We just got back from watching “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” Short review: We liked it a lot. Did we love it? That’s harder to say. Melanie said that while she liked it a lot, she felt a little disappointment as the credits roll, but mainly because she has read the books so many times, and knows them so well, they couldn’t have made a movie that didn’t leave even slightly disappointed. That said, it’s about the best movie we could expect them to make. If that’s not singing praises from the rooftops, so be it.
It’s been a lot longer since I’ve read the books, so I was remembering a lot along the way and didn’t miss the bits they left out for the most part. Here are my quick impressions.
- The White Witch reminded very strongly of the Satan character in “The Passion of the Christ.” It probably wasn’t intentional, unless it was on the part of Mel Gibson using Lewis’ white witch as his inspiration. Still, for those who saw The Passion, this is an image that resonates.
- The character of the White Witch struck the right tone. In his review for the Catholic World Report December issue, Steven Greydanus says that the witch’s appearance before Aslan to demand the blood price was too strong and proud, and perhaps that’s true. Still, I got the impression that just below the confidence of one who demands what she knows is hers by right is the fear that she is demanding it of one who is both more powerful than she and who is her enemy. That confidence-masking-fear stays with her throughout the film too, right up to the point of the sacrifice. Even then you get the sense that she thinks any moment her victim will leap tp his feet and tear her to pieces for her temerity.
- Edmund struck just the right note, although his betrayal didn’t seem like ... enough. It wasn’t enough to demand such a high price in return. But then do our own sins seem like they should demand the price of the Christ’s death on the Cross? Maybe that’s exactly how Edmund’s betrayal should be, tenuous and not quite horrific.
Dom,
Glad to see a positive review.
One observation,
“Maybe that’s exactly how Edmund’s betrayal should be, tenuous and not quite horrific.”
You probably already know this, and the movie may have ommitted this detail from the book, but for those who don’t . . .
Edmund’s betrayal in question is *not* his betrayal of the “good guys,” but his betrayal of the White Witch.
It suddenly dawns on me, in fact, that all the Statues must be people who had served and betrayed Jadis, just like Edmund and Tumnus, demonstrating how the Enemy only has power over those who are in sin. . . .
But anyway, she wants to kill him for betraying *her*. Aslan steps in as a ransom.
Edmund is not so much Judas as Faust.
Sorry, I just don’t buy your theory that Edmund’s crime is against the witch.
If Aslan represents Christ and the Emperor Over the Sea represents God the Father and the White Witch represents Satan, then how would that play out in the real world: we are punished because we’ve sinned against Satan?
No, all sin is sin against God.
It doesn’t work on the level of symbolic correspondences.
Moreover, I don’t see how it works in the literal level of the story. I just don’t see how you can argue that Edmund betrays the witch. He does what she asks him to do: he sides with her against his brother and sisters, against the beavers and Aslan and all the forces of good. He tells her as much of their plans as he knows as soon as he gets to the castle (the movie blurred this a bit, but in the book he blurts out everything all at once about the beavers, the Stone Table and Aslan.) Again the movie blurs it, but in the book it is quite clear that does this out of greed, especially greed for power: he wants to be the sole king and have Peter and Susan and Lucy as his courtiers. He rejects Aslan’s plan that he be co-ruler under Peter as High King.
When does he decide that siding with the witch is a bad idea? When it becomes clear that she has always meant to kill him, she was just using him as bait to attract his siblings. And anyway, her citation of the deep magic and of her rights as the executioner is just a pretext to hurt Aslan, her real interest in the children is protecting her own regime against the threat she knows the children pose (recall the prophecy that when Adam’s flesh and bone sit in the thrones her power will be overthrown.)
Seems to me that the Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time represents justice; but the Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time represents love. We are subject to death because of sin but because God’s love is deeper than his justice we have been redeemed and if we repent we are freed from death.
Melanie,
“It doesn’t work on the level of symbolic correspondences.”
First, free yourself from nonsense about symbols.
It is quite clear from the literal meaning of the text that they are not “symbols.” Aslan is not a symbol of Christ; he *is* Christ, manifested differently to a different world.
The Emperor Beyond the Sea *is* God the Father, referred to by a different name on a different world.
Jadis is not a symbol of Satan. She is not even a cognate to Satan. If anything, she’s a cognate to the Roman Empire. She may be a *type* of Satan, but not a symbol. Satan very clearly exists in the world of Narnia, in the form of Tash, and Jadis is very clearly referred to as a descendant of Lilith.
Meanwhile, Lewis was very clear that “Christ is crucified once for all,” and Aslan is a *supposal* of how Christ’s sacrificial love might be manifested differently to a different world, if—whether hypothetically or in actuallity—God created other worlds with sentient life forms.
Lewis’s whole point is to make the events *different* from, yet similar to, Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. Most of the Biblical cognates in the books are more to show Lewis’s idea of the fulfillment of myth.
For example, the Garden in _The Magician’s Nephew_ is more Hesperides than Eden (same with the paradise in _Perelandra_).
Secondly, my interpretation *is* based in the literal meaning of the text, because it’s what the text *says* (unfortunately, all my books are presently in boxes).
Edmund betrays his family to the witch, so he becomes her slave. He quickly learns how empty her promises were, so he wants to go back, like the prodigal son. But she says, “You belong to me now. If you try to go back, I’ll kill you. And since you’ve betrayed Him, Aslan has no power over you.”
Aslan comes along and says, “You’re right; he’s in your power, but an innocent can be substituted for a guilty party.”
She accepts Aslan as ransom.
Again, Edmund is more like Faust than Judas.
I’ll draw a parallel my thesis, which was on _Till We Have Faces_.
The story of Cupid and Psyche was one of Lewis’s favorite myths. In the original story, when Psyche is first cast out for her sin of betraying Cupid’s trust, she seeks help from Ceres and Juno, the goddesses of wives. They can’t help her, and she’s forced to come crawling to her “mother-in-law,” Venus, who then subjects her to a number of trials.
My reading of that in my thesis is that Psyche has not really been Cupid’s bride, but his secret mistress, so she cannot be helped by the goddesses who protect wives. Instead, her fornication has ironically enslaved her to her enemy, Venus.
It’s a similar reasoning at work here.
On a theological level, though, I’d like to point out that people have a way of ignoring Lewis’s more “speculative” ideas. It’s too complicated to go over in a comment box, but I do know that Lewis says somewhere that he doesn’t really buy the idea that we owed a debt to God that God Himself filled for us. He sees Satan as the arbiter of Natural Justice (“death to all sinners”), and Christ’s death fills the death sentence that we *owe* to Satan for sinning *against* God.
man with black hat: Narnia
Godsgadfly,
I won’t quibble over the academic terms you use, that would be fruitless. I prefer to look at Narnia in terms of types or symbolic correspondences because it is a fairy tale and not a fifth gospel and I think that saying Aslan *is* Christ has led too many people into making more of the Chronicles than they are. I even saw one blogger complain that Narnia is bad theology because Aslan is supposed to be the third person of the trinity and …. well I don’t recall the whole argument but he had problems with that.
Your response made your argument clearer nevertheless, I still don’t find your reading of the text to be a convincing one. Lewis certainly had some flaws when it comes to theology… he never became Catholic, for one. Even if he did have some odd ideas about sin involving a debt we owe to Satan rather than to God, that simply isn’t the way I understand the real world. In as much as the Narnia books speak truly, perhaps they speak better than even Lewis knows about who Edmund has really betrayed. You seem to be stuck in an authorial-intent reading, I’m coming at it from a different angle.
I’ve been re-reading Narnia since I was a child (literally the first books I remember reading) and it was always clear to me that Edmund’s betrayal was first of Lucy, then of his other siblings, and finally of Aslan himself and the ultimate order of things. I’ll always read Narnia with my child’s heart because before all else it is a fairy-story that also speaks to a child’s understanding of Christianity (and didn’t Jesus say that we should approach him as little children?). I think sometimes the academic tools we acquire can hamper our understanding as much as they can help it.
When I read the Faust story it never echoed with Edmund’s story to me. I don’t think he ever consciously enters into a Faustian pact, deliberately summoning the witch so that she can give him power. Rather it seems to me he is seduced by the witch’s promises, and that it is above all his own spite towards Peter, Susan and Lucy that predates his meeting with the witch that opens the door to his betrayal of them. His desire to be king and to create a kingdom to his own glory with better roads and all seems to me a fairly close parallel to Judas who wants Jesus to be an earthly ruler rather than a heavenly one.
I suppose as two former English majors (and I’m also an English professor as well) with strong opinions on Lewis, it isn’t likely that either of us will convince the other and perhaps we shouldn’t monopolize my husband’s blog if we are only going to have a fruitless argument. It might be an interesting conversation to have face to face, but in my experience combox debates seldom result in clear communication.
Ah, so you are *the* Melanie!
Nice to “meet” you!
There is definitely a danger of thinking of the book as a “fifth Gospel” or “book of Mormon,” but that is why the term “supposal” is so crucial.
Whether one overemphasizes “Aslan IS Christ” or overemphasizes allegory, the same problem remains: reading the book and expecting an orthodox correspondence.
Lewis intentionally avoided such correspondences.
One of my problems with most commentary on Lewis is that it misses the nuances in favor of the simplistic readings. . . . For example, as you’ve demonstrated, Edmund is a very complex character, and his fall is based on a number of factors.
The disagreement we’re having is merely on the reason for Edmund’s death sentence and exact efficacy of Aslan’s sacrifice. As you note, it’s a discussion best reserved for another format, and, as I noted, my copy of LWW is missing at the moment.