I have a great deal of time for TGD and I have to say that there is one inaccuracy here - the narrator in that book was aware (and so were the saved souls) that morning was coming soon, and that when it did, those who had not ascended into the mountains would lose their chance irrevocably. For those who had left the grey town and ascended into the mountain, it would have been Purgatory; for those who stayed there, it would be Hell - and it would always have been Hell.
Is it? If so, could you dig up some proof? And if you can, then add the title to his Wiki entry, because I can’t find any reference to a Through A Glass Darkly by Lewis.
The title sounds funny to me. Would Lewis put a famous quote in a title? OK, he used a quote in That Hideous Strength, but that quote was really, really obscure. Lewis mainly quoted himself (Til We Have Faces and Mere Christianity) or made ironic references other people’s quotes (The Great Divorce and The Pilgrim’s Regress). There’s a few cleverly descriptive titles – Out of the Silent Planet, The Allegory of Love, The Discarded Image. However, most of his titles are simply descriptive: Perelandra, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, Studies in Words, and English Poetry in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama.
Perhaps it’s one of the posthumous publications. Walter Hooper could’ve come up with that.
Sorry, Jodi, but you’re simply wrong. C. S. Lewis did not write a book called Through a Glass Darkly. I just made a pretty thorough check for any evidence that such a book exists, but there’s just nothing. I suspect that you’re vaguely remembering a book or an article which discuss (among other things) C. S. Lewis whose title was Through a Glass Darkly (and there do exist articles and books with that title), and you’re mistakenly remembering the book or article as being by Lewis.
> The simple reason I am getting stuff wrong is that I am upstairs, and my Lewis
> books (which I’ve been buying and reading since the mid-1960s) are
> downstairs.
Then may I make a suggestion? Look things up before you post. The SDMB works better when people look things up, even if they think that they’ve remembered correctly, than when they just post what they remember offhand.
I definitely have some reading to do. I mentioned upthread I got weepy when I first read the summary of how The Last Battle ends- I’ll probably be a wreck when I actually read it.
Does the stable=purgatory?
I didn’t realize The Horse and His Boy took place outside Narnia. Where is it set?
I’m glad I started this thread, all the side discussions it has provoked are intriguing. Thanks everyone!
Yup. I’ve accused Pullman of being a bigot for stereotyping religious people in general, Christians in less general, and Roman Catholics in the least general of all. Pullman makes it clear that he considers himself intellectually superior to all religious people, and that religious people (particularly Catholics) are all either fools or sociopathic manipulators.
I was raised in the South, where my parents and their peers saw anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic bigotry as a sign of low-brow tobacco-chewing cousin-marrying Crackerhood. When I see the signals and buzz words of this sort of nonsense, I react. Pullman signals and buzzes like a toy train.
I am under the impression that Pullman introduced the claims that Lewis sent Susan to Hell, and that the Calormens were an allegorical attack on Islam. I really don’t think there is any way to derive either of these ideas from any of the Narnia books – considering the specific passages in Narnia that state just the opposite.
You might not have gotten them from Pullman – but you didn’t get them from Lewis either, cause they ain’t there.
I sobbed through a lot of it. I kept waiting for something to come out right. Well, in the end it did, but there was so much bad before that.
It’s in the world of Narnia, but not in the country of Narnia, if that’s not too confusing. The Kings and Queens have gone to visit the country of Calormen, to discuss the possibility of Susan’s marriage. Then it moves through the desert to the country of Archenland. Doesn’t get to the actual country of Narnia until the end.
The stable would be more like the Vestibule of Hell, I suppose - the dwarfs aren’t being actively tormented, but they are missing all the fun. The match-up isn’t exact though as you couldn’t quite call the** dwarfs “righteous pagans”.
Harking back to The Great Divorce, the spirit guide pointed out late in the story that, being a dream-vision, it wasn’t speaking authoritatively on the possibility of choosing Christ after death, and that all the conversations the Ghosts were having could equally well be read as commentary on the choices they made in life.
Nope. What you did is try to dispel a canard by raising one. Which is kind of funny.
I think you are approaching Pullman loaded with prejudice, exactly as you think some of us are approaching Lewis.
For what it’s worth I enjoyed the Narnia books when I was young (late 1970s), but even at the age of eight I was appalled by the Last Battle, especially the ending. When I reread the earlier books I found them tainted with traces of what I hated in the last book: (racism, moral superiority, misogyny).
I don’t think jsgoddess is alone in this. I first read the Narnia books as a little kid (many years ago) and I loved them. I still consider myself a big fan. But from the books, I was very disturbed by what happened to Susan and was aware that his portrayal of the Calormenes was the product of an earlier time when even educated Western people were enchanted with stereotypes about the Islamic world. On the first point, I blamed Lewis very much … the second issue simply speaks to the way the world has changed.
Mostly in Calormen. Shasta and Aravis do have to flee Calormen to Archenland to warn of the Calormene invasion. The Narnians from Wardrobe do play a role, but IIRC I don’t think any of the characters set foot in Narnia throughout the book.
If you look at this map of Narnia you can see how Calormen is to the south, Narnia to the north and Archenland in between.
Yep. I know I’m not alone in it because my husband couldn’t even finish reading A Horse and His Boy because he thought it was both boring and ugly. This was about 1998.
He was wrong about it being boring, though. I still like the book. I think I gave it four stars on Goodreads, but that doesn’t blind me to the discomfort I feel when I read it.
I am wrong, in fact could not be wrong-er. I was thinking of Till We Have Faces. I have no idea where the title I used came from – the dark recesses of an addled brain, I suppose.
Guess I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue! Sorry, all.
