Chronicles of Narnia - POLL

order of composition is correct. lion witch is the first book and everything else pivots around it

Didn't vote in this, huh! Top 2 are correct because trippy Narnia is the best Narnia.

the religion in TLTW&TW is so heavy-handed that it would take an idiot child not to spot it

Bssed on my experience as a kid, it suffices to not be Christian

Ditto. Aslan's submission to his fate and his resurrection baffled me - "so he just comes back to life? huh." I wasn't judgemental enough to call it lame but I definitely found it lacking in narrative justification.

I've only actually read that one and The Magician's Nephew. Should I read the rest now, in my 49th year?

reason I don't like order of publication is that TLTW&TW is so worthy and moralistic, it's a poor start and worth getting past as track 2, not as an opener

H&HB was a favourite as it took place entirely within the world and explored different cultures (not sure how I will feel abt this now of course), also I had just been to Mont Saint-Michel and imagined the city as being like that, I have always been more interested in setting than in plot or characters.

Bssed on my experience as a kid, it suffices to not be Christian

the bolt of tash falls from above

Another reason for TMN to be canonically Book One is that it would mean they finally make a film of it next time they get around to it, instead of getting bogged down in the final third of TLTW&TW again.

Ha! It would be good finally to get a film that far into the series...

I've always been in the 'order of composition' camp. Any other way and you lose all those 'aha!' moments that I found so enchanting as a child. You're discovering things about a world as Lewis is inventing them, and that's a wonderful way to read fantasy.

I've only actually read that one and The Magician's Nephew. Should I read the rest now, in my 49th year?

― ledge,

If not, the bolt of Tash will hit you from above.

I guess I don't mind The Lion. The first volumes in a series are often the most awkward; the writer's creating a world and he hasn't figured out every detail (e.g. the White Witch as descendant of Lilith and the Djinn instead of, as we learn later, the queen of Charn).

all his books are basically nifty tableaux with trudge as connective tissue, and from dawn treader onwards CSL just got better at cutting back on or sparking up the trudge (yr walking thru a wood but it's the WOOD BETWEEN THE WORLDS) (yr walking thru a wood but uh oh calormenes are SHOOTING AT YOU plus oh no there's TASH)

the last battle is good bcz it's basically all jumpdoors all the time (no trudge)

order of composition is correct. lion witch is the first book and everything else pivots around it

^^^

I loved the opening setup of The Last Battle is great, the unique way in which the human characters are drawn back to Narnia. Same reason I really loved the opening of Prince Caspian as a child: the way the reader uncovers the "mystery" along with the returning characters is almost Lovecraftian and the passage of time lends a certain weight and reality.

is great

Like, as a child I too might get older some day.

we finished TLTW&TW, it was better than I had remembered, tighter in the action, less obviously religious. I want more of their life as adult kings & queens, diplomacy, working out a longer term plan for the country. I would have had Peter marry and have grandchildren by the time they return, that would set up the sequel better

occurred to me this time - it is always winter, and it frequently snows, so

* why isn't the snow tens of metres high and impossible to get past?
* what source of food could there possibly be in such an environment?
* when it suddenly thaws wouldn't there be catastrophic flooding?

also

* there are many sons of adam and daughters of eve in the kingdom just to the south, have none of them ever wandered north a bit?

I'm fine with father christmas being there, it's a land of mythical creatures, why not?

Lewis hadn't worked out the narrative yet; later novels show that, yeah, the descendants of King Frank and Queen Helen dwelled in Narnia, not to mention Archenland and Calormen.

I also wish Lewis had written a novel during the reign of Peter, but I suppose leaving the Golden Age to the imagination is the point.

That said, the White Witch would've killed any humans: she can't have potential claimants to the thrones of Cair Paravel, right?

* what source of food could there possibly be in such an environment?

turkish delight!

I'm reading these w my 11yo right now and we're doing them in the "suggested" order rather than publication order. We just finished Horse and His Boy - just as racist and orientalist as I remembered, v difficult to deal with, honestly, but actually way less boring than I remembered so I guess there is that.

We're currently on Prince Caspian which is great. So many awesome names I had forgotten. Nikabrik! Reepicheep!

Re: the Golden Age of King Peter (and Queens Susan and Lucy, and King Edmund), didn't it only last a year? I swear I remember that's what they said at the beginning of Prince Caspian. And then when they're tugged back into Narnia it's hundreds of years later?

I think the reign lasted about a dozen years.

At the end of The Lion Lewis writes that they matured into young men and women.

I define post-punk as music inspired by the energy of punk but catholic by necessity and as amorphous as the tenuous articulations of its makers.

Also: boo.

towards the close of tLtWatW there's a pauline baynes pic of the of the four kings and queens as tudor-style dandies and lady dandies, on horseback and such -- ok it's turkish-delightland but i think the implication is that it's several years later (but only an hour in our-world time)

(caveat: my books are all in boxes currently so i may have hallucinated this pauline baynes pic, or transposed it from some other work she illustrated)

The film also straight up shows this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1UafcfmKOg

i believe the "year" mentioned in prince caspian is an our-world year for the pevensies since their wardrobe adventure (same caveat as above)?

lol "professor" kirke is such a creepy weirdo in the film version, read some effing actual-real plato digory you pill

Whenever I think of horrific things in this series (besides the ambient racism as described above and such), I think of two things:

1) the fact that they were adults and grown and were suddenly thrust back into childhood with all those memories and experience. I don’t think CSL actually addresses the implications of that much on them in the real world does he? (Nb I have not read these books in 15 years)
2) ofc the absolute horrific real-world ending for most of the characters (which Neil Gaiman fleshed out the implications of in his absolutely horrific short story The Problem of Susan). And when I say that story is horrific, I’m not exaggerating.

Also re The Horse and His Boy, I found this piece about the grown up Penvensies in Narnia, which I didn’t remember at all, mainly cos I have totally forgotten that book and everything that happened in it apparently.

So I found The Problem of Susan posted on a blog and here’s the bit I was thinking of re The Last Battle ending, and I’ll hide text about it cos it’s kind of fucked up:

The professor cuts herself a slice of chocolate cake. She seems to be remembering. And then she says, “I doubt there was much opportunity for nylons and lipsticks after her family was killed. There certainly wasn’t for me. A little moneyless than one might imagine, from her parents’ estate, to lodge and feed her. No luxuries …”

“There must have been something else wrong with Susan,” says the young journalist, “something they didn’t tell us. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been damned like that, denied the Heaven of further up and further in. I mean, all the people she had ever cared for had gone on to their reward, in a world of magic and waterfalls and joy. And she was left behind.”

“I don’t know about the girl in the books,” says the professor, “but remaining behind would also have meant that she was available to identify her brothers’ and her little sister’s bodies. There were a lot of people dead in that crash. I was taken to a nearby school, it was the first day of term, and they had taken the bodies there. My older brother looked okay. Like he was asleep. The other two were a bit messier.”

“I suppose Susan would have seen their bodies, and thought, they’re on holidays now. The perfect school holidays. Romping in meadows with talking animals, world without end.”

“She might have done. I remember thinking what a great deal of damage a train can do, when it hits another train, to the people who were travelling. I suppose you’ve never had to identify a body, dear?”

“No.”

“That’s a blessing. I remember looking at them and thinking, What if I’m wrong, what if it’s not him after all? My younger brother was decapitated, you know. 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.”

from gyac's piece:

The king has a gentle way with others because of his own history, too. When Shasta desperately assures Edmund he’s not a traitor, he puts a hand on Shasta’s head and tells him, “I know now that you were no traitor,” but advises that he should work harder not to eavesdrop if he wants to avoid that appearance. Even the evil Rabadash is seen as worthy of a second chance from Edmund’s point of view: “Even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did,” he says, and then, Lewis tells us that Edmund “looked very thoughtful.” I love that after all these years Edmund is still remorseful for his actions, and that remorse causes him to be kind and forgiving to those around him.

aw

Yes I just looked again and it’s been a dull real-world year since the adventure. While in Narnia they “seemed to reign for years and years” which would explain the sheer volume of memories the treasure stores under Cair Paravel awaken in them

xpost yes there is this weird slippage between being adult kings and queens in Narnia and being kids in the real world, and there’s a kind of truth to it, to do with growing up and still feeling like a kid inside, and vice versa, but yes the actual diegetic consequences of these jolts don’t get talked through at all

Yeek I will read the Gaiman piece when we’re done w Last Battle I guess

From one of the comments:

@9, while I have a different version of Susan’s reconversion, it happens during the funeral service and end with her embracing and comforting Eustace’s parents. Queen Susan the Gentle knows all about grief, she comforted the wounded in Narnia’s wars and the families of the dead over and over.

The important point imo is that Aslan doesn’t cut her off, she cuts him off. Her head is turned by the temptations offered to a young and exceptionally beautiful woman. She is not rejected, she is never rejected. The choice was and is entirely hers. And Lewis wrote that he expected Susan to get back to Narnia. In her own time and her own way.

When did Lewis write that about Susan?

Yeah. There’s a nice aspect to some of CS Lewis’s religious views in the text, like the importance of penance and forgiveness for past behaviour, and that read very much like that to me. It’s a very touching description.

xp he wrote that in a reply to a young fan who was upset about the ending

oh okay

The relevant part of the letter is here:

In an early 1955 letter to a girl named Marcia, Lewis first revealed his decision to have Susan lose her way in The Last Battle. “Peter gets back to Narnia in it. I am afraid Susan does not. Haven’t you noticed in the two you have read that she is rather fond of being too grownup? I am sorry to say that side of her got stronger and she forgot about Narnia.”

“The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having been turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end—in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense’”

Though, contrary to a popular internet rumor, Lewis never planned to finish writing Susan’s story himself. In another letter, he wrote: “I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s ever getting to Aslan’s country; but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?”

I at once cringed at the assumption that young women are prone to conceit and silliness, smiled at Lewis' humility ("But I may be mistaken."), and chuckled at his Christian generosity, as if it didn't matter who wrote these books ("Why not try it yourself?")

I think the conceit and silliness thing is something that troubles me about the children going from adulthood back to childhood in an instant. Maybe Susan found it harder to go back to being a child than the others? I’ve read some good analyses of this ending over the years and I get what he was going for ito the overarching theory of his series, but that aspect upset and pissed off lots of people over the decades, and probably still does if they are reading it now!

there's an avoidance (maybe a fear) of not just sex but adulthood in the narnia books which is of course typical of 50s children's books - and complete avoidance is infinitely preferable to the icky way jk rowling deals with adolescence - but you do have to wonder, if jack had survived to see the 70s or even the 80s would he have tackled these questions, if just for his now-grown-up fans?

chuckled at his Christian generosity, as if it didn't matter who wrote these books ("Why not try it yourself?")

What about Rabadash's lust for Susan? It is of course telling that it's the dark-skinned Calormen whose clear about his rape fantasies.

I have a memory of Tirian hitting on Lucy in The Last Battle.

_chuckled at his Christian generosity, as if it didn't matter who wrote these books ("Why not try it yourself?")_
Narnia officially open-source! can you imagine the fan fiction if these books were first published in the 21st century?

I remember now there being quite a good bit about adult life & relationships right at the end of TH&HB but will hold off on it until we've read that.

xp not really familiar with eo3 or fanfic world so went to check this out, this was the second result, so a yikes and a nope here

https://i.postimg.cc/pLWzMPwR/Screenshot-20230320-122138.jpg

Yeah, people will post stuff like that, there’s plenty of tools to avoid seeing content you want to avoid too.

This is quite obvious but I liked it, and I think it is the kind of thing CSL was nudging his young readers to explore.

it's good but seven years of catholic schooling has left me with a revulsion towards any kind of explicit religious parable, so uh guess I'm reading the wrong books.

Ha! I went to Catholic school for six years and we treated the Bible like a dead snake in the road, so these stories fascinate me.