[Content Note: Physical Abuse, Slavery]Narnia Recap: Peter, Susan, Lucy, and the Beavers are traveling to the place where they expect to find Aslan. Along the way they have seen proof that the Witch's spell is weakening, in the form of Father Christmas who supplied them with food and presents.
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Chapter 11: Aslan Is Nearer
Edmund fans will be disappointed to note that this is the last chapter in the book where Child!Edmund will be allowed a voice. Say your fond farewells now.*
EDMUND MEANWHILE HAD BEEN HAVING a most disappointing time. When the dwarf had gone to get the sledge ready he expected that the Witch would start being nice to him, as she had been at their last meeting. But she said nothing at all. And when at last Edmund plucked up his courage to say, "Please, your Majesty, could I have some Turkish Delight? You -- you -- said -- " she answered, "Silence, fool!" Then she appeared to change her mind and said, as if to herself, "And yet it will not do to have the brat fainting on the way," and once more clapped her hands. Another dwarf appeared.
"Bring the human creature food and drink," she said.
With Chapter 11, we'll be looking a little bit at how the White Which treats her minions, and the implications of such. By way of preview, I will note that she is cold and cruel to her minions, openly refers to them as slaves, and threatens them with death. It's possible she's under a lot of stress and isn't normally like this, but it seems pretty heavily implied to me in the text that her behavior isn't terribly atypical for a normal day in the Witch's household.
This sort of thing isn't unusual in literature, though it's admittedly a pet peeve of mine. There's an unfortunate implication that being "evil" means being evil all the time, to everyone, and frequently for no reason. The problem with being Stupid Evil, however, is that it's very hard to understand why the Stupid Evil dictator has any supporters whatsoever. (The other problem, of course, is the accidental implication that if a dictator is nice to some people sometimes, zie can't be that bad, right?)
Now, there are some ways around this. Maybe the dictator is so powerful that no one dares cross them, despite their always Stupid Evil policies. The problem here, though, is that this view tends to infantalize the minions to the point where, say, stabbing the evil dictator in their sleep or similar assassination methods just never occurs to them. Another way around this is to have the Always Chaotic Minions equally stupidly evil, to the point where they don't really mind being beaten at a moment's notice on a daily basis because they are ideologically devoted to the concept of Evil to the point where their own self-preservation instincts are over-ridden.
I was going to suggest that Lewis was going for the latter here, and was in the middle of typing "Wow, it's lucky that the Witch has all these Always Chaotic Evil races willing to mobilize for war on her behalf, because it's sure not her personality!" when I had a moment of doubt. Why does the Stupid Evil queen have all these people willing to lay down their lives on the battlefield against Aslan? I suppose if we go with the obvious Christian allegory, the answer would be that the Ghouls and Ogres and Werewolves all just hate Aslan so much that they're willing to join together against their own self-interest in order to battle the forces of good. And I'd reckon that's a valid interpretation of the book.
And yet, I've always had a sympathy towards the bad guys in the X-Men comics. The point has been made that the "bad guys" in X-Men tend to be the ones least able to blend in to human society. The only good guy in the main X-Men cast that doesn't look 100% normal is Cyclops with his visor, and the pretty sunglasses in the movie fixed that right up. You have to latch on to Beast in order to find someone who simply can't pass, and he's fortunate enough to have quite a lot of privilege attached to his government job (depending on which X-Men continuity is being followed). On the other side, quite a few of the bad guys in the X-Men 'verse are mutants who simply cannot pass and have zero privilege to protect themselves from discrimination. So while a lot of them say they hate humans, it's never completely clear if they'd feel the same way in a world where the humans would be willing to live in peace with them.
All of which is a VERY long way to say: Are the Witch's forces willing to fight on her side because they hate Aslan, or is it because the Ghouls and Ogres and Werewolves wouldn't have a safe place under an Aslanian regime? Is the Witch's abusive behavior to her minions suffered because her minions can't figure out how to safely turn on her, or is her bad behavior somehow better than what they might otherwise endure? (More likely the author didn't really think too hard about it. But by gum, if I want to read too much into the motivation behind Random Evil Minion #871, then I will.)
Anyway. A dwarf brings Edmund some dry bread and cold water.
"Turkish Delight for the little Prince. Ha! Ha! Ha!"
"Take it away," said Edmund sulkily. "I don't want dry bread." But the Witch suddenly turned on him with such a terrible expression on her face that he apologized and began to nibble at the bread, though it was so stale he could hardly get it down.
"You may be glad enough of it before you taste bread again," said the Witch.
I couldn't work it into my huge ramble above, so this is as good a place as any to offer the theory that in addition (or possibly in contrast) to being Stupid Evil, it's entirely possible that the Witch and her minions are just doing it For The Evulz.
And oh, how miserable he was! It didn’t look now as if the Witch intended to make him a King. All the things he had said to make himself believe that she was good and kind and that her side was really the right side sounded to him silly now. He would have given anything to meet the others at this moment -- even Peter! The only way to comfort himself now was to try to believe that the whole thing was a dream and that he might wake up at any moment. And as they went on, hour after hour, it did come to seem like a dream.
It's interesting that the Witch didn't want Edmund "fainting along the way", given that the text states that she fully intends to ride the entire way to the Stone Table (at which point she appears to intend to either kill Edmund or use him as a bargaining chip against the remaining three children). It seems like a fainting child would be just the thing here, considering that the faint won't kill him and it will keep him quiet and docile.
Of course, it wouldn't do for Edmund to faint because eventually the snow will thaw to the point where the sleigh can go no further and then everyone has to get out and walk -- but the Witch doesn't have a way to know this in advance and seems to be genuinely surprised and outraged when it happens. So I'm not sure where this fits on the Narnia clairvoyance scale, to be honest. I will say, however, that if you want to keep a child from fainting, you might want to supply a coat in addition to the crust of bread before you take him out in a several-hours-long sleigh ride in below-freezing weather.
How Edmund hoped she was going to say something about breakfast! But she had stopped for quite a different reason. A little way off at the foot of a tree sat a merry party, a squirrel and his wife with their children and two satyrs and a dwarf and an old dog-fox, all on stools round a table. Edmund couldn't quite see what they were eating, but it smelled lovely and there seemed to be decorations of holly and he wasn't at all sure that he didn't see something like a plum pudding. [...]
"F-F-F-Father Christmas," stammered the Fox. [...]
Edmund saw the Witch bite her lips so that a drop of blood appeared on her white cheek. Then she raised her wand. "Oh, don't, don't, please don't," shouted Edmund, but even while he was shouting she had waved her wand and instantly where the merry party had been there were only statues of creatures (one with its stone fork fixed forever halfway to its stone mouth) seated round a stone table on which there were stone plates and a stone plum pudding.
And... unless I miss my count, those will be the last words said by Child!Edmund in this book.*
The narrator makes a point of saying outright that this is the first time in the story that Edmund has felt sorry for anyone other than himself. However, the narrator earlier didn't know how long Edmund stood staring at the stone lion in the Witch's courtyard, so if zie can't even keep track of measurable things like time, I'm not about to give zie a pass on knowing Edmund's innermost thoughts and feelings. Especially not when earlier in Chapter 9, Edmund passed a faun statue with a sad expression, and Edmund wondered if the statue had been Lucy's friend. Maybe he was wondering purely for information's sake, but the tenor of the passage sounded more like sympathy to me.
Now they were steadily racing on again. And soon Edmund noticed that the snow which splashed against them as they rushed through it was much wetter than it had been all last night. At the same time he noticed that he was feeling much less cold. It was also becoming foggy. In fact every minute it grew foggier and warmer. And the sledge was not running nearly as well as it had been running up till now. [...]
"It's no good, your Majesty," said the dwarf. "We can't sledge in this thaw."
"Then we must walk," said the Witch.
"We shall never overtake them walking," growled the dwarf. "Not with the start they've got."
"Are you my councillor or my slave?" said the Witch. "Do as you're told. Tie the hands of the human creature behind it and keep hold of the end of the rope. And take your whip. And cut the harness of the reindeer; they'll find their own way home."
So. Edmund has been bound, placed on a forced march, and threatened with a whip. And just in case the gravity of the situation is lost on you, the narrative has a helpful little picture attached.
What strikes me about this passage and the context around it is how thoroughly it obscures Edmund, despite him being ostensibly the point of view character for the chapter. There are approximately three pages left in this chapter and two full pictures, and all the words and images remaining in the chapter will deal with flowers and spring and the Witch's reaction to them.
Lewis is frequently compared to Tolkien for various reasons, and it strikes me that Tolkien has a similar scene in his books where complex protagonists are captured by evil creatures and then bound and forced to journey towards their doom. The difference, to me, is striking: when Merry and Pippin are within the custody of the orcs, we feel sorry for them. We feel scared for them. We want them to be alright. I read that scene as a child with tears swimming in my eyes, barely able to slow down enough to read the page because if I could just keep flipping pages fast enough maybe everything would be alright.
You can feel sorry for Edmund here, but you're kind of doing so on your own dime. You're not being fed any descriptions of how Edmund feels, you don't get a sense of his fear, or his loneliness in captivity, or how very much he misses his mommy and wishes he could just go home. Sure, we had a quick throw-away line earlier about how he even missed Peter, but this framing only seemed to serve as a reminder that Peter was right and Edmund was wrong and now Edmund is righteously suffering for his sins. If the narrative drives home a point that Edmund is to be pitied and that no one deserves the treatment he is receiving, I don't see it. If the narrative makes the case that Edmund is a vulnerable 9-year-old boy who is suffering mightily in this strange, confusing, and violent world, I can't find it.
It's odd to me that Tolkien was able to evoke more pity from me regarding two adults adventuring in their own universe than Lewis has tried to work from me regarding a small child who has stumbled unwillingly into an unfamiliar wonderland. This passage should be a sad one that copes with Edmund's loss and fear and grief, not a treatise on flowers.
Maybe that would be too over-the-top when Lewis had a more subtle point to be made, I don't know. But I do know that in a very few chapters, Aslan will acknowledge that the Witch has a right to Edmund's life, has a literally God-Given Right to kill this boy.
Now, Aslan is going to do everything in his power to save Edmund. Aslan is going to offer himself willingly in exchange. But -- and this is a crucial point to me -- the Witch doesn't have to take the exchange. This isn't "The Hunger Games" where Katniss' sacrifice is automatically accepted because there are rules for that sort of thing. Jadis owns Edmund's life. Aslan confirms this is fact. She can choose to accept a substitute, but she can just as easily say, "No, I think I want to keep what was behind Door Number 1." She can choose to keep and kill Edmund, and Aslan will not do anything to stop her.
Flash back to Tolkien. What if Aragorn caught up with the orcs who held Merry and Pippin in custody and it turns out that the orcs had an old treaty saying that any hobbits who maliciously trespassed in their lands were theirs to kill? What if Aragorn's own ancestor had ratified the treaty, and Aragorn was ostensibly bound by that decision? Would readers accept an Aragorn who said well, crap, I guess that's that then, unless you'd rather take me instead?
No. They couldn't. They wouldn't. Or, to be more accurate, I couldn't and wouldn't. I loved Merry and Pippin and while they were quite clearly at war with the orcs with their whole "mission to destroy the ring" thing, they were on the side of good and the orcs were evil, and giving them up for death would have been wrong. An Aragorn that gave up characters whom I loved in favor of the legality of a centuries-old treaty in spite of the utter wrongness of that treaty and the devastating effect it would wreak on their lives and the quest at large would have been an Aragorn I wanted nothing to do with. A good king doesn't let evil win because of legalities. A good king doesn't let the innocent suffer because of an unjust law. A good king doesn't play roulette with the lives of the people he loves. A good king may be Lawful Good, but he is not Lawful Stupid and he doesn't uphold unjust laws that kill the people he cares about.
But Aslan does that. And in order for Aslan to be good, and in order for the Witch's claim on Edmund to be anything other than a complete wall-banger moment for the reader, it is vitally important that Edmund be characterized as little as possible. His internal sufferings with his bound hands and the whip at his back aren't obscured to protect the children; they're obscured to protect Aslan and the Emperor because the more you feel sorry for Edmund, the less thrilled you're going to be at his death sentence.
"This is no thaw," said the dwarf, suddenly stopping. "This is Spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan's doing."
"If either of you mentions that name again," said the Witch, "he shall instantly be killed."
* Edited to add: I was wrong; Child!Edmund has one line in Chapter 13 in which he says "I'm sorry" in the middle of a paragraph describing his reunion with his siblings.
225 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 225 of 225 Newer› Newest»Ana, you play LOTRO, you know what a ruin they made of him in the game. I'll feed him his yellow boots.
Oh my god, yes. His epic quest line is so annoying.
Really, the whole forest is kind of messed up in the game. It just doesn't have the feeling of dread that I got from the books -- and having the town RIGHT THERE next door kind of weakened it, too, I don't care if it's lore or not. It's just not scary when ten feet away there's a gal selling bacon by an oven. :P
Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory
Ha.
Now we know what happened to TurboJesus. "I will take this atom bomb for myself!"
Male lions may look pretty, but I understand they spend most of their time waiting for the lionesses to bring home the meat.
They also -- I think -- take over tribes and kill babies to induce the females into heat. Thank you, National Geographic, for scarring me as a child with that tidbit. :D
Why not do the thing where everyone who beholds him sees him as their own species?
I would like that a lot, actually. That's a great idea.
I read once that Tolkien responded to the claims that the Ring was a nuke by pointing out that if it was, than it would have been used against Sauron.
But... he specifically addressed that! Gandalf *could* have used it against Sauron, but the price would have been too great.
This is why Death of the Author was invented. They ruin all the fun and/or say silly things about their work. Hello, Ray Bradbury, why yes, I am thinking of you.
The variable appearance thing is stolen from the literary sequel to 101 Dalmations, where Sirius the Dog Star freezes time to offer the dogs of Earth the chance to leave behind the humans and join him in the heavens. That is totally a real thing that exists.
Thank you, Rikalous. I had successfully forgotten that book. It was not good.
TRiG.
Addendum: this should logically mean that King Frank represents C.S. Lewis. I don't know if that works. Kit, and anyone else who might know, does Frank's "country voice" when it comes out sound like a man born in Ireland?
It's just not scary when ten feet away there's a gal selling bacon by an oven. :P
I think what bothered me the most was the use of Inexplicable Walls to make to harder to pass through. I mean, for old games like Ocarina of Time, I've fanonised the idea that the kingdom of Hyrule is actually set inside a crater (thus justifying how the vast field suddenly stop at a perfectly vertical stone wall) but I can't even use that to explain the twisty forest maze that Tom Bombadil lives in. If they wanted the forest to be a serious pain, they should have just had the whole thing be a swamp that slowed you down and then crammed it with even more malevolent trees.
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If Aslan was a Relativistic Everybeast, wouldn't that mean the Pevensies would see him as human? Awkward.
Kit, and anyone else who might know, does Frank's "country voice" when it comes out sound like a man born in Ireland?
GIve me a quote and I might be able to tell you. :-)
If Aslan was a Relativistic Everybeast, wouldn't that mean the Pevensies would see him as human?
And presumably naked.
TRiG.
Totally worth it, though, just to hear a Bunny say, "He's not a TAME bunny!"
GIve me a quote and I might be able to tell you.
In reference to hierarchies among his subjects or children: "I could never abide such goings on, sir, and that's the truth. I'd give 'em what for if I caught 'em at it," said the Cabby. (narrator tells us he's losing the Cockney speech he developed in London)
Fighting: "Well, sir," said the Cabby very slowly, "a chap don't exactly know till he's been tried. I dare say I might turn out ever such a soft 'un. 'Never did no fighting except with my fists. I'd try -- that is, I 'ope I'd try -- to do my bit."
On reflection I suspect every male human in the scene represents Lewis in some way.
Not necessarily. He could be garbed in the fashion of the viewer's culture.
(In passing--this is very late.)
To see Lawful Stupid in action, consider Rick Perry and Herman Cain. Having watched our reactionaries take over a wealthy and powerful country and run it into the ground with pointless wars and cruel greed has led me to the conclusion that some people actually do fall in love with pain, destruction, and death.
I'm a big fan of Archibald MacLeish's statement, "A poem should not mean/ But be." I apply that to various non-poem things as well. In this case fiction.
Meaning will follow. I would argue that you can't not have meaning in a work of fiction. The applicability Tolkien discussed is meaning in his text, even if he made no attempt to put it there. The problem with making meaning your primary concern is that it means fidelity to the story isn't.
In a well constructed allegory, where meaning is basically the whole the point, fidelity to your story will get you your meaning without need for you to focus on the meaning. Faithfully tell the story and, because you've set it up properly, the meaning you want will flow from that. It's only if faithfully telling the story doesn't produce the desired meaning that there's any reason to focus on meaning once things get going, but in that case there are only two things you can do if you want to maintain your meaning.
One is to rewrite the story so that the new story, faithfully told, flows where you wanted it to. There's nothing wrong with that, but it seems to me to be more on the being side than the meaning side. The other is to try to force the meaning. That shows. It tends to manifest in out of characterness, or a feeling of railroading, or what is, I believe, technically known as the idiot ball, or things not seeming to follow. However it manifests it doesn't feel right. It's forced, and it feels forced, and that doesn't make for good fiction.
In my opinion.
@hf - no, that doesn't sound Irish at all. It sounds English.
Meaning will follow. I would argue that you can't not have meaning in a work of fiction. The applicability Tolkien discussed is meaning in his text, even if he made no attempt to put it there.
This. And it's one of the reasons I'm such a fan of Death of the Author, because meaning creeps into the work regardless of author intent, and it's just no good for an author to argue that, no, that's not what it "means". The work is more organic than that.
I've taken this week off of work to go through all my Beta Reader feedback and compile all the changes I need to make to my book before sending it off for a final edit and publishing. One thing that fascinates me is how things that I wrote without conscious meaning have resonated with some of my Beta Readers.
The example that stuck with me is that I have a character pick up a silver spoon. I'm pretty sure I choose the spoon from a singular lack of choices -- I wanted something small, an eating utensil, and I didn't want it to be pokey or stabby. That pretty much left me with spoon in the setting I've got. However, one reader pointed out that there's another character who was born with a "silver spoon" in his mouth and that the character picking up the spoon is the person on whom his hopes hinge for getting his "silver spoon" (i.e., rank and privilege) back.
I can pretty safely say that wasn't my intended interpretation, but (a) it's AWESOME (so you can bet I'm leaving it in), and (b) even if I didn't like it, it wouldn't be my place to say "no, your interpretation is wrong".
And I really did like the idea up-thread that the fur coats and wardrobe entrance were a birthing experience. :D
Male lions may look pretty, but I understand they spend most of their time waiting for the lionesses to bring home the meat.
That's not all that they do. I remember watching a nature show following a couple of lionesses and they kept on getting run off from their kills by hyenas. Which meant that they were increasingly badly fed. I suggested to the lioness (via the TV and, I guess, through time) that they just eat one of the damned hyenas. I still don't understand why they didn't.
Anyway, at some point after they'd made a kill and the hyenas were preparing to steal it from the lionesses a random male lion came by. He killed and started to eat on of the hyenas, which scared off all the others allowing the lionesses to eat their kill in peace.
Relentless Enemies (http://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Relentless-Jeremy-Irons/dp/B000MQCULE ) has the lionesses scared off by hyenas, and it happened against last night with a cheetah on African Cats.
It's baffling, because the hyenas don't look very frightening. Maybe they smell bad? Maybe that sound they make is painful? I don't know!
Um. no. Merri and Pippin are adolescent by Hobbit standarts, even though their age is adult for human.
Pippin is underage, but not Merry; they were 29 and 37, and hobbits came of age at 33.
Apologies for a disjointed post. I read the comment thread jotting down notes on things I wanted to mention or reply to.
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I just feel I have to mention Niel Gaiman's short story "Nicholas Was. It's one hundred words long.
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You were asking why Santa's reindeer fly. It's because of fly agaric, apparently. Read that. It's fascinating.
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The Christian spanking porn domestic discipline stuff is disected by Greta Christina, as well as ever.
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Trickster Gods. I was at the Irish Discworld Convention last weekend, and attended a couple of talks by the renouned folklorist Jacqueline Simpson. In a talk on magical animals (did you know that seals are descended from Pharaoh's army drowned in the Red Sea?), she was asked about the Brer Rabbit myths. It seems they're descended from the tails of Anansi. He's a spider in Africa, but as he crossed the sea he became a rabbit, perhaps because there are fewer impressive spiders in the Americas.
(Seals and other fairy folk may alternatively be the angels who were cast out of heaven for refusing to take a side during Satan's rebellion.)
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Love Potions. I'm just going to quote myself, something I said in a completely different context. But I think you may find it interesting.
Rosemary Sutcliff's retelling of Tristan and Iseult
A strand of Iseult's hair blows across the sea from Ireland to Cornwall, and King Mark decides he will marry this woman with such beautiful hair. So he sends his nephew Tristan over to Ireland to find her and bring her back to Cornwall.
Iseult is found, and willingly goes back with Tristan to marry his uncle. But she's going to marry a man she's never met. What might go wrong? So someone (I forget who) supplies her with a love potion which, when she and Mark drink it together, will guarantee their love. Unfortunately, a mistake is made, and she and Tristan drink the potion together before they reach Cornwall. And so the tragedy is set in motion. She marries King Mark as promised, but she loves his nephew.
The tale of Tristan and Iseult got bound up with the Arthurian legends: Tristan ends in Arthur's court. It's origins, though, are probably far older. Rosemary Sutcliff, in her retelling, leaves out the love potion. She felt that it was added in the medieval "courtly love" period. The heroes of the tale are an adulterous couple, and that goes against the morality of the period. The love potion provides an excuse, and allows sympathy for the protagonists as their lives spin out of control.
The other great Celtic love stories (Sutcliff mentions specifically "Dierdre of the Sorrows" and "Diarmuid and Grainne") contain no love potion, even though adultery is a central plot device to all of them.
I last read that story probably in my mid-teens. I must dig it out again. I've forgotten much.
TRiG.
But why would the Emperor give a job to someone who destroyed her own world and whose first actions on entering Narnia were to attack Aslan and steal his fruit? It would make more sense, at least to me, if she were a more Satanic figure in that she was the first traitor against the Emperor, but she's not, and in any case Tash's existence in LB seems to imply that the position of Adversary is filled.
Yes, but TLTWATW was written long before Charn or Tash were ever thought of, and I believe it was intended to be mythologically complete in itself. The other books told other kinds of stories.
There are approximately three pages left in this chapter and two full pictures, and all the words and images remaining in the chapter will deal with flowers and spring and the Witch's reaction to them.
I read them as being mostly about Edmund's reactions:
Unless you have looked at a world of snow as long as Edmund had been looking at it, you will hardly be able to imagine what a relief those green patches were after the endless white.
we hear what the dwarf says, and what the witch says, but we see the spring entirely through Edmund's eyes, and he sees it as "wonderful" and "delicious." The thaw in the wood mirrors the the thaw in his heart; the mist is blown away, the silence turns to song.
But why would the Emperor give a job to someone who destroyed her own world and whose first actions on entering Narnia were to attack Aslan and steal his fruit? It would make more sense, at least to me, if she were a more Satanic figure in that she was the first traitor against the Emperor, but she's not, and in any case Tash's existence in LB seems to imply that the position of Adversary is filled.
Yes, but TLTWATW was written long before Charn or Tash were ever thought of, and I believe it was intended to be mythologically complete in itself. The other books told other kinds of stories.
There are approximately three pages left in this chapter and two full pictures, and all the words and images remaining in the chapter will deal with flowers and spring and the Witch's reaction to them.
I read them as being mostly about Edmund's reactions:
Unless you have looked at a world of snow as long as Edmund had been looking at it, you will hardly be able to imagine what a relief those green patches were after the endless white.
we hear what the dwarf says, and what the witch says, but we see the spring entirely through Edmund's eyes, and he sees it as "wonderful" and "delicious." The thaw in the wood mirrors the the thaw in his heart; the mist is blown away, the silence turns to song.
This has an element of sense, but... am I the only one who sees Medea as a "thinker" and Achilles as, uh, not so much? Individual tastes, I guess. :)
I think of Achilles as taken. If he's marrying anyone in the Elysian Fields, it should be Patroclus.
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