C. S. Lewis - Narnia, etc.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I was wondering what had happened to the proposed cinema films of The Silver Chair and the other Narnia titles that weren't covered by Walden Media. It seems that a "new Narnia TV and film series" is now planned. However, it's a Netflix project so it may only be available to Netflix subscribers (unless it gets a DVD/Blu-ray release):

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 67056.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Katharine]

I was very disappointed with the ending to The Silver Chair. No Enid Blyton 'and they all lived happily ever after'.

[Courtenay]

Well, there is a literal "and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after" at the end of The Last Battle, even if it's not in a Blytonesque fashion! I would agree, though, the ending of The Silver Chair is a little bit blunt and sounds like a plug for the caves as a Narnia tourist attraction. I enjoy the book itself (I love them all), but the closing paragraphs could have rounded it off a lot more satisfyingly. All the other books, if I'm remembering rightly (I don't have most of them with me), end with an amusing or intriguing remark from the author or one of the characters, which in most cases does make for a nice neat finish.

As for a Netflix "Narnia-based universe", not sure what I think about that, but I suppose none of us can comment until we've seen it! Interesting that they've acquired the rights to all seven books, as only four of them (to my knowledge) have ever been made into film or TV productions before — The Lion..., Prince Caspian, The Voyage... and The Silver Chair. I guess it helps that they all follow on from each other pretty directly — they were the first four to be published — and involve the same characters in succession (the Pevensies aren't in The Silver Chair, of course, but Eustace is in the previous book and so provides the link to the next one).

The Horse and His Boy is the one I can imagine causing the most stirs over "political correctness" if it were to be filmed, with Calormen drawing on various "Oriental" / "Arabian Nights" stereotypes and tropes that were of course quite standard in children's literature of Lewis's time but harder to get away with now. It would be interesting to see how they portray Calormen and the Calormenes if they do film that one.

The Calormenes and their demon-god Tash also of course feature in The Last Battle, but what I can see being most controversial in that and The Magician's Nephew is that those are the two stories that bring in Christian themes most explicitly: the creation of a world and the entrance of evil into it in The Magician's Nephew, and the end of the world, the final judgment and the afterlife in The Last Battle. As far as I know, in the relatively recent films, the producers deliberately tried to avoid bringing out the religious themes too obviously, but I can't see any way they could get around them if they adapt those two books. I'm wondering if they'll avoid doing them as such and just invent other "Narnia-based" adventures, so that they can potentially keep the Narnia universe going for as long as they want, rather than having to create and destroy it in keeping with the original books. Again, I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

[Daisy]

I was very disappointed with the ending to The Silver Chair. No Enid Blyton 'and they all lived happily ever after'.

I'm wondering which bit of the ending disappoints you, Katharine. I love the way we see Caspian becoming as he was in the prime of life as he adapts to life in the hereafter. I think the way C.S.Lewis portrays the way the school is amusing. One can't help feeling he is getting a jibe in - showing his own view on such modern experiments. I get the feeling Jill and Eustace did have a much happier time thereafter.

[Katharine]

Daisy, I was saddened by the fact that Caspian only lived long enough to lay his hand on his son't head. I know he was old, but I would have liked to imagine them spending a few years together.

I know the idea was probably to show how wonderful heaven/the after life is, but for me that doesn't sit comfortably in a children's fantasy book. I also felt uncomfortable that Jill and Eustace seemed to want to stay there rather than going back to school. I can understand why they didn't want to return, but I just find it a bit unsettling that two young children thought death was preferable to living. I read a 1950s school book a while back with a similar sentiment - a preacher came to the school telling the children all about the after life, and they expressed a disappointment that they couldn't go there yet. I suppose back when the books where written, death was seen as inevitable and something that may well come sooner rather than later, so the idea was to take the fear of dying away from children, rather than today's world where we are constantly battling to delay that time for as long as possible.

On a lighter note, I did have a chuckle at the comment about the head teacher who was removed from the school when they realised she wasn't any good, and so was put in charge of other head teachers, and when it was discovered she wasn't any good at that either, she went in Parliament - some things never change.

[Daisy]

I also felt uncomfortable that Jill and Eustace seemed to want to stay there rather than going back to school. I can understand why they didn't want to return, but I just find it a bit unsettling that two young children thought death was preferable to living.

I didn't read it like that - more that they would have liked to stay in Narnia. However, as in real life, they had to return to face their problems - but of course they find things will change for the better very soon, once the inspectors get going!!

[Katharine]

Maybe if I'd read the book as a child I wouldn't have made that connection.

[Courtenay]

I know the idea was probably to show how wonderful heaven/the after life is, but for me that doesn't sit comfortably in a children's fantasy book.

I was going to say "well don't read the last book then!!", but I'm aware you already have... Seriously, though, with that element of it, I take into account the fact that Lewis was writing these books only a decade or so after WW2. There would have been a lot of children (and adults) who lost family in the war — not only in the fighting, but through the bombings of London and other major towns and cities in the Blitz — and death and loss must have been a painful reality for many young people, not just something that mostly happens to the very elderly. I don't think he was intending to have children wish they could die too, just not to be afraid of what may happen beyond death or to fear that a loved one who has died is lost forever.

Also, Lewis was writing to illustrate Christian concepts in a non-"churchy" way for young readers, and the belief in life after death is a basic part of Christianity (and many other religions), so I would guess he felt he needed to include his understanding of the afterlife, which logically meant having at least some of his main characters die. (He's not the first or the last author to have included death in a children's book, of course — Watership Down by Richard Adams is another one that also includes a beautiful glimpse of life after death at the end, although it wasn't written with any religious purpose in mind.)

[Katharine]

Good points Courtenay. When I first read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe as a child, and then again as an adult I just thought it was a book about some children and their adventures in a magical world, it was only recently (on these forums I think) that I discovered there was a meaning behind the stories. If I hadn't known about the Christian concepts when I read the other books, I doubt I'd have picked up on them.

[Katharine]

Well I've just finished reading The Last Battle and it has to be in my opinion the worst book of the series. It really underlined why I turn back to Enid Blyton all the time, it was violent and children died. I think of all the other authors that I've read, this must be the absolute worst children's book so far. In some ways it reminds me of the Harry Potter books and The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings, but at least I felt those had reasonably happy endings. I just cannot see how it can be 'happily ever after' when all the main characters are killed off. I'm obviously missing out on what C.S. Lewis was trying to say, but to me the message is that if you try and help other people, be brave etc., you will die early!

I also hated the way that Puzzle was used and humiliated by Shift - makes me think of domestic violence/modern slavery. I'm certainly glad I didn't read it as a child, I have a feeling it would have haunted me over the years, thankfully these days my memory is pretty shocking, so I will probably have forgotten the plot within a matter of months - I just hope I remember that I definitely don't want to read it again!

[Daisy]

I don't think I picked up on the Christian aspect when I first read the series, although by the time I got to The Last Battle I was aware of it. I agree the beginning of the book is a bit hard to get your head round but the well named Puzzle is being used by Shift and one begins to see some kind of message behind the story. The children were involved in a train crash and catapulted into Narnia - they were not (as far as I understood it) deliberately killed! The ending is glorious - and never fails to send a shiver down my spine - a nice one though. Aslan at last tells them they need never be apart from him again - no more going back to a difficult life on earth. I also love the bit where one of Tash's followers feels he will be excluded when he realizes he has been following evil rather than good only to be told that anything he did with love in his heart could not be in honour of Tash but rather was something for Aslan. Great stuff!

[Katharine]

I meant they were deliberately killed by the author rather than anything else, but actually that's not strictly true. Jill, Eustace and Trilian were thrown into the stable to be killed by the man hiding behind the door. The others however just had the misfortune to be involved in a train crash.

I know I've read the books as an adult, rather than the age they were aimed at, but I don't think I'd ever have got a thrill from their deaths. I grew up being aware of children in previous generations of my family that had died young, either through illness or accidents, and as an adult I know even more people who have lost children, so I find reading anything that makes light of the subject rather upsetting. Rather than thinking how wonderful that they were with Aslan forever, I just think of how cruel to be deprived of a full life, they never had the chance of careers, homes, marriage, children of their own etc. However wonderful Narnia might be, I certainly wouldn't want to experience it until I'd at least reached my 3 score years and ten. For Polly and Digory, then yes, it might have been the right time, but far too soon for the others in my opinion.

And what about poor Susan - left without siblings, parents or even her cousin? And Eustace's parents? Not perhaps the best parents in the world, but they lost their only son - just cruel on the part of the author I feel.

To cheer myself up, I'm back on Enid Blyton - The Boy Next Door.

[Courtenay]

I know we've all debated the ending of The Last Battle before, but thinking about it again, I honestly don't get the impression that Lewis was meaning to "make light of the subject" of death. He went through severe grief more than once in his own life, starting with the death of his mother when Lewis was only 9, which just about shattered his world and had a lot to do with why he became an avowed atheist until well into his adult life. I really don't think he was meaning to trivialise the subject of life and death. He was a very widely respected Christian commentator in his time (including during WW2, when fear of death was naturally a lot more on most people's minds than it usually would be) and these are subjects he did a lot of thinking and writing about.

Yes, it could be said to be cruel that all the main characters are killed off during the story for the sake of getting them into heaven, most of them at a young age — but sadly, people do sometimes die young in real life, too. Or indeed, sometimes people lose their entire family in one terrible accident or disaster, like Susan did. There's no implication that any of the "friends of Narnia" died young because they were good; it's just what happened. Again, going by his own life story, I don't think Lewis was meaning to shrug it all off with a sense of "Ah, it doesn't matter if you die too young, the next world is so much better than this world anyway." I love the characters' gradually unfolding realisation that all the things they thought had been destroyed in the "old Narnia" (and indeed in our world) — and all the friends they thought had died, either in the last battle or in earlier times — aren't lost at all, but that in Aslan's country they find the real and original being of everything that matters, which can't be destroyed. They're not losing anyone or anything they loved before in their earthly lives, but finding them again in a deeper and more wonderful way than they could have imagined.

Even coming from an agnostic background, I've always found that a far more comforting and inspiring thought than the traditional sort of portrayal of "the afterlife" as sitting on a cloud with angel wings and harps and so on. The message I feel Lewis was trying to get across there was that death, however horrifying and final it looks to us on this side of it, doesn't destroy anything that truly matters.

I'm guessing many readers' reaction to the ending of the final book might have to do with how much they'd picked up on the Christian themes throughout the earlier books in the series, particularly the subject of who Aslan is meant to be. Reading them at the age of 7, I know I twigged fully at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Aslan tells the children he is in our world as well, but with a different name. It's in that same scene, just beforehand, that Lucy realises "It isn't Narnia, you know... It's you" — that it's not being in Narnia that matters most of all, but being with Aslan. By that stage of reading, I'd already felt that there was something very, very special and indescribably good about Aslan that would make one want to be with him forever — which is probably the effect Lewis was intending. But if I'd not grasped any of that and saw him as just a sort of magical lion character, I would guess I'd have found the ending of The Last Battle to be a baffling let-down too. As it is, I absolutely love it, but I can understand why not everyone feels the same.

[Katharine]

Interesting thoughts Courtenay. In some ways I wish I had read the book as a child and before I realised the religious tone to it. Although I suspect I'd have just been upset that they pretty much all died, and not sure I'd have twigged that they'd gone to heaven. I also found the idea of there being a Narnia inside a Narnia and the real world being a spur that reaches out the Narnia extremely hard to get my head around, I'm pretty certain I'd have struggled with that as a child as I like my stories to have proper endings.

Yes, it could be said to be cruel that all the main characters are killed off during the story for the sake of getting them into heaven, most of them at a young age — but sadly, people do sometimes die young in real life, too. Or indeed, sometimes people lose their entire family in one terrible accident or disaster, like Susan did. There's no implication that any of the "friends of Narnia" died young because they were good; it's just what happened.

Maybe it was just the way I interpreted the books, but the feeling I get is that somehow Susan is being 'punished' for not believing in Narnia any more, but that the others are all rewarded for going to help by getting killed off young.

I suppose because I mostly read Enid Blyton books as a child, I'm not used to such themes. I know from other authors I've read more recently, that fighting was seen as something to be admired. I think it is Little Women where someone has already lost one or more sons in the war (American Civil?) and his attitude is one of pride and that he'd be quite prepared to let his one remaining son die too if 'necessary'.

I prefer more gentle stories where the good always survive, the baddies always get caught and the worst anyone gets is a box on the ears and a few scratches from a gorse bush.

[Daisy]

Well said Courtenay, that is exactly how I feel.