Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Just have to ask this question here: what is the point/purpose in the narrative of having one of the children fall away from Narnia? And in the particular manner of the falling away? If Lewis thought he was preparing minds to accept a greater story later when they came to it in adolescence, what was he doing in having one of the girls 'stray'? Why were the falling aways of the boys earlier forgiveable but not Susan's?

Given that the Last Battle is of course an allegory or at least an analogy of the Christian Judgment Day, it would have been, well, dishonest for Lewis not to cover the Goats as wll as the Sheep. More specifically Lewis, who was always interested in individual faith and action as they relate to salvation (see Screwtape) was making a point which is key in Lewisian theology: that indifference is often more fatal than defiant Miltonesque sin. Satan is no atheist! Edmund certainly committed a very bad act: but it was forgivable because *everything* is forgivable- provided one wants to be forgiven. Susan had simply ceased to care.

Why Susan? Well, it had to be somebody, and Susan was really the extra one. Peter (name no accident) was the High King/Viceroy/Vicar/ Pope of Aslanism. Lucy was always the Good One, the one whose belief was purest. Edmund- well, it would have blown the point of Vol 1 if he's condemned anyway in the end. That leaves Susan, the least interesting Pevensey anyway.

Is he preparing for readers to believe all the historically received notions of Eve being the greater sinner, and of women being morally inferior and culpable for the fall, being the more deceived? Really, was he preconditioning girls to believing that they must cover their heads in church out of their responsibility for Eve's sin? And submit to the "churching" ceremony to cleanse themselves after childbirth before they can return to public church services?

Is this a deliberate strawman? Are you accusing Lewis of believing or advocating such snakehandler nonsense?

Precisely. And its view of an idyllic social organization without any strife, where there is clearly private ownership of property rather than communal ownership, provides the kind of silence which speaks volumes.

I'd like to think you're not trolling here, but I equally wouldn't want to think you're serious.

In the first place, the Shire is intended to be Home: comfortable, familiar, a little childish, even if JRRT can't help a few puckish jabs at bourgeois mentality. (Strife, if without bloodshed, clearly does take place, from Frodo's mushroom-raids to the the Bilbo/S-B feud to the very existence of lawyers.) A great statewide commune would have been as alien as Carter's Mars, and required a great deal of explanation and delving into political economy that Tolkien plainly had no interest in doing. No 'Warwickshire village about the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee' was remotely Communard!

In the second place, the notion that 'strife' is an inevitable result of private property and can be avoided only by communal ownership is a Marxist notion which not only would have been rejected by Tolkien, but also by the overwhelming majority of rational human beings. Why should he bother to be anything but silent about a fringe theory held only by a handful of people on the looney Left? The rest of us live in a world of property ownership. Again, as I posted monts ago: Tolkien wasn't writing a political novel.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

BTW, piosenniel, thanks for the livejournal link, which includes this very apt passage (I had forgotten it):

"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race onto the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and stop there as long as she can."

And the very comparable quote from the short-story The Shoddy Lands:

...all her clothes and bath salts and two-piece swimsuits and indeed the voluptuousness of her every look and gesture, had not, and never had had, the meaning which every man would read, and was intended to read, into them. They were a huge overture to an opera in which she had no interest at all; a coronation procession with no queen at the centre of it; gestures, gestures about nothing.

About says it all.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

Given that the Last Battle is of course an allegory or at least an allegory of the Christian Judgment Day, it would have been, well, dishonest for Lewis not to cover the Goats as wll as the Sheep. More specifically Lewis, who was always interested in individual faith and action as they relate to salvation (see Screwtape) was making a point which is key in Lewisian theology: that indifference is often more fatal than defiant Miltonesque sin. Satan is no atheist! Edmund certainly committed a very bad act: but it was forgivable because *everything* is forgivable- provided one wants to be forgiven. Susan had simply ceased to care.

Well, of course if we are going to have an allegory of the Christian Judgement Day, we should expect the relative proportions to be slightly different. Aren't there supposed to be more goats than sheep?

Originally Posted by Mr. Quickli

Why Susan? Well, it had to be somebody, and Susan was really the extra one. Peter (name no accident) was the High King/Viceroy/Vicar/ Pope of Aslanism. Lucy was always the Good One, the one whose belief was purest. Edmund- well, it would have blown the point of Vol 1 if he's condemned anyway in the end. That leaves Susan, the least interesting Pevensey anyway.

What an intriguing trinity you postulate: Peter/ Edmund/ Lucy. But who says that the moral/spiritual worth of a human being is determined by "interest", by charm, charisma, readerly appetite?

Fact still remains that in traditional Christianity, the Fall is the female's fault and so Lewis is perpetuating that moral vision of the female's failing. Just read a few Medieval Churchmen to get a flavour of the virulent excoriation of women that is part of social history of the faith. Lewis is by no means as misogynist as the Church Fathers but he unfortunately uses traditional notions of culpability to express his idea of falling away from faith.

Originally Posted by berry

Is he preparing for readers to believe all the historically received notions of Eve being the greater sinner, and of women being morally inferior and culpable for the fall, being the more deceived? Really, was he preconditioning girls to believing that they must cover their heads in church out of their responsibility for Eve's sin? And submit to the "churching" ceremony to cleanse themselves after childbirth before they can return to public church services?

Originally Posted by Mr. Wicki

Is this a deliberate strawman? Are you accusing Lewis of believing or advocating such snakehandler nonsense?

No. Yes. If you have a philosophy/theology that develops a schism between mind and body, between spiritual and material, then it's going to be a problem handling the very material question of procreation, especially if you have a story so dependent upon virgin birth. (Wasn't it you who asked about Danae's golden showers on a thread recently?)

Originally Posted by Mr. Quickli

However LR isn't about 'class social structure.'

Originally Posted by Bb

Precisely. And its view of an idyllic social organization without any strife, where there is clearly private ownership of property rather than communal ownership, provides the kind of silence which speaks volumes.

Originally Posted by WCH

I'd like to think you're not trolling here, but I equally wouldn't want to think you're serious.

In the first place, the Shire is intended to be Home: comfortable, familiar, a little childish, even if JRRT can't help a few puckish jabs at bourgeois mentality. (Strife, if without bloodshed, clearly does take place, from Frodo's mushroom-raids to the the Bilbo/S-B feud to the very existence of lawyers.) A great statewide commune would have been as alien as Carter's Mars, and required a great deal of explanation and delving into political economy that Tolkien plainly had no interest in doing. No 'Warwickshire village about the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee' was remotely Communard!

In the second place, the notion that 'strife' is an inevitable result of private property and can be avoided only by communal ownership is a Marxist notion which not only would have been rejected by Tolkien, but also by the overwhelming majority of rational human beings. Why should he bother to be anything but silent about a fringe theory held only by a handful of people on the looney Left? The rest of us live in a world of property ownership. Again, as I posted monts ago: Tolkien wasn't writing a political novel.

You're right, he wasn't. But that still does not mean readers cannot discuss his choice to write an a-political story, particularly since he uses the theme of regained kingship but avoids some of the concommitant situations of monarchies. And, actually, I wasn't thinking at all about Marxist theory, but thinking about pre-agrarian or early agrarian cultures, or even Viking culture--Rohan?--when I was thinking about communal ownership, trying to 'place' just where Tolkien imagined the Shire in terms of human development. In Victorian times a man could not vote unless he owned property of a certain value--not sure what the laws were in Edwardian times--and given real estate in Old Blighty at the time that stipulation certainly caused some strife in terms of a lack of political power.

But even if we take The Shire as Home, which you very interestingly and imaginatively suggest, Tolkien's assumption--or is it yours?-- that Home is always so comfortable is . . . a political statement about that form of domestic organisation. And, if you are going to argue that The Shire is Home, then that tantalizingly suggests the Ring story is almost an allegory about not wanting to grow up, Frodo wanting to save the Shire and all. Was he a kind of Peter Pan, wanting to preserve that comfortable childhood, and when he found he couldn't, he just . . . was the opposite of Susan/Wendy.

I have no idea where I'm going with this, as it's late and I've been continually interrupted. . . . Thanks, pio, for those links. They must, alas, remain unread until after this last holiday weekend. I certainly hope that does not make me sound as frivolous as Susan.