Narnia

[liv]

Narnia-related conversations in several places have sparked my curiosity: where were you when you understood that the Narnia books are about Christianity? Or did you always know?

I read The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was quite little, maybe 5 or 6 ish? I didn't know about reading in publication rather than chronological order, and I have an unusual degree of affection for The Magician's Nephew. I found it slightly weird, but, well, I was reading a lot of books that were really meant for somewhat older kids (or even adults) and I was generally used to the idea that everything in books is weird and half-understood.

So I went looking for more books in the series, and found Prince Caspian which felt very sequel-ish, the Pevensies return to Narnia and a bunch of unmemorable stuff happens. And then I found The voyage of the Dawn Treader, which felt properly exciting again (I do slightly muddle it in memory with Arthur Ransome's We didn't mean to go to sea). And then there's that scene at the end where Aslan turns out to be a Lamb as well as a Lion, and that was the moment where my lovely portal fantasy turned out to be preaching about Jesus.

One of the discussions I read, I think on Making Light, roughly divided people into two groups, more or less that people from a Christian background realize the allegory at the end of Dawn Treader, and people from non-Christian backgrounds get all the way through to The Last Battle with their innocence intact. I don't know why as a seven-year-old Jewish kid I had any idea about Jesus as the Sacrificial Lamb, I think I was just a sponge for random facts about about the world.

The thing is that this was really bad timing for me, because I had just started at a new school and I was in a class with a teacher who bullied me really badly, for lots of reasons but a prominent one was that she was upset that I didn't share her Christian beliefs. So I was getting shouted at a lot for not believing in Jesus and particularly for not believing in Original Sin (which the teacher felt should have been a gimme as it's in the Old Testament), and to find out that Aslan, the fantasy character I loved, was Jesus after all was really upsetting.

I mean, getting bullied about religion had made me really stubborn about the fact that I don't believe in Jesus. So I think my main feeling was not the more typically reported sense of betrayal that preaching was sneaked into the story, but more like feeling excluded, this story was not for me, it was for Christian children. I felt vaguely guilty for cheering for Aslan, given that I was personally fighting for my right not to consider that I was Saved by Jesus' sacrifice, whereas within the story I had accepted the idea that Aslan's sacrifice saved Edmund. It wasn't until I was older that I started worrying about whether Aslan's sacrifice was meaningful if he was really the creator of Narnia and outside the rules that normally mean dead people have to stay dead.

Later on I met OICCU types (I'm always tempted to call them oiks) who quoted Lewis at me, and I thought, you're not tapping into childhood nostalgia, you're evoking childhood misery because it's only been a decade since last time someone tried to bully me into believing in Jesus. Besides, I may have quibbles with how CS Lewis understood religion, but college Christian Union zealots really really don't understand Lewis.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I was raised in a culturally Christian environment - went to Sunday School occasionally, went to an Anglican high school - but I didn't recognise Narnia as a Christian allegory until I was told that it was some time in my late teens, to my great surprise. I only remember getting really angry at the end of The Last Battle on Susan's behalf, and avoiding that book on all re-readings. I later read some other Lewis books and that intense, smug paternalism retroactively tainted Narnia for me, unfortunately.

[simont]

I loved the whole series when I was eight or so, and read it repeatedly. I think I didn't find out it was Christian propaganda until some time in my teens, by which time it was distant enough in my memory to evoke no more than a bit of an eye-roll.

I went back and re-read it all a few years ago, around the time the LWW film came out. (Not consciously because of the film, though it's perfectly possible that the upcoming film caused lots of people to happen to mention Narnia in conversation, which in turn planted the idea of rereading it in my head.) When I did that, I was struck by the fact that with one notable exception, the Christian propaganda is quite separate from the exciting fantasy storytelling, and the latter had stuck in my memory much better than the former: for example, my memories of The Magician's Nephew were quite detailed in the sections with the Wood Between The Worlds, the yellow and green rings, Charn, the creation of Narnia, and Jadis's visit to London, and almost completely blank about the huge deal made of the magic apple tree and the attempted temptation. It's as if my 8-year-old brain had recognised that bit (and several others) as tedious advert breaks and quietly filtered them out, even without really understanding what was being advertised.

The one notable exception to that clear separation into proper story and advert breaks, of course, is Aslan's self-sacrifice and resurrection in LWW, just because it's so totally central to the plot that you can't possibly forget it if you remember anything about how the story goes. And of course that's the one Lewis wrote first, so I can't help wondering if that was his one actually good idea in this area and the rest was bodged together half-heartedly...

[alextiefling]

I always knew. I was raised in a CofE household, and attended Holy Week and Easter services from an early age. To me, Aslan's sacrifice in TLTW&TW was an obvious allegory for the crucifixion, and from quite early on it bugged me that 'Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time' was an unsatisfying characterisation of Atonement theology. (The search for an actually workable theology of the Atonement has continued to be a major feature of my Christian life, and a much more distinctive point of difference between me and most evangelicals than anything about ritual.)

I loved TMN, and gained renewed respect for it when I read Dante's Divine Comedy, as I felt that the garden where the healing apple is found was probably inspired by the Earthly Paradise - a good mirror of the fallen Eden. Lewis, with his love of classical pagan syncretism, was probably thinking at least as much of the Garden of the Hesperides, but still.

I really don't like TLB, and not just for Susan-related reasons. The business about Tash, while not an actual Voodoo Shark non-fix, is still a pretty crappy (and creepy) approach to unfamiliar religion. But more generally, the apocalyptic feel which begins to creep in after leaving the final island in VotDT, and which pervades TSC, is stifling in TLB. I like apocalyptic literature, but it doesn't make for good YA novels, especially in such an uncritical treatment.

[alextiefling]

I can't help wondering if that was his one actually good idea in this area and the rest was bodged together half-heartedly

This is my enduring thought about the series. There isn't anything like enough fuel in that one analogy to power an entire seven-book sequence. And it's especially problematic that the book with the good idea ends up as number 2. TMN is a pretty good prequel, and TH&HB a good interquel*, but every subsequent return to the well diminishes the impact of TLTW&TW culminating in an event which Lewis fairly explicitly portrays as the Narnian part of the trans-universal meta-historical event of the Passion.

*Team Aravis, always.

[iddewes]

I didn't know as a child at all, it was only when I went to University and discussed the books with a friend who IS quite strongly Christian that she told me they related to Christianity!
I converted to Judaism as an adult, so I was not a Jewish child, but my parents were not particularly religious, and I mostly went to school in a part of Canada where the publicly funded schools were either secular or Catholic, and I always went to the secular schools, so I never really learnt much about Christian teachings anyway. We had no RE at school there at all.

[jack]

*hugs* I'm really sorry about your teacher :(

I think, I read all the books except the last battle and I had no clue. I think the bit with the lamb, I remember thinking "wait, is that Jesus?" or something like that, but I don't think I really connected it to the rest of the books.

I've no idea how I failed making the connection, I think I went to a CoE-y school, but got a vague idea of religion involving platitudes and God being up in the sky, but didn't actually grok any of the theology.

And then years later, I read Last Battle and I think by then I had some idea, but just found it really really sad. I liked some of the early bits, but the well-meaning donkey was tricked into being evil and the selfish ape turned from rogueish and misguided to really evil, and all the Narnians fell to the inevitabilitiy, and the good guys made an effort and then everything they tried failed, and they tried harder -- and still failed. And then it was scary and everyone died.

And it felt really arbitrary, like the world went evil because everyone was worshipping false-Aslan. But Aslan could have cleared everything up by just asking them not to. And I didn't quite have the sense of this at the time, but everyone KNEW false Aslan was asking them to do bad things, but they did them anyway -- because the message "do whatever Aslan said" had been drummed into them. If Aslan had told them to think for themselves all along, they wouldn't have been in that fix! And then rather than fixing it, Aslan writes off the world and ends it. And then everyone randomly dies, and then something something heaven.

[jack]

And FWIW, I loved a lot the books. LWW. And I really liked Prince Caspian, the first half with the island and the trek through the woods felt like a classic secondry world adventure, but also like the pevensies were really getting on and DOING something, not just doing what people told them. And I enjoyed most of Dawn Treader a lot. And I liked HaHB and MN. And I liked parts of SC (Puddleglum) although it felt like a slightly different world.

[jack]

And fwiw, some of the bits now I can see are direct allegories to something, I appreciated at the time -- lots of people are annoyed by Eustace turning into a dragon, but even though the exact mechanics aren't explained, I found it hit all the right emotional notes for a story -- Eustace is dragoned because he's selfish and short-sighted, and freed because he's helpful and bold.

But many others, I didn't know what they were about, but I remember not grokking them at the time, either because they didn't hang together with the plot given, or because they relied on theology I've still not picked up. Like Aslan's sacrifice, his actual death and resurrection were really moving. But I didn't understand the trade at all -- surely LOTS of people were traitors, including Tumnus, why does this all happen for Edmund? Who made this rule that traitors belong to the witch? Since most of it (the rule about traitors, the fact that suddenly it matters to Edmund but not the other people killed, the deep magic, the deeper magic) are all made up on the spot, it doesn't feel like Aslan is actually giving anything up, rather, he's just announcing "the plot randomly says this happens next".

[jack]

One bit that stuck with me as actually having a memorable pro-Christian evangelising effect, was the bit where the dwarves are in the stable in the last battle and refuse to see Aslan and heaven.

It's like, however much I'd LIKE to be able to fly, people saying "flying it really awesome" is not going to make me more likely to start jumping off things, because however much I'd LIKE to, I have no reason to think it would actually work.

But if people say "everyone else does it all the time, it's really easy, just jump in the air and see", I find it really hard to say "no, I know in advance it's not going to work, I'm not going to try it".

[simont]

Like Aslan's sacrifice, his actual death and resurrection were really moving. But I didn't understand the trade at all

A thing I noticed in my re-read was that Aslanity seems generally less subtle than 'real' Christianity, in a way that I couldn't help thinking might reduce its effectiveness as propaganda.

For example, Christ's sacrifice in Christianity is supposed to confer a nebulously specified benefit in the next life, whereas Aslan's sacrifice in LWW confers the much more immediately tangible benefit of everybody not dying in the first place by virtue of causing the Witch to be defeated.

I recall other examples coming up elsewhere in the series, for example Lucy finding the extreme-beauty spell in the book in Dawn Treader and being tempted to read it: in our world, she'd have had to resist that temptation by herself, perhaps with a little help from imagining how God or Jesus or both wouldn't like it, but in the Narniaverse, she actually fails to resist temptation, but it's OK because she's promptly rescued by Aslan actually manifesting in the book and saying 'ahem'.

It made me think that, read by a certain kind of mind, this could surely make at least some people less likely to believe in Christianity, because the message of these books is that the effects of gods that truly exist are really obvious and difficult to miss – and hence, the effects that happen in Christianity, which are so subtle that we rely on the Bible and other people to tell us they're happening at all, might be dismissed on the grounds that they clearly don't fall into that same category.

[jack]

Aslan's sacrifice in LWW confers the much more immediately tangible benefit of everybody not dying in the first place by virtue of causing the Witch to be defeated.

Huh! I had completely the opposite reading -- I thought his sacrifice saved Edmund at the near-certain cost of everyone else dying and the white witch ruling Narnia for the rest of eternity, which they escaped by (a) getting lucky that a 14-year-old boy was as good a general as a 1000s of year old god (b) Aslan getting resurrected so he could save everyone at the castle and the battle like he should have done in first place, by way of the secret Deeper Magic which he knew about but kept secret to let everyone think they were going to die.

Did I miss something?

[simont]

It's certainly possible that I missed something. I don't actually have a copy of Narnia to refer to: all I have conveniently to hand is some jottings in a text editor that I wrote down on the occasion of my re-reading, so if I got something wrong at the time then my notes will reflect that.

[jack]

the message of these books is that the effects of gods that truly exist are really obvious and difficult to miss – and hence, the effects that happen in Christianity, which are so subtle that we rely on the Bible and other people to tell us they're happening at all, might be dismissed

I know what you mean. I _think_ what's going on is, partly the books are a message about how you should act, that you should be good and honorable and trust in the christian message, and so, and those are reinforced by both Aslan saying so, but also in turning out for the best (eg. Lucy spies on her friend and the consequences are directly bad, not that Aslan punishes her).

And partly, people think the effects _are_ obvious in our world and _aren't_ subtle, and Narnia is just a more accessible interpretation of them, not a more convincing one. (That's obviously something they'd disagree with you about.)

In fact, several times, I felt like there COULD have been a good allegory but wasn't, like I felt if Aslan's sacrifice had been clearer, it would have been a whole lot more moving, and whether or not I agreed Jesus did the same thing, I might have WANTED to believe. But because I just didn't get it, I didn't have a lot of emotional investment in the allegory.

[antisoppist]

I had read and enjoyed the Narnia books as a child. I then saw a dramatised version on television in my early teens and spluttered "What? Aslan is like Jesus!", at which point my mother said the equivalent of "well, yes, duh!" and I was extremely cross at not having noticed before/having been tricked by the author.

But despite a Church of England childhood, I didn't pick up on it from reading the books. I had to *see* it to notice it.

[davidgillon]

Oh, ick on your teacher!

I'm going to be the odd one out in never having read them. They weren't something that ever came up even though I was a voracious reader as a child. I was vaguely aware they were out there, but don't recall ever picking up a copy, nor having them mentioned at (Catholic) school.

So the first time I knew they were a Christian allegory was when I read the entry on them in the Encyclopaedia of Fantasy, and that completely put me off ever reading them. I have this vague memory of sitting there going 'He did what?!? In a kids book!?!' I'm uncomfortable with Christian evangelization at the best of times (no matter I'm Catholic) and this struck me as being almost abusive in nature.

[wychwood]

I'm a counter-example to the ML discussion, in that I read the Narnia books multiple times for years before I ever actually noticed the allegory. I think I started reading them around age 7ish, and I was probably ten or eleven, maybe even older, before I registered it.

Also: in my experience OICCU was populated almost entirely by jerks, most of whom wanted to convert me because everyone knows that Catholics aren't actually Christian... they refused to let our assistant chaplain join on that basis, I believe.

[liv]

Yeah, I was brought up in a fairly Christian culture, including Christian schools. So maybe that's why I was set up to recognize the Lion/Lamb thing. I was basically alienated from the books before I ever read The horse and his boy or The last battle, so I don't remember having a strong emotional reaction about Susan. In some ways she was the character I most related to, the sort of sensible big sister type, and, well, I was already extremely aware that Christians don't think I am going to Heaven, so the fact that Susan is excluded was just another instance of Christians being wrong about the afterlife. I was young enough that I didn't understand the thing about lipstick and stockings, that she was effectively punished for growing up or for being sexual.

And yes, I do think Lewis can be very smug and paternalistic, though I do like some of The Screwtape letters. But I definitely do have bad associations with Lewis' version of Christianity because of the stupid preachy Christian Union types.

[lilacsigil]

Yes! Arbitrary! The earlier books followed emotional logic at least, but this one suddenly just squashed every effort because it was squashing time, and that was it. I can remember being excited when Aslan turned up, then he was just as horrible and depressing as the rest of the book. I really didn't get the something something heaven part: I really thought they had lost the battle and were now dead, and Susan didn't even get to be there with her family.

[liv]

Yes, I think you're right, the one good idea of an allegorical retelling of the Passion isn't enough to sustain the whole seven-book series. There's still some very good portal fantasy round the edges, but the bits where it's squeezed to fit the Christian allegory framework don't work very well. Regarding the pastede-on Christian bits as tedious advert breaks makes a lot of sense.

It seems to me the best audience for the Narnia books are precocious kids, advanced enough to read a fairly complex story but young enough not to question the underlying theology / allegory. I think that's why the characters in Lev Grossman's The magicians are so obsessed with their thinly-disguised equivalent of Narnia; I found that a very realistic portrayal, though I think Grossman's critique of Narnia doesn't work well.

[liv]

Slightly tongue-in-cheek, but doesn't the New Testament have the same problem? It has the climax of Jesus' death and resurrection very near the beginning, and then there's another two dozen books about the disciples and Paul wandering about doing slightly random stuff, and then Revelation, which, well. I've always thought that the big problem with The last battle isn't that Lewis failed to write a fantasy version of Revelation, but that Revelation fundamentally doesn't work as the final chapter of a novel, if you're expecting anything like modern novel conventions. And then there's another two thousand years of history in which the life and death of Jesus certainly have a big impact, but fundamentally the world still carries on existing much the same, with its burdens of sin and suffering and death.

[liv]

That's a really interesting perspective, from a religiously knowledgeable Christian child presented with the stories as being about your own religion. I think that's probably the audience Lewis had in mind, as he was writing in an era when he could reasonably expect most children would have a fairly comprehensive Christian education. I don't think he was intending to bait-and-switch his readers by presenting an enjoyable fantasy story and sneaking Jesus into it.

The Atonement stuff kind of offended my sense of justice when I was a kid, and I can't say I'm entirely over the feeling that it seems deeply unfair for God to punish all of humanity just because their progenitor committed a sin, and equally it seems deeply unfair for God to punish sinless Jesus for the actual sins of anybody else. It's really interesting to me that that's something you struggle with.

I think Dante, too, would have been influenced by Classical Pagan thought, so it's not surprising you see similar elements in Dante and Lewis. And I do think you're right that apocalypse literature doesn't fit very well into the children's fantasy frame, there just isn't a way to do it that would make it work within the established genre.

[liv]

That makes sense, that you found out about the Christian bits of it as an adult. I generally love secularism but public schools not teaching religion at all seems very strange to me.

[liv]

Thanks for being sympathetic. The year I was rising 8 was a long time ago, but it was pretty grim at the time, and I'm still mildly scarred by it.

It sounds like your Christian education was fairly rubbish, very much confusing God with Santa Claus as Salinger puts it.

Your critique of The Last Battle is much more sophisticated than mine; unlike the earlier books in the series I only read it a couple of times and don't remember it very well beyond that it was depressing. I love the idea that things would have been better if Aslan told everybody to think for themselves. I agree that inevitable doom doesn't make for a very good plot.

[liv]

Whereas I'm much much worse at noticing subtext in visual media than in books. I can just imagine being cross at feeling tricked like that. But I think it wasn't intended as a trick, it was intended to be obvious to the presumed Christian reader.

[highlyeccentric]

I was given the books at a Christian school, so my chances of innocence were limited. I don't think I spotted the allegory IMMEDIATELY, but within a year of me reading LWW we were being fed the BBC made-for-TV movies with explicit (and insufferable) smug proselytising. I kept reading, because fantasy! Wheee!, but eventually that spoiled my enjoyment of the whole series.

I *cannot* handle the Screwtape Letters, although I cognitively recognise they are very funny and influenced things I do like (eg: Good Omens). But I know too many people who read it as an actual guide to demonic goings-on. I've had the Screwtape Letters quoted at me as evangelical material to remedy my stubborn refusal to believe that demons cause, eg, the common headcold.