Chronicles Of Narnia - Should I Read It?

[The Marquis de Leech]

Maybe I can use my son as an excuse for a reread. This evening he got tired of Dracula and wanted to hear about Lucy again. The bit about it being always winter and never Christmas always cracks me up. Oh, the horror!

But there's a Lucy in Dracula too!

(Oh god, I now have this awesome fanfic idea for a Narnia-Dracula crossover).

[AverageGuy]

I liked the Last Battle when I was a child. What's wrong with it?

The Aslan/Tash bit and the allegorical Calormenes are what most people seem to have issues with.

You may not like them as an adult, but I don't think there's any harm in trying the first one (in publication order) and seeing how you feel. They are children's books, and the Christian parallels will probably be more obvious to you as an adult, if that's a concern. But even if for instance Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a little too obviously Paul on the road to Damascus, I think to some extent you can just take the books on a surface level.

[Shryke]

The Aslan/Tash bit and the allegorical Calormenes are what most people seem to have issues with.

It's not that specifically. It's that there's nothing else in the book.

It's literally all bad allegory and no fun story.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I'd argue that The Last Battle is even more racist re: the Calormen than A Horse and His Boy: Not only are they silly Arab/Muslim caricatures but they actually worship Satan! Wow. Besides I remember being bored with Tye Last Battle even before Lewis decided that having Jesus dress like a lion wasn't subtle enough and went full steam ahead. Admittedly it's been a while since I read Narnia.

A Horse and His Boy (modelled, of course, on the Jewish people escaping captivity in Egypt) is simply casually racist. The best you can really say about it is that at least it is casual: the Tisrock, for instance, isn't stupid, even if he presides over a massive slave empire. His son is the villain, and lusts after Susan, but he's still not the baby-eating sort, and learns better in the end.

The Last Battle not only has the Muslims aligned with Satan*, and supporting the Beast of Revelation (the Ape) and the Antichrist (the Donkey), but it also takes shallow potshots at atheists (the Dwarves), and gets very literal in salvation/damnation (the Stable Door). Then there's the fact that Lewis kills all his human characters in a traincrash, which is a very strange happy ending indeed. Oh, and Susan, who commits the crime of wanting to grow up.

*With the proviso that if you do good in the name of Tash, you're supposedly really helping Aslan. Doesn't quite get clear up the problem that the guy they think they are worshipping is essentially Satan.

[frodostark]

The Aslan/Tash bit and the allegorical Calormenes are what most people seem to have issues with.

You may not like them as an adult, but I don't think there's any harm in trying the first one (in publication order) and seeing how you feel. They are children's books, and the Christian parallels will probably be more obvious to you as an adult, if that's a concern. But even if for instance Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a little too obviously Paul on the road to Damascus, I think to some extent you can just take the books on a surface level.

Plus, reading about ideas you may not agree with probably won't kill you. :)

Thanks to Pullman it seems that most Lewis discussions will veer off into controversy, which is a shame...but I have to say, I just read Horse and His Boy with my kids and the racism claim seems a bit overblown. If massive slave empires are racist, is GRRM racist? I seem to remember at least two digressions where Lewis praises the poetry of the Calormenes and he talks about them as strong, fearsome warriors; the only real negative aspects come from the fact that the Tisroc is sly and wicked, his son is proud and wicked, and the Vizier is old and wicked.

[frodostark]

Oh, and Susan, who commits the crime of wanting to grow up.

This is my favorite slur on Lewis and it really has gotten stale. It's not an accurate reading of The Last Battle nor of the Chronicles as a whole. Andrew Rilstone buried that horse (so as to avoid further beatings) pretty convincingly here: http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2005/11/lipstick-on-my-scholar.html.

[The Marquis de Leech]

This is my favorite slur on Lewis and it really has gotten stale. It's not an accurate reading of The Last Battle nor of the Chronicles as a whole. Andrew Rilstone buried that horse (so as to avoid further beatings) pretty convincingly here: http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2005/11/lipstick-on-my-scholar.html.

The problem with that reading is that Susan is one of only three sexual beings in the entire series (the others being Jadis, the White Witch, for whom Uncle Andrew and even Digory Kirke have an attraction, and Rabadash, the horny young Carlomene Prince). Susan becoming an airhead bimbo is one thing, but the fact that Lewis kills off everyone else in a train crash makes it appear he was so desperate to preserve the innocence of, especially, Lucy, that he ensured that those other Pevensies would never have to deal with sexuality. Yes, on paper Peter, Edmund, and Lucy have hit puberty by the time of the Last Battle, but Lewis only ever portrays them as innocent. So when Susan comes along and expresses herself, she is clearly the odd one out: like the White Witch before her, she's fallen into error.

Also, one thing Lewis never addresses (but Neil Gaiman does) is how Susan must have felt to have her entire family wiped out like that. No-one in Narnia gives her feelings a second thought.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Thanks to Pullman it seems that most Lewis discussions will veer off into controversy, which is a shame...but I have to say, I just read Horse and His Boy with my kids and the racism claim seems a bit overblown. If massive slave empires are racist, is GRRM racist? I seem to remember at least two digressions where Lewis praises the poetry of the Calormenes and he talks about them as strong, fearsome warriors; the only real negative aspects come from the fact that the Tisroc is sly and wicked, his son is proud and wicked, and the Vizier is old and wicked.

Slave empires are one thing, but you have this whole discrepancy between cruel, brown Carlomenes and free, white Narnians. It even gets noticed in the first chapter of A Horse and His Boy, where our protagonist is noted as having the skin colour of those barbaric Northerners (i.e. Narnians).

You've even got the bit in Voyage, where the old "bad" Eustace thinks Carlomene is the least dodgy of all these places, and thinks about going there: the Carlomenes are the series' most enduring bad guys.

[Night's_King]

Plus, reading about ideas you may not agree with probably won't kill you. :)

Thanks to Pullman it seems that most Lewis discussions will veer off into controversy, which is a shame...but I have to say, I just read Horse and His Boy with my kids and the racism claim seems a bit overblown. If massive slave empires are racist, is GRRM racist? I seem to remember at least two digressions where Lewis praises the poetry of the Calormenes and he talks about them as strong, fearsome warriors; the only real negative aspects come from the fact that the Tisroc is sly and wicked, his son is proud and wicked, and the Vizier is old and wicked.

I don't want to derail the topic, but there are few issues with Ice and Fire, yes. Now and then there's a thread in the Ice and Fire-books corner, discussing racism in the books. Especially when dealing with Daenerys storyline.

I wouldn't exactly say, that the books are racist, but they use at least a lot of stereotypes.

Honourbound, dull northerners? Hot-blooded, ill tempered southerners? A white Master Race (only race known to control dragons)? Cartoonish, weak, evil slave traders from the Near East? Slaves that are willing to sell themselves back into slavery or serve the Messiah without payment, like it's their nature?

There are obviously a few issues with those books.

On topic: You have to see the books in their temporal context. The books were published in the 50s. Many authors of that time, even Tolkien, are discussed, when it comes to racism. The civil-rights movement didn't start until the late 50s or early 60s. Those people were raised in a different political context. I'm still wincing everytime my Grandma (born 1924) refers to coloured people as Neger (german word for Negro), but I can't convince her that it's wrong to use such a word, because she was raised that way.

I'm not saying that this is a good or bad thing. I just think you shouldn't rage so much about racism in older books. I think it's a great example for how our society has changed. It was normal at that time, but it's totally different in our time. And I think it's a great thing that no author can put racist political views into his story and still sell many books anymore.

[Yersinia]

But there's a Lucy in Dracula too!

(Oh god, I now have this awesome fanfic idea for a Narnia-Dracula crossover).

Heh, I completely forgot about her, it's been so long since I last read the book or watched the movie. My son will most likely lose interest before we get that far, because the language is so archaic and he's only 5. (Yeah, yeah, I know, but he really wanted to hear about Dracula...)

[The Marquis de Leech]

The racism in Narnia really only rears its head in two of the seven books, and in only one does it really come across as toxic. However, while Lewis was a man of his time, he is incredibly judgemental and petty in this series, and took snide potshots at every opportunity. Everything from mixed-gender schooling, to vegetarianism, to sexuality, to atheism. Voyage, my old favourite, is stacked with straw men on closer inspection.

Even Tolkien, who was Lewis' best mate, hated Narnia.

[Night's_King]

The racism in Narnia really only rears its head in two of the seven books, and in only one does it really come across as toxic. However, while Lewis was a man of his time, he is incredibly judgemental and petty in this series, and took snide potshots at every opportunity. Everything from mixed-gender schooling, to vegetarianism, to sexuality, to atheism. Voyage, my old favourite, is stacked with straw men on closer inspection.

Even Tolkien, who was Lewis' best mate, hated Narnia.

Narnia wasn't really that good for their friendship... :D

[polishgenius]

It's not that specifically. It's that there's nothing else in the book.

It's literally all bad allegory and no fun story.

I really like the story. But then I strongly suspect that reading it when I did was a big influence for my taste (I'm gonna spoiler this because, after all, OP hasn't read it)

for big, doomy, magical apocalypses. After all I wasn't familiar with The Book of Revelation when I read it at about eight years old I think, so I didn't see the allegories (as opposed to the earlier books, where I did catch at least some- it would have been a bit weird if I didn't, being already a Christian).

But hell, even Neil Gaiman, who as noted wrote 'The Problem of Susan' and has stated his dislike of much of the book, wrote a story arc of Sandman that was greatly influenced by it. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's also my favourite arc of Sandman.

On the Last Battle/Horse and his Boy comparison, I think I found tHahB more troubling because although the 'Muslims worship Satan' implication in The Last Battle is obviously hugely off-key (and a really weird way to interpret a fellow Abrahamic religion), it also makes sure to show that there are good Calormenes, which I don't remember tHahB doing, and also although the way he went about showing it isn't great, Lewis' decision to state that you can be a good person even if you follow the 'wrong' religion and that you won't be barred from Heaven just for not being Christian was quite an important, positive impact on my religious viewpoint.

[Buckwheat]

If you decide to read one, my recommendation is without a doubt to start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and if you decide to go on to keep following publication order. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe you discover Narnia along with the characters and it is a much better introduction than The Magician's Nephew (which would be the first in "internal chronology" order), where the word Narnia appears in the first paragraph as something already familiar.

I do not think that is really a problem if one wanted to start with reading that one before the others.

It is just one mention, and then the narrator goes on to introduce us to the characters in England that will later get to know Narnia along with the readers.

Reading Order:

1. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (let's face it, it's the most famous one).

Probably the reason I decide to like Magician's Nephew more, I usually do not like what everybody else does. :P

Also, one thing Lewis never addresses (but Neil Gaiman does) is how Susan must have felt to have her entire family wiped out like that. No-one in Narnia gives her feelings a second thought.

Is that a theme in one of Gaiman's novels or something? Which one?

I also found Susan's fate strange the first time I read it. I did not like Last Battle much.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Is that a theme in one of Gaiman's novels or something? Which one?

He's written a short story called The Problem of Susan, where we have an elderly Professor of children's literature (i.e. Susan) talking about her life.

A god who would punish me for liking nylons and parties by making me walk through that school dining room, with the flies, to identify Ed, well … he’s enjoying himself a bit too much, isn’t he? Like a cat, getting the last ounce of enjoyment out of a mouse. Or a gram of enjoyment, I suppose it must be, these days. I don’t know, really.

[Nabarg]

The Calormenes, like Susan, always seems to create a LOT of distorted responses. There is no reason to see them as an allegory for muslims, since their religion is totally different. Image worshipping polyteists, whose main deity is a four armed being with an animal head, which is worshiped through blood sacrifice, looks to me as far from islam as one can get. And there is at least one good calormene character in tHahB: the girl Aravis is one of the main characters, and the one female character in the Narnia books I like best.

[UtherDoul]

I have to say that what bothered me the most about The Last Battle wasn't the Satan worshipping Arabs, Susan ( on whom pages and page have been written), that Atheist are morons who refuse reality even when it's in front of them or even Lewis' interpretation of concept of the virtuous heathen, which managed to be a particularly offensive one, IMO.

To echo RBPL, what irked me the most was

the happy ending being that the characters died. Sure Real Narnia is Heaven and everyone is happy the characters are in Heaven (except Susan who will be left mourning the senseless death of her family alone -- I didn't particularly like The Problem of Susan but I did find that objection poignant). But it looked like Lewis wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Remember kids, hastening your passage to the Kingdom of Heaven via suicide is a big no no, but if lion Jesus arranges a convenient lethal accident, it's okay.

[MinDonner]

For a rather detailed deconstruction of the first few Narnia books, I recommend Ana Mardoll's Ramblings - sadly trolls have now chased her from the internet but there's some really interesting analyses in there, whether you agree with them or not.

[SeanF]

The Horse and His Boy is probably the one I enjoyed most (along with the Silver Chair and Dawn Treader). I wouldn't call it a racist book, given that the heroine is herself a Calormene, and ends up married to the white hero. Nor would I identify the Calormenes with Muslims, given how radically different their religion is to Islam.

But, I do find the religious allegories throughout the series too heavy-handed.

[Darzin]

wouldn't call it a racist book, given that the heroine is herself a Calormene, and ends up married to the white hero.

This, also I like it because its just a strait in world adventure story, with less religious allegory than the others.