A great find at a used bookstore - can't wait to reread these as an atheist
Posted Dec 19, 2015, 3:16 AM UTC
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I started reading them again the other day. It's been about 15 years or so for me. I'm going through a book a night (they're super-easy). I'm reading in chronological order, rather than publication order for that whole "Genesis to Revelation" feel.
When you finish, make a thread.
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Those books are so incredibly bad.
I was miffed at them even as a kid because Fuck what he did to Susan but as an Atheist adult rereading them...So much bigotry and mind games.
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Have you read Neil Gaiman's story "The problem of Susan"?
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Susan Pevensie: C.S. Lewis' strawman of what atheists are like.
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I have not. Do you recommend it?
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I haven't read it either. That's why I was wondering if you have.
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Phew. You're the only person I've ever encountered who also didn't like them. I had to read a few of them in my Christian intermediate school (grades 5+6), and I thought they were incredibly boring. As a Christian kid that's not something you're allowed to admit...
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I disagree with a lot of what C.S. Lewis had to say, but I still love those books.
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He's very good at eloquently stating points I disagree with. For his faults, he had the kind of calm, reasoned intelligence you just don't see much of in modern apologetics.
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They're in pretty decent condition, and the cheesy old art is charming to me - I love old D&D books for this same sort of thing.
I used to be into these when I was young, and it's been long enough that I've forgotten the finer details of the stories and only remember the general outline of the series. I wouldn't have given a second thought to the religious content when I was young, but it'll be interesting to see what I find objectionable now.
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I was an obsessive fan of the books when I was young but one thing I didn't pick up on then was the racism, which is pretty obvious to me now in The Horse and His Boy especially. The fair skin of the good Narnians and Archenlanders is often contrasted with the dark skin of the evil Calormenes, with a few exceptions like Aravis and then later Emeth (who is a really controversial character in Christian circles since it suggests that Lewis thought that non-Christians might be able to go to Heaven). I don't think Lewis meant to be racist at all, but he was just a product of his times.
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Let's not forget the evil Telmarines, AKA Italians...
I've always thought the books that dealt with the Calormenes did a great job exemplifying Orientalism in children's literature. I've got the Horse and His Boy ready to go and I'm just hoping I won't get too upset at it.
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I have that same set. I've been thinking about rereading them for 20 years but haven't gotten around to it. I used to store them in chronological order.
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(Please read in a lavishly sarcastic voice) I for one will never let my kids read them because of the magical undertones that will obviously make my children witches or warlocks which are obviously real things that one could be if you dabbled enough in magic. I love how because C.S. Lewis is a Christian anything he writes about magic is totally ok because...Jesus.
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Those dwarfs stuck in the invisible house of The Last Battle, man. When I originally read them, I thought "yeah, that's must be how unbelievers are, denying what is right in front of them." Ironic.
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We still have this exact same set back home at my parents house!
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Sweet find! I still re3ally, really enjoy them. I'd be very curious to see a post with your thoughts once you work your way through them all again.
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I still read non-fiction Christian books like Mere Christianity, stuff by Timothy Keller, etc., from time to time.
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Reading through them with my daughter for the first time now actually. They're so obviously allegorical it's funny.
She enjoys them but hates Aslan with a passion. Her biggest gripe with Aslan is that he always swoops in at the last moment and just "saves things". When he does that he doesn't give the characters a chance to solve the issues for themselves and they had been working hard.
Ah, the mind of a child.
EDIT: She also oddly hates the half-star girl at the end of "Voyage of the Dawn Treader". The one that Prince Caspian marries. I strongly think that Prince Caspian might be her first crush.
Your daughter is going to be at the top of her English class!
I always hated the half-star girl. She was hardly even a character, just "magical" and "beautiful," and that's who marries Prince Caspian? Come on, give him a real PERSON to marry, not some shallow girl we know nothing about.
I don't know why, but I really liked her. Seemingly for the exact reasons you guys didn't haha. I always pictured her as completely otherworldly. Someone totally unique and strange and marvelous. The type of person you could, and would, fall in love with immediately. She had a sense of mystery and wonder and "otherness" that I really enjoy. Very similar to a character you'd see in a Neil Gaiman novel.
I always found it hilariously bad that she didn't even have a name, let alone a personality. In the recent movie they gave her a name, which was kind of nice.
He actually insisted they weren't allegory. Of course there are some very obvious Christian messages, but Lewis wanted people to be able to just read them for the story too.
It's true there is a lot in there from pagan mythology too, which is why some Christians I knew wouldn't let their kids read the books.
It sounds like your daughter is very thoughtful about what she's reading/hearing, which is great. I also can't blame her for not liking Ramandu's daughter! She pretty much just exists in relation to the men in her life (Ramandu, Caspian, and Rilian) and has no real character of her own. Lewis wasn't great with female characters, and VotDT was one of the first Narnia books written. They get better in the later books once he had actually gotten to know a woman well.
Relatively recently, people have begun suggested that The Chronicles of Narnia also take a lot of inspiration from medieval cosmology.