Lupiverse(es)

James Wynn · 15 Mar 2012, 23:22 · from 2012-March.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:22:58 -0500
Subject: (urth) Lupiverse(es)
In-Reply-To: <12AA9CFAA3E7475EA584103C522FE938@Rover>
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For the record, I never had any problem seeing the allegorical parts in 
LWW or the Silver Chair (the most allegorical of all the stories). TLB 
is not even allegorical. It's merely eschatological. Given who Aslan was 
revealed to be in "The Magician's Nephew", it is inevitable that he 
would play the role he did at the end of the the Narnian world.

If one sees materialism as an "oppositional identity" to Christianity 
(and all young materialist in the West do because that is almost always 
their only counter-example), then you are likely to feel chaffing at 
Aslan's role in TLB. But Aslan's plays the same role in TLB as he does 
in ALL the other book. He shows up at the end to sort things out and 
sends the characters on their way. But only if one  associates 
End-of-the-World stories SOLELY with Christianity would one suddenly 
realize in TLB  that Aslan is Jesus.

But there is sooo much more to Narnia than the Christian allegory. 
Almost all of it is, as Lewis called it, a stew with lots of familiar 
flavors rather than a lock-and-key allegory. It's just that there are a 
few clumps of beefy allegory in there as well.

In fact, being young and recognizing the allegories in the story made 
"The Last Battle" quite confusing for me, I think.  Because Lewis has a 
very idiosyncratic theology (it certainly wouldn't jive with 
Presbyterianism).  If, because of one's youth, he is unaware that there 
are so many subtle shades of Christian belief, he will surely have a WTH 
reaction. And I did.

So TLB would be better if it were read by an older, more worldly person 
who can both recognize how different Aslan is from our Standard Jesus 
and is willing to accept that that is okay. Or someone who has had the 
time between the first book to the last to familiarize himself with some 
of Lewis's other writers ("The Great Divorce", "Til We Have Faces", 
"Pilgrims Regress")

J.

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