|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: How to deal with unpleasant aspects of C S Lewis
|
Tea
Shipmate
# 16619
|
Posted
How should one deal with C S Lewis’s ethnocentricity when reading The Chronicles of Narnia with a child?
I am reading the Narnia books with my seven year old. We have just finished Prince Caspian. Very soon I will be faced by the challenge of Lewis’s writing on Calormen, which I think can fairly be described as ethnocentric and orientalizing.
I don’t want to stop reading about Narnia with my child, but neither do I want to appear to endorse these attitudes of Lewis.
What should I do?
Posts: 66 | From: USA | Registered: Aug 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
|
Posted
If it comes up at all, explain that Calormen is a country in Narnia, rather than anything in this world?
We do see (though in later books) good Calormenes who are even main characters (like Aravis) and of course one of my very favorites, Emeth in the Last Battle.
--------------------
My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
Posts: 14068 | From: Clearwater, Florida | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Welease Woderwick
Sister Incubus Nightmare
# 10424
|
Posted
Lewis was very much a product of his generation who grew up with the concept of Empire deeply embedded. Were he writing today he may well have put things very differently although Islamophobia has been alive and well in Western Europe for over a millenium and seems reluctant to die away.
He needed to create an "other" and took what was readily to hand - perhaps he also gives you an opportunity to talk about "other-ness" and how it intrudes upon the consciousness of all - and works both ways! I think even quite young kids can understand "other" - poor kids, rich kids, disabled kids, learning challenged kids, red haired kids, etc.
--------------------
I give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.
Fancy a break in South India?
Accessible Homestay Guesthouse in Central Kerala, contact me for details
What part of Matt. 7:1 don't you understand?
Posts: 48139 | From: 1st on the right, straight on 'til morning | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
|
Posted
I first read these book as a child, more than 50 years ago ![[Eek!]](eek.gif) and I know it bothered me even then. But what really annoyed me was the fact that although Lucy first discovered Narnia, Peter got to be High King.
I think one advantage of reading a book with a child is that you have more of a chance to discuss the characters, and even the attitude of the author. I know when Mum read to the 4 of us we had a lot of discussion about the books.
As an aside - being read to is something I really loved as a child - now the nearest I get to it is borrowing books on cds from the library.
Huia
--------------------
Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Zoey
Broken idealist
# 11152
|
Posted
I always liked Susan best - I think maybe because she was the one of the four siblings who didn't have some obvious special distinction (Lucy discovered Narnia, Peter was high king, Edmund was the redeemed traitor).
[*Spoiler*]
I was not happy when Susan ended up as an apostate who didn't join the others in heaven at the end of The Last Battle. (Although I did think Narnia neatly reproduced one of the puzzles of evangelical Christianity - is it, or is it not, possible to become un-saved or an apostate once one has said one's sinner's prayer? There's a saying in the books which is "Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia" - but if that's the case, what is the deal with Susan who seems to get lost and stop being a queen of Narnia having previously been one?)
--------------------
Pay no mind, I'm doing fine, I'm breathing on my own.
Posts: 3095 | From: the penultimate stop? | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
|
Posted
We're stuck on The Horse and his Boy - I don't think my daughter has read any of the others yet and she only read that one because of the horses being major characters. To anyone who's ever learned to ride, the bits about Bree teaching Shasta to ride are hilarious. There are good things in it, even though the portrayal of the Calormenes makes me uncomfortable as well.
We haven't really talked about the (implied) racism, but we did talk about the sexism. To my mind, the sexism is much more of an issue because (as Huia points out) it runs through all the books. Even the Narnians and Archenlanders (who are held up as shining examples of enlightenment) think that telling Queen Lucy she's 'as good as a man, or anyway as good as a boy' is the highest compliment they can possibly give her.
I think the only firm conclusion you can draw from the portrayal of Calormene (beyond the fact that C S Lewis is a product of his time) is that Lewis didn't like The Arabian Nights. That's the real-world material he drew on, isn't it? And it is only fair to add that many of the Ottoman emperors behaved exactly like the Tisroc. Making the Calormenes out to be paragons of virtue would be just as racist as making them pantomime villains.
And there is a good Calormene in The Horse and his Boy: Aravis. You might say she doesn't count, because the book is all about her wanting to escape from Calormen. But she is a product of her culture too: brave, tough and fearsomely competent, but also quite comfortable with the idea of setting her maid up for a beating until Aslan points out to her how unfair it is.
[ 02. September 2014, 10:30: Message edited by: Jane R ]
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
|
Posted
Zoey, it's a long time since I've read the books, but I thought we just don't know what happened to Susan at the end of the Last Battle?
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Zoey
Broken idealist
# 11152
|
Posted
M. - I think technically you're correct, however Susan's choices and ultimate fate are not depicted particularly favourably in The Last Battle. It's also a long time since I've read the books, but I checked the relevant Wikipedia page when writing my post above (to check I'd got Edmund's name correct). Under 'Criticism' on the Wiki page, there's a section about Susan's non-appearance in The Last Battle. As I say, I think you're correct in that Susan is still alive in our world at the end of the work, so it's not clear what will happen to her when she dies. However, she is apparently described as being "no longer a friend of Narnia" and my pre-teen / teen mind (which was pondering the question of apostacy anyway) felt that the implication was that she'd lost her salvation - although that is not explicitly stated.
--------------------
Pay no mind, I'm doing fine, I'm breathing on my own.
Posts: 3095 | From: the penultimate stop? | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
|
Posted
I'd always (well, always as an adult*) assumed that the fact she is still alive at the end means that we don't know what happens to her as a no-longer friend of Narnia and that that was the point.
M.
*Coming from a non-religious family, when I read them as a child, I had no idea they had anything to do with Christianity.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
I think the Calormenes aren't so much products of Empire as products of medievalism. Many of Lewis' favourite books were written at a period in which the conflict between Christendom and the Islamic World was the great epic struggle. (I think the most obvious text is Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.)
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
|
Posted
Zoey: quote:
...Susan is still alive in our world at the end of the work, so it's not clear what will happen to her when she dies.
Not sure you can let Lewis off the hook that easily. Firstly, because she is 'no longer a friend of Narnia' there is a clear implication that she has lost her faith completely (and if she hadn't, losing her whole family in a train crash might do it). Secondly, if Aslan's country is outside (or beyond) Time, wouldn't she be there if she was going to be, even if she died at a different time? Or is that getting too complicated for a children's book?
Dafyd, you could be right about Orlando Furioso. However, at the time Lewis was growing up, the Arabian Nights was very popular; and ISTR that he said he didn't like it, though I can't remember whether he ever made the link between that and Calormen himself.
[ 02. September 2014, 14:45: Message edited by: Jane R ]
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
|
Posted
I think it is too simple to say that Calormene are from one particular inspirational point. That is to reduce C.S. Lewis as an author in creating Narnia to something of simply writing analogy. The origins are far more complex than a single source.
The Calormene are perhaps most useful understood as a product of lots of the discourses that make up what Edward Said calls "Orientalism" rather than a portrayal of a specific culture or cultural source. I think there are bits from India, bits from medieval understanding of Islam, bits from Arabian Nights and probably bits from China. What these hold in common is they are largely come from Western Cultural sources (i.e. more reliant on Kipling than Appu Nedungadi). That is it is an amalgam of projections from a variety of Western sources onto the East. Given that Edward Said's book only came out in 1978, I think we can not really expect C.S. Lewis to have taken it into account.
Jengie
[ 02. September 2014, 14:48: Message edited by: Jengie Jon ]
--------------------
"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
|
Posted
I wasn't trying to suggest that he only used one source of inspiration. In fact, Tolkien criticised The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on the grounds that it was a mishmash of lots of different things (Greek fauns, centaurs and dryads, Norse dwarfs, Father Christmas... am I allowed to speculate about the White Witch being inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen?) and wasn't coherent like his own Middle-Earth.
Just as well Lewis didn't listen to Tolkien, isn't it.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
|
Posted
I should also point out that Lewis was not at all a fan of Empire--this comes out quite clearly in the way that the villains talk about taking over Malacandra in Out of the Silent Planet (long before Narnia). And Narnia is not the huge empire in the books--Calormen is.
quote:
“Unfortunately, my guess is that the Tisroc has very small fear of Narnia,” Edmund replied, not wanting to add that he felt the Tisroc had good reason. But hoping to lead others to the same conclusion, he continued, “We are a small nation. And small countries on the borders of a great empire are always hateful to the kings of those great empires. They long to blot them out, gobble them up.”
Lewis also said this in "Life on Other Planets":
quote:
I...fear the practical, not the theoretical, problems which will arise if ever we meet rational creatures which are not human. Against them we shall, if we can, commit all the crimes we have already committed against creatures certainly human but differing from us in features and pigmentation; and the starry heavens will become an object to which good men can look up only with feelings of intolerable guilt, agonized pity, and burning shame.
Of course, after the first debauch of exploitation we shall make some belated attempt to do better. We shall perhaps send missionaries. But can even missionaries be trusted? "Gun and gospel" have been horribly combined in the past. The missionary's holy desire to save souls has not always been kept quite distinct from the arrogant desire, the busybody's itch, to (as he calls it) "civilize" the (as he calls them) "natives."
I don't know what Lewis would say now, or how he might have written the stories, if he knew more Muslims or Hindus.
The matter of gender issues, and whether everyone agrees that this is problematic in the books, may also be another one.
--------------------
My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
Posts: 14068 | From: Clearwater, Florida | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
|
Posted
Neil Gaiman wrote a very disturbing short story, "The Problem of Susan", which is about Susan Pevensie. A similar work would be Boneland, by Alan Garner. It is the 'third volume' in his Weirdstone of Brisingamen series. But it is not really a third volume, it is a novel set thirty years later about one of the characters.
In both of these works it is clear that it is not always a good thing, to go to Narnia, to meet the Elven Lords, to have adventures with wizards. It changes your life, and you may never get better.
--------------------
Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
|
Posted
I suppose the answer to how you deal with it is to treat is more like a fairy tale, and (if necessary) explain that the Calormen are just "the baddies". The characteristics are just to identify them.
I suppose that is how I would understand them now, although, in honesty, I read them 30 years ago, and I was just accepting of what was written. I probably had a level of xenophobia that was not uncommon at the time (not justifying it, just explaining why it was not an issue then).
In the end, it is a story. It is a powerful story, and you can take lessons from it, but you can also avoid parts of the story where they do not work.
--------------------
Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
Lewis did have some admiration for Calormen culture, if not their religion or expansionism. He said that children in Calormen were taught to tell stories the way English schoolchildren were taught to write essays, with this important difference: people enjoyed listening to the stories, whereas nobody wants to read the essays.
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
jrw
Shipmate
# 18045
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
... if Aslan's country is outside (or beyond) Time, wouldn't she be there if she was going to be, even if she died at a different time?
In that case there would have been no need for their parents to die in the train accident at the same time. Still, it's not Panorama.
Posts: 522 | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
|
Posted
I've not encountered Calormen yet with my kids...but from what I've read here and thinking of when the books were written, was there never a sense that old ideas about Islam were drawn on by him to make new analogies with the USSR? That 'expanding empire, gobbling up little free states' quote brought this to mind.
--------------------
"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
|
Posted
My first reaction to the OP is that you're looking at the potential problem with adult eyes. A child won't notice the nuances you do and maybe drawing attention to some of the things your adult conscience finds troubling will only draw them to the child's attention?
Second: with the ghastly news coming out of the middle east at the moment, I'd have thought CSL's views would fit in quite nicely.
--------------------
Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
ChastMastr
Shipmate
# 716
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Second: with the ghastly news coming out of the middle east at the moment, I'd have thought CSL's views would fit in quite nicely.
Honestly, I think Calormen overall is a major improvement over ISIS. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
--------------------
My essays on comics continuity: http://chastmastr.tumblr.com/tagged/continuity
Posts: 14068 | From: Clearwater, Florida | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Arethosemyfeet
Shipmate
# 17047
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
My first reaction to the OP is that you're looking at the potential problem with adult eyes. A child won't notice the nuances you do and maybe drawing attention to some of the things your adult conscience finds troubling will only draw them to the child's attention?
This. It never occurred to me when reading the books as a child to infer anything about real world cultures based on the colour of the people in the Chronicles of Narnia. It also never occurred to me to infer anything about Susan's ultimate fate from the fact that she was no longer a "friend of Narnia". I was too busy enjoying the story. They are fairy tales; that's what C. S. Lewis set out to write and that's what he achieved. Rereading them now you see his bias against schools, and against certain aspects of modernity. Mostly though you get fairly simple stories of good and evil, and the choices associated with them.
It does strike me, of course, that I may not have been the most perceptive child, as I never associated the golliwogs in Noddy with black people either. Might have been because I grew up in a very monocultural white area, other ethnic groups and religions were exotic novelties you read about (I remember aged about 6 writing in a school project about the Pygmies in the Congo and - what was then - Zaire with "skin the colour of chocolate").
Posts: 2933 | From: Hebrides | Registered: Apr 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
|
Posted
quote:
My first reaction to the OP is that you're looking at the potential problem with adult eyes. A child won't notice the nuances you do and maybe drawing attention to some of the things your adult conscience finds troubling will only draw them to the child's attention?
Yes, the racial overtones completely passed me by as a child.
I think being a historian by background helps me here. I don't feel any temptation to judge authors born in the 19th century by 21st century standards. 'The past is a foreign country' and all that. I think its good for children to be exposed to pre-1960s children's literature - it teaches them that cultural norms do change over time and that many things we take for granted (often good things, like racial equality) are really very recent and fragile. I'm also certain that our early 21st century norms are not the last word in moral enlightenment - who knows which of our opinions will horrify our grandchildren?
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
I think its good for children to be exposed to pre-1960s children's literature - it teaches them that cultural norms do change over time and that many things we take for granted (often good things, like racial equality) are really very recent and fragile. I'm also certain that our early 21st century norms are not the last word in moral enlightenment - who knows which of our opinions will horrify our grandchildren?
I grew up in a house full of old books, including children's books. I was a voracious reader. At the time I could not have put it into words, but I came to recognize that people in different times and places take different things for granted.
This understanding has proved useful all my life.
Moo
--------------------
Kerygmania host
---------------------
See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
TurquoiseTastic
Fish of a different color
# 8978
|
Posted
I would acknowledge (reluctantly) that the treatment of Calormen is slightly racist. But I don't think that Lewis was himself racist, certainly not by the standards of the day. I think it comes in "accidentally", in a sense, because Narnia draws so much on his love of mediaeval romantic chivalry. So it takes on many of the ideas of that world-view, including the idea of the Near-Eastern Muslim enemy. If the heroes are rather like idealised European knights it fits the pattern for the villains to be rather like demonised Ottoman pashas.
Posts: 1092 | From: Hants., UK | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
|
Posted
You have problems with C Lewis and racism? Look at Dr Who - certainly in the old stories the daleks only really get wound up once the black dalek arrives.
Subtle racism?
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
|
Posted
I hinted earlier that I think Lewis - and many of his contemporaries - were more xenophobic than racist. His personal challenge was "the different" rather than a judgement based on skin colour or genetic background. The Calormen are just different - and represented by the eastern influences that were the oddity at the time.
So not, I don't think either he or Tolkien were racist (Tolkien, of course came from South Africa, so he was an outsider in some ways). They were scared of the outside, the changes that they saw, the destruction of their idyll. I think this is reflected in the stories.
But crucially, it is not racist. It is not that appalling judgement based on genetic inheritance, it is merely the fear of change, of the other. That is far less suspicious and far more reasonable. Considering the events that have happened since, I think they were right to fear.
--------------------
Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
There's at least one place where Lewis says something definitely racist, in which he contrasts ancient Gauls assimilating Roman culture with Africans in bowler hats 'pretending to be Europeans'. Although even there I think there's a level on which he thinks being a European in a bowler hat is not all that worth pretending to be. I don't think he ever buys into the superiority of Western European civilization as such.
[ 04. September 2014, 09:51: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There's at least one place where Lewis says something definitely racist, in which he contrasts ancient Gauls assimilating Roman culture with Africans in bowler hats 'pretending to be Europeans'.
Well, Graham Greene in "Journey Without Maps" (1936) has much more to say about that!
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Sarasa
Shipmate
# 12271
|
Posted
All this talk about the book has made me pick it up again and I'm just enjoying it as a thoroughly good read, I hope your daughter enjoys it too.
As for stereotypes I like the line in E. Nesbit's late-19th century The Story of the Amulet (part of which Lewis reworked in The Magician's Nephew . A group of children are transported back to Ancient Babylon and one of them tells the queen he comes from the land where the sun never sets. As an aside Nesbit says 'Robert had been reading his father's Daily Telegraph lately'.
--------------------
'I guess things didn't go so well tonight, but I'm trying. Lord, I'm trying.' Charlie (Harvey Keitel) in Mean Streets.
Posts: 2035 | From: London | Registered: Jan 2007
| IP: Logged
|
|
Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gussie:
As for stereotypes I like the line in E. Nesbit's late-19th century The Story of the Amulet (part of which Lewis reworked in The Magician's Nephew .
THANK YOU! ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
I read and loved both books as a child and knew that bit of the Amulet reminded me of something but I couldn't think what. Until now. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Regarding the OP, I think Moo's point about accepting that different times and cultures regard different things as acceptable is pertinent. We do this when reading almost without realising it, especially as children. And there are some pretty dappy and unlikeable non-Calormenes. cough Lasaraleen cough
Nen - now planning a Narnia and Nesbit re-read.
--------------------
They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
|
Posted
When I think of the shedloads of jingoistic, racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and sexist books I downed as a child (Rider Haggard, Kipling, Sapper, Buchan, Chesterton, Sax Rohmer) it's a wonder I grew up into the right-thinking Guardianista that I am.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
|
Posted
Yeah, the sexism, and racism annoyed me, but it didn't convert me. I just thought the people who wrote it were wrong. (I was an opinionated child, some things never change ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ).
Huia
--------------------
Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
Posts: 10382 | From: Te Wai Pounamu | Registered: Oct 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
|
Posted
And, unless you confine your reading only to works written within the last three years (and only a selection of those, because there are plenty of modern writers who are dorks), you are always going to find sexism, racism, classism, etc. There is no literature written, that is not of its time. We are fish, swimming in the waters of our era, and we cannot escape that ocean; it permeates all we create.
--------------------
Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Polly Plummer
Shipmate
# 13354
|
Posted
I think there are some places where CSL addresses the tendency towards racism. For example, near the end of "Out of the silent planet", where Oyarsa says that the love of kindred is not one of the greatest laws, but that the lord of the silent world has taught Weston to break all the other laws and has bent that law until it becomes folly.
There's also the bit in the Screwtape Letters (sorry can't find the reference) about the patient's girl friend: the chink in her armour is that she thinks people who aren't like her are a bit ridiculous.
As a girl in pre-feminist times I did wonder about Lucy and Susan not being allowed to fight, and Lucy having the best cabin on the Dawn Treader, but it seemed to me then, as it no doubt did to him, that that was just the way things were. I've changed my view as I've grown older and maybe he would have done if he'd had time.
As you can tell from my name, I'm a big fan!
Posts: 577 | Registered: Jan 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
Isn't that bit of Edmund's thinking about small countries and empires, based on Greece and the Persian Empire? Hence the Calormene issue would far predate anything to do with Islam.
And I didn't (don't) like the way he wrote off Susan. It fits with the short story "The Shoddy Lands". It's not so much her being no longer a friend of Narnia. It's her being a normal adolescent girl, which she would, normally, have grown out of. (I did have my own idea of fan-fic on that subject, but it's an overdone theme, so I never developed it properly. One part of it was that, as she was not yet over 21, she would have become, briefly, while coping with bereavement, the ward of Eustace's parents, who would have loathed her for her association with the family which "corrupted" him.)
Also a tale my English lecturer told at college - he was not very admiring of Lewis (having been at Oxford himself) because of one incident in which Lewis had turned away a woman student as soon as she turned up at his room for a tutorial, and a rather brusque way.
[ 12. September 2014, 16:03: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
|
Posted
Early Inklings meetings have all the hallmarks of a gentlemen's club, which at the time, Oxford would have been.
From my reading around Lewis, he changed considerably when he met Joy Davidson - he certainly changed his attitude towards that particular woman, who he regarded his intellectual equal in all matters.
--------------------
Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Seth
Shipmate
# 3623
|
Posted
It may also be worth pointing out that the Calormene religion is polytheistic, and so quite unlike Islam, and that "Aslan" is the Turk*** word for lion!
(Fascinating thread, by the way...)
Posts: 566 | From: Wiltshire, UK | Registered: Dec 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
|
Posted
I didn't read the Narnia series until my late teens.
I've never understood the people who think Susan is damned. I don't think I'd heard the idea until joining the Ship.
As many kids do, Susan was trying to grow up too fast. (Different from Phillip Pullman's complaint that CSL thought growing up is more or less evil. For that matter, Digory grows up into the Professor--CSL in disguise, I think.) In her haste, she pushed her Narnia experiences off into a playland.
Nothing says, however, that Susan won't come back around to the truth. After all, CSL abandoned Christianity after his mom's death*...and came back.
I think he considered Susan's situation a severe mercy, because Susan still had a chance to change. Plus he had universalist leanings.
*And part of "The Magician's Nephew" is an attempt to correct the loss of his mom: Digory is able to save *his* mom.
--------------------
Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Second: with the ghastly news coming out of the middle east at the moment, I'd have thought CSL's views would fit in quite nicely.
You want to explain what you mean by this?
--------------------
So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
----
Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Posts: 2958 | From: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dark Knight
Super Zero
# 9415
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ChastMastr:
If it comes up at all, explain that Calormen is a country in Narnia, rather than anything in this world?
We do see (though in later books) good Calormenes who are even main characters (like Aravis) and of course one of my very favorites, Emeth in the Last Battle.
Oh, Emeth! What a beautiful character! Plunged me straight back to my nine year old self, when I first read The Last Battle. What a book. ![[Axe murder]](graemlins/lovedrops.gif)
Sorry, nothing more intelligent to offer.
--------------------
So don't ever call me lucky
You don't know what I done, what it was, who I lost, or what it cost me - A B Original: I C U
----
Love is as strong as death (Song of Solomon 8:6).
Posts: 2958 | From: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Tea
Shipmate
# 16619
|
Posted
Thanks for the helpful comments.
I'm aware, as many of you have suggested, that it possible for adults to overthink this and end up belabouring the child with so much explanation and warning that all the joy of reading disappears.
On the other hand, children take many of their cues about acceptable characterizations and language from parental acquiescence or lack thereof. So am inclined to go in the direction Welease Wod. suggested upthread. The challenge is how to both put this in terms that a seven year old will grasp and also do so in such a way that one doesn't make too heavy weather of the whole business.
I have some thoughts about Lewis, race, and historical context, but they are probably more appropriate for Purgatory than for here.
Posts: 66 | From: USA | Registered: Aug 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Cara
Shipmate
# 16966
|
Posted
Coming a bit late to this very interesting thread. I am in the camp of those who say, let's just enjoy the stories!
When I was a child, the Narnia books, Alan Garner's books, Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time, the E Nesbit books---all these and more had a great effect on me, one I think beneficial--they all, but in a non-preachy way, wrote about good vs evil, and values like hope, courage, integrity etc--but as a reader you didn't notice any of that at the time, but simply enjoyed being in those worlds.
(And although I was being brought up very much as a Christian, at 9/10 when I read the books I didn't realise they could been seen as having anything to do with Christianity per se! Which is good because Lewis himself very firmly said they should not be read as "allegories." Of course there is much in them that's relevant to faith and to the Christian story, and when reading them to my own children I enjoyed the added dimension...)
The experience can be magical and transformational, and just as I think it's a shame that some fundamentalist Christians would ban these books because they are fantasies, I think it's a shame to burden today's children's reading experience by imposing our modern world-view. Unless of course they themselves notice attitudes they feel are wrong, and mention it...
There are so many influences for bad in this world, I wouldn't worry about these books!
--------------------
Pondering.
Posts: 898 | Registered: Feb 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Twangist
Shipmate
# 16208
|
Posted
quote:
Digory grows up into the Professor--CSL in disguise, I think.
I got the idea (I think from AN Wilson) that the Prof was rather based on the chap that taught Lewis prior to Uni
--------------------
JJ
SDG
blog
Posts: 604 | From: Devon | Registered: Feb 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
|
Posted
I think just alternate with another book, with a different world view.
--------------------
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
|
Posted
Golden Key: quote:
I've never understood the people who think Susan is damned.
I'd heard of the idea before joining the Ship; in fact I have a vague recollection of Lewis himself saying that he'd decided one of the original four had to stop being a 'friend of Narnia' (with the implication being that they also reject God). Presumably he picked Susan because she is the character he is least in sympathy with; she's inclined to be squeamish and over-sentimental and she grows up into an 'ordinary grown-up lady' (direct quote from 'The Horse and His Boy', in case anyone was wondering).
Of course the other possibility is that she has just chosen a different way of obeying Aslan's command to grow closer to her own world; instead of indulging in nostalgia about her childhood trips to Narnia she is trying to conform to what (Lewis thinks) is expected of grown-up women in her world.
jrw: quote:
Still, it's not Panorama.
![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif) Does anyone still watch that? Even if I did I wouldn't be citing it as an authority on either theology or children's literature.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
jrw
Shipmate
# 18045
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
jrw: quote:
Still, it's not Panorama.
Does anyone still watch that? Even if I did I wouldn't be citing it as an authority on either theology or children's literature. [/QB]
Just to be clear that I was referring to the book, not the discussion itself, just in case my original comment came across as patronising, which was not my intention. Panorama wasn't the most brilliant example to use I admit, but that's beside the point.
Posts: 522 | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
