The Narnia books are so well-known that it hardly needs an introduction. Yet, it is hard to describe what Narnia is really like because each story is different, with the span of sometimes hundreds of years. It is a land of talking animals, fairytale creatures, of magic, wise kings and a talking lion. Sure, Narnia demands some leaps of faith from the readers, but it is a worthwhile destination.
I am currently at the end of my second month of lockdown, even though I haven’t really been counting it. I live in a small loft apartment with my partner and two cats and at times, the space can be imposing. We are hostages of a virus that knows no bounds of justice and sympathy, and driving us insane by the minute. Books have kept me in some sort of tourniquet while my sanity bleeds out. Narnia is the perfect foil because it is pure escapism in a world where animal talks, the king is fair and good prevails. It is to me, some sort of remedy.
I remembered reading the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe years and years ago and not liking it. I read it too fast I suppose, and there is that bit with Santa Claus that I didn’t swallow well, but I wasn’t really keen on reading the rest of the books. But I cannot resist my innate desire to clean off book lists and Narnia is always prominent. When I saw the box set on sale I went ahead and bought it right before the lockdown hit.
Impressions of Narnia
Recently, I’ve got into the habit of writing about everything I read. I wasn’t sure if I should write Narnia as a whole, or reviewing each book separately. I decided to do both. Each separate book can have its own little piece, and what you’re reading now — the summary can hold its own. Thankfully, there is a lot to write about in each book because they were all so different.
So what are my impressions of the saga? I am grateful that it has come at the right time to take my mind off things, as books often do and in particular being a fantasy adventure. There is a young man in me that wants to cross deserts, roam the underground caves, cross oceans and talk to talking animals. A deeper man in me is gratified by the violence in Narnia, especially in the destruction of evil which we can almost guarantee will happen in every book (oh, spoiler alert).
But there are things that bother me about the book, particularly the message it has for children. Books, after all is the brain child of an author who are almost always imperfect beings and these values are passed on to keen readers. My concern is that these values are passed on to the particularly vulnerable target reader: the children.
Not all the message in Narnia is bad, in fact most of it is good. The Pevensie children are really ordinary English schoolchildren who in the end, became kings and queens and ruled their kingdom fairly. Isn’t this an implication that any children can also go in the same adventure and reach great things in life while leading a moral life?
Narnia takes for granted that its characters be courageous, and courage I find, is something that is present in youth, fleeting in the middle age and perhaps forgotten in the old age. Adventure stories always reawaken something primal inside readers to go beyond their lives and perhaps take action equal to taking on Calormene soldiers in Achenland.
Yet there is something plain sinister in Lewis’s portrayal of Narnia’s southern neighbours which doesn’t sit well with me.
The Calormene Question — Otherisation in Narnia
The Southern neighbour of Narnia is a peculiar kingdom where another deity is praised who is not Aslan, a deity who demands human sacrifices. The men in the country are brash and corrupt, looking after their own interests. We see this in Shasta’s father, the Tarkaan nobleman who visited, the Tarkaan royalty and Rishda Tarkaan in the Last Battle.
The portrayal of Tarkaan mirror those of Middle Eastern descents with the colour of their skin, the turbans that they wear, their beliefs and even their weapons (the curved sword which sounds like an Arabic scimitar). In the Horse and His Boy, Prince Rabadash was a potentially murderous and abusive husband. These portrayals are normalised in Narnia and it truly bothered me while I was reading it.
While it is disrespectful, there is a tinge of xenophobia in it that encourages readers to be wary of foreigners. For a book which tolerates animals talking, portraying other fellow men as such seem a cold irony, a hypocrisy. Sure, this may be the context from where and when he was writing — Lewis was a middle-aged white man who never traveled outside of Europe. His image of the exotic was really an amalgamation of what he understands to be exotic.
But as modern day readers, do we have the right to forgive the author for his passive discrimination? I think in the case of Narnia, the good outweighs this but I think every parent who encourages their children to read this series will also need to discuss the Calormene question with their kids.
Is Narnia an allegory?
Although the author does not admit that Narnia itself is allegorical, it is easy to draw parallels of Narnia to Christianity — Aslan as the messiah figure. But when I think of Aslan being a lion, does Aslan also represent the British empire trying to impose order to the chaos of the world. I don’t know if the intention is deliberate. But the religious undertones is something that has is widely discussed in Narnian lore.
Whatever the intention of Lewis, I don’t think for my sake that I will explore further literature which discuss these parallels. I think in the end, it’s not within the purpose of my reading. But I am grateful for Narnia, as Lewis’s original intention was to create children’s literature that is not embedded in realism, something that became far too commonplace.
He was good mates with Tolkien and both set out to build their own worlds where the children can play the hero, and demands more from the readers imagination. Their clique of writers, the Inklings, went a long way to shape fantasy as a genre.
Final Verdict
Narnia has been for me, an escape from my tiny apartment. I’ve enjoyed the adventures more than I expected and if I were younger I may have come to love these stories even more. But Narnia isn’t without its faults, and I’m thankful to read the series at a later age so that I can dissect the stories in a more analytical and objective manner, yet retain my passion as a reader.
