Got into it with Tim Skellett last night over C.S. Lewis, on the matter of whether the Narnia books are questionable in terms of the subtle moral messages they impart to young and relatively defenseless minds. I’d like to review just a few of my objections to those books, now that I’m fully rested and at least partially caffeinated.
Racial Determinism In Narnia
There are several races within the Narnian world which are portrayed as wholly irredeemable. To quote WikiNarnia on the topic of Hags:
Hags, like Ogres, Boggles and Werewolves, were one of Narnia’s darkest and most evil races. All known Hags were enemies of Aslan and loyal followers of the White Witch. Any willingness to consort with Hags was a sign of “going bad” in other creatures.
There are also Ghouls, Goblins, Minotaurs, and probably a few other Dark Races that I’ve left out here. Each of these races of intelligent beings are portrayed as irredeemably depraved in character and nearly all of them are represented as ugly to behold. This is doubly problematic, because it conveys to young readers that some races of intelligent beings are morally irredeemable and that physical attractiveness is a good proxy for character.
I’m not even going to press the point about implicit anti-Semitism we might see as these irredeemably dark races surround the Stone Table to joyously ritually sacrifice Narnia’s Messiah, because even all these years later I have trouble imagining that Lewis did that on purpose, and probably kids wouldn’t pick up on it unless they have also been drilled in the Matthean version of the Crucifixion account.
Christian Messaging In Narnia
Ok, so this one is perhaps foot-stompingly obvious, but I have to mention that it is not intuitively clear to younger readers that blood sacrifice is a universally necessary prerequisite to divine forgiveness. Kids might be fairly cruel to each other on the playground, but it takes some doing to drill this level of bloodthirst into their young minds and convince them that life-for-forgiveness is somehow a transcendent cosmic law which applies to all possible worlds. The narrative of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe pulls off this trick even more effectively than the gospels themselves, so far as children are concerned. Recalling my own childhood, it was Narnia that paved the way for Sunday School, not the other way around.
Of course, there is far more Christian messaging woven throughout the seven books. At the end of the cycle we find the Pevensie children all grown up and rejoicing as they trek onward and upward into eternal bliss. Well, all of them but one. The Narnia books teach children to accept that we should move joyously forward, even without our loved ones, if they show insufficient belief in the Christ-figure.
Anti-Skepticism In Narnia
Probably the most objectionable Narnian Christian message, from the perspective of modern skepticism, is the idea that we should have belief in belief rather than in the evidence of our senses. This lesson is driven home most clearly and directly in chapter nine of Prince Caspian, “What Lucy Saw,” in which the other Pevensie children have to follow their stubborn little sister because she is the only one who can see Aslan through the eyes of faith. In the story, of course, Lucy’s childlike faith allows them to follow Aslan to precisely where they were hoping to go. In real life, that sort of faith leads people to toss their lifesaving medications away at the behest of charlatan faith-healers.
I stand by my earlier assessment that these books are worthy reading as adults, once we’ve developed a fully-functioning memetic immune system against such pernicious nonsense as racial determinism, substitutionary atonement, and the virtue of belief in belief, but I am not about to recommend these books to any child who hasn’t already been well-trained in how to critically examine and reject the terrible ideas that the narrative is trying to implant in their minds.
Your thoughts?
