horrifying as completely inconceivable. It's an action that he's incapable of undertaking or even contemplating too much.

I'm reminded of the way spirits work in Shadowrun. Their magical tradition is an intrinsic, immutable part of the spirit. So, similarly, Aslan, as a being of these magical rules, may not even be able to even consider breaking them.

Sadly, while I might find such a situation more sympathetic and/or interesting, it seems ill-supported by the text.

Patrick Hickey said...

That's a problematic answer, since the moral perspective of the book is approving of the "Emperor's Magic." If one is inclined to think negatively of this Emperor and his rules, then that answer provides a factual explanation for why Aslan can't work against said rules... but it also implies, from this perspective, that Aslan just isn't good enough, and that this aspect of Aslan is a weakness, much like Edmund's greed.

Rikalous said...

I see no particular reason why we need take the moral perspective of the book as valid if we're deconstructing it. If we aren't deconstructing it, I see no particular reason why we need to think about it that deeply.

Toby Bartels said...

>We don't know that Tash exists at this point. He may have come into existence after the Witch's death. Maybe he was created to fill that very void?

From a Doylist perspective, sure, that's why he was created. But from a Watsonian perspective, no. In _The Horse and His Boy_, we learn that the worship of Tash has been long established, yet this is less than a generation after Jadis's downfall. The Calormenes who know of Jadis consider her a barbarian queen, nothing in the sight of their all-powerful god. And indeed, when Jadis is destroyed, Tash is still around.

Yonmei said...

Patrick Hickey: "Christianity typically rejects this idea. But its actually the best way to make sense of Narnia. The ancient laws that Aslan can't break just... exist. The "Emperor's laws" stands in for the ancient and unalterable reality that Aslan manipulates to accomplish his goals. So the ancient laws are unjust! So what? What did you expect of them?"

Yes. As noted above, when I read TLTWATW I was seven or so. I knew the basic story of Jesus, but I never would have linked it to the death of Aslan.

And also:

Over the next nine or ten years after that first reading of Narnia, on my way to becoming an atheist, I read each of the gospel versions of Jesus's crucifixion, in several different versions: I read quite a few modern retellings and commentaries, including several by C. S. Lewis himself. At no point, until I was explicitly told that was what Lewis intended, did I connect the death of Aslan with the death of Jesus. Aslan's death and resurrection was very moving for me - but I just didn't connect the two.

By contrast, the very first time I read Plato's Republic, which I think was when I was sixteen or so, I instantly saw how Lewis had borrowed from Plato to make Narnia - and that was even before I re-read TLTWatW and rediscovered with new understanding the Professor's mutterings of "It's all in Plato, all in Plato". Because it really is - parts of the The Last Battle and of The Magician's Nephew suddenly made entire sense to me as part of a mythologic idea that Plato had put forward out of Socrates' mouth and Lewis had adapted into a children's story. No one had to tell me how Lewis had connected the two: it was obvious once I'd read both texts.

Rikalous: "Is Aslan a creature of the Emperor's magic? I'd say he could be, at that means that the Rules are literally* part of him, which would explain why trying to break them would horrify him. "

I like that interpretation.

EdinburghEye said...

Patrick Hickey: "Christianity typically rejects this idea. But its
actually the best way to make sense of Narnia. The ancient laws that
Aslan can't break just... exist. The "Emperor's laws" stands in for
the ancient and unalterable reality that Aslan manipulates to
accomplish his goals. So the ancient laws are unjust! So what? What
did you expect of them?"


Yes. As noted above, when I read TLTWATW I was seven or so. I knew the
basic story of Jesus, but I never would have linked it to the death of
Aslan.

And also:

Over the next nine or ten years after that first reading of Narnia, on
my way to becoming an atheist, I read each of the gospel versions of
Jesus's crucifixion, in several different versions: I read quite a few
modern retellings and commentaries, including several by C. S. Lewis
himself
. At no point, until I was explicitly told that was what Lewis
intended, did I connect the death of Aslan with the death of Jesus.
Aslan's death and resurrection was very moving for me - but I just
didn't see any resemblance between the two.

By contrast, the very first time I read Plato's Republic, which I
think was when I was sixteen or so, I instantly saw how Lewis had
borrowed from Plato to make Narnia - and that was even before I
re-read TLTWatW and rediscovered with new understanding the
Professor's mutterings of "It's all in Plato, all in Plato". Because
it really is - parts of the The Last Battle and of The Magician's
Nephew
suddenly made entire sense to me as part of a mythologic idea
that Plato had put forward out of Socrates' mouth and Lewis had
adapted into a children's story. No one had to tell me how Lewis had
connected the two: it was obvious once I'd read both texts.

Rikalous: "Is Aslan a creature of the Emperor's magic? I'd say he
could be, at that means that the Rules are literally* part of him,
which would explain why trying to break them would horrify him. "

I like that interpretation.

Phoenix said...

Interesting take on all this. I've been lurking these posts for awhile now (off and on, because it's rather painful for me to read detailed deconstructions of racism and misogyny in a series that I used to love).

Without reading any of the comments, I'll add my own response. I find it curious that you think Lucy and Susan are too innocent to watch this happen and in fact might have been in danger. Since I did read this as an allegory to the crucifixion, I always saw them as stand-ins for Mary Magdalene/Simon Peter and Mary herself, Jesus' companions who somehow managed to watch their beloved friend/mentor/son be tortured to death.

Your point about the allegorical nature of this being lost in translation is well taken, though, and could account for some of this. Magdalene, Peter and Mary were spectators along with everyone else during a fairly run-of-the-mill execution; this one takes place as the opening event of a war, so obviously the girls were in fact in danger in a way that the spectators of Jesus' torture and execution were not.

Off to read the comments now. Thanks for writing this.

Ana Mardoll said...

Hi, Phoenix! I'm glad to have you here, and I'm totally with you on it being a hard decon to read and write. I have very fond memories of Narnia, too, and I hope still will after all this. :)

I think for me a difference is that Mary, Peter, and Mary are allowed to feel angry. The Romans are executing Jesus and it's wrong. I feel like Lucy and Susan have been robbed of that; Aslan has already made it clear that questioning the rightness of the Emperor's magic is not ok for whatever reason. I think that emotional outlet is important. :(

Phoenix said...

Read the comments (fascinating comments!). One additional thought: I kinda figured that Aslan died solely for Edmund as opposed to "for all Narnia, good guys and bad guys alike" the way that Jesus supposedly did because when you're a small Christian child, you're often told that Jesus loves YOU above all others, would have died if YOU were the ONLY one he was saving, etc. It occurs to me that Lewis may have been trying to hammer home the point that Jesus/Aslan was willing to die for the sake of saving only ONE person.

Needless to say, this point is pretty muddied by several things - Edmund is a Good Guy who temporarily becomes a Bad Guy, and it would have been a much clearer communication of the intended message (if my speculation is correct) had Aslan died for one of the really Bad Guys*; the act-of-war or act-of-love? business, and probably a bunch of other things. I'm sick today and not thinking as clearly as one might hope. But there it is, anyway.

*Though we're talking about a message that is supposed to resonate with young Christian children (again, if my speculation is correct) so by definition, such kids would automatically be on the side of the good guys who love Aslan even though they occasionally make mistakes, not the nasty evil demon creatures. Perhaps that explains why Edmund was chosen.

Anna said...

I think Lewis here is suffering from the same problem that Fred's often brought up in the LB deconstructions - all events have to be seen from the perspective of one of the Pevensies, therefore he has to maneouvre the Pevensies into a position from which they can see important events, even when it feels unnatural for them to be there. Ultimately, Aslan takes Susan and Lucy to see his death because Lewis needs the reader to see Aslan's death.

hapax said...

Ana, I haven't much to add but to thank you and Kit for pointing out how... I'm sorry, but how unChristian this part has always felt to me.

I'm not dissing Lewis's Christian bona fides -- it isn't my place, and I'm sorta suspect as far as orthodoxy goes, anyways.

But there's nothing in this scene that read to me of Forgiveness. Of Sacrifice. Of Reconciliation. Of Relationship.

In the theology I always learned, the theology I teach, the whole point of the Atonement is (forgive the de riguer bad theological pun) At-One-Ment. However and whyever the death of the man Jesus "works", the purpose of it, the effect of it, is to bridge, to slam shut, the chasm that has arriven between Creation and Creator.

Hence the language of one of the most ancient Easter hymns (emphasis mine):

Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us
Therefore let us keep the feast...
The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all;
but the life he lives, he lives to God.
So also consider yourselves dead to sin,
and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. ...
For as in Adam all die,
so also in Christ shall all be made alive.


I mean, does that even make any *sense* if we substitute "Edmund" for "Adam" and "Aslan" for "Christ"?

The whole Mystery of the Atonement is that it wasn't a one-off. It is an eternally ongoing reality -- Christ is *always* becoming incarnate as human, Christ is *always* hanging on the cross, Christ is *always* returning to life, Christ is *always* ascending back to the Godhead [1] ...

... all for the purpose that human beings, as individuals and as part of the entirety of the created cosmos, can *participate*. We get caught up in the vortex.

But in Narnia, we don't get to take part. We're not even (as in the Mousetrap theory) incidental spoils of the war between Heaven and Hell. We're barely even pawns. Susan and Lucy are reduced to the roles of mere *observers* -- and they don't even get to see the important parts!

So no, this has never felt like anything I knew as Christian. This always read as "Odin sacrificed to Odin." Or perhaps Nathan Hale's tragic, foolish hanging. Or Sydney Carlton on the tumbrel.

It's sad. It might even be noble. It turns out to be unexpectedly effective at achieving the victim's ultimate goal.

But it doesn't have anything to do with me.

[1] And I do give Lewis credit for this, that he doesn't skimp over the importance of the Ascension in any Gospel allegory. Problem is, he forgets that Aslan is supposed to be going ahead of us, to prepare a place for us, not just slipping off back Over-the-Sea and leaving us behind.

Beroli said...

Of course, I don't know his exact post resurrection words, so maybe that's all invalidated.
Actually, if I recall correctly, he says that the resurrection requires the ritual, including him being killed on the Stone Table. Meaning that there was always a chance the Witch would say, "Ha ha, sucker, I do so know about the Deeper Magic, you're dying on the ground where I had you tied up"--or just "I'm too excited to wait while you get him on the Table"--and then he would stay dead.

Edited to add: Which makes me wonder if one of the topics of conversation when Aslan was offstage with Edmund went, "You are certain she grumbled about not being able to do it properly on the Stone Table?"

Steve Morrison said...

forgive the de riguer bad theological punBut isn’t that the actual derivation?

Chris Kern said...

I don't know if you read responses to posts this old, but I figured the presence of Susan and Lucy was supposed to be a sort of mirror of Jesus' walk to Golgotha, particularly the parts in the Stations of the Cross where Veronica wipes Jesus' face and Jesus comforts the women of Jerusalem.

It's also funny to have the concept that an Arthurian King does everything himself, since Malory's Arthur didn't do that; he had to be helped by people constantly through the whole thing. This is one of my favorites parts of the Morte:

"Right so anon came in a lady on a white palfrey, and cried aloud to King Arthur, Sir, suffer me not to have this despite, for the brachet was mine that the knight led away. I may not do therewith, said the king.

With this there came a knight riding all armed on a great horse, and took the lady away with him with force, and ever she cried and made great dole. When she was gone the king was glad, for she made such a noise. Nay, said Merlin, ye may not leave these adventures so lightly; for these adventures must be brought again or else it would be disworship to you and to your feast. I will, said the king, that all be done by your advice."

BaseDeltaZero said...

When I was growing up, I decided a woose was a cross between a wolf and a moose - basically a pack carnivore on a moose scale, with giant shoulders, horns and the ability to eat half its weight in meat.

That does sound pretty nasty.


No? I'm totally not a military type, so maybe I'm totally off base (haha), but this is sort of setting the good guys up for slaughter.

It's totally freaking stupid. Of course, it was destined for them to win the battle, and Aslan doesn't seem to particularly care about casualties, so...


Since the land is benefiting from the True Kings and Queens showing up, it gives back by letting them tap into the experiences with the old rulers, and/or the innate understanding the land has of itself and its peoples.

That's a cool idea, to use in a D&D Campaign or story... the royal family (or some group) actually has a kind of empathic connection with the land itself. Of course, me being my 'now how does this work mechanically' minded self, it'd be more 'gigantic ancient ritual spell linked to powerful blood magic, perhaps with an array of menhirs to support it' than 'The Land is bound to the Fisher King because it and the citizens are rightfully part of the King(s property). Maybe of the royalty are/are descended from a group of druids... although druids tend not to do much ruling, hippies that they are.

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