osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2023-06-23 08:07 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2023-06-23 08:07 pm
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Book Review: The Last Battle
When I first read the Narnia series, I didn’t like The Magician’s Nephew or The Last Battle. Upon reread, I learned that I now enjoy The Magician’s Nephew, so I’ve been wondering if I would also find new things to appreciate in The Last Battle. But while there are of course things to appreciate in the book - my God C. S. Lewis can keep a story galloping along! - I still don’t like it.
It’s just so grim. No plucky children appear until the fourth chapter. Instead, we start off with an Ape bullying his donkey friend Puzzle into putting on a lion skin to pretend to be Aslan, and then using the false Aslan to enslave the Talking Beasts of Narnia, forcing them to cut down dryads and send the timber to Calormene, among other travesties.
One of the dryads manages to warn King Tirian, the last king of Narnia, as C. S. Lewis tells us right from the start. Fair play to him: he tells us exactly where this book is going. The dryad dies at Tirian’s feet as her tree is cut down, and Tirian and his unicorn friend Jewel rush off to try to rescue the Talking Animals, for of course they know that this can’t be the real Aslan…
But they fail. Even after they’ve rescued poor Puzzle and start showing everyone, “See? He’s just a donkey in a lion skin, not the real Aslan at all!”, many creatures refuse to believe them. (“Trump supporters,” I sighed. C. S. Lewis is wrong about a lot of things, but he is also really incredibly right about human nature almost always.) The Calormenes conquer Cair Paravel, Tirian and Jewel (joined by Jill and Eustace and a few other companions) attempt to rally the Talking Animals to their side, but only a few join them, and they all die in a heroic last stand…
But it’s fine! They wake up in Aslan’s Country, also known as Heaven.
So I think what Lewis is going for here is eucatastrophe: everything is dark and terrible, and then suddenly there’s a break in the clouds, the light comes down, and the happy ending is all the more transcendent for seeming so impossible just moments before. The climax of The Lord of the Rings, basically.
The problem is that the sense of eucatastrophe here relies on a deep investment in the Christian cosmology, far more than the other Narnia books. The literal-minded reader may otherwise be just a trifle upset that all the Friends of Narnia (except Susan!) just died. (There are many fine essays about The Problem of Susan, so I won’t get into that here, but know that I did indeed notice.) The protagonists we’ve gotten to know and love over the last six books? Killed all at once in a train crash. Yes, yes, they’re in Heaven, but I don’t care about Heaven, dammit! I’m here for Narnia, and Narnia just died too, and bigger better Narnia Heaven doesn’t feel bigger and better than Narnia at all!
I did laugh when Professor Kirke yells, “It’s all in Plato!”, though. “The real world is a mere reflection of true reality” is indeed all in Plato! And I found it nuts there, too.
It’s just so grim. No plucky children appear until the fourth chapter. Instead, we start off with an Ape bullying his donkey friend Puzzle into putting on a lion skin to pretend to be Aslan, and then using the false Aslan to enslave the Talking Beasts of Narnia, forcing them to cut down dryads and send the timber to Calormene, among other travesties.
One of the dryads manages to warn King Tirian, the last king of Narnia, as C. S. Lewis tells us right from the start. Fair play to him: he tells us exactly where this book is going. The dryad dies at Tirian’s feet as her tree is cut down, and Tirian and his unicorn friend Jewel rush off to try to rescue the Talking Animals, for of course they know that this can’t be the real Aslan…
But they fail. Even after they’ve rescued poor Puzzle and start showing everyone, “See? He’s just a donkey in a lion skin, not the real Aslan at all!”, many creatures refuse to believe them. (“Trump supporters,” I sighed. C. S. Lewis is wrong about a lot of things, but he is also really incredibly right about human nature almost always.) The Calormenes conquer Cair Paravel, Tirian and Jewel (joined by Jill and Eustace and a few other companions) attempt to rally the Talking Animals to their side, but only a few join them, and they all die in a heroic last stand…
But it’s fine! They wake up in Aslan’s Country, also known as Heaven.
So I think what Lewis is going for here is eucatastrophe: everything is dark and terrible, and then suddenly there’s a break in the clouds, the light comes down, and the happy ending is all the more transcendent for seeming so impossible just moments before. The climax of The Lord of the Rings, basically.
The problem is that the sense of eucatastrophe here relies on a deep investment in the Christian cosmology, far more than the other Narnia books. The literal-minded reader may otherwise be just a trifle upset that all the Friends of Narnia (except Susan!) just died. (There are many fine essays about The Problem of Susan, so I won’t get into that here, but know that I did indeed notice.) The protagonists we’ve gotten to know and love over the last six books? Killed all at once in a train crash. Yes, yes, they’re in Heaven, but I don’t care about Heaven, dammit! I’m here for Narnia, and Narnia just died too, and bigger better Narnia Heaven doesn’t feel bigger and better than Narnia at all!
I did laugh when Professor Kirke yells, “It’s all in Plato!”, though. “The real world is a mere reflection of true reality” is indeed all in Plato! And I found it nuts there, too.
no subject
There are a lot of things I like about The Last Battle - as you say, Lewis absolutely nails so many bits of human nature, and Jewel and Puzzle are so lovely, and I love the doomed last stand and the dwarves in th stable, but trying to write about fictional heaven is never going to work.
no subject
I have read a couple 19th century books about fictional heaven which were more successful than this, but they started with the main character's death and spent the whole book exploring heaven, and the whole "exploring an interesting new world" aspect makes it feel more like a portal fantasy.
no subject
George MacDonald's Lilith (1895) has the shtick of finding true life in dying, but it also has such a personal, unfiltered, gonzo vision of Christian myth mixed up with midrash that I don't feel insulted by it, it's exactly the kind of flight of id-fueled fancy that the ending of The Last Battle closes down.