Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow, Ow, ad infinitum...
Stop hitting me over the head with your god, Mr. Lewis.
I remember now why I gave up on the Narnia books when I was rereading them a decade or so ago. There's just too much God. And not in a subtle way either.
Just finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I recall this was the one that last time finished me. Having had enough of Aslan's visage appearing to give a disapproving growl whenever the children were going to do something bad, or even worse the appearance of the Lamb, I never completed the series I'd once enjoyed so much as a child.
This time the one good thing I could take away from it was that I've found that, "proof denies faith". In Narnia Aslan is an active superior being - he either saves the day or provides assistance with annoying regularity. But for me this just begs the question, why he isn't more active? Why does he let bad things happen to good people? Why was Narnia in winter for 100 years? Why not 50? Or 1? or not at all?
I much prefer stories where the characters achieve something through their own mettle, rather than because a god has decided that this is the right time to take a hand in the proceedings. Aslan's reasons for dalliance are cryptic and pat.
Aslan, get off your arse, roll up your sleeves and muck in. Or as another put it, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way".
Last night I started The Silver Chair. Sigh... Aslan's already made another useless appearance.
posted by winstoninabox @ 7:59 AM
19 comments
19 Comments:
First, let me congratulate you on your recent blogging efforts! In the past month or so you have been far and away the most interesting of us all. If I go home early today (sniff, koff) I will write something abou Se7en, but I must respond to your Narnia post at once, buttons having been pressed and all...
Narnia is not a playground, but a battlefield and a workshop for making souls that are fit instruments for eternity. In this context it is no great problem that 'bad things happen to good people', because in suffering through the bad things they will become better people. This may not be pleasant for them and may sound trite, but it is a perfectly good position for a God to take. I believe that Aslan, as an interventionist God, only interferes with this natural process of the Narnians workng out their own salvation at those points in history where it is *impossible* for the forces of good to succeed without his aid. In this he is like the examiner who gives a few extra marks to bring a student over the line when they have done all they can by their own efforts and it would be impossible for them to pass otherwise.
I was thinking only last night that 'The Magician's Nephew' is more satisfactory than Genesis- it is better to have evil entering the new world from an old, stale world that has had plenty of time to go wrong, than just appearing there...
Thanks for your praise, but I find your good self and Marco the best recent reads. Sorry I don't respond all that often because I unfortunately have to spend my time googling about what you've both posted. While this leaves me not enough to post a reply, I do feel that I've learnt something every time I've visited both his and your site.
That said I'm glad you've found some buttons here 8)
I very much like the idea that Narnia is a training ground for souls.
Aslan being an interventionist god is worth looking at, but for me again raises another question. Why does Aslan only intervene with certain creatures? Many others may be worthy, but receive no such divine guidance. After approptiate suffering Eustance is saved from his dragon form by Aslan himself, but the Narnian lord who died there previously was given no such aid.
Or what about Deathwater Island. Instant death! Here is no chance to better oneself through suffering. Just death.
However if in Narnia there is reincarnation...?
And while I'm thinking about it...
While Aslan is the creator of Narnia (the soul battlefield and workshop) he cannot be the creator of the souls that populate it. If so, he'd simply just make better souls to begin with.
So if he didn't create the souls, who, what, when, where, and why were they created?
Oh dear dr. clam, I find myself writing a third reply to your letter. I really should get my thinking in order before putting fingers to keyboard.
But I now find that my last reply is really stunted. Aslan's relationships to the souls of Narnia may run a gamut rather than singular.
He could have no power over and no connection with the souls. The souls could be preexisting and simply enter the host body at some undefined point. Or the soul may arise gestalt-like at creation, as a kind of by-product of corporal existence. Whatever the method, Aslan could have no control over the soul's creation.
Or he could have had some limited effect over the soul's creation, but maybe not an exact control over it. The analogy (especially shakey ground here) I'll employ is a chemist performing an experiment. Maybe the chemist knows from experience that the application of heat will give a certain reaction, but the slight variables of the inital state of the chemicals, the strength of the heat, the vessel the chemicals are contained in, the point of appliction, etc. give a slightly different result in color, vigorousness of reaction etc.
Then at the other end Aslan may have complete control over the creation of the souls. He may choose to make imperfect souls for his amusement, experimentation, perversness, or any number of reasons unfathomable to we of mortal intelligence.
I always thought that Aslan was just the Emperor Over The Sea's bitch. Darth Vader to his Palpatine, and so on.
Aslan is the public face of EOTS inc. Aslan had nothing to do with the creation of souls etc., but has to put up with whiney little humans asking why bad things happen to good fawns.
I think it is probably safe to push the Christian analogies as far as they can go with Narnia, which would put Aslan/EOTS in the position of the chemist: the souls are created things, but are imperfect because of some kind of 'Original Sin'. The role of Aslan in Creation is exactly the same as the Greek Logos: he is the 'Word' of God, who sings Narnia into existence in 'The Magician's Nephew'.
It's all there in Plato. I wonder what they do teach them in schools nowadays? :D
The public face of EOTSinc. Tee Hee emmajeans.
Bah, of course we did Plato at school. In Home Economics we cooked a Plato fish and chips.
So dr. clam, as the souls are imperfect due to original sin what are we to assume about Aslan/EOTS's control over the soul creation process?
Full control, partial, or non at all?
Oh, partial control, certainly!
I hope this discussion will continue. I have done a foolish thing, in that I have started reading a study of the Narnia books by a Freudian crackpot. It is irresponsibly entertaining in much the same way as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution blasting away at a priceless collection of Ming vases.
I do wish someone would do something similar with my 2003 Nanowwrimo Novel. I am keen to find out about all my bizarre psychological peculiarities...
I'd have to agree with partial control.
Full control makes me think of some kind of spooky, omnipotent, control freak Aslan vs. created creature relationship. Aslan can create any kinds of souls he wishes, but chooses to make flawed ones so that he can make them jump through hoops for his amusement.
No control leads to a charlatan diety. Aslan would lack true power.
Partial is the middle road which is not to weirdish and not to weak.
So Aslan intervenes with only certain creatures because...
Aslan may be a home brewer of souls who lovingly selects only the souls of potential for distilling. Aslans country is where the best beers, I mean souls, go.
Aslan may be a soul vampire whose motives are to breed fittingly pure souls for his unnatural soul appetite. Aslan's Country is where the ripe souls go to await consumption by Aslan.
Add your own variations to this menu if you so desire.
Hmm, a food theme. Possible oral fixation.
I know I should enter into the freewheeling speculation you are encouraging, but because the allegorical aspects are so explicit I find myself unable to disentangle Narnia from what we know as the "Real World".
In my opinion it comes down to the faulty housing for the immortal soul which you mention before. There would be proper housing, but Aslan and Co. have sub-let the job of making it to free-willed subcontractors.
To venture an orthodox answer to a question you have raised several times and I have sidestepped so far, Aslan appears to intervene for some people's sufferings and not for others, because he is not interested in alleviating suffering simply for the sake of alleviating suffering: suffering is part of the process of fitting souls for eternity. Instead, Aslan intervenes when the entire Narnian community is in danger of losing its moral compass and abandoning its divinely instituted purpose.
Now if "free-willed sucontractors" isn't in itself freewheeling, then I'm a monkey's descendant.
I too find it hard to separate from the "real world". Lewis' didactic style makes a separation unthunkable. But I'll continue with Aslan for want of another proper noun.
I'm less concerned about his alleviating of suffering that I originally spoke of. I really quite like your idea of the soul battleground/ workshop, and am quite happy to try to not extend that out of the pages of Narnia.
Given that Aslan&co. have made an imperfect universe from imperfect materials I'm more interested in his relationship to the souls he deals with on an face-to-face basis.
Why are Lucy (especially) et. al given his personal advice, when so many others are not?
He so often intervenes with them in cases that are not for the salvation of Narnian souls en masse, but rather for those indivuals personal salvation.
The case in point (because I just finished the book) is Eustance as the dragon. He, through his own selfish actions, has come to this crisis, yet he his saved from this fate by Aslan. Yet the lord who was previously stranded on the island, or the turned-to-gold lord at DEathwater Island received (I presume) no such intervention.
Three suggestions- one buck-passing, one kind of unsatisfying, and one plausible but disturbing:
(1) Aslan only comes to walk the surface of Narnia at certain times of great cosmic importance, when the fate of the world hangs in the balance: the time of the Voyage of Dawn Treader was one of those times, but the time of the earlier voyage of the Lords was not.
(2) Aslan only intervenes where the spiritual fate of the victim is in doubt. The Lords turned to gold and dragon-hood were older, and more set in their ways: maybe Aslan's divine foreknowledge showed him that they were already set irrevocably on the path of goodness, or irretrievably lost to evil, at the time of their demise, and Eustace's soul is much more in the balance.
(3) Only the visitors to Narnia really have souls. Everyone else is an NPC automaton.
A weaker version of this would say that as Aslan has brought the humes into Narnia for some special purpose, so he intervenes in their cases where he would not intervene in the case of a native Narnian, because of the flow-on effects of his action back in our world.
As for the special favours shown to Lucy, I think it is just because she is the youngest... the extreme example of the trend that people 'grow out' of Narnia as they get older.
My wacky Freudian is especially down on the Eustace/dragon episode:
"I believe this process of self-disgust and self-rejection is deeply distrubring, and it is one of those episodes in Lewis's fantasies which seems most unplatable. In it, I believe, we experience Lewis's strange dislike of being in a human body [Strange? When he could have a shiny new robot body? -Dr. Clam] and sense his disparagement of humanness, his misanthropy ... Whether or not the grisly episode is suitable for children depends on how much one supposes they may be subjected to psychotic fantasy without being harmed... It is worth noting that the imagery is very phallic..."
I agree with your assesments dr. clam.
(1) The buck has been passed. Aslan may well walk Narnia in times of cosmic importance, but the Dawn Treader's voyage isn't one of those times. Caspian is explicit about Narnia being in a time of peace then. So much so that he can leave it in the hands of Trumpkin and go sailing on a quest for the lords.
It could be in a time of spiritual conflict, but that is just speculation.
(2) Aslan seems to only intervene when the fate of named characters is in doubt. In "Prince Caspian" Aslan appears to Lucy and tells her to lead the others in another direction, but the others don't see him and don't believe her and so they travel the wrong way. Aslan comes and gives her a pep talk, she puts her foot down, and gradually the others come around and can eventually see Aslan.
This is one standout time where the heros are given multiple chances and preferential treatment from Aslan. What unnamed character has had so much pampering?
(3) Not so convincing. Caspian himself gets an admonishment from Aslan when the Dawn Treader is nearing the end of the voyage and he wants to continue with Reepicheep.
I don't mean to be contrary in writing mainly rejections of these ideas. I myself have little to put forward of my own, so I'm left to put pins in yours until I can put forward a tissue-paper thin balloon of my own.
I find Aslan relationship to Narians and visiting humans alike to be problematic.
Strangely, I have read all of the seven books in my childhood, but quite out of order. I started with "voyage of the dawn treader", and the last one I read was "the magician's nephew". It only came to my notice that it was Christian allegory many years after I had read them. I used to always read in a vaccuum, connecting only with direct experiences. It may as well have been the bible being allegory for the Narnia series at that point in my life. However, my vague feeling that it has been a positive moral experience for me (as opposed to violent video games etc.) means that I have encouraged my children to enjoy the films and books.
Marco, about reading the books out of order, I'm not so sure that the order suggested by Lewis is the necessarily to be prefered.
He wrote the books in a different order to the 1-7 that that they are now published in. This order is his suggested reading order - it chronicles Narnia, well... chronologically.
But the order he wrote them in I think (with little justification by myself) might better show his process of thinking, and so we can better experience Narnia as he was imagining it. Certainly after reading "The Magician's Nephew" this time near the start (maybe 3rd?) I didn't feel it added anything to my appreciation of the story arc.
I must check what order he did write them in. Also I think it would be interesting to read "The Magician's Nephew" immediately previous to "The Last Battle" if it isn't already in that place in the originally published order.
Ah, the wonders of the internet!
This link gives the order they were published, and the (slightly different) order they were written.
In one of those lovely netty coincidences, that last link I posted is actually from the website of one of the designers of "Once Upon a Time"...
As destiny would have it, the order I read them in was as follows:
5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6. The Silver Chair
7. The Last Battle
4. Prince Caspian
3. The Horse and His Boy
2. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
1. The Magicians Nephew
And for some reason, my favourite was Prince Caspian. The Last Battle got me really confused.
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