My parents read C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia aloud, in rotation, to us kids growing up; when we finished The Last Battle, we'd start over immediately with The Magician's Nephew. I had thus heard them multiple times (and had myself done some of the reading aloud), but had never gone through the series by myself. My mom gave me the set (a nice, slightly moldy used set of the vintage of theirs) for Christmas, and I cruised through them in about a week.
It was an interesting experience on many levels. One was reading them after the other British fantasy I've read since hearing Narnia for the first time--including Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books, Brian Jacques' Redwall series, and most recently all of Harry Potter--and seeing parallels. Another was comparing my adult interpretations of the language with how I'd (mis)understood it as a child--for example, when the Witch gives Edmund "a stunning blow," she's not puckering up and pushing air at him through her lips. And this time, because the time frame in which I went through the series was so compressed, I got a stronger sense of the cleverness and creativity of Narnia's rich and complex history. Finally, I remembered my dad tearing up as he read certain passages, but had never felt particularly compelled as a child--although the Stone Table scene in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe did make me a little sad. This time, though, I was much more aware of the emotional impact of the stories. It was the end of The Last Battle, which I had remembered as the most boring and vague of the series, that really got me.
Between Harry Potter and the new Golden Compass film (and of course the recent Lord of the Rings and even Narnia films), Lewis's children's stories have been in the media recently. Apparently J.K. Rowling never finished the series, and Philip Pullman has made clear that he despises Lewis; he's popularly credited with saying such things as, "I loathe the ‘Narnia’ books. I hate them with a deep passion, with their view of childhood as a golden age," and calling them "one of the most ugly and poisonous things [he's] ever read." I will grant that the books have clear moral content that's not exactly complex or subtle, but it's hard for me to picture them making kids somehow dumber, less discerning, or generally worse people; in my (biased, but thoughtful) opinion, the alternative seems more probable.
January 18, 2008
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1 comments:
I have very similar childhood memories of the Narnia series. My mother went through the series at least five times with my siblings and I.
Did you ever see the BBC produced movies? They were produced in the late 80's on an apparently very low budget covering The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe through The Silver Chair. They were a HUGE disappointment (to me anyway). The absolute worst scene in the series came in The Silver Chair, when the Prince kills the witch in her snake form. LAMEST SPECIAL EFFECTS EVER.
I'm glad they're redoing the movies but after watching the first one I feel I've outgrown them.
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