maeve66 | (Reply)

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maeve66.livejournal.com

But see, that's the thing. He wrote the whole series to lead up to The Last Battle, which is practically the Rapture, so it's not just that he's riffing on plot details from his religion: he was a literary theologian himself, so it's not an accident.* That's even clearer in the science fiction, but it's pretty clear in the Narnia series as well, once the whole parallel religion (Tashkent) is introduced in The Horse and His Boy... again, I have read and reread this series, and actually like it and enjoy it. But it had a point and an intention, and I do think he wanted to do some indoctrinating -- what celesteh says above, especially in his views that modern (e.g. 1950s) British education was getting away from its orthodox Anglican roots and going all scientist on the poor children of Britain. The upper middle class ones. I didn't even TALK about the sickening class references.

And I repeat: I can enjoy reading his stuff and suspend both my disbelief and my political critique. But that's temporary. When I emerge from the book (or the movie, I guess) those faculties are turned back on.

What I actually want to blog about at some point is what the intent is in Philip Pullman's trilogy, because that's gotten a lot of ink, and I haven't managed to finish it, which is really unusual to me. I can't seem to read the third book (The Amber Spyglass, I think), and it's a bit ironic, because the general reaction seems to be that Pullman is deliberately writing a critique of organized religion. I can't tell. It's not as purely enjoyable to me as, for example, Lewis' Narnia series, or -- to bring in a publishing blockbuster with absolutely no religious axe to grind -- the Harry Potter series. Or to bring in a body of work that is not as media-glitzy, the work of Diana Wynne Jones, which is also agnostic on religion.

* On specific details... Edmund's betrayal in the book is worse, as I recollect it, than what you've described in the movie. And Aslan ASKS Lucy and Susan to walk with him to the very edge of the clearing or whatever, where the Stone Table is; he may not SAY that he wants them to witness it, but they're the only characters he brings. It doesn't have to be letter-perfect to be an allegory. Oh, and I think Lewis' Christ is a muscular Christian kind of Christ, and also that he draws on the smiting stuff in the Old Testament to justify the violence. The same exact sort of spirit can be seen in That Hideous Strength. The defining characteristic of Lewis' world view seems to me to be the centrality of properly hierarchical social arrangements: humans above (non Talking) animals; men above women; Kings above commoners; the classes in their right places, etc.

Oh, and

flowerlane, note the length of MY comments: I believe in long LJ back-and-forths, as long as they're not flamewars of any kind. And this doesn't seem to be one. I think differing perceptions of literature are what make it fucking interesting, you know?