Chronicles Of Narnia - Should I Read It?

[MinDonner]

Out of the Silent Planet is seriously fucking weird to a sci-fi reader (as opposed to a Christian Apologetics reader). Been a few years now, but IIRC the plot boils down to this: dude transported to strange planet, meets powerful god-entity who says "I'd like to kill everyone on Earth so they can all go to heaven, but unfortunately they're mostly unsaved heathens so I can't yet" and dude thinks "damn, that's a shame, good luck with that". what

[Pilusmagnus]

Damn, Lewis did have fucked up views of his religion!

[Darth Richard II]

Eh, actually his views were pretty spot on for his religion.

[Wilbur]

Damn, Lewis did have fucked up views of his religion!

Well, he was the author of Mere Christianity, the modern treatise on common orthodoxy and Christian belief, so your assessment here may be a bit off.

He also wrote The Problem of Pain, which seeks to provide the orthodox answer to the question, "If God is good, how can evil exist" for the modern reader.

Finally, his work also included Miracles, which is the argument from reason for Christianity, and again, is a fairly straightforward treatment of the historicity of the New Testament.

[Altherion]

In most contemporary fantasy, religious people are fanatics or corrupt, religious orders don't want to help people, but increase their power. Most heroes are atheists or make jokes about the gods they seem to believe in. And most religious orders seem to be like the catholic church at the time of the inquisition.

To be fair, this it is really, really difficult to reconcile a realistic religion with a typical fantasy setting. You run into all of the philosophical issues from real-world religions like the problem of evil. The Last Battle has several of these; I haven't read it recently, but the ones I remember are:

• The concept of salvation is just as problematic as elsewhere. It's not clear what the criteria are. He couldn't make it just those who follow Aslan so the Calormenes can get in by doing good in the name of Tash (even though the latter is basically a Satanic figure), but it's not clear how much is enough. It can probably be argued that even their leader was doing good within the constraints of his culture.
• The treatment of Susan is pretty terrible for what is supposed to be a benevolent deity. The main argument against her joining them is not so much that offhand comment about lipstick as the fact that she no longer believes in Narnia. This is not possible for a sane individual: she has spent over a decade as a queen of the place and in fact, since the beginning of the first book, she has probably lived longer in Narnia than on Earth. Grossman presents interdimensional travel as not exactly conducive to the psychological and emotional stability of children (particularly when they are rulers in one place and children in another) and I tend to agree. One would think that an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent god would reassure the poor girl... but instead, all of her family is killed in a train accident and she left is all alone. WTF, lion Jesus, just... WTF?

Incidentally, I thought the treatment of religion at the end of His Dark Materials is even worse. I was disappointed in Pullman for bringing it into the open; he was clearly aware of Narnia and he had to know doing that is annoying, but he did it anyway and it turns out that an anti-Christian screed is even more irritating than a pro-Christian screed.

The Magicians gets away with it, but mostly because the so-called gods are not taken too seriously; they are not so much gods as very powerful magical beings. It's also not very prominent: "the last battle" in the third book actually manages to be the less important of the two plot lines at that point in the book.

All of that said, there do exist fantasy books which include gods without devolving into either allegory or criticism of the religions of Earth. Take a look at L. M. Bujold's Chalion series for an example.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Well, he was the author of Mere Christianity, the modern treatise on common orthodoxy and Christian belief, so your assessment here may be a bit off.

I think the issue is more how Lewis goes and applies his beliefs in his books. Tolkien was just as religious, albeit Catholic rather than Anglican, and his works are deeply imbued with his world view. He famously described The Lord of the Rings as a fundamentally Catholic work, yet no one ever accuses Tolkien of having "out there" religious weirdness in his books.

When Lewis goes and tries to give us thinly veiled Christianity in a fantasy setting, you get all the issues that come with that, but you also get the problem of those issues having to also conform to plot, characterisation, and Narnia's status as a children's series. Lewis ends up juggling too many balls at once.

[felice]

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 be fair, the big problem with the school in question was failure to deal with bullies, and he says it later becomes a good school under new management, without any implication that it ceases to be co-ed.

[Jo498]

I do not think one has to deal with all the philosophical problems of religions to have them somewhat better represented in fantasy settings than they usually are. The problem that has been pointed out is that most fantasy is actually as thoroughly modern as the authors are, so a distant or cynical view of religion will dominate.

(The exception is Bakker and I think even there the views of Cnaiur or Kellhus who more or less take the Holy War (unless obviously used for political reasons as Conphas etc.) as mass madness tend to dominate.)

This is getting OT, but to use a somewhat less loaded example, take "honor". Until the late 19th century men would even in Europe fight duels to "save/defend their honor", sometimes for "insults" we find ridiculous today. This stuff should be a dominant social force in almost any culture, be it "barbaric" or medieval in fantasy settings.

What do we get instead: Brutal barbs like the Scylvendi with hardly any religion or honor code (except a crude idea that might makes right), the lame clichee that knights (or analoguous castes) are pompous asses and vulnerable to cynic sellswords, because they "fight with honor" etc. Hardly any of the newish fantasy I read has even tried to employ honor codes in a way we know from 3000 years of literature since Homer. Recall how essential this is in the Iliad where Achilles is not honored according to his prowess and his girl is taken away. Or later (not in the Illiad, IIRC) when Ajax commits suicide after having slain a bunch of sheep in madness, because he was wronged by Odysseus in the competion for the arms of Achilles. As he was the strongest after Achilles' death he should have won, so he snapped when he didn't and after the slaughter of the sheep he has completely lost his face, so his life as a heroic warrior is over and nothing left worth living for.

This way of thinking is so alien to a modern Westerner that we hardly miss it in our fantasy which usually deals with societies very similar to ones of our past with strict codes of honor. Certainly, they often did not keep these codes, neither did they obey the teachings of Xtianity etc. But that's besides the point; at least some of our fantasy cultures could and should be dominated by honor codes, religions, taboos etc. as real societies were.

[ChillyPolly]

He hated it because he hated allegories, and he thought that Narnia was too much of an allegory of Lewis' beliefs rather than a complete and complex work of art in which anyone could decide for himself what is the moral of the story. So I guess Aslan - Jesus did irritate him.

Tolkien never said this. He said he disliked allegory, but he never accused any Narnia book (afaik, the first was the only one he ever commented on) of being an allegory (and technically, arguably, it is not one). He said he did not care for Narnia#1 because it mixed, without discrimination, too many diverse mythological elements, or something of that nature.

[The Green Griffin]

Well, they're quick reads. I haven't read most of them in years, but I liked them when I read them. My favorites are The Magician's Nephew and The Horse and His Boy (probably the two least likely to be adapted into a movie for various reasons). I continue to reread those two every now and then.

[thistlepong]

Out of the Silent Planet is seriously fucking weird to a sci-fi reader (as opposed to a Christian Apologetics reader). Been a few years now, but IIRC the plot boils down to this: dude transported to strange planet, meets powerful god-entity who says "I'd like to kill everyone on Earth so they can all go to heaven, but unfortunately they're mostly unsaved heathens so I can't yet" and dude thinks "damn, that's a shame, good luck with that". what

This assessment is entirely bats.

Tolkien never said this. He said he disliked allegory, but he never accused any Narnia book (afaik, the first was the only one he ever commented on) of being an allegory (and technically, arguably, it is not one). He said he did not care for Narnia#1 because it mixed, without discrimination, too many diverse mythological elements, or something of that nature.

Just that once, Tolkien was wrong. There's a unifying thread running through all the diverse mythological elements in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in that they're all essentially medieval Jovian imagery.

[Eponine]

If you've read this entire thread, you could have gotten through the first book by now.

Despite my oh so well publicized atheism, I have a soft spot for Narnia, and it's one of the only overtly Christian things where I can separate myself from the grinding irritation. I hate when people make recommendations of long books they haven't read since they were 13 (at least to people who aren't currently children), and if this were 400+ pages, I don't know that I'd recommend it, but seriously, they're short and written at a level a child can read, so there's no real reason not to quickly read tLtW&tW and judge it for yourself.

My favorite thing ever is in the much-maligned Last Battle. The way that Narnia heaven is described (not the keeping people in and out bit, but the very very end) is the only Christian afterlife description that has ever appealed to me or felt like something that I wanted.

If one could run without getting tired, I don't think one would often want to do anything else. But there might be special reasons for stopping, and it was a special reason which made Eustace presently shout:

"I say! Steady! Look what we're coming to!"
And well he might. For now they saw before them Caldron Pool and beyond the Pool the high unclimbable cliffs and, pouring down the cliffs, thousands of tons of water every second, flashing like diamonds in some places and dark, glassy green in others, the Great Waterfall; and already the thunder of it was in their ears.
"Don't stop! Further up and further in," called Farsight, tilting his flight a little upwards.
"It's all very well for him," said Eustace, but Jewel also cried out:
"Don't stop. Further up and further in!
Take it in your stride."
His voice could only just be heard above the roar of the water but next moment everyone saw that he had plunged into
the Pool. And helter-skelter behind him, with splash after splash, all the others did the same.
The water was not biting cold as all of them (and especially Puzzle) expected, but of a delicious
foamy coolness.
They all found they were swimming straight for the Waterfall itself.
**stuff cut for space**
Jill was last, so she could see the whole thing better than the others.
She saw something white moving steadily up the face of the Waterfall.
That white thing was the Unicorn. You couldn't tell whether he was swimming or climbing, but he moved on, higher and higher. The point of his horn divided the water just above his head, and it cascaded out in two rainbow-coloured streams all round his shoulders.
Just behind him came King Tirian. He moved his legs and arms as if he were swimming but he moved straight upwards: as if one could swim up the wall of a house.
What looked funniest was the Dogs. During the gallop they had not been at all out of breath, but now, as they swarmed and wriggled upwards, there was plenty of spluttering and sneezing among them; that was because they would keep on barking, and every time they barked they got their mouths and noses full of water.
But before Jill had time to notice all these things fully, she was going up the Waterfall herself.
It was the sort of thing that would have been quite impossible in our world. Even if you hadn't been drowned, you would have been smashed to pieces by the terrible weight of water against the countless jags of rock. But in that world you could do it. You went on, up and up, with all kinds of reflected lights flashing at you from the water and all manner of coloured stones flashing through it, till it seemed as if you were climbing up light itself-and always higher and higher till the sense of height would have terrified you if you could be terrified, but later it was only gloriously exciting.
And then at last one came to the lovely, smooth green curve in which the water poured over the top and found that one
was out on the level river above the Waterfall. The current was racing away behind you, but you were such a wonderful swimmer that you could make headway against it. Soon they were all on the bank, dripping but happy.