Pullman rips on LOTR, others

[davem]

I think this section from the Introduction to Lewis' allegory 'The Great Divorce' sums up where he is coming from with Susan:

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads will perish; but their rescue
consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but
only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point,
never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot “develop” into good.
Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, “with backward
mutters of dissevering power” – or else not. It is still “either-or.” If we insist on
keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we
shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I
believe, to be sure, that any [person] who reaches Heaven will find out what he
abandoned (even plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing; that the
kernel of wheat he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be
there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in “the High Countries.”

Now, you may agree or disagree with that, but that's what Lewis believed & I think, as a consequence one can see Susan's (temporary?) fate as inevitable. Susan's fate was a direct consequence of Lewis' worldview.

For myself, I find most of Lewis stuff unreadable - though there are some jewels scattered throughout.....