Edmund straight up sells out his own family, and the future of Narnia, to Jadis.
Edmund is eventually rescued and repents, apparently sincerely.
Redemption from treachery, however, requires not only repentance of the traitor, but forgiveness by the betrayed–until he is forgiven, he is still outcast from polite society and so he still belongs to Jadis. Even Aslan can’t tell Jadis to get fucked, it’s a legit sitch.
To meet the demand of forgiveness, Aslan(Love) offers Himself in trade and Jadis greedily accepts. And this is where it gets fuzzy.
Now, a cheat is where I offer to sell you a bridge, you give me the money, and I give you a fake deed and a dead end. Basically, theft. A swindle is more subtle. I lead you to believe, or knowingly allow you to believe, I am selling you The White House for $50. You give me the $50 and I give you the deed to the white house on Cedar Woods Drive just outside Byhalia, Mississippi. Technically I didn’t lie, you were too greedy to read the fine print and so doom on you. But I knew you were misled.
How is that not what happened between Aslan & Jadis? Aslan knew, because he knew the Old Magic better than anybody, that Jadis wanted him, and dead forever. And he allowed her to believe she would get exactly that if she released her claim on Edward. But he also knew that if he willingly entered the proposition that he would NOT in fact be dead forever, or even for more than a few hours.
Am I wrong to think that was treachery on Aslan’s part? Or is that Lewis’ idea of justice–that not all the cards have to be played with full disclosure, that Right does not have to prevail by its own principles so much as Evil can be allowed to slip on its own forked tongue?
Technically no, if I remember rightly. Those were the words that Jadis was using to support her claim to Edmund’s life. It’s been many years since I read TLTW&TW but wasn’t the next chapter called something like “Deeper Magic” - that which brought Aslan back - and revolve around the fact that Jadis did not know it, since her knowledge went back only to the Dawn of Time?
OP has some of the right of it. But Jadis’s right was only to Edmund’s life, as the traitor. If she exchanged it for the privilege of killing Aslan, that was her look-out - and there was no promise that Aslan would stay dead (I imagine it never occurred to her to ask).
Let’s not cry out on Aslan too much over this. It’s quite a generous deed for an immortal to submit willingly to his own death to save the life of someone who doesn’t deserve it, even if he does know that the death will be undone.
Keep in mind that this is a straight-up allegory for the crucifixion of Christ, and that it’s not Lewis’ idea of justice, it’s the Christian idea of justice. Or at least the Christian idea of justice as taught by the Church of England.
Jadis did get the satisfaction of shearing Aslan’s mane, striking him, humiliating him, hurting him, and putting a death wound upon him.
Aslan may have come back from all that, but he will never forget it.
It’s sort of like a fraternity prank bet, where if I lose, I have to have a frowny face tattooed on my butt. It doesn’t really mean much – who’s gonna see it? – but we all know it’s there.
I always felt like it was a bit of a con. Aslan acted all sad and let everyone think he was going to die but he knew he wouldn’t. Jadis couldn’t really do any real damage to him. Maybe she hurt his pride a little, but humility is a virtue. However, Jadis is a Bad Guy, so it doesn’t really matter if he dealt fairly with her or not.
Yeah, I caught that. And I guess the whole crucifixion thing rubs me a bit for the same reason. Kind of a hollow gesture when the martyr knows going into it that it’s not really a sacrifice. I want there to be another dimension to the act that makes it truly meaningful and not a deliberate emotional manipulation of those who love the martyr, but I can’t find it. The sacrifice itself becomes a deception, the moral high ground gets lost, and that blurs the lines between good & evil.
Lewis, like Tolkien, believed in the banality of evil. Evil only exists because God allows it to exist in furtherance of His own goal, a goal which evil is incapable of comprehending because it is petty and focused on insignificant matters.
As such, the White Witch accepts Aslan’s sacrifice on Edmund’s behalf because the idea of embarrassing and killing Aslan pleases her on a visceral level, even more so than it would please her to kill a mere son-of-Adam like Edmund. And she does so not realizing that she’s doing exactly what Aslan intended her to do, or even that she’s merely playing a role she was intended to play from the beginning.
That’s the biggest reason I’m not a big fan of the Gospel of John, which portrays Jesus as still fully omniscient while incarnate. I find it much easier to empathize with him as portrayed in the synoptics, uncertain enough that, the night before the Passion, he can plead desperately with God that, if possible, this cup should pass from him.
I feel the same way about “The Devil and Daniel Webster”. Webster proved, or at least convinced the jury, that the Devil couldn’t take Jabez Stone’s soul because the Devil was not American, or because Americans never give up, or whatever that was. The jury found for Stone, so he got to keep his soul. But, that logic should have voided the contract. If the Devil never had a claim on Stone’s soul, he should have been able to reverse Stone’s fortune.
The part I don’t understand is how Jadis ever got into such a position of authority in the first place. It doesn’t make sense, like much of TLtWatW, and supports my sense that the whole thing is an incoherent dream-like muddle.
No, I guess it’s not really. Before the sacrifice happens, he gives Peter lots of advice for the future. Peter asks him if he will be there to help, and Aslan says he can’t promise he will be. I thought he knew, because once he comes back to life, he knows exactly how and why. Since he existed before the Dawn of Time, it makes sense that he knew more than Jadis. But maybe he didn’t find out what would happen until he was dead.
Before the sacrifice, he is hanging out with Susan and Lucy and he says he is sad. If he was angry, or afraid, or even nervous, I would feel more like he thought he was going to his death.
There’s a prequel to that story that explains where the wardrobe and Jadis (and the streetlight) all come from. She’s a Genie/sorceress/queen from another world.