quote:

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Does the Neil Gaiman story (if you've read it) deal with the "Susan problem" in a way you find interesting, or revelatory, or does it further muddy the waters?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gwai:
I remember that in other books also I would note that for the story line to work someone would have to die and I was pretty good at picking which character was important enough but not too important. That character would be sacrificed.
Susan was sacrificed.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
I think Susan's experience in Last Battle ties in very nicely with what Lewis said about himself and people generally in Surprised by Joy -- which is (paraphrasing from memory here) that people go through a sort of false "growing up" in adolescence during which they are very concerned about superficialities and appearances, and consider it a sign of maturity not to believe in the magic and wonder and fairy tales of their childhood. He believed that wise people eventually find their way back to the wonder of childhood, which is what Susan, by the time of LB, had failed to do.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:


For a contemporary take on this same problem, see this heart-rending "last ever" Calvin and Hobbes cartoon (NB this is a fake, but heart-rending nonetheless).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by bc_anglican:
Susan was the least developed of the 4 characters. Peter is the High King, and the leader of the pack. Edmund and Eustace both go through redemption story lines. And Jill and Lucy both play heroines.

Susan, it always seemed to be, was more the background character. She was there, but I felt Lewis probably saw her as an after thought.

I do see Susan as a metaphor for our modern age, in which many moderns see religion, faith, and spirituality as superstition, and so gets wrapped up in the concerns of this world. However, remember Aslan's oath "Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia!" I do believe that Lewis leaves the final state of Susan unresolved, because ultimately Aslan, or in the final state of things, Jesus, is the one who makes the decision.

---

quote:

---

Is her fate a reflection of Lewis's attitude towards adulthood (as Philip Pullman seems to suggest) or to adult women specifically (as many readers have suggested)?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Yerevan:
To go back a bit, I think alot of Lewis's attitude to women stemmed from the fact that he grew up before WWI and spent most of his life as a bachelor Oxford don.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Yerevan:

quote:

---

Is her fate a reflection of Lewis's attitude towards adulthood (as Philip Pullman seems to suggest) or to adult women specifically (as many readers have suggested)?

---

To go back a bit, I think alot of Lewis's attitude to women stemmed from the fact that he grew up before WWI and spent most of his life as a bachelor Oxford don.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Edward::Green:
The message about women's role in That Hideous Strength is also rather odd.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
I've always felt that Susan had the least agency of any of the children: Peter is the High King, Lucy is the discoverer and explorer, Edmund has the whole traitor/redemption thing going, but Susan is just beautiful and good at shooting a bow. She's largely a background character, even while being ostensibly one of the main characters.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon J:
I can remember being very disapointed as a young teenager finding out that Susan stopped being a "friend of Narnia". I also thought that it was deeply unrealistic psychologically to have someone experience all those things and then deny them - especially if you look at how people look on Near Death Experiences they've had for example.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by PeaceFeet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon J:
I can remember being very disapointed as a young teenager finding out that Susan stopped being a "friend of Narnia". I also thought that it was deeply unrealistic psychologically to have someone experience all those things and then deny them - especially if you look at how people look on Near Death Experiences they've had for example.

---

I don’t think it is unrealistic to ‘do a Susan’ – the moderately famous UK athlete-turned-presenter Jonathan Edwards is often held up as an example of someone 100% committed (or 110% as we’re talking sport) to God but then stepped back to question and never came back. You don’t have to go far in the New Testament to see people who have seen the physical reality of the miraculous and have ‘fallen away’ for a time.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Wanderer:
However, the ending (suggesting Aslan/good and the witch/evil are two sides of the same coin) does serious violence to Lewis' ideas as expressed in TLB and eslewhere. To me that doesn't fit at all (whereas the loss of life seemed a justified extrapolation).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by PeaceFeet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon J:
I can remember being very disapointed as a young teenager finding out that Susan stopped being a "friend of Narnia". I also thought that it was deeply unrealistic psychologically to have someone experience all those things and then deny them - especially if you look at how people look on Near Death Experiences they've had for example.

---

I don’t think it is unrealistic to ‘do a Susan’ – the moderately famous UK athlete-turned-presenter Jonathan Edwards is often held up as an example of someone 100% committed (or 110% as we’re talking sport) to God but then stepped back to question and never came back. You don’t have to go far in the New Testament to see people who have seen the physical reality of the miraculous and have ‘fallen away’ for a time.

For me Susan’s story isn’t over.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:
I'm not sure that the experiences of people in this day and age are at all similar to Susan. To deny something you once held on faith is one thing, but she hadn't just "believed in Narnia. She had been there, had seen, smelt and experienced it all in a physical sense. She had met Aslan, not as you might "meet" God in prayer or the sacraments (no disrespect intended), but in the flesh.

To deny all of that, and say that it never existed, is to deny not just your former beliefs but all 5 of your senses. I think CSL intended this to be the analogy you describe, but I don't think it stands up to scrutiny.

---

All analogies, even Jesus' parables, only work with some, not all of the available details, otherwise they wouldn't be analogies. I think the important thing is not that she experienced things with her own senses but that there's no tangible proof of those experiences once you're back in our world. That's analogous to experience a spiritual reality that you can only apprehend by faith IMO.

Back in my charismatic days I had some pretty intense experiences that I would have sworn were just as real and direct as anything I experienced through my normal senses. That hasn't stopped me, as time and changing beliefs create distance, re-evaluating those experiences.

I guess that makes me Susan
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
considering the context, Jane Studdock comes across as a lot stronger than her husband in That Hideous Strength.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
considering the context, Jane Studdock comes across as a lot stronger than her husband in That Hideous Strength.

---

It would be hard to imagine a context in which Jane is not stronger than her husband in that book!

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I don't know - it might be that Lewis just didn't regard girls as good protagonists.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Golden Key:
**MAJOR SPOILERS**

quote:

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Originally posted by Gwai:
I remember that in other books also I would note that for the story line to work someone would have to die and I was pretty good at picking which character was important enough but not too important. That character would be sacrificed.
Susan was sacrificed.

---

No no no. She didn't die. She wasn't on the train or at the station. She wasn't there, because she felt she was too grown-up to play the Narnia "game" any more.

She's in the horrible position of having lost her entire family. But she's still alive.

/END SPOILERS

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gwai:
It is made clear that the rest of her family dies and goes to heaven while she is left behind and probably damned.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Peppone:
How about that freakish, sadistic blackshirted policewoman from That Hideous Strength, and the husband's admitted sexual fascination with her; and the torture scene with the cigarette burns? Can we read something into Lewis's bringing that stuff into the story?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Peppone:
How about that freakish, sadistic blackshirted policewoman from That Hideous Strength, and the husband's admitted sexual fascination with her; and the torture scene with the cigarette burns? Can we read something into Lewis's bringing that stuff into the story?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You could argue (probably successfully, too) that Lewis' female characters aren't his strong point: especially his girls, because he never actually came into contact with any of them.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
What I meant was the context in which she fulfils a "traditional" and "submitted" role in her couple, while Mark is the breadwinner - a role which she embraces afresh after their brief estrangement

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Moo:
It is a terrible pity that Lewis's mother died when he was ten. From all accounts she was a capable woman who was an original thinker.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Peppone:
How about that freakish, sadistic blackshirted policewoman from That Hideous Strength, and the husband's admitted sexual fascination with her; and the torture scene with the cigarette burns? Can we read something into Lewis's bringing that stuff into the story?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:
And I'm gobsmacked that in a discussion of Lewis's portrayal of women, nobody has mentioned Till We Have Faces.

---

quote:

---

I believe it was written after he had known Joy Davidman for some time

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
What I meant was the context in which she fulfils a "traditional" and "submitted" role in her couple, while Mark is the breadwinner - a role which she embraces afresh after their brief estrangement

---

Well, that's the polemical point, isn't it?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
You could argue (probably successfully, too) that Lewis' female characters aren't his strong point: especially his girls, because he never actually came into contact with any of them.

---

He taught women students at Oxford.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

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Originally posted by MouseThief:
And I'm gobsmacked that in a discussion of Lewis's portrayal of women, nobody has mentioned Till We Have Faces.

---

They have; scroll up.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:
And I'm gobsmacked that in a discussion of Lewis's portrayal of women, nobody has mentioned Till We Have Faces.

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They have; scroll up.

---

Sorry, my mistake. You'll have to scroll up, over and down: it was mentioned on the other thread, here.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mummyfrances:
The way I have always read the Last Battle was that EVERYONE dies, but Susan is not in heaven. Because in her effort to "grow up" she discarded her experiences and turned away from Narnia.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hooker's Trick:
Why is it so hard to believe that Susan would do it?

---

Part of the problem is the way Lewis describes Susan's fall (if you will). There are no big reasons - no death of a child or a parent, no great ethical dilemma, no grave crime perpetrated by her or on her, no growing existential doubt. Just lipstick and nylons. Just boys. Just culture. That's all.

And for those who love Narnia, we can't quite believe that that would be enough to tear us away from our belief. If we had been Susan, we would have stayed faithful. We feel both betrayed (by Susan) and outraged (by Lewis). Or for that matter betrayed by Lewis and outraged by Susan. And we have pity and compassion that this Queen of Narnia will never go further on and further up.

And as Hooker's Trick says, we all know someone who's lost faith in Jesus for just those 'just' reasons. Nothing big. Just.
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gwai:
It is made clear that the rest of her family dies and goes to heaven while she is left behind and probably damned.

---

And probably damned? I never read that out of it. Clearly not everybody here has, either.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by adso:
I don't see the fate of Susan as a problem and I don't see it as misogynistic. I'm sure most of us have met girls like Susan at the end of TLB. ... I saw Susan in TLB as someone I was free not to be and found this quite a relief.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
I've always thought the end of TLB was the end of the Narnian world, and that our world continued. Each world has its own "heaven" -- ie a place where, as someone in TLB says, all that is best and loveliest in that world is preserved in perfect form (and presumably where people from that world go when they die), but only when the Narnian world ends is everyone and everything good from Narnia taken up into Aslan's eternal kingdom. I read it as a promise that this would someday happen to our world, but hadn't yet. In Lewis's cosmology each separate inhabited world has its own version of incarnation/redemption, also its own version of heaven, but they are all connected.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cattyish:
Lewis describes the place they get to at the end of TLB as the "real" Narnia, so isn't the house they see in the real England as opposed to the poor reflection we currently live in?

Lewis seems IMO to leave it to God to decide whether Susan gets another chance.

In The Great Divorce Lewis wrote again about what happens at death. I think he believed we can reject God and lose out on Heaven, and that Hell is real and horrible.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
There are no big reasons -

---

quote:

---

I've always thought the end of TLB was the end of the Narnian world, and that our world continued.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by JonahMan:
I agree - given that the time from the beginning of Narnia (in The Magician's Nephew) to its ending (in The Last Battle) occupies only a few decades in Earth time, I always imagined that Narnia time was very foreshortened relative to 'our' Earth and thus we would carry on for much longer (as seen by an observer outside both - please ignore relativity!).

The presence of the Prof's house in heaven-Narnia is anomolaus though. I have a vague memory it was destroyed somehow in Earth (not sure about this at all) so perhaps that would allow it to be recreated there?

Or maybe all worlds end up in the same Heaven, with the best bits of each intermingled, and being temporally divorced, the best bits can appear independent of their otherwise pseudo-simultaneous coexistence on their place of origin.

Or something.

Jonah

---

In the books, Aslan's country, the real Narnia, already existed prior to the destruction of the Narnia of the shadowlands, and in the same way, the heavenly England, including the heavenly home of the professor of which the one in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was only a shadow, just as our whole world is only a shadow that will one day pass away, leaving the reality. It's all in Plato - what do they teach them in schools these days?

Not particularly Christian, in my opinion - Lewis took the Platonic influence too far for my liking, and the idea of a physical resurrection seems notably absent from The Last Battle.

But I think that Lewis has been badly misrepresented over the "problem of Susan". I wrote a blog post responding to some of Philip Pullman's criticisms, and also an essay giving a more scholarly look at the differences in Pullman and Lewis's views of growing up in His Dark Materials and the Chronicles of Narnia. Writer Rebecca Anderson also has a very good essay on the subject here.

[ 07. January 2008, 23:24: Message edited by: The Revolutionist ]
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 

quote:

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However, in context, that's a sacrifice. It is made clear that the rest of her family dies and goes to heaven while she is left behind and probably damned.

---

There's nothing that indicates damnation. At the end of the "Through The Stable Door" chapter, there's a discussion about Susan. Her siblings say she's "no longer a friend of Narnia", she's growing up too fast, and is basically being a brat. Polly speculates that Susan may live a rather shallow life, but hopes she really *does* grow up.

Even from a very fundamentalist view of salvation, Susan still has a chance. She's still alive.

IMHO, lots of people put away the *wrong* "childish things" as they grow up. (And not just religious thing.) If they're lucky, they get time to straighten that out. Part of growing up is looking at where you've been, and beginning to understand it.
 

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Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
I quit reading Lewis after Till We Have Faces because I thought he was cruelly unsympathetic to the plain sister. What girl wouldn't be jealous of a beautiful sister, so obviously favored by their father? Yet, Lewis seems to encourage the reader to view her with a superior, judgmental eye. I felt the same thing in the Narnia books, to a lesser degree, that he was telling us certain children were "bad" and it was right that they should meet a bad end.

So many people love C. S. Lewis that I always end up thinking that I just must not "get" him. I really don't.
 

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Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
If The Great Divorce really does indicate anything about Lewis's view of the Afterlife, Susan is sitting on the foothills of Heaven in some deep confab with an angel/ departed acquaintance while everybody else is climbing up the waterfall.

[ 08. January 2008, 00:02: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
 

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Posted by bush baptist (# 12306) on :
 
Doc Tor wrote:

quote:

---

Part of the problem is the way Lewis describes Susan's fall (if you will). There are no big reasons - no death of a child or a parent, no great ethical dilemma, no grave crime perpetrated by her or on her, no growing existential doubt. Just lipstick and nylons. Just boys. Just culture. That's all.

---

quote:

---

BTW, I wonder if Lewis ever considered that Susan was then left with, as far as we know, only two relatives. Her unplesant Aunt and Uncle, Eustice's parents.

Poor Susan!

---

I don't suppose Lewis thought about that at all.
Though they weren't so very bad (of course, I'm a fellow-vegetarian ) and they would be devastated too, having just lost their only child; I expect they'd be needing Susan very much, as the last person other than themselves who'd known Eustace all his life, and as someone who might have been able to help them understand how and why he'd changed over the past two or three years. I can imagine the three of them would have a lot to work through together.
 

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Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
Grief counselling with Susan, Harold and Alberta. Now there's a fanfic I bet no-one's written.
 

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Posted by bush baptist (# 12306) on :
 
Go for it, Trudy!

ETA: I can hardly wait!

[ 08. January 2008, 00:24: Message edited by: bush baptist ]
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I'd be far more concerned if Lewis had shown Susan's falling away as a matter of crime, or abuse, or some dreadful, uncope-with-able event. Those things do come, and I suspect the Lord cuts people a lot of slack under such pressure. I think all of us would, and I'd be pretty upset with Lewis if we had to listen to even the pretty mild blame of Susan we get at the end of the Last Battle, under such circumstances.

But what's going on with Susan is that she has (temporarily, at least) traded her birthright for a mess of pottage--for mere lipsticks and nylons and such. All well and good in their own way, but nothing in comparison of what she used to have, and has discarded, devalued. Put simply, she is being silly. Like most of us at one time or another.

But should silliness result in such a heavy punishment? Well, we would hope not--but there's no denying that being silly at the wrong moment has some pretty drastic results for some people. Witness the Darwin Awards. It's just the nature of the world we live in.

I don't actually think Susan is being punished at all by being "left behind." I think she is being given another chance, a whole series of second chances, if you will, to grow up and get her head on straight. There's every reason to hope that she will succeed. After all, "once a queen in Narnia, always a queen in Narnia." Her road may be a bit longer and rockier, but I think she'll get there by God's grace in the end.
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gwai:
Fair. I noticed that after it was too late to edit. I tend to interpret the ending of the last battle as the end of the world, but I admit that many here clearly don't.

That post was just meant to clarify since it seemed that perhaps my post was being understood as showing that I didn't know how the series ended.

---

If any of that was directed at me...I didn't think that you didn't know how the story ended over all, but that you and some of the other posters might have missed that point. People were assuming that Susan was both dead and (probably) damned.

I've had similar discussions with people who think Narnia is an allegory.

As to the end of the world, I read it as only the end of the temporal Narnia. The only reason the kids' parents were there was that they got to the train station about the same time, and were involved in the accident. Since they weren't Narnians, they went into Heaven by a different path--but as the kids traveled further into Narnia, they could see their parents a long ways off. They were all headed to the same place.

I think it's also possible that Lewis viewed Susan's loss of her family as "severe mercy"--something that would rock her enough to make her get her priorities straight.

Many people do lose their childhood faith, and eventually find their way back as adults.

FWIW.
 

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Posted by Dinghy Sailor (# 8507) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Assuming Lewis' views on salvation and damnation are correct, killing off Christian characters is merciful. ISTM it's just a logical conclusion from his premise, which is one reason I diagree with his faith.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Twilight:
I quit reading Lewis after Till We Have Faces because I thought he was cruelly unsympathetic to the plain sister. What girl wouldn't be jealous of a beautiful sister, so obviously favored by their father? Yet, Lewis seems to encourage the reader to view her with a superior, judgmental eye.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nicolemrw:
Dyfrig, thanks for mentioning The Shoddy Lands (or whatever it was called), I was trying to remember the details of that story. I remember reading it and being quite dismayed by it, the total difference between the character's "experience" and my own as a female.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
My point being, all Lewis' knowledge regarding girls up to university age was academic.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Assuming Lewis' views on salvation and damnation are correct, killing off Christian characters is merciful. ISTM it's just a logical conclusion from his premise, which is one reason I diagree with his faith.

---

If you killed Christians when they were young, they wouldn't be able to evangelise anyone else and the faith would die off pretty quickly (cf. Romans 10:14

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Late Paul:
All analogies, even Jesus' parables, only work with some, not all of the available details, otherwise they wouldn't be analogies. I think the important thing is not that she experienced things with her own senses but that there's no tangible proof of those experiences once you're back in our world. That's analogous to experience a spiritual reality that you can only apprehend by faith IMO.

---

quote:

---

Susan is as bad as Emeth is good.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Late Paul:
All analogies, even Jesus' parables, only work with some, not all of the available details, otherwise they wouldn't be analogies. I think the important thing is not that she experienced things with her own senses but that there's no tangible proof of those experiences once you're back in our world. That's analogous to experience a spiritual reality that you can only apprehend by faith IMO.

---

None of us can revisit the past, and our memories are all prone to misremembering and false interpolation. I can't get past the fact that she didn't have a subjective, spiritual experience but a real physical one (which just happened to be in a different world). I went to the south of France when I was eight; for Susan to deny Narnia would be like me denying France existed (I haven't been back there since).

---

quote:

---

You say you have re-evaluated your youger spiritual experiences: so have I (to the extent that I don't think I've had a genuine "spiritual" experience). But I don't think them memory of a place I've been to and the memory of a personal, subjective experience are the same sort of thing at all.

---

quote:

---

Why do I get worked up about this? I feel cheated by Lewis and have my suspension of disbelief broken at the end of the book so he can make a cheap shot. Susan is as bad as Emeth is good.

---

quote:

---

But what's going on with Susan is that she has (temporarily, at least) traded her birthright for a mess of pottage--for mere lipsticks and nylons and such. All well and good in their own way, but nothing in comparison of what she used to have, and has discarded, devalued. Put simply, she is being silly. Like most of us at one time or another.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
My point being, all Lewis' knowledge regarding girls up to university age was academic.

---

Not true.

1. Mrs Moore had a daughter, Maureen, 8 years Lewis' junior and thus still in her teens when he came home after the war and set up housekeeping with Mrs Moore.
2. At least two girls came to stay at the Kilns during the London air raids: Patricia Boshell and Jill "June" Flewett are mentioned in Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship (Colin Duriez. Paulist Press, 2003). Many more children billeted at the Kilns; these are just two whose names I could discover in a quick check.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I think I'm coming to the conclusion that Lewis was just mystified by the fairer sex and couldn't quite see the point of them (until later in life). Not an uncommon fault in men of any era.

---

quote:

---

The Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything. He is not so much the alter ego as the anti-self... He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it. How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman...*

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Callan:
Had Susan become the High Priestess of Tash I might be inclined to cut Lewis some slack, but nylons and lipstick?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Callan:
One of the more plausible points in Lewis' ethical scheme is that really spectacularly bad people are corrupted good people. It is those who could have been saints who turn out to be the really bad sinners. Only Lucifer could have ended up as the devil of hell.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Twilight:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Callan:
Had Susan become the High Priestess of Tash I might be inclined to cut Lewis some slack, but nylons and lipstick?

---

Exactly, plus why do nylons and lipstick represent all that is shallow and worldly?

Doesn't he recognize that an adolescent girl's fascination with these things is not out of vanity but a desire to prove to herself that she is attractive enough to be chosen as a wife. It is through this desirability that women fulfill their destiny as procreators. Would he despise a boy for liking sports and adventure?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Josephine:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Callan:
One of the more plausible points in Lewis' ethical scheme is that really spectacularly bad people are corrupted good people. It is those who could have been saints who turn out to be the really bad sinners. Only Lucifer could have ended up as the devil of hell.

---

But Screwtape makes the point to Wormwood that, while it's delightful to make great sinners of their subjects (at least those with the potential of becoming great sinners), it's far safer and more certain to simply distract them with little things -- and most particularly, with a desire to fit in with shallow, trivial, and worldly people.

In the case of Screwtape, of course, he's talking about a man, not a woman. So I don't think his point is misogynistic.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by angelfish
Didn't Lewis also have a neice (called Lucy and to whom TLTWATW is dedicated)?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Callan:
But she's a Queen in Narnia so its akin to the problem Screwtape and Wormwood have when the patient finds God and starts hanging out with the nice Christians. The flesh and the world have failed, they have to resort to the devil. Susan's failure should have been equally drastic given what has gone before.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Callan:
but nylons and lipstick?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Eigon:
Looking back on it, I'm sure that subconsciously thinking about Susan was one of the reasons why I had to be dragged so unwillingly to the Just 17 counter in Boots to choose my first make-up - I still wanted to be able to go through the wardrobe. (Still do, actually).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Late Paul:
But if Narnia is an analogy for Faith then we're already comparing a literal tangible experience with an inner intangible one. If Susan "forgetting" Narnia is like you forgetting France then going to Narnia is like becoming a Christian by literally going to Heaven and seeing Jesus.

---

quote:

---

Bush Baptist wrote:

quote:

---

Susan is as bad as Emeth is good.

---

Do you mean the character or the writing?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by mirrizin:
What's so "grown up" about makeup? Gwai never wears any. Does that mean she's still, on some level, a child?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Twilight:

I wonder if Lewis felt that he had gone over to the shallow, worldly side when he started wearing a suit and tie.

---

quote:

---

He reckoned he was only a few miles from St Anne's and decided to have tea before he set out. He had tea. At his Landlady's suggestion he had a boiled egg with his tea. Two shelves of the sitting room were filled with bound volumes of The Strand. In one of these he found a serial he had begun to read as a child but abandoned on his tenth birthday came when he was half way through it and he was ashamed to read it after that. Now he chased it from volume to volume till he finished it. It was good. The Grown up stories to which after his tenth birthday he had turned to instead of it, now seemed to him, all except Sherlock Holmes to be rubbish.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by mirrizin:
What's so "grown up" about makeup? Gwai never wears any. Does that mean she's still, on some level, a child?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by PeaceFeet:
Don’t the children forget nearly everything about Narnia when they’re out of it? When they return in Prince Caspian they begin to remember not only small details that anyone could forget, but huge parts of their lives in Narnia.

---

quote:

---

So they lived in great joy and if they remembered their life in this world it was only as one remembers a dream. [...]
"I know not how it is, but this lamp on the post worketh me strangely. It runs in my mind that I have seen the like before; as it were in a dream, or in the dream of a dream."

---

It seems the memory of one world fades when you live in the other for a long time, and so it all must have seemed a bit improbable. "We were grown-ups? And now we're back to being kids again? Whatever." There's enough scope for belief in Narnia to be an act of faith, and I don't think Susan is insane for rejecting it. She's just a bit easily led and disloyal, so deserves to be eaten by Tash, evidently. But that's a different thread.
 

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Posted by Jon J (# 11091) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by mirrizin:
It's one thing to strut around in lipstick and nylons, it's another to actually mature. And part of the maturing might be the realization that, in the end, lipstick and nylons are just lipstick and nylons.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Callan:
Susan's failure should have been equally drastic given what has gone before.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
She's just a bit easily led and disloyal, so deserves to be eaten by Tash, evidently. But that's a different thread.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon J:

quote:

---

Originally posted by mirrizin:
It's one thing to strut around in lipstick and nylons, it's another to actually mature. And part of the maturing might be the realization that, in the end, lipstick and nylons are just lipstick and nylons.

---

That's certainly been my experience.

---

Assuming that you are, in fact, a man, this deserves to go on famous last posts or something
 

---

Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Lad Himself:
I think the story reminds us (fairly gently) of what we have against God. Whatever comes after, this further up and further in, is going to have to be awfully good to make up for having to find my brother's body. Or for Susan, left behind as a rebuke, to have to identify the others. I personally feel I have rather a strong case against Him. I remain angry and if His answer will be perfect, I've yet to imagine it. Presumably I won't be disappointed, but it'll be the first time.

Neil Gaiman is the best thing ever.

---

Neil was our GOH at Mythcon XXXV and he read this outloud to us, prior to its publication. He pointed out that many of us made assumptions (inferences) about what he was saying and what he meant, things that he didn't explicitly say but I tend to argue he implied. He definitely knew he was playing with peoples' heads but he's so fun and charming that it's hard to mind too much. I've been intrigued that the very aggressively protective CSL estate hasn't challenged the story as they've kept others from publishing stories that address the Susan issue in the past (I guess if you're big enough they ignore you-- ). I don't think Gaiman isn't trying to make things 'fit' with CSL so much as making a response (if you haven't noticed, there's a link to his GOH speech in which he speaks of Narnia and its importance to him in childhood) to it.

But your own post and anger with God makes me think of Job 40-42 and particularly the culmination "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6). God is more than capable of answering for Himself but I think a big part of our difficulty is that we see such a small part of the picture and make judgments based upon inadequate knowledge.

Eutychus, I'd not seen the Calvin & Hobbes ersatz final comic; poignant, it reminds me of The Velveteen Rabbit.

quote:

---

dj-ordinaire said:
Nah. He just realised too late that he'd introduced 8 children, which isn't such a nice mystical number as 7. So he jettisoned the one he liked least.

---

quote:

---

sanityman said:
I'm not sure that the experiences of people in this day and age are at all similar to Susan. To deny something you once held on faith is one thing, but she hadn't just "believed in Narnia. She had been there, had seen, smelt and experienced it all in a physical sense. She had met Aslan, not as you might "meet" God in prayer or the sacraments (no disrespect intended), but in the flesh.

To deny all of that, and say that it never existed, is to deny not just your former beliefs but all 5 of your senses. I think CSL intended this to be the analogy you describe, but I don't think it stands up to scrutiny.

---

quote:

---

I went to the south of France when I was eight; for Susan to deny Narnia would be like me denying France existed (I haven't been back there since).

---

But what if you went to the south of France, grew up, married and then one day almost inadvertently crossed a barrier and found yourself an eight-year-old, back in England... It's rather a different dynamic, I think.

Excellent point, Dyfrig!

For those of you interested in the process and dynamic of creativity among the Inklings, let me again recommend my friend's book, The Company They Keep - really excellent, readable, and inspiring - whether you're a Lewis Scholar or not--

Mousethief, Lewis wanted Joy listed as co-author of Til We Have Faces and the publisher vetoed it; she in fact co-wrote it with him. Glyer may speak of his early aborted attempt to write on the Psyche myth in TCTK but I don't recall off the top of my head (referencing Eutychus).

Part of what I love about The Great Divorce is the idea that people continue to have opportunities, that God continues to reach out. There are people in Hell who continue to move farther and farther away, isolating more and more - and then there are the folks who take the busride to the outskirts of Heaven... I don't find Biblical support for this POV but I hope it's true.

I think the 'nylons & lipstick' thing is shorthand, that's all - in and of themselves, nylons and/or lipstick are just fine. Josephine nails it regarding the efficacy (from the dmonic POV) of small temptations rather than great ones.
 

---

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:

quote:

---

sanityman said:
I'm not sure that the experiences of people in this day and age are at all similar to Susan. To deny something you once held on faith is one thing, but she hadn't just "believed in Narnia. She had been there, had seen, smelt and experienced it all in a physical sense. She had met Aslan, not as you might "meet" God in prayer or the sacraments (no disrespect intended), but in the flesh.

To deny all of that, and say that it never existed, is to deny not just your former beliefs but all 5 of your senses. I think CSL intended this to be the analogy you describe, but I don't think it stands up to scrutiny.

---

It's an interesting question, isn't it? How would you or I deal with living for 10 or 15 years in Narnia, ruling, growing up, traveling, etc., and then being immediately reduced back to childhood? That, in itself, would be really hard to process and I suspect some people would indeed deny the reality of the experience because they couldn't prove the experience to anybody on the outside of it (God bless Digory Kirke!).

---

{digression: I suspect prof Kirke wouldn't have wanted to extend that reasoning to people that he didn't already know were telling the truth . The over-simplifying of a difficult question reminds me strongly of the central trilemma in Mere Christianity /digression). Good point, and in line with Lewis's statements elsewhere, e.g. Uncle Andrew: "The trouble with trying to make yourself stupider that you really are is that you're likely to succeed." And of course the dwarves. I had always assumed it would have a huge impact, but it seems Narnia is not "like that," that you do forget. This always makes me think of the situation at the end of the movie Contact, and I wonder what I would have said...

quote:

---

Later you said:

quote:

---

I went to the south of France when I was eight; for Susan to deny Narnia would be like me denying France existed (I haven't been back there since).

---

But what if you went to the south of France, grew up, married and then one day almost inadvertently crossed a barrier and found yourself an eight-year-old, back in England... It's rather a different dynamic, I think.

---

And perhaps one in which you'd have to deny your experiences to preseve your sanity? Of course, Susan could have been lying, like Edmund pretending not to have been to Narnia the first time - but to herself. Ultimately, we're left guessing, because Lewis does rather throw her character away. I know one person who identified with her as a little girl, and still resents him for it.

- Chris.

eta: PS, with you on the Great Divorce!

[ 09. January 2008, 06:22: Message edited by: sanityman ]
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Re the Narnia, France, and England comparisons:

IMHO, it's more involved than that.

France is some place people generally know about and agree exists. Narnia is someplace no one knows about unless they've actually been there. You can't tell people about it--at best, they'll laugh; at worst, they may lock you up. You can't prove anything about it.

Now, plug that bit into the comparison that Lynn just made, and I think you'll have a more accurate comparison.

FWIW, I think this is the same problem people run into when they speculate about being one of Jesus's original disciples. Sometimes they think they would've stayed faithful, etc....but people, especially in a monotheistic culture, don't normally accept someone as a deity incarnate. We might not do any better than the people who lived then.
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Re women characters:

Add to the list of strong ones, Sarah of (Whatever) Corners in "The Great Divorce".
 

---

Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:
And perhaps one in which you'd have to deny your experiences to preseve your sanity? Of course, Susan could have been lying, like Edmund pretending not to have been to Narnia the first time - but to herself. Ultimately, we're left guessing, because Lewis does rather throw her character away. I know one person who identified with her as a little girl, and still resents him for it.

---

I'm always sorry when a work of fiction has a strong personally negative impact on a person... But I wonder if it makes any sense to think of Susan as suffering a peculiar form of PTSD (!! - but I'm actually seriously pondering it - of the more dissociative type).

GK, weird thread juxtaposition - I was reading that as "Sarah Connors" and I just mentioned that character on the tiger hell thread a few hours earlier! But I know who you mean, that fabulous, celebrated 'unimportant' soul...

I love it.
 

---

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by adso:
As I read the book, the problem with Susan was not that she wore make-up, but that her main interests had become parties and make-up and stuff.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Maybe a different thread, but within the context of THIS thread, as several people have pointed out, there is never the slightest suggestion that Susan is eaten by Tash. Or that any other horrible (eternal) fate befalls her

---

quote:

---

From the Last Battle:
And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared in his huge black shadow. [...] The children never saw them again. I don't know what became of them.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Personally, I read that as more than a suggestion of a nasty fate.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:
I guess that's right. It is worldliness he seems to have been warning against, not attractiveness (& as an aside, maybe to him, as to many men, lipstick & frilly knickers and all the rest of it aren't that attractive any way).

---

Indeed, Lewis himself seems to have preferred the middle-aged mother of one of his war-time compariots to lipstick and frilly knickers.

<... Naughty tangent ends.>
 

---

Posted by J Whitgift (# 1981) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
For those of you interested in the process and dynamic of creativity among the Inklings, let me again recommend my friend's book, The Company They Keep - really excellent, readable, and inspiring - whether you're a Lewis Scholar or not--

---

Is a very good book on how (JJR) Tolkien, the Lewis's (Warner and C.S.), (Charles) Williams and (Owen) Barfield interacted. I can therefore recommend it. However, it is probably best read alongside Humphrey Carpenter's seminal book on the aforementioned literary group 'The Inklings' even if some of the details of the two thesis's disagree. Carpenter's book is helpful as it provides greater biographical and background colour which assist in the reading of the book by LMC's friend.
 

---

Posted by Hiro's Leap (# 12470) on :
 
Hi Mousethief,

As I said, Lewis "never said Susan couldn't repent". Her final fate was left undecided. Saying she deserved to eaten by Tash was meant to be mostly tongue-in-cheek (hence the ), but if she'd been on the train with the rest on them what would have happened to her? Peter's tone makes it clear that her disbelief is a serious matter.

I'm not sure about annihilationism. How well does that fit in with Lewis' other writings? My (somewhat hazy) impression is that he appeared uncomfortable with hell but ultimately supported a traditional interpretation. Is that fair?

[ 09. January 2008, 15:38: Message edited by: Hiro's Leap ]
 

---

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by J Whitgift:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
For those of you interested in the process and dynamic of creativity among the Inklings, let me again recommend my friend's book, The Company They Keep - really excellent, readable, and inspiring - whether you're a Lewis Scholar or not--

---

Is a very good book on how (JJR) Tolkien, the Lewis's (Warner and C.S.), (Charles) Williams and (Owen) Barfield interacted. I can therefore recommend it.

---

As can I. My parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas - the only thing I'd seen the last few months that I was at all concerned about (except for all five series of Babylon 5 on DVD ) was Glyer's book. It's available via amazon.co.uk too.
 

---

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
...I'm not sure about annihilationism. How well does that fit in with Lewis' other writings? My (somewhat hazy) impression is that he appeared uncomfortable with hell but ultimately supported a traditional interpretation. Is that fair?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rossweisse:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
...I'm not sure about annihilationism. How well does that fit in with Lewis' other writings? My (somewhat hazy) impression is that he appeared uncomfortable with hell but ultimately supported a traditional interpretation. Is that fair?

---

My reading of Lewis is that he accepted that there is a Hell -- but that we choose to put ourselves there, by rejecting God's grace. That Hell is the absence of God, rather than a fiery pit. Not to say that there wouldn't be immense torment in such eternal loneliness...

Ross

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
if she'd been on the train with the rest on them what would have happened to her?

---

quote:

---

I'm not sure about annihilationism. How well does that fit in with Lewis' other writings?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Maybe a different thread, but within the context of THIS thread, as several people have pointed out, there is never the slightest suggestion that Susan is eaten by Tash. Or that any other horrible (eternal) fate befalls her

---

I agree it's not stated outright. Lewis was writing a children's book after all, and he certainly never said Susan couldn't repent. But looking at the rest of Lewis' writing, he did believe in hell - albeit perhaps reluctantly. And in that context Peter saying gravely "Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia", and then...

quote:

---

From the Last Battle:
And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared in his huge black shadow. [...] The children never saw them again. I don't know what became of them .

---

Personally, I read that as more than a suggestion of a nasty fate.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by MouseThief:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Personally, I read that as more than a suggestion of a nasty fate.

---

As you are welcome to. But don't blame it on Lewis. It sounds to me like annihilationism. And anyway it says nothing at all about Susan because she wasn't one of the ones that came to the door and looked at Aslan. That day of reckoning for our world is still to come, and Lewis holds out hope for repentence for those hardened to Aslan/God, as shown by Trumpkin and Bree and even Susan.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by J Whitgift:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
For those of you interested in the process and dynamic of creativity among the Inklings, let me again recommend my friend's book, The Company They Keep - really excellent, readable, and inspiring - whether you're a Lewis Scholar or not--

---

Is a very good book on how (JJR) Tolkien, the Lewis's (Warner and C.S.), (Charles) Williams and (Owen) Barfield interacted. I can therefore recommend it. However, it is probably best read alongside Humphrey Carpenter's seminal book on the aforementioned literary group 'The Inklings' even if some of the details of the two thesis's disagree. Carpenter's book is helpful as it provides greater biographical and background colour which assist in the reading of the book by LMC's friend.

---

I think Diana presumes folks have already read The Inklings. And yes, there's a huge difference in the fundamental group theory at work: Carpenter argues that the Inklings didn't influence each other (based in part on their own statements) and Diana argues that they couldn't help but influence each other and unpacks historically why such a weird view came into being in the first place (in short: an understandable reaction against the accusation that they had a "group mind" !!!) and looks at the complex and varied dynamics of influence (I personally think this book is really insightful and practical for writers and other creative folk). How cool that you've read it

And Doc Tor (I'll tell Diana; she'll be jazzed).
 

---

Posted by Hiro's Leap (# 12470) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon J:
I'm not sure that I would call Lewis' postition in TPoP annihilistic [...] Lewis talks about the remains of something which had once been a human soul, just in the same way ashes had once been a log before it was put on the fire.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by prettyfly:
I think these words are worth noting, because ISTM that in saying that, Lewis is explicitly not saying that Susan - or anyone else - is damned

---

I might say similar, but with the emphisis changed: "Lewis is not explicitly saying...".

Actually, in part I agree with you (and everyone else who thinks I'm reading too much into the books): Lewis deliberately left some ambiguity in the fate of the non-believers. Part of this perhaps reflected his own struggles with the issue (IIRC); I also suspect he was a kindly soul and didn't want to scare children shitless.

quote:

---

even if I had some idea I don't think it is my place to speculate.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Part of this perhaps reflected his own struggles with the issue (IIRC) <snip> I honestly don't see why it's a stretch to interpret the passage this way. IMO he's at least consciously hinting that this may be their fate

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:I also suspect he was a kindly soul and didn't want to scare children shitless.

---

Well, yeah, that too
 

---

Posted by Dinghy Sailor (# 8507) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by prettyfly:
ISTM that in saying that, Lewis is explicitly not saying that Susan - or anyone else - is damned or off to a fate of eternal suffering/punishment/banishment

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
(I personally think this book is really insightful and practical for writers and other creative folk). How cool that you've read it

And Doc Tor (I'll tell Diana; she'll be jazzed).

---

I have every intention of stealing all her ideas and presenting them as my own for my next Greenbelt talk...
 

---

Posted by MouseThief (# 953) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dinghy Sailor:

quote:

---

Originally posted by prettyfly:
ISTM that in saying that, Lewis is explicitly not saying that Susan - or anyone else - is damned or off to a fate of eternal suffering/punishment/banishment

---

Personally, I don't hold out much hope for the guy who got carried off screaming by Tash.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
Many of the problems expressed on this thread were problems JRRT had with the series; he was a fan of much of Lewis' work but not Narnia.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
Many of the problems expressed on this thread were problems JRRT had with the series; he was a fan of much of Lewis' work but not Narnia.

---

If I were JRR Tolkien I would not be a fan of Narnia. It's the difference between working out your own mythology by integrating Norse elements into a Jewish setting, and raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:What Mousethief said: CSL wasn't writing Theology 101 for Precocious Children. First and foremost, these are fantasy novels designed to sneak Jesus past the "watchful dragons" at the Sunday School door; he had very strong feelings on the baptism of the imagination (as in our imaginations). He was thinking, "what would Jesus be like if He was in a world of talking animals?"

---

I know no-one will agree with me here , but I think he succeeded almost too well. I've always found the character of Aslan to be immensely appealing, much more so than anything a reading of the Gospels can conjure up in my imagination. Aslan isn't half as troublesome and unreasonable as that fellow in the NT.

- Chris.

[ET tidy up attributions]

[ 10. January 2008, 10:15: Message edited by: sanityman ]
 

---

Posted by J Whitgift (# 1981) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:

quote:

---

Originally posted by J Whitgift:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
For those of you interested in the process and dynamic of creativity among the Inklings, let me again recommend my friend's book, The Company They Keep - really excellent, readable, and inspiring - whether you're a Lewis Scholar or not--

---

Is a very good book on how (JJR) Tolkien, the Lewis's (Warner and C.S.), (Charles) Williams and (Owen) Barfield interacted. I can therefore recommend it. However, it is probably best read alongside Humphrey Carpenter's seminal book on the aforementioned literary group 'The Inklings' even if some of the details of the two thesis's disagree. Carpenter's book is helpful as it provides greater biographical and background colour which assist in the reading of the book by LMC's friend.

---

I think Diana presumes folks have already read The Inklings. And yes, there's a huge difference in the fundamental group theory at work: Carpenter argues that the Inklings didn't influence each other (based in part on their own statements) and Diana argues that they couldn't help but influence each other and unpacks historically why such a weird view came into being in the first place (in short: an understandable reaction against the accusation that they had a "group mind" !!!) and looks at the complex and varied dynamics of influence (I personally think this book is really insightful and practical for writers and other creative folk). How cool that you've read it

---

Fair enough. I read it as someone with an interest in the Inklings in general, and in Tolkien and Williams in particular, rather than as a writer/academic. I wanted to highlight Carpenter's book as a good source, alongside your friend's book, for those new to the Inklings/who don't know much about them.

'The Company They Keep' is certainly a very well written book - I yomped through it in about 1.5 days. However, I would say that her thesis is fairly obvious one, once you begin to think about it. (That groups will cross-fertilise is a fairly isn't a new idea, it happens at many different levels from menstruration to literature.) What I find rather odd is that as Carpenter should have rejected this thesis out of hand. (Though to be fair Carpenter was a biographical journalist not a literary historian or theorist.)

If you're friend is interested, what the Inkling world* really needs is a decent biography of Charles Williams as one doesn't exist in print at the moment.

* Not Narnia or Middle Earth!
 

---

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:
Aslan isn't half as troublesome and unreasonable as that fellow in the NT.

---

quote:

---

... It is made clear that the rest of her (Susan's) family dies and goes to heaven while she is left behind and probably damned.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Twilight:

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:
Aslan isn't half as troublesome and unreasonable as that fellow in the NT.

---

I found Aslam cold and distant. I much prefer that NT fellow with his weakness for children and messed up adults.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by cattyish
In The Great Divorce Lewis wrote again about what happens at death. I think he believed we can reject God and lose out on Heaven, and that Hell is real and horrible.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Birdseye:
the lingering thought is not 'Reader you're doomed if you don't die in childhood' it's 'don't lose sight of paradise as you grow up'

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's the difference between working out your own mythology by integrating Norse elements into a Jewish setting, and raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Birdseye:
I'm a bit anxious that so many people seem to have read C.S.Lewis as though he were an oracle of truth <snip>

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's the difference between working out your own mythology by integrating Norse elements into a Jewish setting, and raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately.

---

What's wrong with "raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately"?

---

quote:

---

The prime motive [for writing LOTR] was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
What's wrong with "raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately"?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
What's wrong with "raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately"?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
What's wrong with "raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately"?

---

Nothing necessarily - it's a matter of taste. (Although the Tolkien way involves more work, and has less risk of suspension of disbelief. Narnia is occasionally a little camp. But then a lot of people think the same about Tom Bombadil.)

---

Less risk of suspension of suspension of disbelief, surely?

[edited to make sense at top of page]

[ 10. January 2008, 16:07: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Hiro's Leap (# 12470) on :
 
Mousethief,
If you're going to quote Tolkien, it's worth noting he seems to have been a much stronger critic of Narnia than anyone here:

quote:

---

From Letters to Malcolm and the trouble with Narnia:
IN THE EARLY SPRING OF 1949, C.S. Lewis read part of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, still in manuscript, to J.R.R. Tolkien. Expecting enthusiasm from his longtime friend and colleague, he received instead what would remain Tolkien's permanent dismissal of the work. The assessment was blunt and unequivocal: Tolkien deemed the book almost worthless--a carelessly written jumble of unrelated mythologies.

---

quote:

---

Some things were meant to be parallel between Narnia and the Real World™, but not all things need be. Lewis can have brought the wicked (however defined) to annihilation in the Narnian world without saying he believes that's the fate of anybody in the Real World™.

---

quote:

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Oh, and it's hell being thrown into the Lake of Fire, iirc. From that nasty and bizarre last book of the New Testament

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Yes. Which was kind of my point.
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
Just one thought. If the real world didn't end, then presumably the Pevril children's parents are in heaven because they died in the train accident. Except, if they were going to hang around the train, why on earth weren't they hanging around their children who they wouldn't see in a long time. I find this quite hard to accept, so the best solution I can find is that they died elsewhere or the world ended. That could be just me though.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I don't think physical location had anything to do with it. The Pevensie children were certainly on the train in the beginning of the story, and their bodies were presumably found in the wreckage somewhere after the last page. I assume the parents were on the platform, waiting for the train to come in. There's no way they could have been together unless the train had already come in and stopped (in which case an accident would be hard to visualize).

It appears, then, that everyone else who died in that wreck would have gone to the England version of heaven--but Aslan had a particular job for the Pevensies etc., and so yanked those particular souls over into Narnia for a short time. After all, since everyone going "further in, further up" is going to meet on the mainland, the family reunion is just a matter of time.
 

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Posted by Nicolemrw (# 28) on :
 
I don't think they knew they were on the train. As I remember it, it was coincidental.
 

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Posted by prettyfly (# 13157) on :
 
It's been a while since I read it, and I don't have it to hand, but I think I assumed that their parents had been caught up in the accident somehow - I think I imagined they were waiting on the platform and the crash had some sort of impact... But now think about it that maybe isn't all that probable...

Will have to re-read.
 

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Posted by Nicolemrw (# 28) on :
 
In any case though, the parents were def. associated with the crash, I'm pretty sure about that.

I'' take a look at the library copy tomorrow when I'm at work and check.
 

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Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :
 
They were in the train coming the other way.
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
Fair enough. Still odd, but it's probably just been too long since I read those books.
 

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Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :
 
My recollection is that one of the Pevensies says something like "I saw the train coming into the station, and I thought it was taking the curve a bit fast, and the next thing I knew we were in Narnia." I can't remember who was in the train and who was on the platform.

As for the timing of the eschaton, Lewis makes it very clear that the worlds are on different schedules. Marnia isn't created until 1940, Earth time, and Jadis in The Magician's Nephew comes from a world that is dying in about 1900 earth time.
 

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Posted by MouseThief (# 953) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Mousethief,
If you're going to quote Tolkien, it's worth noting he seems to have been a much stronger critic of Narnia than anyone here

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quote:

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But OTOH the analogies to Christ within Narnia are so powerful that it's difficult not to look for other parallels with Lewis' faith (IMO).

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quote:

---

quote:

---

Oh, and it's hell being thrown into the Lake of Fire, iirc. From that nasty and bizarre last book of the New Testament

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Yes. Which was kind of my point.

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It was your point it was from the Revelation? I'm confused.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by sanityman:
I've always found the character of Aslan to be immensely appealing, much more so than anything a reading of the Gospels can conjure up in my imagination. Aslan isn't half as troublesome and unreasonable as that fellow in the NT.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by J Whitgift:
Fair enough. I read it as someone with an interest in the Inklings in general, and in Tolkien and Williams in particular, rather than as a writer/academic. I wanted to highlight Carpenter's book as a good source, alongside your friend's book, for those new to the Inklings/who don't know much about them.

'The Company They Keep' is certainly a very well written book - I yomped through it in about 1.5 days. However, I would say that her thesis is fairly obvious one, once you begin to think about it. (That groups will cross-fertilise is a fairly isn't a new idea, it happens at many different levels from menstruration to literature.) What I find rather odd is that as Carpenter should have rejected this thesis out of hand. (Though to be fair Carpenter was a biographical journalist not a literary historian or theorist.)

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quote:

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If you're friend is interested, what the Inkling world* really needs is a decent biography of Charles Williams as one doesn't exist in print at the moment.

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quote:

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Moo said:
IIRC Lewis, in his introduction to The Great Divorce said explicitly that he did not want to get people talking about what happens after death. He was using the heaven/hell setting to discuss the behavior of human beings on earth. When he asks George Macdonald about whether people have a choice after death, Macdonald tells him he can't understand the answer to that question.

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I'm not sure exactly what the preface says (my books being mostly packed at the moment ) but he certainly failed if it was his purpose not to get people talking about what happens after death! Of course, people are going to talk and speculate no matter what, so-- I completely agree with Macdonald's statement; I think there are many things we can't wrap our brains around while walking in this flesh - certain things will, indeed, be clearer.

quote:

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Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
It's the difference between working out your own mythology by integrating Norse elements into a Jewish setting, and raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately.

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What's wrong with "raiding half a dozen different folklores (plus Father Christmas) indiscriminately"?

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Well, if you're a purist... And I think in many ways Tolkien was a purist (he described himself as "Niggle") so, for him, it would be disturbing. For some it would feel like 'compartment rupture' and then it depends whether one likes that sensation or not; for others it doesn't make a bit of difference.

Dinghy Sailor and Mousethief, Tash carrying the guy off could have even been the equivalent of the Tatiana leaping out of the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas night and dispatching a young man (and, as horrible as it is, doesn't that resonate with portents? Doesn't it beg being included in a supernatural thriller? Rather Place of the Lion-esque?).

I rather like the appearance of Father Christmas as an indicator that the witch's hold over Narnia is breaking, that winter's end is not far off. And of course for children the concept of "always winter but never Christmas" is very powerful even if it doesn't make good logical sense within the framework of the book itself.

I do think you can make a good argument for Tom Bombadil in LoTR being the equivalent of Father Christmas in TLTWTW; it comes from the early incarnation of the novel as a sequel to The Hobbit and despite the fact that it doesn't really fit the tone of the final work, Tolkien retains it, finding something of mystical importance in the person of Bombadil.

BTW, last name is Pevensie, not Pevril (which is kind of nice - like blending Pevensie and Bovril!).

Yeah, sometimes a children's fantasy novel is just a children's fantasy novel...
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
My recollection is that one of the Pevensies says something like "I saw the train coming into the station, and I thought it was taking the curve a bit fast, and the next thing I knew we were in Narnia." I can't remember who was in the train and who was on the platform.

As for the timing of the eschaton, Lewis makes it very clear that the worlds are on different schedules. Marnia isn't created until 1940, Earth time, and Jadis in The Magician's Nephew comes from a world that is dying in about 1900 earth time.

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quote:

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(Roger Lancelyn) Green read all seven of the (Narnia) books in manuscript, and his encouragement and criticism shaped the series in a number of ways. He edited the work, removing some stiffness and cliches and "and occasional forced jocularity". More substantially, he helped Lewis address the stories to children, for in this period there were very few children in Lewis's life. Lewis had used a lot of slang from his own childhood which by then had become completely obsolete: "Being rather more in touch with contemporary children, Green was able to suggest a number of small alterations and improvements, ranging from the deletion of "Crikey!" as a common exclamation among the young ... to the omission of bird's-nesting from among the Pevensie children's occupations - Lewis being unaware of the revolution against egg-collectors achieved by Arthur Ransome".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
The Magician's Nephew is set when "Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street" (that indiscriminate mixture of fictional characters again)[...]

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quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
(though I don't know who the Bastable boys who were digging for gold are)

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quote:

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First published in 1899, it tells the story of Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and Horace Octavious (H.O.) Bastable, and their attempts to assist their widowed father and recover the fortunes of their family; its sequels are the The Wouldbegoods (1899) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904).

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
Thank you! My E. Nesbit extends to The Railway Children and no further.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
For anyone who's strict about keeping their fantasy worlds consist (I'm not, at least as a reader), Father Christmas in Narnia would be the absolute horror because the story is about a parallel world with Aslan as a parallel incarnation of Christ -- but Father Christmas is a character from the mythology of our world, attached to a festival which celebrates the incarnation of OUR Jesus. If you see what I mean. Hopeless boundary-crossing there, but I don't care.

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quote:

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"There was a real railway accident," said Aslan softly. "Your father and mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead."

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Eutychus:
What Trudy said. He's one crossover too many from the point of view of suspension of disbelief. Don't worry, I haven't thrown my copy of TLTWATW away yet though.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
Or perhaps it's more like a semi-permeable membrane and there are places one can press-through from the Pevensy's England (as distinct from, say, Ken and J Whitgift's England) to Narnia.

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Our England is quite permeable. All you need to know is where to look... Sometimes you can catch glimpses of the Shire too, if you screw your eyes up just so.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
Gee, and there I was thinking New Zealand...
 

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Posted by bush baptist (# 12306) on :
 
(Coming in very late) There wouldn't be a problem with Father Christmas if he was Father Winter, in the Russian tradition (who also comes jollily in the middle of winter with gifts). Father Winter was probably simply turned into Father Christmas sometime, anyway. (Like Eostre into Easter.)
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Our England is quite permeable. All you need to know is where to look... Sometimes you can catch glimpses of the Shire too, if you screw your eyes up just so.

---

At university we had a friend who was quite taken with the idea of the best of each world ending up in Heaven à la Aslan's country - not just the scenery but great works of art and buildings. Seeing as how we were in Durham, the cathedral was of course on the list!

Meanwhile as a result of this thread I have got hold of a copy of Till We Have Faces. It's been a long time since I read it and I haven't finished it yet, but I'm thinking that Redival bears some resemblance to an older Susan. (No Father Christmas here, either !)
 

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Posted by Oriel (# 748) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:

Interesting post, Oriel - I've not read We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Oriel:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:

Interesting post, Oriel - I've not read We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea.

---

You can see the character develop this way through the other Swallows and Amazons books, but it's particularly striking there, in (what I believe to be) the final book in the series.

---

quote:

---

At university we had a friend who was quite taken with the idea of the best of each world ending up in Heaven à la Aslan's country - not just the scenery but great works of art and buildings. Seeing as how we were in Durham, the cathedral was of course on the list!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Wanderer:
And of course the lamppost is in Durham - at the end of Prebend's Bridge. Or so local legend says.

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quote:

---

As for the Father Christmas bit, the problem becomes clear whenever you see the novel dramatized, I've watched several stage versions by now, all of which were working hard to make Narnia as credible as possible. Then along comes Father Christmas and everything looks rather silly. The same thing happened with the film, despite all the resources they had. When the old man appeared there were sniggers form parts of the audience, which didn't help the overall suspension of disbelief.

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I've never seen any live dramatised versions and thought this prior to the film, but that puts my point very well.

[ 12. January 2008, 14:36: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
Entirely off-topic, but I must share this .

It's so amazingly wonderful all I can do is
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
Well, they'd win the Mythcon Food Sculpture* competition, if it was a competition (it's not - it's simply a potentially embarrassing presentation of artistic banquet scraps** made to our GOH, which brings us back to Neil Gaiman of the opening post. See? Not far afield!), but we craft our food sculptures in 10 minutes or so; these guys took seven days. SEVEN DAYS. *sniff*



Thanks, that was a total delight - just the kind of madness I appreciate AND the fallen Nazgûl mount made of black licorice really is thoroughly awesome.


*in the bottom third of the loaded page, under the heading Themes Universal, the paragraph that begins "He was promptly awarded..." See?! Actual published citations for this madness!

**disgusting anecdote: at the Mythcon 27 banquet we were served trout (sadly sans head; I did ask) and as folks wandered by my table asking what they could contribute to the sculpture, I asked for their fishtails. I proceeded to make a grand swirling mountain of fishtails (it was lovely, actually - wish I had a digital photo of it; I'd prove it to you) and we called it the 'Book of Lost Fish-Tales' in honor of the recent HoME release. Connie Willis was sitting next to me with a look of complete horror on her face (my, how she dreaded the banquet when she was our GOH several years later-- ) and I spent the rest of the night trying to wash the smell of fish off my hands: "OUT, damn stench!" but to no avail. So really a candy mock-up of a great literary event is perfectly reasonable.
 

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Posted by kuruman (# 8892) on :
 
Going back a bit to the train discussion: I may have missed it, but has anyone looked at the people who died from the point of view of the fact that Lewis was writing for children? I remember myself the immense comfort as an 8-year-old when I realised that the characters had "died" to have Lucy find her parents there as well. Kuruzapplet 2 has recently gone through a whole lot of grief over coming to terms with death (he's 5)and his greatest fear isn't death itself (as he's still innocent enough to accept heaven with no doubts) but the concept of being separated from the things he loves most: immediate family. To me it's a remarkable sign of just how well Lewis understood children's feelings that he's willing to stretch narrative probabilities in order for the parents to be there too. To me that's infinitely more important than whether or not he was up to the latest slang. After all, what was the "latest slang" then is hopelessly dated now but doesn't concern my children at all. The characters dying and leaving their parents behind, on the other hand, would have distressed them hugely.

I also remember clearly being distressed about Susan, but having complete faith that Aslan would sort her out in time. Can anyone else remember their reactions when they first read these books as a child ? As children's books, isn't it fairer to judge them from that point of view than our adult one whenever possible?
 

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Posted by Emma. (# 3571) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by The Wanderer:
And of course the lamppost is in Durham - at the end of Prebend's Bridge. Or so local legend says.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by bush baptist:
(Coming in very late) There wouldn't be a problem with Father Christmas if he was Father Winter, in the Russian tradition (who also comes jollily in the middle of winter with gifts). Father Winter was probably simply turned into Father Christmas sometime, anyway. (Like Eostre into Easter.)

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quote:

---

Originally posted by maleveque:
You know, I always figured that Father Christmas got into Narnia via the first King and Queen - Frank and Helen....

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Oh, I like that explanation, Anne -- it makes tremendous sense. Thank you!

(Yes, Narnia is a very English place, isn't it?)

Ross
 

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Posted by bush baptist (# 12306) on :
 
Agreed! That was great, Maleveque!
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by maleveque:
You know, I always figured that Father Christmas got into Narnia via the first King and Queen - Frank and Helen....

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Perhaps somebody's chocolate Santa dropped out of their pocket into the soft ground of the newly-created Narnia while it was still growing gold and silver trees, lamp-posts, etc
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
oh I like that!
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
I love it!
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by The Wanderer:
And of course the lamppost is in Durham - at the end of Prebend's Bridge.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Oriel:
And both have suffering to come: although Ransome may not have intended it, we now read the books in the knowledge that the Second World War is looming, and with a father (and possibly by then a brother as well) in the Navy, Susan Walker will know at least worry, if not loss. However, this suffering brings opportunity: women were pressed into all sorts of service in the War, and Susan could well find herself doing things that would have been inconceivable a few years earlier.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
* It sticks because I was the same age as Roger was at the beginning of the book.

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Me too as I recall, but the disconcerting thing as I read through them was that he grew up a lot faster than me.

Ken, the Wanderer... *sigh* "Grey towers of Durham, yet well I love thy mixed and massive piles...". Lantern waste has to be that strange empty spot in the middle of town, just as John's college has to be the basis for Bracton in THS. Though what I mostly remember about Prebends bridge was it being a good place for kissing

[ETA though, Wanderer, I think my corner of France comes pretty close to the Shire too]

[ 14. January 2008, 19:00: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Ken, wow re your lamp post anecdote!
 

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Posted by bush baptist (# 12306) on :
 

quote:

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so many female protaginists, rather than just tokens, and that they all had different personalities

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(Still off on a tangent, but yes, and not just the protagonists, either -- even the minor players had distinct personalities, like the couple the D.'s boarded with in Winter Holiday, and Mrs Blacket, and her aunt. Except Peggy -- Peggy missed out on personality. )
 

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Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
The difference may have been something in Ransome's wanting to convert you to a life of sailing, and the freedoms you get with that, while Lewis wanted to convert you to a life of belief, and... But Lewis' story was created by a SERIOUSLY academic person, while Ransome was much more a people person. (judging by his trips to Russia, and his Racundra's First Cruise )

And, has been pointed out, the major characters in Ransome are based on direct observation, described by a newspaperman, while Lewis was working entirely in theory.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
ooooh, Ken, a frisson of wonder at your Durham lamp post tale...

quote:

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Originally posted by maleveque:
I love C.S. Lewis and I love Narnia, but I have to admit that Arthur Ransome had a much better understanding of the child's imagination.
Now that Father Christmas hypothesis of mine.... should I write it up as a paper, or as a story?

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Either works: you could submit a story to The Mythic Circle or submit a paper to Mythlore but I'd really love to see you work up a paper comparing treatment of children between the two series and present it at the annual Mythopoeic Conference, conveniently located in the northeast for the first time... *nudge, nudge*. I'd love it, anyway.

Or Nicole-- seriously, check out the call for papers (anybody interested in these kinds of discussions should take a look; we get the occasional Brit coming over and presenting and folks come from all over the USA to attend Mythcon - it's a great, small conference: intellectually stimulating and lots of fun - an unbeatable combination).

Obviously I need to read the Ransome books.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
Horseman Bree, by all accounts CSL was very much a people person as well as an academic. Don't be confused by Anthony Hopkins' watery portrayal in Shadowlands.

(the edit window was particularly short today--)
 

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Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
But his idea of children was rather theoretical, compared to Ransome's direct reading of the Altounians.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
It may have been more theoretical but Mrs. Moore's daughter was in the home during quite a few years so he did, in fact, have the experience of living with a child in the home - which isn't the same as a brood underfoot, still... I think it's also possible he was going for a certain kind of "classic" or "old style" feel to the books. And it may be a result of his hasty writing (these books, in particular, were written very quickly).

I really don't know why his children don't 'read' better (I like them, personally, but I'm not looking for realism). Maybe he just wasn't very good at portraying children?!
 

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Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
The Ransome books certainly converted me to an interest in sailing, just as the Lewis books coloured my attitude to Christianity.

But the Ransomes had much more feeling of possible actuality - the kids were able to be just a bit freer and more reliable than "regular" kids, (being able to camp without supervision and without fighting, for instance) which made the stories more likely.

The Lewis books were something that happened to the kids, rather than something they did to themselves, although the kids certainly responded in desirable or possible ways. That response was what kept up the interest.

The idea that kids could go unsupervised for really quite long times in either set of stories is quite mythical now, BTW!

[ 15. January 2008, 09:13: Message edited by: Horseman Bree ]
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
It may be that he was simply looking back at his own childhood experiences. He clearly is working through some of his childhood traumas in the books. (E.g. his mom's death through Digory and his mom, boarding school bullies, etc.) I think he did a great job with situations kids face--loyalty to friends, learning from your mistakes, taking risks, etc. The bit in "Dawn Treader" where Lucy magically overhears a friend's moment of weakness is pitch-perfect, IMHO.

IIRC, CSL came off pretty well as a person in Sheldon Van Auken's "A Severe Mercy". Long time since I read it, though.
 

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Posted by Eirenist (# 13343) on :
 
I admit at the outset that it is sometimes misleading to rely on ideas floated in one of an author's books draw conclusions about his views in general. However, if we look at CSL's 'The Great Divorce' we find that in that story those who have not reached Heaven after their life on Earth are still given the opportunity to visit it and to stay permanently if they wish (and can bear it). So I doubt very much if we are supposed to assume that Susan is irrevocably lost because 'at the silliest time of her life' she turned away from Narnia. I must concede that the portrayals of women in TGD are in general far from flattering, though I think we get a glimpse of an 'Aunt Polly'-ish figure.
 

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Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
I don't think the portraits of women in TGD are less flattering than the portraits of men. Almost all the characters are shown in the act of making bad decisions -- choices that will keep them trapped in Hell rather than allowing them to move on to Heaven. The one character whom we see making a positive move forward is male; the one character we see already celebrated as a great saint in heaven is female. I think it's pretty balanced. Maybe there is some gender stereotyping in the sins Lewis assigns to the characters (the women, as I recall: possessive "love," vanity about physical appearance; the men: intellectual and artistic snobbery, sexual perversion) but both male and female human beings are shown as being capable of both great weakness and great strength when it comes to making moral choices.
 

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Posted by Eirenist (# 13343) on :
 
Regarding TGD, yes, I agree, Trudy S. I notice that the discussion seems to have moved on since the idea of contributing took hold of me; dare I say we have got a bit away from the issue of Susan?
If one may stray a bit farther, I would say that in Lucy we have a parallel to the character of Titty in the Ransome books - quite a deep and imaginative person as protagonist. She and Edmund are the most fully worked out figures in the Narnia books(I'm afraid I can't believe in any boy, John, I mean, who regularly exclaims 'By Jove!'. Maybe this was current boys' slang at Malvern in the early 20th century, but language at the private school I attended in the 1940s was very different, though hardly such as any publisher would have accepted in a children's book at the time, or even now.)

To my mind the most successful book is 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader', in which Edmund and Lucy are the protagonists. Interestingly (has anyone noticed this?) CSL was using the ancient Irish tale-form of the 'Immram', the voyage into an unknown sea, which Alwyn and Brinley Rees describe in 'Celtic Heritage' as 'a Celtic Book of the Dead'. But perhaps I am digressing a bit too far.
 

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Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
The idea that kids could go unsupervised for really quite long times in either set of stories is quite mythical now, BTW!

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• have no parents (viz Harry Potter)
• have parents who are not part of the story (any number of school stories) have parents who ignore them (Matilda is a superb example) have parents who don't supervise them (any number of gritty realist teen novels)
• have parents who require looking after, thus giving the child the parenting role (again, gritty teen novels)

quote:

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That was one of the things that disturbed me about Harry Potter--no adult supervision, most of the time.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Nicolemrw:
In the first book, Mrs Walker comes over in the row boat to do a surprise inspection of the island to make sure they've set everything up properly and safely.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Golden Key:
That was one of the things that disturbed me about Harry Potter--no adult supervision, most of the time.

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Nah, Dumbledore always had his eye on Harry.
 

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Posted by Nicolemrw (# 28) on :
 
Besides, We Didn't Mean to go to Sea is about exactly that. They didn't mean to. They are supposed to be safely anchored, but the adult friend in who's care they are supposed to be doesn't show up (at the end of the book you find he's been in an accident and has been unconcious), they forget to loosen the anchor ropes, the tide rises, they slip their anchor, it's a foggy night, and the next thing they know they're heading across the North Sea in a storm, and the only thing they can safely do is keep going forward.

So that's the only one of the books where they are in real danger alone without adults. (Well, there's Missy Lee, too, but I'm just realizing I don't remember that one well at all, and I can't remember how they get in that situation or who else is there.)
 

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Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Nicolemrw:
(Well, there's Missy Lee, too, but I'm just realizing I don't remember that one well at all, and I can't remember how they get in that situation or who else is there.)

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Eirenist:
To my mind the most successful book is 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader', in which Edmund and Lucy are the protagonists. Interestingly (has anyone noticed this?) CSL was using the ancient Irish tale-form of the 'Immram', the voyage into an unknown sea, which Alwyn and Brinley Rees describe in 'Celtic Heritage' as 'a Celtic Book of the Dead'. But perhaps I am digressing a bit too far.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
Still thinking, this time about some of my favourite young adult writing. Tamora Pierce is almost the only fantasy writer I can think of where adults (not parents in the main) play a significant part in the plot. She is outstanding for having adults who take their responsibility very seriously - the one character who does have parents in evidence discusses sex and politics with her mother, and Pierce's worlds show places where children have adults to emulate and admire. And as a result the reader is encouraged to emulate and admire as well. But then, her characters grow up and mature in the books.

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I can recommend William Nicholson's Windsingers fantasy trilogy. It's an interesting riff on the 'Chosen Child' theme - but the parents involved are always around, realistic and have problems and missions of their own. (Note to self: time to re-read them.)
 

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Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :
 
True, maybe I should reread them, along with Cynthia Voigt's Dicey books, which are all about forming family and what it means to be family (since we're off on a tangent).
 

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Posted by MouseThief (# 953) on :
 
One thing about Harry that explains his independence from adults is that for his entire life, he has lived with the Dursleys and has had it driven home to him that adults are untrustworthy and cruel. Expecting him to show up at Hogwarts and instantly and magically grow an appreciation and trust of adults is absurd. So of course when he finds ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump, he investigates on his own, or drags other adolescent/young adult friends along, quite often over their objections to the effect that he should tell Dumbledore or another adult at the school.

And although he's dying for a father, seeking one in Dumbledore and Sirius Black, he seems to come up empty on both counts. For some reason he never cottons onto Mr Weasley as a substitute father, although he does take to Mrs Weasley as a substitute mother.

Certainly in LWW, Peter and Susan take their troubles with Edmund and Lucy to the Professor, although his unexpected answers kind of sour them on seeking his help. British children really were separated from their parents in WW2, so that's hardly a phony contrivance. And Lewis billeted many of these children so he was writing from experience, albeit from the other end of the telescope.

My favorite Narnian tale is the Horse and His Boy. I think both of the child characters in that book are well-drawn, and I think it is nearly the most like a classical fairy tale in its structure and plot. Both Shasta and Aravis come off very strong and brave and clever/intelligent (the things Lewis admired in children), and certainly Hwin is no less an admirable horse than Bree.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
And I particularly like the ending, how they marry in order to go on arguing more conveniently...
 

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Posted by prettyfly (# 13157) on :
 
There's another similarity to Harry Potter and Narnia - specifically LWW - in that the witch and Voldemort both fail in their schemes because they do not take "deeper" magic into account, that magic being love and, as someone mentioned earlier, self sacrifice.

JK said something wonderful on her website under the FAQs (yes, I'm a bit of a Potter geek...) - that when Voldemort took some of Harry/Lily's blood into himself in The Goblet of Fire he unwittingly transferred some of that powerful love and self-sacrifice into himself (it was that which saved Harry from his original curse). And that "If he had repented he could have been healed more deeply than anyone could have supposed".

I thought that was amazing... and I think CSL would have approved
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
And I particularly like the ending, how they marry in order to go on arguing more conveniently...

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quote:

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Originally posted by ken:
But how could you write an adventure story about children or younger teenagers any other way? If they are constantly under the orders of parents or teachers then its not really their adventure is it? So you might as well give up and go home.

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quote:

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Again, Nesbit is the model here. Maybe not the first to write books like that, but the model for what came after.

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quote:

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And anyone who mentions Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer will be taken outside and shot. They are different. Sort of.

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Funny, Twain said that about anyone who tried to find a moral in "Huckleberry Finn"!
 

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Posted by JonahMan (# 12126) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
Ken took the words out of my mouth. I've spent the hour since I last posted trying to think of children's and young adult's novels where there are functional parents who play an important part in the story. I can think of a number where there are functional foster parents or adults in authority, but the children still have their adventures without them.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:
Ken took the words out of my mouth. I've spent the hour since I last posted trying to think of children's and young adult's novels where there are functional parents who play an important part in the story. I can think of a number where there are functional foster parents or adults in authority, but the children still have their adventures without them.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
The only adventure books I can think of which have functional parents are A Wrinkle In Time, where the father has gone missing but is restored,

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quote:

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Originally posted by Golden Key:

quote:

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Originally posted by ken:
But how could you write an adventure story about children or younger teenagers any other way? If they are constantly under the orders of parents or teachers then its not really their adventure is it? So you might as well give up and go home.

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At the very least, you could have an in-house dorm parent. The kids could sneak by him/her, get caught occasionally, and have someone to advise and comfort them when things were rough. At least they'd always know that an adult was readily available.

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Sort of like Harry Potter.
 

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Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by ken:
(Every mother figure in Diana Wynne Jones books is evil, almost every father figure well-meanign but ineffectual).

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And they're becoming worse, which is beginning to piss me off, rather. I have been wondering about DWJ's mother ever since Deep Secret, and Conrad's Fate convinced me that she has a "thing" about mothers.

Although to be totally fair to DWJ, Millie is actually good, nice AND competent as a parent and Mara in the Derkholm books is fabulous.

[ 16. January 2008, 19:42: Message edited by: Arabella Purity Winterbottom ]
 

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Posted by adso (# 2895) on :
 
I've found an involved parent!
The father in Roald Dahl's "Danny The Champion of the World"!
I love RD's postscript to this book: "When you grow up and have children of your own do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY."

There's also "Jo's Boys" (sequel to "Little Women") where Jo and Prof Bhaer are closely involved in many of the adventures of their own sons and the other children at the school. Though, of course, this mainly works because most readers would have got to know Jo as a teenager and still don't quite see her as an adult.

From the few biographical details I recall of CSL's father, I'm not surprised CSL didn't decide to include the parents in any adventures.
 

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Posted by prettyfly (# 13157) on :
 
Well, there are parent figures even if not actual parents - the beavers for example in LWW are sort of parent figures to the children, feeding them, guiding them, advising them.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by ken:

quote:

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Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
The only adventure books I can think of which have functional parents are A Wrinkle In Time, where the father has gone missing but is restored,

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But he's not a functional parent for the main part of the story. He can't function as a parent because he's been captured by [NO SPOILERS] in an alternate universe!

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Originally posted by maleveque:
...Now that Father Christmas hypothesis of mine.... should I write it up as a paper, or as a story?

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quote:

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Originally posted by The Wanderer:
I've never noticed a problem with Diana Wynne Jones.

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quote:

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Originally posted by The Wanderer:
I've never noticed a problem with Diana Wynne Jones. There's not enough time to check my collection now, but Millie and Mara jumped to mind instantly. Oh, and the mother in The Ogre Downstairs is good, but harassed. As for father figures being ineffectual - what price Chrestomanci?

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
And since _MN_ was written after _LWW_, was Lewis trying in a short-hand way to do his own Silmarillion - a creation myth for Narnia?

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quote:

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Originally posted by adso:
I've found an involved parent!
The father in Roald Dahl's "Danny The Champion of the World"!
I love RD's postscript to this book: "When you grow up and have children of your own do please remember something important: a stodgy parent is no fun at all. What a child wants and deserves is a parent who is SPARKY."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom:

quote:

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Originally posted by The Wanderer:
I've never noticed a problem with Diana Wynne Jones. There's not enough time to check my collection now, but Millie and Mara jumped to mind instantly. Oh, and the mother in The Ogre Downstairs is good, but harassed. As for father figures being ineffectual - what price Chrestomanci?

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Completely off the top of my head:
Miranda Chant (Christopher's mother) - shallow, able to be used by her evil brother.

Cat and Gwendoline's mother - dead at the beginning of the book.

Gwendoline herself as mother figure to Cat - tries to get him killed to further her own ends.

Polly's mother in Fire and Hemlock - petty and self-serving, ignores the way her boyfriends treat Polly.

Janine in The Merlin Conspiracy (Nick's mother) - tries to get Marie killed, aids and abets her evil brother Gram White, and is evil herself.

Franconia Grant (Conrad's mother in Conrad's Fate) - ignores Con altogether and resents him asking for the basic necessities of life.

Both grandmothers in The Pinhoe Egg - power hungry and vindictive. Mind you, none of the adults in that book barring the Castle staff come off very well.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
how many of y'all read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell?

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quote:

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Ken mentions the Queen of Faerie

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quote:

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Every mother figure in Diana Wynne Jones books is evil, almost every father figure well-meanign but ineffectual

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quote:

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Originally posted by The Wanderer:
I think we've established by now that Wynne Jones writes about good and bad mothers, effective and ineffective fathers. This is a long way from the sweeping generalisation that:

quote:

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Every mother figure in Diana Wynne Jones books is evil, almost every father figure well-meanign but ineffectual

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and a lot fairer to a writer who has written so much so well.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Rossweisse:
Oh, JS&MR is an amazing book! I'd love to discuss it.

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quote:

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The books I've read - by no means all of them, but many - pretty well bear out what I said

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quote:

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Every mother figure in Diana Wynne Jones books is evil

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then I'm not sure we are using language in the same way.
 

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Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
To be fair on authors ( ), the use of archetypes isn't just to be encouraged, it's near-mandatory: for some deep psychological reasons, archetypes resonate with us, plugging into unconscious emotional sockets in our brain.

The Evil Mother is the other side of the coin to the Mother: the woman who eats her young where the expectation is for her to protect them with her life.

For sure, DWJ uses the archetype a lot, but not universally. I possibly overuse the Trickster archetype - but I do find it more fun than a standard Hero character. An Evil Mother instantly produces a protagonist (the child), and antagonist (the mother), and often a plot too. There must be conflict, or the story dies.
 

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Posted by The Wanderer (# 182) on :
 
Thank you Doc Tor. I must order your latest from my nearest bookshop.
 

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Posted by wombat (# 5180) on :
 
Jumping back to the original OP somewhat--

Do you think the Narnia movies will do the affair of Susan as lewis presents it? Or will they change it?

(My biggest disappointment with what happens to Susan is that it basically happens out of almost nowhere. There is some vague foreshadowing of possible trouble in Prince Caspian,but when I read the novels, it was very much a 'Oh, by the way, Susan's fallen from grace when you weren't looking but it all happened off stage' which isn't very good storytelling. Imagine if Ron had vanished after the first few chapters of the last Harry Potter book, then suddenly turned out to have become a Death Eater off stage and is mentioned in the next to last chapter as having been killed off stage...)
 

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Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :
 
But that's not really a fair comparison, wombat ... because Ron is one of three central characters all through the Harry Potter books, whereas Susan and Peter are finished with Narnia by the end of Prince Caspian anyway, and you have to assume their lives are going on apart from the Narnian story. I guess for those who see it as Susan's Eternal Damnation (with suitable strains of menacing music) maybe it is a big enough deal to deserve its own story, whereas those who, like me, see it as Susan missing THAT opportunity to go back to Narnia, with a long life still ahead of her to get her priorities straight, don't feel it needs an entire storyline of its own.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
That Damned Susan!, coming soon to a bookshelf near you...
 

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Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :
 
There's no particular reason why not, LMC: according to your friend Diana's book, Lewis was forever encouraging younger members of his extended family, and even fans who wrote to him, to write more Narnia stories.

Something tells me the Lewis estate might have something to say about that now though .

(Of course, if they're reading this - I'd be up for an authorised project...)
 

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Posted by Pious Pelican (# 13120) on :
 
This is a fab thread, btw.

I have to say I’d be astonished if Disney do the film of TLB; it is just such a deeply weird book, quite apart from not being as well known as Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. One of the best strengths of LWW, Caspian, Dawn Treader, is that they work on the level of pure adventure story as well as allegory, or whatever you want to call it (as a child I blithely zipped through Aslan’s, er, resurrection without realizing that he was meant to be Christ!); not so much true of TLB, I think. I certainly don’t see there being heavy-handed comments made about people who get born in stables or Aslan morphing into Jesus, as happen in the book. If they do do it, I imagine they will probably make the issue of who Aslan is much more ambiguous than it is in Lewis, but that still leaves Susan. I have no idea how they’d do her. I’d love to see it!

I know some people have said that we’re overanalyzing Susan, but there does seem to be a pattern in books of this period of having underdeveloped characters whose main function is to be a substitute parent and who are always female (Susan and Peggy in Ransome, Anne in Famous Five etc.); I think Lewis’ treatment of Susan has to be seen in light of this. Perhaps the reason people often react so strongly to Susan’s story is that here the underdevelopment is much more high-stakes than, say, being doomed to making endless jam sandwiches for Julian and co. – Susan actually gets damned (or not-quite-saved, or what you will) because of it. Throw in some stuff about lipstick that can be read as comments on sexual maturity and you have an explosive mix. If Lucy, say, had been the one that “falls”, I think Lewis would have made his point about being distracted by the world more effectively; and because Lucy is a properly developed character, people wouldn’t feel that Lewis was being cruel to the “expendable” character. But of course it would have been much more shocking if it had been Lucy because she is the central character for much of the series.

PP

PS: somebody a while back asked how we know that Ransome’s Peter Duck and Missee Lee are metafictional: the first draft of Peter Duck was called ‘Their Own Story,’ and features the children sitting somewhere cosy in the wintertime, making up the story and the characters. There are also references to Peter Duck being imaginary in Swallowdale. Great Northern? may also fall into the same category, although the plot isn’t quite as fantastic as it is in PD and ML. As for what was said about Ransome being more in touch with children than CS Lewis was; Swallows and Amazons was actually written for the Altounyan children, and Ransome had a daughter of his own. As you can see, I have never really gotten over my Ransome obsession ...
 

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Posted by bush baptist (# 12306) on :
 
But I don't think you can call Peggy a substitute mother -- she's always Nancy's little sister. ("The innocent child was easy prey for the smooth, smiling villain," murmurs Dorothea. She doesn't think of calling Susan an innocent child -- and who could?)
In fact, it's fascinating how much of a mother Nancy is, in every way except providing food -- she mothers Peggy through storms, she is very quick to care for people's feelings, especially her own mother (she knows exactly how much stress her mother can take) and even saving the Great-Aunt's face in front of that crowd of rescuers. She sweeps people along, but she cares for them all (except in S&A, my least favourite book of the series, along with Secret Water, which I hardly know).
Even when Peggy takes over the Nancy role in Nancy's absence, she's following exactly in her sister's footsteps, not emerging as her own strong personality ("Who taught you to shiver timbers?" -- well, the answer to that is obvious.)
 

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Posted by bush baptist (# 12306) on :
 
Sorry, double-posting out of shame at having strayed from the topic -- I don't think Aslan is actually morphing into Jesus in the closing scene of The Last Battle, I think the idea is that the reality which both have been images of is being revealed.
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
There's no particular reason why not, LMC: according to your friend Diana's book, Lewis was forever encouraging younger members of his extended family, and even fans who wrote to him, to write more Narnia stories.

Something tells me the Lewis estate might have something to say about that now though .

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That, to me, is the sad irony - CSL encouraged people to play in his world and his estate says, no no no no no! But Gaiman's story hasn't been attacked, so I think mostly the estate threatens and intimidates unknown authors. Even more

Welcome Pious Pelican - long may you enjoy the Ship!
 

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Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor:
To be fair on authors ( ), the use of archetypes isn't just to be encouraged, it's near-mandatory: for some deep psychological reasons, archetypes resonate with us, plugging into unconscious emotional sockets in our brain.

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Terry Pratchett's "Witches Abroad" explores this, among other things.

 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Doc Tor:
[qb] T But Gaiman's story hasn't been attacked, so I think mostly the estate threatens and intimidates unknown authors.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ken:

quote:

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Originally posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege:

quote:

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Originally posted by Doc Tor: But Gaiman's story hasn't been attacked, so I think mostly the estate threatens and intimidates unknown authors.

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I'd find that hard to believe. Copyright lawyers aren't stupid, and Neil Gaiman probably has more money in the bank than J Random Fangirl. And he certainly has more reputation to lose (which his lawyers will worry about) and is more likely to get be widely read (which the Estate's lawyers will worry about)

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So how do explain the fact that the estate has gone after small time authors but not Neil Gaiman? Your assessment is correct but what explains the behavior?

Horseman Bree, yes, that "I'm too cool for this stupid stuff" attitude... I remember it well...
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
Lynn, do we know that Lewis' estate isn't in talks with Gaiman?
 

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Posted by Lynn MagdalenCollege (# 10651) on :
 
Good point, Gwai-- Neil is pretty forthcoming on his blog but if some legal discussion was taking place he probably wouldn't be free to discuss it. I've assumed that we'd know by now but perhaps not--

[ 23. January 2008, 01:20: Message edited by: Lynn MagdalenCollege ]
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
I just know that sometimes the company I work for (textbook publisher among other things) has discussions with authors that last forever.
 

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