Just popping over to the nearest parallel dimension, won't be a minute

Finished Caspian. Guess what? The end was as boring as the rest.

I started Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and thanks to some lengthy downtime in which I was unable to use my work computer at all, I'm now 4 chapters in.

According to Wikipedia (and I know what you're thinking - it MUST be true!) J. R. R. Tolkien did not like the Chronicles of Narnia because "he disapproved of stories involving travel between real and imaginary worlds." I think Tolkien was being nice, and didn't want to say that Lewis is just not that graceful with the whole "travel between the worlds" thing. I've read plenty of stories and seen plenty of movies with travel between our world and some parallel dimension, and they usually play out just fine.

That has everything to do with presentation; your hero can't just walk by the crack in the wall in chapter 1 and say "I say, that looks like the Faeriey* World over there! I think I'll just pop over and see, although I've no motivation for such a journey!" The movie cannot open with Sarah saying "where is the baby? Good grief, there's a mystical labyrinth in the back yard! I'm sure that David Bowie has stolen the child! I must save it from the evil muppets!"

Meanwhile, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 1, just barely paraphrased:
Lucy: Look at that picture of a boat, Edmund! It looks just like a boat of Narnia! Oh how I do wish we could be in Narnia right now!
Edmund: I say, I've never seen a more Narnian boat! Blimey, the picture is moving!
Lucy: Cor!
Edmund: I'm certain this picture is a portal to Narnia! Put down those crumpets, Lucy, and let's just pop in and see!
Annoying Cousin: You and your stupid Narnia!
Lucy: Even though you are a ridiculous prat and the author is using both you and your parents to represent people he hates, I feel very sorry for you because I am the sweetest little girl in all of literature!
Annoying Cousin: Oh no! I've come through the picture with you, and now I'm in Narnia! Here I shall surely get all the punishment I deserve! It's all your fault, Edmund and Lucy!
Edmund: That's your majesties to you, blighter!

But what the hell. It's easy reading, so they go by really quickly if I don't get distracted.

*intentional misspelling of "fairy".

Getting bored with Narnia

I am very nearly finished with Prince Caspian. My progress has slowed to a crawl lately, and I think I know why - Prince Caspian is dead boring. Spoiler alert! Nothing really happens. It's a book about a battle that might occur, but never really does.

That is, unless the final chapter is full of thrilling heroics. And I sort of doubt it.

And don't give me any "but there is a fight in the next to last chapter in the book!" OK, first, hardly. Second, isn't the next to last chapter a little bit late to start up the action?

I haven't seen the movie Prince Caspian yet, and I really doubt Hollywood held out until the last 10 minutes of the film to get some fightin' in there. I'll have to rent that DVD now, and see how it goes.

This is four of the seven books I've read now, and I can see why J. R. R. Tolkien didn't care for them. They're dull, that's why. The stories are totally obvious, and C. S. Lewis writes down to children as if he's telling the house cat a story. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is ok. The Horse and His Boy had an interesting plot, at least, although the time it took to moralize for a while before getting around to the point started to get pretty dull. And now Caspian - good grief.

I'm trying to get back on track with these stories. It's embarrassing to read them so slowly, considering how simple they are to read. But I really am beginning to think that C. S. Lewis's legendary status as a fantasy writer is completely undeserved. Apparently if you write some completely obvious allegory about Jesus, everyone will fall over themselves in an effort to say how fantastic it is.

The problem with The Horse and His Boy

So I’ve come to the end of The Horse and His Boy, and it was a decent enough adventure story. There was, however, a situation near the end that I found troubling.

The girl Aravis is attacked by a lion at one point, who cuts open her back with his claws. Later, we learn that this lion was Aslan. Later still, Aslan explains why he did this. When Aravis was running away from home, she drugged the slave woman that was meant to be on the watch so that she could escape. The slave woman was whipped as punishment for allowing Aravis to escape. Aslan says that the scars he gave her are exactly equal to the scars the slave woman received after being whipped.

I was bothered by the idea of Aslan attacking a young girl when it was first revealed that he was the lion that attacked her. The later explanation for the attack didn’t give me much relief. First, he’s holding a girl accountable for the damage she’s caused in the way an adult would be held accountable.

Second, the girl is punished in the same manner that the slave woman is punished. I’ve not read any mention of slaves being kept in Narnia yet – in fact, much is made of how creatures of Narnia are “free” creatures. The punishment given from master to slave is by it’s nature cruel and unfair under any circumstances, and in this situation the slave woman was punished for a situation that she could not control. While Aravis is responsible for the slave’s punishment, this cruelty is part of the very way of life that Aravis is escaping. It is indicated at various parts of the story that slavery is one of the many unsettling practices of Aravis’s people, and yet Aslan believes that the punishment given from slave master to slave is appropriate punishment for a girl, although she is at all other times commended for escaping her land.

Finally, Aravis is escaping her land because she is arranged to marry a 60 year old man. I’m sure that C.S. Lewis intended for readers to find her arranged marriage repulsive, and it serves well as justification for her escape. Aravis is seldom unwatched in her family’s house, and so she had few options regarding her method of escape – in fact, it seems that no matter what, a slave was bound to be punished for her escape. And so Aslan’s punishment indicates that although her situation is desperate, although she is a child, and although her culture is cruel, she should still be held accountable for a situation that may have been unavoidable. Add to this that so far, she has received the most severe punishment of any of the protagonists; Edmund only got a good talking-to for being a traitor. I also can’t shake the concern that she is the only protagonist so far that is of a dark-skinned race, and it leaves me with an unsettling feeling that Aslan thinks a more severe punishment is appropriate for her race.

It’s a troubling choice that C.S. Lewis makes here. Aslan is the unquestioned authority in Narnia – all people and creatures treat his judgment as absolute and always correct. He is the high ruler of the land, he is above kings and queens. And of course, at this point it is unavoidable to mention that C.S. Lewis uses Aslan as an analog for Jesus. Lewis appears to believe that judgment from God should match the crime, which is a very Old Testament way of seeing things.

Which is something I find unpleasant about his writing. At some points in the other novels in which he describes England from some time before the current day, he talks about the past as a time when things were much better than they are now. Between that and his stern view of discipline, I find myself perceiving the author’s voice as that of a grumpy old white man, who doesn’t like this modern world with all of its changes and social evolution.

I’m still moving forward with these stories, and next up is Prince Caspian. The series is still a classic of children’s literature and of the fantasy genre, and I will not give up the list just because of one troubling element. But I must note at this point, the problem discussed here clearly goes against my post from March 24th, in which I noted that the deeper meanings don’t matter that much to me. There are deeper implications when a young girl of a non-caucasian race is clawed by a lion, and then told that she deserved that punishment by an authority figure that no one questions. I think these things would have bothered me as a child, even if I didn’t recognize the allegorical nature of the story.

I had considered reading the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman next, because irony is the birthright of my generation. I’m now beginning to think that after Narnia, it might be nice to read a single novel instead of going immediately into another series.

My favorite line from Chronicles of Narnia, so far

Aravis is a girl who is being forced to marry a sixty-year-old man. And so she decides to leave behind the land she is from and head out for Narnia. A friend of hers does not understand why she won't stay, considering that her husband-to-be is wealthy and important. Her friend begs her to stay.

"Goodbye," said Aravis, "and I thought your dresses were lovely. And I think your house is lovely too. I'm sure you'll have a lovely life - thought it wouldn't suit me."

As far as I'm concerned, that is what fantasy writing is all about.

The unavoidable conversation: Christian themes in Narnia

I spent all day Friday in a waiting room, and during that time I finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. At one point a man and a woman were sitting next to me in the waiting room. The man was reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, the woman was reading a sci fi novel that I am not familiar with, and cannot remember the title of. We talked a few times, and the woman told me a little about the book she was reading. I showed her that I was reading The Chronicles of Narnia, and confessed that I never read the entire series as a child.

"I never did either," she said, "and now that I know about all the religious themes in it, I don't really want to read them." She didn't say this in a mean sort of way, and I actually appreciated her frankness on the subject. I don't often find people in Alabama who can openly say that religion turns them off with out sounding confrontational, but she pulled it off admirably. I let her know that the religious themes are poorly disguised to an adult, but that I also didn't catch them when I was a kid watching the animated film or reading Wardrobe.

Which figures, and is sort of the way it is. I was a teenager when my peers began to tell me that The Chronicles of Narnia were all about Jesus. The teen years seem to be the age at which we are obsessed with disguised meanings. This is the same age at which I learned that the Alice in Wonderland stories are about drug use, and The Wizard of Oz is about politics and economics in the late 19th century. I received these interpretations with interest, or amusement, or disapproval. I decided that all books must be about something deeper than the story they seemed to be telling, and that this was the mark of a good book.

Now that I am no longer a teenager, these deeper meanings don't matter that much. They are interesting bits of trivia that I've picked up along the way, but they are otherwise meaningless. I have a greater interest in whether the stories are good and entertaining. I didn't hesitate to buy my niece the full box set of The Chronicles of Narnia for Christmas several years ago for fear that she will be indoctrinated with Christian subtexts. She lives in Alabama. She attends church. Christianity need not be delivered to her through subtle means.

Besides, children take away from stories what they want, and keep very little of the rest. So even as I easily recognize the subtext in The Chronicles of Narnia, I still read Wardrobe with a sense of comfort, as I remembered so much of the story from the animated series. It was pleasant just to revisit a familiar story.

So that one is finished, and now on to The Horse and His Boy.

In other news, I realized today that a title that I'd been counting as one book is actually a series - His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman is actually a trilogy, not a single book. So the individual novel count is now up to 198. No doubt, I will find more instances of titles that I did not recognize as a series as I continue.

The ones I have already read: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's (or Philosopher's) Stone

This is the entry I am the most mystified about, and is the choice that I feel the greatest level of disagreement with. In the entire Harry Potter series, why is the first title the only one on the list of excellent books?

There are a few instances in the list in which only one book from a series is listed. Foundation, for example. Dune. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I disagree with, but which also lets me off the hook because I've never finished the entire series. In each of these situations, however, it can be argued that the first book in the series is the best, the one to read if you must only read one.

Not so with The Sorcerer's Stone. Many fans consider Prisoner of Azkaban the best of the series. I am personally fond of the Order of the Phoenix, in which Harry and his friends learn that most adults are motivated by self interest, and cannot be relied upon to do the right thing. Rebellion is introduced to the series in that novel. I always hear the Sex Pistols in my head when I think about it.

I suppose the point of selecting only the first book of a series when the entire series is not excellent makes sense from the point of view that the first book will make more sense than picking up in the middle. But this is Harry Potter. It wouldn't be all that hard to start in the middle and still understand everything that is happening. In fact, you could just watch the films up to the book in question, and then read Prisoner of Azkaban, or Order of the Phoenix. Both books are far better than their film versions, and the films leading up to each are sufficient to catch you up to date.

Or you could just read the entire series. It's not that hard. If scads of 9 year olds can finish a Harry Potter novel in one all-nighter, an adult can read the entire series in the space of two months, easily.

Meanwhile, the entire Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is on the list, which is 36 novels. Soon to be 37. I doubt that I will read that series all together - I'll probably have to read other novels in between. I really doubt I could finish it in two months time. I wonder if I will finish that series in one year's time.

Which brings up a point that I've been dodging for a while now. This isn't actually a list of 149 novels. It's a list of 149 novels and series. It's much more than 149. It's actually 196 novels. And also 7 short stories in the Earthsea series by Ursula K LeGuin.

If we count in individual novels, I've finished 20 so far. In completed titles/series, I've finished 17. I'm going to stick with the original 149 novel count, but I think it's worth noting that at times, I am reading well more than it seems like I am reading. Especially once I start on that Discworld series.

More on the order of The Chronicles of Narnia

My young niece, whom I mentioned in the previous post, also read them in the new order. She seems to think this order is fine. When discussing this reading order with people my own age, however, I've been told by one person my own age (so far) that the new order is stupid.

I still think that the quality of the stories does not hinge on the order in which they are read. They are very simple stories. The plots are not difficult to follow. You could probably read them in any order at all and follow along just fine.

There is only one reason I can see, so far, for putting them back in the old order: The Magician's Nephew was not exciting, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is. So I guess for children who bore easily, the original order may be better.

But then, I was one of those children that bore easily, and I started with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was a child, and then went no further. So most likely, it doesn't matter.