Further Up and Further In

Anyone who comments with “that’s what she said” gets a kick in the pants.

So, Narnia. The series that started it all for me. I really didn’t want to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; at Brownies, another girl who was trying to bluff her way through her book-reader’s badge gave a summary of it that made me think it was about a girl trapped by a witch in a closet. (I was picturing Judy Garland cowering beneath the hangers in her blue-checked dress, with the Witch of the West’s big red hourglass spilling the seconds away.) Unluckily for you, my mom persuaded me to give it a shot anyhow. And from there, it was only a short step to having at least four Narnia books on my person at all times; waving a plastic sword at the TV as I watched the BBC adaptations; and knowing pretty much the entire series by heart.

My great love of the Narnia series engendered the deepness of the betrayal I felt when I slowly discovered that beneath the sword fights and walking trees and Talking Beasts lay an ugly bedrock of prejudice and proselytization. To be fair, it’s not like Lewis tried to hide it: his overblown “Mere Christianity” seems so obvious to my adult eyes, and it was my own growth as a person that led me to reject many of the morals of the Narnia books, rather than a sudden, “gasp! You mean that was what it was all about?*” revelation.

So despite everything, it’s still tough for me to look at Narnia with a critical eye. Just as I only now begin to appreciate, say, the cleverness and cause-and-effect plotting of the Bugs Bunny cartoons I watched since I was too young to understand them, it’s only as I grow as a writer that I’m able to see what’s under the hood of Lewis’s Narnia stories. But here’s my best shot.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – The more I read this story as an adult, and especially the more I watch film and TV adaptations of it, the more I see how difficult its structure is. There are four protagonists, none of whom goes on an individual hero’s journey. You could make the case for Edmund being a traditional hero, but what would normally be the climax of his story, the here’s-what-I-learned moment, happens “off-screen”, with us picking up as Lucy gives him a drop of the cordial. Aslan gets to take over at the climactic battle. And yet, this story is still the most appealing to me: vivid characters like Edmund and Lucy; warm, fuzzy details like Mr. Tumnus’s tea and Father Christmas’s gifts; and dramatic moments that make you gasp like Susan and Lucy watching Aslan de-statuefy the White Witch’s prisoners.

Prince Caspian – Or, four British kids help Simba beat Scar**. This book is interesting to me as an adult because of the way it starts with the Pevensies pissing around Narnia, not really sure where or when they are, and then Lewis reveals that they’re actually a thousand years in the future (although the technology is still roughly the same). I mean, these books are so ingrained in me that this move seems natural now, but what a change that is for the second installment of a series! This book also has the Aslan-takes-over-the-climax deal, but I love the parallel action of the single combat between evil usurper Miraz and champion-for-the-rightful-king Peter, even if it did end in a confusing (for nine-year-old me) and somewhat anticlimactic way.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – This book really doesn’t have a plot — the youngest two Pevensies and their awesomely obnoxious cousin Eustace join Caspian for a Narnian road trip through the unexplored islands of the East all the way to the End of the World. They’re kinda sorta looking for vanished lords who were Caspian’s father’s allies, but, enh, who really cares? Each island they visit is its own chunk of a story, and some of them have the most strongly evocative atmosphere in the entire series. The empty-ish island with the, uh, special water; the start of the visit to the island of the Dufflepuds; Eustace creeping alone to the dragon’s cave; and not to mention the island where dreams come true  — all these scenes still make the hair prickle on the back of my neck.

The Silver Chair – Of all the Narnia books, I think this is the one with the most solid plot structure, which of course means nothing, considering I enjoyed the rest as well. Aslan charges Eustace and his friend Jill (best female character in the series — actually human and not just a symbol of belief, worldliness, etc.) to follow His four Signs and recover the lost Prince Rilian before Caspian, now an old man, dies. I love the plot because… they consistently mess up every Sign they encounter. Their Narnian guide, pessimistic, sardonic Puddleglum, rocks. And even though I know the villain is meant to represent “evil” atheism, well, that character is still scary and interesting nonetheless. (Also, much funnier if you imagine her as played by Richard Dawkins in drag. Does that make me a bad person?)

The Horse and His Boy – Words cannot describe my feelings of disappointment when I picked this one up. I got the Narnia books in sequence via the Scholastic book order sent to my school, and although I loved the ones I’d read, I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the next, save that it would appear next month. (Hey, I was young enough that the Internet wasn’t even a blip on my radar.) Imagine my shock at eagerly opening this book only to find… it started in Narnia! Without any familiar characters! Where were Eustace and Jill? Who the heck was this Shasta guy, and why should I care about him and his attempt to escape slavery in Calormene with Bree, a Narnian Talking Horse?

Eventually, I learned to enjoy the plot, especially since Shasta and his travel companion Aravis are some of Lewis’s better flawed characters. He hardly ever knows when he’s done the right thing because he’s so used to doing the wrong thing; she has to come off an ego trip and learn to function with other people***. The crazy racism about the dark-skinned Calormenes… eerrrrrrr. I mean, I see on one hand where Lewis is trying to flesh out a completely different society for them based on a weird take on the Islamic world of the Middle Ages, but, yeah, that kind of makes it worse, not better.

The Magician’s Nephew – Again, totally unprepared for this book to be about the weird old professor from The Lion, the Witch… etc., but when he was a kid. But once I got over that, the story was awesome. Not only did it get me into E. Nesbit’s wonderful Bastables books by mentioning them on the first page, but it had stay-with-you conceits like the Wood Between The Worlds with its gateway to infinite alternate universes. Its realistic characters, Digory and Polly, bicker with each other, have plausible moral choices to make (Digory’s mother is dying; will Digory disobey Aslan to steal an extra apple of life to save her?), even set the plot in motion by accidentally freeing Jadis and bringing her to newly born Narnia. (So it represents original sin. Whatever! It was still tense.) True, there’s a lot of elaborate description and not-so-funny-as-Lewis-evidently-feels Talking Animal hijinks. But I always enjoyed this as a solid book.

The Last Battle – Is there any Narnia fan who reached this one without a “WTF”? Eustace and Jill are back — but Narnia is going through the End of Days, and they and poor King Tirian are fighting a losing war until the world ends and everybody goes to heaven, aka Narnia Mark II. Maybe it was the downbeat deaths followed by more downbeat deaths, or the lack of agency of any of the characters by the end, but even as a kid I never liked reading any part of this book except the “heaven” part at the end. Then again, that plays more like, “Main characters of the Narnia series, THIS IS YOUR LIFE!” (“Lucy Pevensie, do you remember This Voice?” “I was the first person you met when you arrived in Narnia. We had tea in my cave, and I decided not to betray you to the White Witch.” “Why, it’s Tumnus, Mr. Tumnus the Faun!” *applause and hugs*)

I guess I should apologize, because this blog entry was more of an exercise for me: pulling apart stories so familiar I take for granted how they work. But the more I think about it, the more I come to conclude that the Narnia series is a great example of a series that changes drastically with every book. Some of its writing lessons seem outdated: for instance, unless you’re an established or genius writer, it’s awfully hard these days to sell an agent or publisher on an omniscient narrative voice that digresses from the story to address the reader directly. (And, from experience, they’re extremely difficult to handle well.) But others maybe offer food for thought, especially to those of us working on series — how and when switching things up works, allegories and their uses, what makes otherwise preachy stories run.

Or maybe I just needed a segue for my review of the new Dawn Treader movie next week…

* Polkaroo was the male host all along???

** I remember seeing a trailer for The Lion King and being super excited about it because it sounded like Prince Caspian.

*** Actually, come to think of it, their dynamic isn’t unlike that of Taran and Eilonwy in Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. Only with more racism.