Not too long ago, my eldest daughter decided it was time for my youngest daughter to join her in one of her favorite fandoms: Jurassic Park. Toward the end of the movie, my youngest got deeply agitated and asked, “Does it hurt the actors when those dinosaurs bite them?” No, we explained, those are just special effects. Robots and computer generated drawings. “Well,” she asked, “Does it hurt when the robots bite them?” All of us older folks had a good laugh about that. She was so young and full of wonder, and the world was full of living dinosaurs and strange things.
At the end of Prince Caspian, Peter announces that he will not be returning to Narnia, and neither will Susan, because Aslan has told them they are too old. As a kid this upset me, because I worried that I wouldn’t find a portal to Narnia before I aged out. As an adult, this had gotten all wrapped up in a variety of questions about what exactly Lewis means by this declaration, and especially how it connects to that big question that is lurking out in front of us in this series: What exactly happened to Susan Pevensie that she wasn’t invited into Narnia for the Last Battle?
Now, we know that there’s not a hard-and-fast age limit for Narnia. (Skip this paragraph if you’re reading along and haven’t read all the Chronicles yet… some major spoilers here.) In Prince Caspian Peter and Susan are different ages (14 and 13). In Dawn Treader we’ll see that Edmund and Lucy are told they also are getting too old for Narnia—Edmund’s 12 and Lucy’s only 10 at the time. And in their final Narnian adventure, Eustace and Jill are 16. In another weird quirk of Narnia, the royal Pevensie family all grew up once in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Aslan didn’t kick them out because they were too old at that time. In fact, we see Susan, Edmund, and Lucy in Narnia during this time period in The Horse and His Boy, when they are 26, 24, and 22… a strange and sad fact when we realize that Edmund and Lucy will die on Earth when they are 19 and 17.
I’m going to suggest in this article that what Lewis is getting at in Prince Caspian isn’t so much Peter and Susan’s age in terms of the number of years they’ve lived, but rather the way they process information and, most specifically, the nature of their belief in Narnia and Aslan. As we’ve reminded ourselves in each article for Caspian, Lewis told us that this novel is about the restoration of true religion after it has been corrupted. There’s a major theme exploring the battle between belief and skepticism running through this book, another duality in the narrative.
Lewis gives us a major clue, a key, that he’s driving at something more than age early on in the book. Caspian is talking with his uncle, King Miraz, and telling him all about the stories he has heard about Narnia’s Golden Age. In those days there were talking animals and Naiads and Dryads and Dwarfs and Fauns and so on. Miraz sternly replies that this is nonsense “for babies.” He repeats that. “Only fit for babies, do you hear?” Then he tells him, “You’re getting too old for that sort of stuff. At your age you ought to be thinking of battles and adventures, not fairy tales.”
Miraz grills one of his noblemen, Lord Glozelle, on this topic, too. “Does your Lordship believe those old wives’ fables about Peter and Edmund and the rest?” Glozelle replies, “I believe my eyes, your Majesty.” As we move through the book we see that skepticism and even pragmatism is consistently shown as something that prevents our heroes from achieving their goals, and can even become truly dangerous… as when the enemies of Aslan suggest resurrecting the White Witch. And, as was implied in a previous article, the re-establishment of the old religion seems to be centered around the question of belief in Aslan and the re-awakening of magic.
Throughout the novel we see little glimpses of Peter and Susan’s “old age” as they focus on practical things or even suggest rational solutions to magical problems. Note that even when they first begin to be pulled into Narnia, Peter’s first thought is that Susan is grabbing him (it’s Edmund who declares this is clearly magic at work… he recognizes the feeling of it). When Lucy asks Peter if they might have possibly returned to Narnia Peter says they could be anywhere, which is a funny thing to say after being magically whisked away from a train station. Susan rather wisely and in a grown-up way suggests they should make sure how many sandwiches they have for lunch. Lucy often sees Susan as the big sister who can’t help but be the annoying second mother.
The most important scenes on this theme center around Lucy seeing Aslan when no one else does. She tries to convince the others to come with her and follow Aslan.
Susan asks, “Where did you think you saw him?”
“Don’t talk like a grown-up,” Lucy says. She didn’t think she saw him, she actually did see him. Notice that, “like a grown-up,” Susan is communicating her basic disbelief. She doesn’t see Aslan, so of course her baby sister must have seen something else. Lucy is mistaken, and elder Susan will decide how exactly Lucy misunderstood.
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They settle on taking a vote: follow Lucy and her supposed Aslan, or follow the path that makes sense looking at the landscape. Their dwarf friend is by the far worst of them in the conversation that follows, suggesting it was a regular lion Lucy had seen, or worse, that Aslan is an old, enfeebled, or witless lion by now. None of the children stand for that, but again we have the skeptical reality: Aslan would be over a thousand years old by now, so of course Lucy didn’t see him.
Edmund is the only one who votes with Lucy. “When we first discovered Narnia a year ago—or a thousand years ago, whichever it is—it was Lucy who discovered it first and none of us would believe her. I was the worst of the lot, I know. Yet she was right after all. Wouldn’t it be fair to believe her this time?” He’s a bit embarrassed to vote this way, and he blushes when he says it, but he’s on Team Lucy. He hasn’t seen Aslan but he believes it could be him, and he believes Lucy is telling the truth.
Peter, on the other hand, says—note this—“I know Lucy may be right after all” but he still votes to go in the opposite direction. Lucy caves and they all start down the mountain, away from Aslan, with dangerous results.
Lucy eventually has another encounter with Aslan, who chastises her for giving in to her siblings, and tells her to try again. They are asleep at this point. It’s the middle of the night. Lewis writes, “It is a terrible thing to have to wake four people, all older than yourself and all very tired, for the purpose of telling them something they probably won’t believe and making them do something they certainly won’t like.” (Emphases mine.) Older people are less likely to believe what Lucy knows.
After suggesting that perhaps Lucy is dreaming, they follow her. Edmund is the first to see the shadow of their old friend. He asks what the shadow could be; Lucy responds that it’s Aslan, and Edmund says, “I do believe you’re right, Lu.”
As they continue to follow, eventually all of the siblings see Aslan. He slowly becomes clearer to each of them, with those who believe most seeing him the soonest. There are apologies: Peter to Aslan, and Susan to Lucy.
In fact, Susan says something interesting. She admists that her behavior was even worse than the others realized. “I really believed it was him—he, I mean—yesterday.” She voted against following Lucy even though, on some level, she knew it was Aslan: “And I really believed it was him to-night, when you woke us up. I mean, deep down inside. Or I could have, if I’d let myself.”
Edmund believed Lucy. Susan and Peter both believed, too, or at least believed that Lucy might be right. But they chose the pragmatic thing, the practical thing, the non-magical, the thing that made the most sense. They “believed their eyes,” as Glozelle said. You know, like an adult would do.
Now, Peter is forgiven. Aslan tells Susan that she had made her decision because she had “listened to fears” and breathes on her to give her courage. Then he goes after our Dear Little Friend the dwarf and teaches him what a lion—and especially a magic lion—is really like so he will have no doubts again in the future.
In the final chapter, Susan and Peter tell the others that they’ve been talking with Aslan about a lot of things, including the fact that they need their English clothes back before they return home. Lucy doesn’t even understand what they’re talking about when Peter says they need to change, and Susan explains it to her before exclaiming, “Nice fools we’d look on the platform of an English station in these.” Once again, the older kids had this reasonable (adultish) concern, and they brought it up in pragmatic conversation with the Great Lion. But Aslan also told them they’d not be returning to Narnia. They are “too old” now.
I can’t help but think that this is similar to the normal progression in how children think. When they are four or five, they might ask Father Christmas the names of his elves and reindeer. Around eight or nine, it might be “How do you fit down that chimney?” or “How do you get to every single kid in one night?” A couple years more and it’s narrowed eyes and asking Mom, “Whose handwriting is this?” on the gifts. Susan and Peter are becoming, naturally, more focused on the “real world” around them. They are growing up in the same way that everyone grows up and they’ve lost some of the wonder in the world.
There is one last interesting moment to consider, here: We’re aware that there’s a conflict between believing in Aslan and believing in what our eyes see. The Telmarines, who have been taught to believe with their eyes, experience a moment of doubt when confronted with Aslan’s magic. Aslan is offering to send them back to the “real world” if they don’t want to live in the new, re-awakened Narnia. He sets up three sticks like a door, and tells them if they walk through they will arrive on a beautiful island back in our world. They can’t see another world on the other side of the threshold, though. They say, “We don’t see any other world through those sticks. If you want us to believe in it, why doesn’t one of you go? All your own friends are keeping well away from the sticks.”
Peter and Susan know that this means they must be the ones to go through (though everyone’s favorite mouse, Reepicheep, offers to be the first to take the leap). As the children walk through they began “seeing three things at once.” A cave on the tropical island. Narnia. And the railway station they had been on before. So now, even believing only what they can see, they see the truth of their own world, the truth of Narnia, and even the truth of Aslan’s word in a place they have never been or seen before. It’s a nice little bow on the present Lewis has been wrapping for us.
Forgive me for this aside, but I couldn’t help but think, as I was writing this article, about how we grow in our various fandoms. Many of us first come across our favorite science fiction and fantasy lands as children, whether Narnia or the Star Wars universe or Harry Potter, and all those things were made for children in one way or another. When I was a child, I didn’t ask whether cannibalistic teddy bears made sense or if the Death Star had construction workers on it or whether the explosion might have destroyed a certain moon of Endor. I didn’t scoff at the computer generated effects in The Last Starfighter, or ask questions about Lewis’s views on gender in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Star Wars is an interesting flashpoint for me on this topic. I saw A New Hope when I was four. The Phantom Menace came out when I was 25. And while I liked things about it, I didn’t experience the magic again in my twenties. I don’t think it’s because of the movie…my kids, for instance, when I showed it to them, loved Jar Jar Binks. It’s because I became “too old” for Star Wars. And, honestly, it seems to me that some of the current movies are doing their best to make sure Star Wars ages with us instead of inviting us to step out until we find the magic again. The current movies have a lot of talk about politics and how much fuel is needed for starships and where do weapons and blue milk come from and “it’s not realistic” that the heroes would all survive stealing the plans to a battle station. Meanwhile, during The Rise of Skywalker I had so many questions I couldn’t tell what was happening (I’ll keep it spoiler free but the questions were largely “How?” and “Huh?” and “Wha?”). Meanwhile, I’ve talked to a number of kids who told me that they just had a lot fun. And, like the wise Professor Kirke, there are a whole lot of adults who still believe in the magic, too, and they also had a great time. (Okay, look, I still love Star Wars, so don’t haze me in the comments. And if the fine people at Del Rey are reading this, hey, I have a great idea for a novel and I’m glad to say Jar Jar is definitely in it.)
We have choices to make when we outgrow the magic of our favorite fandoms. We can walk back into the real world and acknowledge that for whatever reason we can’t believe anymore… just embrace that this is the truth and be happy with our fond memories of the past. Or we can turn on the creators or other fans because we feel pushed out…upset that this franchise is “no longer for me.” That’s when we get people harassing other fans or actors or directors and saying cruel things to real human beings because we don’t like the way they are treating our fictional constructs.
I don’t think outgrowing our beloved fandoms means we’ll never return to them, and of course Lewis leaves the door to Narnia opened just a crack (Peter, at least, returns eventually). Somewhere down the line we might find that magic again. Maybe there’s another movie coming, or a TV show, or a novel or comic that’s going to have that sudden lightning strike of magic and wonder that makes us believe again, like kids. (I’m told this is called The Baby Yoda Effect.)
Lewis, of course, would say something more profound is happening here. For him this is all about myth and fairy tales and what they signify. The stories we love are all about deeper truths. The myth of Star Wars resonates most where it strikes at the true myth beneath all things. Lewis would, no doubt, hate some of the fandoms we love, love some that we hate, and either way he would keep encouraging us, insisting that if we are seeing some true thing in what we love, if there’s this inexplicable feeling of joy that washes over us when the music begins, or when we turn the first page, then we should follow that joy further up the mountain, even if all we see is the barest shadow of a lion. Because in time that joy will lead us face to face with someone who sang the worlds into being, someone who loves us deeply.
In the meantime, it’s not all bad, Lewis tells us. The children find themselves back in England and although it’s “a little flat and dreary,” it’s also “unexpectedly nice in its own way” with the familiar smells and the sky and summer ahead of them. Being sent home still means that, well, you’re at home.
Being “too old” is a phase, a thing we hopefully grow through. We are young enough for fairy tales as children, and one day we become “old enough” to read them again. As Lewis wrote to Lucy Barfield in his dedication for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, “You are already too old for fairy tales… But someday you will be old enough to begin reading fairy tales again.”
Matt Mikalatos is the author of the YA fantasy The Crescent Stone. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on Facebook.
Some years ago, I had this sort of “too old” revelation with “Elf on the Shelf.”
My brother and his wife knew their youngest, perhaps 5 at the time, was feeling left out because there was no Elf on the Shelf in her house. So they bought her an Elf on the Shelf … as a Christmas present … opened on Christmas morning … when the Elf was supposed to be back at the North Pole. My niece was very confused and her faith was severely cracked by this. Her parents were too old to really understand … or else they just weren’t paying enough attention, too concerned with worldly things.
Kinda like Peter and Susan unable to see Aslan at the beginning of Prince Caspian, I think.
Doesn’t Aslan tell Peter and Susan it’s time they learned to know Him in their own world?
How did you get the ages of the kids worked out? I’ve always wondered what they were but were never convinced I had it right, as I”m not a Brit and couldn’t get firm answers on ages for going off to school, now (or back then) etc.
@2 I am not looking at the books, but I believe that statement is made to Edmund and Lucy at the end of DT.
I was 9 when I read the Narnia books. “Lion” was read to me, then I read the rest on my own. Probably over the course of a couple of weekends. First books I can remember reading for fun.
Regarding Susan, I’ve always been of the opinion that she wasn’t in Narnia during The Last Battle simply because she wasn’t on the train and hadn’t died yet. It’s the easiest way for me to accept that part and still feel good about the whole series.
She received the same invitation the rest of them did. She chose not to come. They do say that girls grow up faster than boys…
It’s interesting that “too old” doesn’t seem to align directly with experience either. Though the bit about ignoring beliefs in favor of one’s fears certainly speaks to having more experience with disappointment. If you don’t believe in something, it can’t let you down.
I’ve not read all the Tor articles on this subject so it wouldn’t surprise me if this has come up already, but a favourite Lewis quote I’ve kept (sorry, don’t know its source): “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
@3, I think you’re right.
This article gets a lot of wheels turning for me. Just occurred to me, it explains the power of nostalgia. Ready Player One is one of the best movie experiences I’ve had in a while, and it must be because I felt I had permission to let go of the real world and indulge in not just childhood memories from the 1980s, but even a touch of that childhood perspective, within the real world parameters my adult self insists on now.
Susan rejected Narnia. Peter explains it all to Tirian. She’s been led astray by the temptations offered to a young and beautiful woman and her desire to be ‘grown up’. The choice is hers. And she can change her mind and be welcomed back to Narnia at any time. Lewis himself believed she would get there in her own time and in her own way. Go Susan!
@2/3 Yes, Elaine is correct, Aslan says that to Edmund and Lucy in Dawn Treader. I’ve been trying to stick pretty closely to each book we’re reading rather than do the comprehensive overview, building to that as we move through the series. But it is an interesting addendum in Lewis’s whole “too old for Narnia” thing.
Elaine, Lewis had notes on when each book took place and also the kid’s ages. Walter Hooper first published this in his book “Past Watchful Dragons.” Scholars get a little bent out of shape over some of the inconsistencies, but honestly I think the answer to those is pretty clearly “C.S. Lewis didn’t much care about the little details.”
Here’s a basic overview of Lewis’s timeline of Narnia.
@10 That’s a really great insight!
Mods, this article does not seem to have been added to the Lewis Reread Index yet.
@13 – Fixed, thanks!
There is a significant difference between the belief of a child, the doubt and confusion of a young adult and the mature faith of someone who has come to understand that doubt is the sacrament of reason and that reason remains a critical part of the stool that true faith rests on; reason, scripture and tradition.
Even though this is a classic Anglican understanding of the basis of adult faith, I sometimes wonder if Lewis missed it in his path to to the CofE. He often seems to, as with Susan, conflate a literal childishness with the admonition to become like a child again in being born again. To be childlike and accept grace with wonder and joy is a very different thing from being a child and unable to willingly accept the grace for yourself (confirmation, adult baptism, etc.) As a child you have what is placed on you by those who should be leading you, teaching you, the path of your faith and the way it should be lived.
I feel like Lewis theologically failed Susan in that he only allowed her to grow to the point of doubting but not to the point where the doubt becomes a foundation of the reasons we have to believe anyway. The only thing preventing her return to Narnia is failure of her teacher – Aslan as Lewis Great High Priest – to lead her there again.
This is a very common failure in modern Christianity worldwide.
As a comics fan it seems weird to lose your connection to a magical world at puberty. Of course this suggests an awesome crossover. “Welcome to the X-Men, Susan Pevensie, hope you survive the experience!”
I recall being genuinely worried I’d lose my ability to imagine when I hit adolescence (ouch). I actually made up an imaginary dog companion to reassure myself my imagination was still in working order.
@17 My son is 18, I’m a wee bit older :) We have been known still to stop playing our video game (we play Warframe together) and get out our stuffed friends and play with them. My turtle “Turtly” has been with me since I was 4 and has been around the world with me.
@15 That is said so perfectly, thank you!
My big experience with aging out is that I didn’t read A Wrinkle In Time until I was an adult, and it just didn’t work for me. I can see how it might have worked for a kid, and I got a few hits at what might have been the good parts, but overall I just couldn’t put myself in the right space for it.
kaci – that makes me sad =( Mostly because Wrinkle (and the three books after it) are some of my all-time favourite books…most likely because I read them first when I was a child and even now when I revisit them every few years or so, I always come away filled with joy anew. Some books just must be read for the first time when you’re young, I suppose.
My experience of this is reading some books by Astrid Lindgren this past year. Came very highly recommended – these children’s books – and I simply couldn’t connect or enjoy. Sadness for me, I suppose.
“ I didn’t scoff at the computer generated effects in The Last Starfighter, or ask questions about Lewis’s views on gender in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
Perhaps not. But I’ll bet fairness mattered then, and matters now. And that’s the center of Lewis’ gender problem.
To paraphrase Ursula K. Le Guin, an adult isn’t a dead child but a matured one. Children often can’t see the Suck Fairy because they don’t yet know enough to recognize its work. Adults can, if they take the trouble to look.
Lewis’ work has dated really badly for me (despite your well written and generous case in favor), but that of other sincerely religious authors (e.g. L’Engle) has not. I got A Wrinkle in a Time as a Christmas present before age 13, when it both terrified and thrilled me. And I was thrilled to discover and read at least two sequels in my thirties. So my age doesn’t account for my continuing delight in her work. Could it be better writing? Books written more recently?
Reminds me of this quote by Lewis that I’ve always loved:
“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
I didn’t read any of the Narnia books until I was in college. The theater department was going to do LWW as children’s theater in spring, and I was cast as Tumnus. To get ready, I read the read the entire series then, and enjoyed it immensely. Of course, I was an avid reader of science fiction already, and had read ‘out of the silent planet’ and the rest of the trilogy years before.
Reading this article, I realize I have NEVER been too old for Narnia (I am 63 now) and never surrendered childlike belief for ‘reality.’ I have never had a problem with reconciling the knowledge that the world is strange and magical, even while making a living as an engineer grounded in reality. Maybe I am just strange that way…
I love this whole concept. I’m just a child at heart and see magic as something in another dimension that’s full of wonder wherein, if we believe, we can spend our days and nourish our souls. We were given imaginations for this very reason. Our imaginings keep us young. The older I get, the more I cherish my days in magical worlds be it through reading or writing or daydreaming! Then again, my folks always told me I had my head in the clouds. Great article, thank you!
I think the weakness of Susan’s fall is that Lewis shied off from really showing it to us and the second hand accounts don’t do it. As a kid, I found it a devastating moment when Edmund, who has been to Narnia with Lucy, comes back and tells the others it didn’t happen. We have the dwarfs in The Last Battle who are so determined to not be taken in that they can’t believe what they themselves are experiencing.
We’re supposed to see this same thing in Susan, that she is denying what she knows to be real because it isn’t popular. But, while I’m pretty sure that’s what Lewis was thinking (it’s a theme in a lot of his work), it’s not what you get when you’re reading the book.
On the “too old for Narnia” front, Lewis also mentioned in some of his works how people get trapped into trying recapture a moment of wonder or exhilaration by doing the same thing over and over again, but it doesn’t work. In some cases, it’s a simple failing, like expecting the same feeling of surprise from a story whose twists and turns you know by heart. In others, it’s a true wrong-doing, like putting unfair demands or even abuse on a partner in a relationship because you want things frozen at a certain state.
In the space trilogy, Lewis touches on this by the Martians having two different words for want (if I understood what he was getting at). You can want something (the elements of an experience) but not want it (trying to get that same experience by reliving/replaying a past event). Susan and Peter are past the second point. They no longer “need” Narnia in this sense. But, they are still at the first, they have grown to the point where they can find the wonder of Narnia and Aslan in their own world. Lewis strongly disagreed with people who felt that being adult meant no longer having that need.
@@@@@21. Msb
Exactly this for me as well. I’m enjoying this series of articles because Matt does a fine job of making what might be the best possible case for Lewis and the Chronicles, but when I reread Lewis and L’Engle as an adult, L’Engle still engaged me and filled me with wonder while Lewis just… irritated me, honestly.
I don’t think it’s a thing with childhood versus adulthood, or not completely. I read Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Rowling’s Harry Potter series as a grown-up and found them both charming and engaging (and both had scenes that brought me to the point of tears, one of them in a restaurant while I was having brunch; the mild embarrassment I felt over possibly bursting into tears in public might have been a baggage-of-being-an-adult thing). And I can earnestly say it’s not a thing of an author’s religion versus my own personal atheism: I still consider Philip K. Dick one of my all-time favorite writers, I thoroughly enjoy LeGuin, I enjoy thinking about religion in fiction and non-fictional contexts (it seems relevant to add that the religious and moral philosophy I find in Tolkien only gets richer and more poignant to me as I get older, even if JRRT’s comes from his Catholicism while mine comes from my humanism; speaking of Catholicism and novels steeped in it: I’m also a pretty big Victor Hugo fan… anyway–).
I just… I just don’t find Lewis a compelling religious thinker. Re-reading Lewis as an adult, I was still a bit thrilled at the magical bits, but the more overtly religious bits (e.g. Lewis having Professor Kirke offer up a variation of Lewis’ terrible “Lunatic, Liar, or Lord” argument in supporting Lucy’s account of having been to Narnia) made me cringe, as did the badly dated views on gender. And as a writer, I have to honestly admit that while I find Lewis a competent enough writer that I can sometimes get swept up in his excitement over a setting or situation, I just don’t find him a deft enough writer to ignore his clunkier passages or the parts where he’s just too much the mid-20th Century crusty Englishman with all the prejudices you might associate with that.
So I think I’m on the same page (or a similar one) with Msb.
Also, this has been a fine and thoughtful series of articles, by the way, and I’ve enjoyed the perspective and thought-provocation. Thank you, Matt.
@21 and @26
I LOVE L’Engle. Weirdly, I like some of her more straightforward essay and memoir more than her science fiction, but she is a beautiful writer with strong spiritual thoughts and a poetic sensibility. And LeGuin is also a favorite… especially the EarthSea books, and her translation of the Tao.
And Eric… your thoughts really closely match how many of the Inklings felt about Lewis. They thought he had been shot into sort of public superstar Christian status too quickly, and his spiritual insights didn’t match his platform. They fretted quite a bit (largely privately) about his lack of spiritual maturity, especially in the early days. Not so much because they found his ideas problematic (there was some of that) but because they worried he was putting himself in a position of spiritual risk. Tolkien in particular was concerned about how easily Lewis seemed to latch on to people and ideas (when Charles Williams, a Neo-Platonist, shows up, Lewis is deeply taken with him, for instance).
Msb, I know for me part of why I can continue to read and enjoy L’Engle is partly the beautiful writing, and partly that her worldview and mine are closer than mine and Lewis’s. Lewis has the advantage (for me) of nostalgia, because I didn’t read L’Engle when I was a kid. But, just to be clear, Lewis’s sexist and racist things in the Chronicles and elsewhere are deeply troubling to me, and I think it’s fair to retire him from one’s personal canon if that’s needed.
@27 Matt,
another well written and generous response. Many thanks.
The issue with Susan might reflect an issue with the Pevensies as a whole – that the characters are largely defined by their role in the story rather than being rounded personalities in their own right. So if Lucy is an unconditional believer and Edmund is a former sinner who has seen the light, then Susan is the one who doesn’t get into heaven. Inversely, ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ has a genesis-type narrative, but not at the expense of the two kids, who – to me, anyhow – seem realistic and engaging. By extension, ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ is a story I still enjoy as an adult, whereas my experience with the other books in the series (the LWW in particular) is more mixed.
@27, that note about the Inklings is really interesting. My experience with Lewis is that he sometimes seems to have trouble differentiating between his personal philosophies of life and universal spiritual truths; he doesn’t seem to be as aware as maybe he could be that not everyone is like him.
On the whole question of losing or returning to Narnia, I recently started reading The Light Between Worlds, by Laura E. Weymouth. It’s not about Narnia, but it is about people who find their way into a magical world with a anthropomorphized animal deity as children during WWII. The story switches between their time in the Woodlands and the time six years later when the older children have moved on and the youngest is still struggling with her longing to return. The Woodlands and its deity aren’t as explicitly Christian as Narnia, but it definitely has a lot of the same feel, as opposed to, say, Fillory in the Magicians books (which I also love, for different reasons)
Susan is the one who doesn’t go to heaven YET.
31. Fair enough!
“When I have something to say which I think is going to be too difficult for adults, I write a book for children.” – Madeleine L’Engle
That said, I had the same experience as in #19. I read voraciously as a kid, but there were a few major classics of children’s literature that I overlooked. One year in grad school I made a point of reading a bunch of these – The Little Prince, The Phantom Tollbooth, Charlotte’s Web, and A Wrinkle in Time. I did enjoy all of them, but felt thoroughly aware throughout the experience that none of them would ever have the chance to become beloved childhood favourites. I still read enough newer children’s books that occasionally I can tell when my inner ten-year-old would have loved something (Annie Barrows’s The Magic Half and Magic in the Mix would have thrilled me out of my mind, and I suspect based on my experience reading The Lightning Thief that I would have devoured the entire Percy Jackson universe if it had come along earlier in my life), but I can’t create retroactive nostalgia for books I simply didn’t catch even though they were there. A fascinating issue.
@33 I LOVED the Phantom Tollbooth when I was a kid. My daughter still has my original beat up copy on her shelf!
@33 I missed Lloyd Alexander growing up, and recently had a go at The Prydain Chronicles; but I couldn’t get through even the first book.
And yet I read The Phantom Tollbooth (among others, including Narnia) early, and can re-read it (and them) even today with immense pleasure.
This kind of anchoring is interesting….
I wonder how conscious Lewis was of Matthew 18:3 — the line about only getting into Heaven by becoming “as a little child”. Your quotes suggest he would have seen it as not having to do with mere credulity, but that his friends might have wondered. I admit to a fondness for the remark about not having to grow up if one gets to age X without doing so, but the attitude is an uncomfortable fit with the overuse of belief in the modern world. Consider for contrast the quote from the Bene Gesserit in Children of Dune: “Religion is the emulation of the adult by the child.”
Nothing useful to contribute at this stage on whether Lewis holds up (I vote yes), but as for the tangent of The Phantom Tollbooth, I definitely vote yes there as well. Look for the fantastic new audio version by Rainn Wilson, who is perfectly cast.
As somebody who is both Catholic, and has spent most of my life studying or in a career based on science/STEM parts of those resonate with me and parts that I rail against. I understand the importance of the childlike wonder and humility that allows you to accept something bigger than yourself, and to avoid the temptation to strictly utilitarian ways of thinking. But I also feel like…is it such a bad thing to be worrying about the sandwiches or trusting your senses and what you have to go on at the time?
As for your Star Wars meander, well, that is something that is especially more resonant to me. I came to Star Wars at 14 (during a very formative time) and the prequels came out when I was 16. I was the perfect age, and the perfect point in my fandom and I still love them unabashedly. I know what their flaws are, I just…don’t care. The story still resonates. The sequels I perhaps did get too old for – or maybe they tried to act too old – but there are still parts of them I love and actually Rise of Skywalker had parts that literally made me cry tears of joy, for all its flaws. So I think Star Wars will always be ‘my’ fandom and I hope I never truly get too old for it :)
cecrow @8 – I was going to pull out that same quote :)
wlewisii@15 – great comment. I’m Catholic, not Anglican, but we have a similar belief on ‘faith and reason’ (Fides et Ratio).
As to ithers, I will say that Tolkien has certainly aged better for me, although in fairness, I did not read Lewis as a child (I DID have an awesome animated version of LWW that I LOVED but I didn’t actually read the books until I was in college). I liked them, but they didn’t draw me in the same way as, say, Harry Potter. (I also read LeGuin and L’Engle in college and while I enjoyed them, they also didn’t become huge favorites.)
princessroxana, I love your impassioned defense of Susan here and in other places :)
I think this is the real tragedy of the Star Wars sequels—they’re not made for children, anymore, they’re made for teenagers and adults.
@39 Maybe, but since I was an adult when they came out, I loved them! The originals and prequels are still there for children to get their introduction, and this way there’s something for them to step into as they grow.
I believe you are over analyzing. Perhaps some joy and fun can be found in ignoring portions of the book as well as ignoring some things Lewis writes. If I was unable to ignore some aspects of his writing I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the books at all because of the clearly absurd gender bias in the book. It’s a fun book, not a guide on how to live life. Selectively ignoring an author leads to more fun, not less.
And in addition to Steve’s #41 comment above, you have to take into account the context of the times in which C.S Lewis lived. Gender bias etc was an accepted part of his society. You can’t judge an author of the past by today’s standards.
@42 – I think it’s fair to not judge him in that I don’t hold him as responsible for it as I may hold somebody else today, but that doesn’t mean it has to be enjoyable to read/immerse myself in. If I don’t care for that time’s standards, I think it’s within reason to not care for works marinated in it (or, to enjoy them, but point out where those standards conflict with my own).
And of course eventually standards change because people IN that society are willing to speak up to change them.
@38: I somewhat relate. The Phantom Menace is my favorite Star Wars film for many reasons, but one is that it debuted when I was 11, at the height of my Star Wars obsession and hungry for more. I love some parts of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi — they made me a fan in the first place — but I didn’t experience the societal excitement and novelty around their debuts before I was born. My interest in subsequent films rapidly waned and I stopped following them after The Force Awakens, but I think that’s less because I became “too old” and more due to their worsening paucity of nonhuman beings/creatures and interesting planets, the features I happened to priotitize. Ages and timing always influence our engagement with stories and fandoms, though they’re not the only only factors.
“Gender bias etc was an accepted part of his society. You can’t judge an author of the past by today’s standards.”
As to gender bias, there was Dorothy Sayers, who loved Oxford as much as any Inkling, and Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas. Aren’t they and their work “of their time”, too? Sayers was at least as enthusiastic a Christian as Lewis, as well.
judging by today’s standards is exactly what any reader must do in order to argue that any book is still worthy of being read as a living work, rather than a historical curiosity. Lewis’ books are still being given to children, as well as being made into movies: I.e. being treated as relevant to the current day. And he still has a considerable reputation as a Christian thinker. As some varieties of self-described Christians still promote the gender and racial bias found in Lewis’ work, that adds importance to objecting to such bias. I wouldn’t give these books to children, especially to girls. (Others’ mileage almost certainly varies.)
There are some books I’ve grown out of because I’m not the same person. I won’t say I’ve grown up, because it has nothing to do with that. I still re-read the Black Stallion once a year or so, and some other childhood favorites. It has to do with who I am as a person. The things that resonate with me now aren’t the same as they were when I was in my teens or twenties or thirties or forties. So books that once touched things in me that have changed no longer resonate. But some things in me have remained the same so I still enjoy the fantasy of being trapped on a desert island with a magnificent horse who befriends me, even if it’s one I met in my childhood.
So I think perhaps people confuse that with growing up and out of a fandom. It’s not about adulthood and turning from childhood things. It’s about the changes that you’ll go through for the rest of your life. A subtle but important difference. It’s still quite possible to enjoy the things of your childhood if that core of you that enjoyed them in the first place remains.
Wow, this was an amazing entry. Thank you so much, @matt-mikalatos.
To respond to a couple of elements:
@2, re: Susan:
Just because Lewis wrote it doesn’t mean I can’t be enraged by it. He wrote that Susan refused the invitation because she had become silly and denied Narnia, obsessed with makeup and boys. Nope. I just can’t conceive of it. I prefer the Kingfisher view of Susan… as someone fully awake and aware and angry.
@princessroxana, my problem is that this feels artificial, forced and false. And more than a little misogynistic (although I love Lewis and don’t think it was deliberate). But still.
I always want to ask, what was freaking High King Peter doing in this period? Was he not also dating, growing up (AGAIN, don’t get me started), dealing with adulthood?
I’ll address this later on The Last Battle when Matt gets to it (cries), but I will never, ever be okay with Susan’s treatment and how she is shut out of Narnia. Nope. Not happening. It’s too neatly an echo of Original Sin and Eve and how mythologically, time and again, women are the source of all the problems etc.
Onward.
But, going by this, how is Lucy suddenly “too old” at the ripe old age of ten, in Dawntreader? And shouldn’t she be the one still visiting Narnia in perpetuity, in terms of belief? Lucy is after all the one in spirit who would never really grow “too old” for Narnia. Erghh.
I love Lev Grossman’s The Magicians for how it addresses, analyzes and reconstructs being a child who loves Narnia in a new way, and one of my favorite plot elements is the absolute and believable betrayal and rage one character feels at being barred from Narnia (cough, Fillory). It’s absolutely perfect and so real. I also loved the exploration of Susan’s similar rage in T. Kingfisher’s short story “Elegant and Fine,” which I had shared previously on these chats.
I will always feel that it was arrogant and cruel of Lewis, a sort of misplaced and clumsy exploration of sin as adolescence approached. The children grow up and become too soiled for Narnia — that’s my subtext, and I hate it.
Which is why I adore, and always will adore, Philip Pullman’s open contempt for this idea — spawning an entire trilogy in “His Dark Materials.” I love Lewis (even if I do not share his beliefs), but reading Pullman was an incredible experience for me — not least because he challenges the very concept of sin at its core, and gives us characters worthy of questioning beliefs Lewis set forth as if they were fact.
Still… I love the Narnia books, and always will. And this:
Holy crap, @matt-mikalatos, this was gorgeous. This paragraph made my millennium. What a beautiful encapsulation. Thank you for this.
@47 paramitch. Thank you so much for your kind words. They mean a lot to me, truly.
I’m going to try to touch on the “why Lucy is suddenly too old for Narnia” bit as we look at Dawn Treader, but *spoiler* I think it’s largely that Lewis was talking about different things in the two books and he had a way of just jettisoning his own mythology when it was inconvenient. (Note that Reepicheep grows an entire foot taller between books and yet can “ride on Lucy’s shoulder” hahaha).
Tolkien was glad when Lewis returned to Christianity, of course, even as an Anglican. But later on he said that in its feeling Lewis’s Christianity was the Christianity of his childhood, naive Calvinism; he called Lewis an “Ulster Protestant”, definitely not a compliment.
This is why Pullman is so opposed to Lewis, because the world of Pullman’s diabolical Magisterium is Calvinist (which is why the Papacy is in Geneva) and not Catholic at all, the kind of Calvinist world Chesterton described as “a quiet street in hell, where live the children of that unique dispensation that theologians call Calvinism and Christians devil-worship.” (Disclaimer: I am no Christian and don’t agree with any of these views.) It is that, and not Christianity as a whole, that Pullum truly abhors.
This is one reason to get children reading early. There is a relatively brief time in early life when magic can “gel” in people’s heads and be a source for special nostalgia and comfort for the rest of their lives. Though I’ve never stopped reading new stories, the portal does close off in a pretty big way by early adulthood. I’m hoping that portal to unabashed wonder opens more easily again later in life.
(Came to this series late through Brad Delong) In the book, Trumpkin is a non-believer, but always cheerful and willing to help. In the movie he is gloomy and bitter. Is this because Walden, following the beliefs of many American Evangelicals, could not portray a cheerful atheist? Movie-Trumpkin believes in Aslan; he just thinks He has abandoned Narnia. Many Evangelicals argue that atheists really believe in God, but they just refuse to submit. Lewis, both in PC and That Hideous Strength has quite happy skeptics, based on his own experience with his tutor William Kirkpatrick (‘the Great Knock’).
Another fantastic post! I was 19 when Phantom Menace came out, and was one of the people my age that was not “too old” for the prequel trilogy. Say what you will about the acting, it still held the mythology and deep meaning.
I was about the same age when I started reading Harry Potter, which was a shock, because I’d always thought all of the classics had already been made, but here was a new classic! The first few movies were great, but I stopped watching halfway through the films, realizing that they could never live up to the books that I’d read, and the experiences I’d had reading them.
The Disney era Star Wars has been a letdown, not because I’d aged out, but because they left behind the mythology and deep meaning, and replaced it with identity politics, and it was the producers and directors of those films that decided to harass the fans by calling them racist, sexist, manbabies, simply because we weren’t thrilled at the assembly line product that they’d haplessly rushed out to turn a profit, rather than taking the time to truly tell a timeless myth for the ages.
OH ffs. I’ve been pretty damn vocal about my disappointment in the sequels as an uninspired, poorly plotted reboot that has to tear down what came before it so it can do it again, but I’m sick of the ‘FEMINISTS RUINED STAR WARS’ claptrap.
Daring to have women in your movie isn’t ‘identity politics’.
@36 I’ve been waiting for someone to post the obvious quote about “unless you become as little children” you can’t enter the kingdom of Heaven!! I’m certain that Lewis was acutely aware of it and that it was a central feature in his world view.
I’m a latecomer to this conversation and recently wrote a long comment about this on the thread about gender in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
@53: 100% agreed; thank you.
I grew up with the original trilogy on VHS and nothing since that has quite compared in that universe…and yet I am fully engaged and excited when new Star Wars happens: movies, television, books…it’s one of the many beautiful worlds that have captured my brain and my heart since forever and I celebrate anything that keeps it alive and fresh, all the while feeling fully able to critique story choices, etc., much like Narnia and Middle Earth and Westeros and Star Trek and so many, many other realms.
It’s like each of those fantastical domains is a family member, and even though I might give my sister hell when she makes unbelievably bad choices or roll my eyes at my dad’s taste in music, I love them all unconditionally and would gladly endure every mild violation of personal privacy and every embarrassing conversation in front of my friends again and again if that’s what it takes to keep spending time with my quirky, stupid, wonderful family.
I saw the original Star Wars (now called A New Hope) in 1977 when it came out, already grown. Let me assure you, the magic was not just for children. Everyone, but everyone, (OK, not quite literally) was blown away. You should have seen us coming out of the cinema. It was a unique moment and I was very lucky to be there. The opening titles (Flash Gordon!) are unashamedly melodramatic. I can still remember “pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship…”
My opinion of the prequels and the recent films is obviously coloured by that, so the fact that I don’t find the same magic in them isn’t significant. But what you say does accord with my impression. Still great fun. (The ending of Rogue One briefly recaptured the original power for me.) But when you start trying to make myth logical, you lose it.
@51 – I haven’t seen the Narnia films but on the basis of what you say, that would indeed be a serious distortion. Trumpkin is not just cheerful, he is a hero. His name means “little trump” – not as in presidential, but absolutely top-notch. We are told Aslan already liked him very much. Lewis was quite strong on morality not being limited to Christians (remember Emeth in the Last Battle, and Screwtape’s annoyed comment that people sometimes get to heaven dying for wrong causes). Overall I find the book Prince Caspian a bit weak, but it has some great scenes, one of which is when Trumpkin volunteers to go to the coast despite having no belief in the horn. “You’ve had my advice, and now it’s time for orders.”
McPhee is in some ways even more superb: the great ally of Ransom who apparently still doesn’t believe even at the end.