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Today's book review is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis.
I have read this book before, but it's been 30ish years. At Capricon I watched part of the film, and some of what I saw in the film didn't seem right, but my memory of the book was very fuzzy, so I decided to reread it. This series was part of what got me started on fantasy, and I was curious how it would hold up in my more worldly (hopefully not too jaded) adult eyes.
This is a good story. The writing is at the level where children who are just getting into real novels can handle it, but for an adult who's willing to suspend disbelief to a fairy tale level, it's still a very solid story. It doesn't stand up to deep questions of things like how they could manage to survive the weather in the enchanted winter or how young children who have never even handled real weapons can survive in a fight, but it's not written in a way that really makes me feel like I should be trying to nitpick at that level. There's a definite moral message, but again, it feels like it belongs there. The characters are pretty weak, but I find that I form a personal attachment to Narnia itself that makes up for my lack of connection with the protagonists.
One other issue for me is that long after I read the books as a child, I started hearing people viciously ripping into them for being nothing but Christian tracts. I was not raised in a church-going way; I didn't go to Sunday school and I didn't study the Bible, and I didn't notice a Christian message when I read the books as a child. But I was wondering how much of that message I would find now that I'd been sensitized to it, and my conclusion is that the atheists who seem to want to burn these books the way the fundies want to burn Harry Potter need to get a life. (Supposedly The Last Battle is the "worst" of the series, so maybe I need to reread it to fully put these claims to rest. I remember it even less than I remembered this volume.) Aslan certainly *can* be interpreted as a Christ figure -- but he makes plenty of sense in his own right. The idea that there is great power in a willing sacrifice is not proprietary to Christianity. It may even be true that Lewis intended these books as some sort of Christian propaganda -- but if one isn't already indoctrinated, the parallels are not only not compelling, they're not even obvious unless you're really looking for them. It's easy to come away from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe thinking that Aslan is a really nice guy, but I don't think you need the example of Aslan to get the idea that Jesus as he's described in the Bible is a really nice guy, and I don't think the fact that you come away from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe wishing that Aslan were a real person you could meet is really going to do much to make you believe that Jesus is real and present today. In fact, if the reader sees Aslan as a deity and as a sympathetic character, it would tend to make them less willing to surrender their critical thinking to the idea that you have to believe in Jesus because he's all there is.
The writing and the characters are a bit weak, but the story and the world of Narnia are wonderful. This book deserves to be part of popular culture. 9 out of 10.
( plot summary )
I have read this book before, but it's been 30ish years. At Capricon I watched part of the film, and some of what I saw in the film didn't seem right, but my memory of the book was very fuzzy, so I decided to reread it. This series was part of what got me started on fantasy, and I was curious how it would hold up in my more worldly (hopefully not too jaded) adult eyes.
This is a good story. The writing is at the level where children who are just getting into real novels can handle it, but for an adult who's willing to suspend disbelief to a fairy tale level, it's still a very solid story. It doesn't stand up to deep questions of things like how they could manage to survive the weather in the enchanted winter or how young children who have never even handled real weapons can survive in a fight, but it's not written in a way that really makes me feel like I should be trying to nitpick at that level. There's a definite moral message, but again, it feels like it belongs there. The characters are pretty weak, but I find that I form a personal attachment to Narnia itself that makes up for my lack of connection with the protagonists.
One other issue for me is that long after I read the books as a child, I started hearing people viciously ripping into them for being nothing but Christian tracts. I was not raised in a church-going way; I didn't go to Sunday school and I didn't study the Bible, and I didn't notice a Christian message when I read the books as a child. But I was wondering how much of that message I would find now that I'd been sensitized to it, and my conclusion is that the atheists who seem to want to burn these books the way the fundies want to burn Harry Potter need to get a life. (Supposedly The Last Battle is the "worst" of the series, so maybe I need to reread it to fully put these claims to rest. I remember it even less than I remembered this volume.) Aslan certainly *can* be interpreted as a Christ figure -- but he makes plenty of sense in his own right. The idea that there is great power in a willing sacrifice is not proprietary to Christianity. It may even be true that Lewis intended these books as some sort of Christian propaganda -- but if one isn't already indoctrinated, the parallels are not only not compelling, they're not even obvious unless you're really looking for them. It's easy to come away from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe thinking that Aslan is a really nice guy, but I don't think you need the example of Aslan to get the idea that Jesus as he's described in the Bible is a really nice guy, and I don't think the fact that you come away from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe wishing that Aslan were a real person you could meet is really going to do much to make you believe that Jesus is real and present today. In fact, if the reader sees Aslan as a deity and as a sympathetic character, it would tend to make them less willing to surrender their critical thinking to the idea that you have to believe in Jesus because he's all there is.
The writing and the characters are a bit weak, but the story and the world of Narnia are wonderful. This book deserves to be part of popular culture. 9 out of 10.
( plot summary )