{"id":1061,"date":"2019-12-15T12:49:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-15T12:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2022-01-26T01:08:32","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T01:08:32","slug":"the-chronicles-of-narnia-c-s-lewis-1950-1956","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2019\/12\/the-chronicles-of-narnia-c-s-lewis-1950-1956\/","title":{"rendered":"<i>The Chronicles of Narnia<\/i> &#8211; C. S. Lewis, 1950 &#8211; 1956"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I was just going to add notes to the listings in the monthly round-up (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2019\/11\/november-2019-books-read\/\">November<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2019\/12\/december-2019-books-read\/\">December<\/a> 2019), but they started getting long!  Looks like I last re-read these\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2017\/05\/chronicles-of-narnia-c-s-lewis-1950-1956\/\">18 months ago<\/a>, which is probably a typical interval for me over my lifetime as I love them so much.  For such short books it&#8217;s amazing how they still elicit new reactions and thoughts <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li> <em>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe<\/em>, 1950. I craved making Mr. Tumnus\u2019 tea\u2014I thought the sugar-topped cake would be a pound cake, but most of the recipes dreamed up&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fiction-food.com\/2018\/01\/sugar-topped-cake-lion-witch-wardrobe.html\">online<\/a>&nbsp;are more of a fruit cake. I might make the cinnamon tea cake&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.book-adventures.com\/2011\/12\/yummy-monday-chronicles-of-narnia-part_26.html\">here<\/a>&nbsp;and dig into some of those other posts!<\/li><li><em>Prince Caspian<\/em>, 1951 <\/li><li> <em>The Voyage of the Dawn Treader<\/em>, 1952<\/li><li><em>The Silver Chair<\/em>, 1953. This time around I noticed how the suspense often resolves quickly, not the typical ratcheting-up, things-get-worse-and-worse techniques I associate with modern fiction (even for children). Near the end, this little drama happens in one paragraph: &#8220;The tide was running up the valley like a mill-race, and if it had come to swimming, the horses could hardly have won over. But it was still only a foot or two deep, and though it swished terribly round the horses\u2019 legs, they reached the far side in safety.&#8221;  And earlier, when the witch-snake almost overpowers Rilian, similarly it&#8217;s wrapped up in one page. The suspense still works but it&#8217;s not gory or drawn out. It reminded me of Lucy resisting the temptation to cast the &#8220;become the most beautiful&#8221; spell in <em>Voyage of the Dawn Treader<\/em>. In the world of Narnia our protagonists encounter perils and make wrong choices without the worst quite happening. It makes sense that Lewis wrote <em>Perelandra<\/em>, an Eve story with a happy ending.  <\/li><li><em>The Horse and His Boy<\/em>, 1954. Calormen is clearly larger and more populous than Narnia. It took a long time for the Narnia-centrism (beyond the general racism) to jump out to me, partly I suppose because Narnia is cognate to England and that cultural viewpoint is the water I&#8217;ve been bathed in since childhood. On the mostly accurate charges of sexism and racism, Devin Brown tries to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.narniaweb.com\/resources-links\/are-the-chronicles-of-narnia-sexist-and-racist\/\">marshall a defense<\/a> of Lewis, but it goes deeper than he admits. [note from future (Jan 2020) reading: Laura Miller&#8217;s <em>The Magician&#8217;s Book<\/em> nails it]<\/li><li><em>The Magician&#8217;s Nephew<\/em>, 1955. Same thought writ large: this is the creation story of &#8220;Narnia&#8221; (ie this whole world and possibly universe), with Aslan singing the very mountains into existence&#8212;but what about all the other lands\/nations we&#8217;ve encountered: Archenland, Calormen, the Lone Islands, even Bism deep in the earth&#8230;? <\/li><li> <em>The Last Battle<\/em>, 1956. Again the end of Narnia-the-world is centered on Narnia-the-tiny-country. But on the good side, I noticed afresh how important this book was to me in shaping my ability to identify and avoid\/deflect a certain kind of person. The monkey Shift manipulates his friend Puzzle the donkey by playing the martyr, telling him he&#8217;s doing things &#8220;for your sake,&#8221; asserting his special ability to do or know certain things. My impression is that Shift must be modeled on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.catholiceducation.org\/en\/faith-and-character\/faith-and-character\/c-s-lewis-and-mrs-moore.html\">Mrs. Moore<\/a> (a very interesting <a href=\"https:\/\/hannahgivens.wordpress.com\/2014\/07\/03\/interesting-carictars-the-scandal-of-c-s-lewis-and-mrs-moore\/\">aspect of Lewis&#8217; life<\/a>, although there&#8217;s plenty of controversy about her <a href=\"http:\/\/yourdailycslewis.blogspot.com\/2006\/01\/on-mrs-moore.html#c113966851850159292\">character<\/a>), but I only find references to her inspiring the <a href=\"http:\/\/firstpresofconrad.com\/our-blog\/the-screwtape-letters-xvii\/\">&#8220;all-I-want&#8221; woman<\/a> in <em>The Screwtape Letters<\/em>. Lucy defends Puzzle against those who blame him for going along with Shift (bringing disaster), but the text is ambiguous enough that I took away the need to develop and trust your instincts. Combined with the storyline of Emeth (the Calormen soldier who&#8217;s told that his sincerity in searching for truth meant that he was really a follower of Aslan rather than Tash), <em>The Last Battle<\/em> actually contributed to my religious skepticism\/atheism. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Someday I want to write an essay about Narnia and Christianity&#8212;a topic that&#8217;s been explored in depth by many, but I&#8217;ve never seen my take fully represented. That will entail yet another re-read. I&#8217;m already looking forward to it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was just going to add notes to the listings in the monthly round-up (November and December 2019), but they started getting long! Looks like I last re-read these\u00a018 months ago, which is probably a typical interval for me over my lifetime as I love them so much. For such short books it&#8217;s amazing how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2110,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions\/2110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}