Quote:
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Originally Posted by Azaelia of Willowbottom
I still am upset by Susan losing Narnia because she started liking boys and wearing lipstick.
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The claim that Susan was denied Narnia because of cosmetics and sex was endurable when made by the Madonna of Modern Fantasy but I simply cannot let a fellow Downer go unchallenged on this point. Susan is not condemned for anything so trivial: she is condemned instead for "forgetting" Narnia and pretending that it was all a game. She lost her faith and her belief. In
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe Edmund's first (and, to my mind, worst) act of betrayal was his cruel denial that he and Lucy had been to another world, and his lie that he and she had only been pretending. He is redeemed of this lie but only after going through some terrible things. For Susan to turn around in her supposed maturity and thoughtlessly do the same thing is the height of arrogant pride and foolishness. She is not "kicked out" of Narnia any more than Satan was "kicked out" of Heaven--they are both rebels who turn away from their true home. (Very Important Note--I am not saying that Susan is Satan, nor am I suggesting that she is in any way shape or manner Satanic: I am merely making an analogy for the sake of illustrating my argument.)
And it does seem to me from what I have read in the popular press that Pullman enjoys saying outrageous things simply to garner more print and attention to himself. I simply cannot find any other explanation for some of his sillier claims; he is clearly an accomplished writer who has read the works of Tolkien and Lewis carefully so he is either being purposefully provocative or he has a far more intelligent and perceptive ghost writer!
As to the "obviousness" of the allegory in Lewis, I have three points:
1) The Narnia books are explicitly aimed at the child reader; for an adult to criticise a book for being obvious to an adult when it is intended for a much younger and more impressionable reader is a bit unfair--kind of like arguing that Sesame Street is a little too obvious because C always follows A and B!
2) I'm not so sure it's all that obvious at any rate even to most adults! I have taught LWW at the university level and been surprised every time by how few of the students -- even those who are actively Christian -- who don't get the Christ-Aslan relation! (Oh, and Narnia is explicitly NOT heaven as is made abundantly clear at the end of
The Last Battle.)
3) I'm not even sure it's really an allegory either: Aslan is clearly a Christ-
figure but that does not make him an allegorical representation of Christ: when Aslan exchanges himself for Edmund at the Stone Table it's a
bargain he is making with a Satanic witch for the sake of an
individual--not the unconditional offering up of himself for the sake of all humanity. He is a lion and
never the lamb. So, sure, Aslan and the story narrates a particular kind of Christian relation but it does not pretend to be re-telling a Biblical orthodoxy.