Narnia Deconstruction

Narnia Deconstruction http://www.anamardoll.com Narnia Deconstruction Ana Mardoll's Ramblings: Narnia: The Humilation of Rabadash http://www.anamardoll.com/2017/07/narnia-humilation-of-rabadash.html <div class="post-body entry-content"> [Narnia Content Note: War, Violence, Chivalry] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I45UFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001I45UFM&linkCode=as2&tag=anamarsram-20&linkId=4OC54CHQSTC34T6A" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B001I45UFM&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=anamarsram-20" width="134" /></a>Narnia Recap: Rabadash's army has fled, his commanders have been killed, and he has been captured. Obligatory note about racism, intent, and Lewis is <a href="http://www.anamardoll.com/2015/09/narnia-cruel-and-ancient-people.html">here</a>. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I45UFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001I45UFM&linkCode=as2&tag=anamarsram-20&linkId=4OC54CHQSTC34T6A">The Horse and His Boy</a>, Chapter 13: The Fight at Anvard Today we're going to see the humiliation of Rabadash, for which I wanted to dedicate a full post. This passage didn't leave much of an impression on me as a child, or at least certainly not as much as the scourging of Aravis (which was quite upsetting to me, even at a very young age). I think that's partly because it occurs at the end of a long sequence (which began when the party "split" at the Hermit's house and which dragged on as we waited for the war to resolve and the heroes to reunite) and partly it happens to an unambiguously "bad" character (Rabadash) as opposed to the ostensible heroine (Aravis). But this passage is part of the reason why I chose to deconstruct these novels in the order they were written rather than in the order they occur in canon. <a name="more"></a> We already know that Lewis likes humiliation, shaming, and power/pain scenes. We saw an elderly man beaten in Dawn Treader for failing to be properly submissive to authority, and we saw what Eustace was put through in order to redeem him from his sins. We were here for the end of Silver Chair when Lewis put a sword in Eustace's hands and a riding crop in Jill's and they beat and whipped school bullies in revenge. We saw the racist subjugation of the Dufflepuds in Dawn Treader and the treatment of the earth people in Silver Chair. And we've been here for the scourging of Aravis in this book, when a brown girl was savaged with claws in imitation of whip-marks to teach her a "lesson" no male character in these books ever has to learn, despite most of them being guilty of far worse. Here enters Rabadash. He is a fictional bugbear for Lewis, coded with so many of the things Lewis finds hateful and threatening. Rabadash is a powerful, strong, virile brown man. He's strongly coded as Arabic and Muslim. He threatens the white supremacy of Narnia in a political and warfare sense (see: this invasion and the continued threat of the Calormen empire to the south) and threatens the white patriarchy in a powerfully sexual sense: first by wooing a white woman into loving him, then by threatening to capture her and hold her in sexual captivity when she rejects him at the urging of her brother (who literally threatens to withhold his love for her if she marries this man). As a child, it made sense to me that Rabadash needed to be bested, certainly. But Lewis needs to go further than that. Rabadash cannot merely be bested. He must be destroyed, broken, emasculated and (quite literally) dehumanized. For Lewis, there can be no happy ending if the brown man is left virile and powerful; he must be broken in order to ensure a happily ever after for the protagonists. So we begin with this incredibly and uncharacteristically lavish description of how Rabadash was captured. The unfortunate Rabadash appeared to be suspended from the castle walls. His feet, which were about two feet from the ground, were kicking wildly. His chain-shirt was somehow hitched up so that it was horribly tight under the arms and came halfway over his face. In fact he looked just as a man looks if you catch him in the very act of getting into a stiff shirt that is a little too small for him. As far as could be made out afterward (and you may be sure the story was well talked over for many a day) what had happened was something like this. Early in the battle one of the Giants had made an unsuccessful stamp at Rabadash with his spiked boot: unsuccessful because it didn’t crush Rabadash, which was what the Giant had intended, but not quite useless because one of the spikes tore the chain mail, just as you or I might tear an ordinary shirt. So Rabadash, by the time he encountered Edmund at the gate, had a hole in the back of his hauberk. And when Edmund pressed him back nearer and nearer to the wall, he jumped up on a mounting block and stood there raining down blows on Edmund from above. But then, finding that this position, by raising him above the heads of everyone else, made him a mark for every arrow from the Narnian bows, he decided to jump down again. And he meant to look and sound—no doubt for a moment he did look and sound—very grand and very dreadful as he jumped, crying, “The bolt of Tash falls from above.” But he had to jump sideways because the crowd in front of him left him no landing place in that direction. And then, in the neatest way you could wish, the tear in the back of his hauberk caught on a hook in the wall. (Ages ago this hook had had a ring in it for tying horses to.) And there he found himself, like a piece of washing hung up to dry, with everyone laughing at him. Lewis piles unlikely coincidence onto unlikely detail because it is critical to him that this defeat be one of total hubris and humiliation. Rabadash cannot be beaten simply because one man (say, Edmund) is slightly better than he in combat; that is an error he could come back from with practice, training, or experience. No, he must be beaten because he is lesser than all the other (white) men present for this scene in a way which he is unlikely to overcome with age because the underlying character flaw will persist. He has to cause his own downfall in order to emasculate himself for all time. This why Rabadash is beaten with his own jump, rather than stomped on by a giant or bested by Edmund. We get such unlikelihoods as a "hook with a ring in it for tying horses to" located 6' off the ground (if we figure Rabadash's height from the hole in his back to be 4' with an added 2' for kicking empty air). We get a mounting block which is (a) outside the castle (as opposed to inside, where one would usually keep and mount horses) and unusually high for a mounting block (given how high Rabadash would have to jump to hook himself and a quick glance at <a href="http://theexercisers.com/how-to-increase-vertical-jump/average-vertical-jump/">average vertical jumping abilities</a>). We get an implausible story of a downwards stomp attack from a giant giving Rabadah a tiny hole in his hauberk but otherwise not damaging Rabadash or causing enough structural damage to tear open the hauberk altogether once Rabadash's full weight is hanging against it on the wall. None of this is plausible. None of it is possible. Lewis additionally wanted Rabadash to be caught yelling a religious attack--"the bolt of Tash falls from above"--because the other part of his humiliation and breaking needs to involve the humiliation of Rabadash's god and Muslim coded ways. This scene is therefore meant to point out the total inferiority of both the brown man and his brown god. The impossible coincidences above become "features" of this plan, since their impossibility can hint at a divine battle between Aslan and Tash. Just as Rabadash's failings are because he is a failure as a man, Tash's failures to protect him are due to his failure as a god. Aslan wins the day as the stronger better god, and Tash's disciple is left hanging in the wind. This isn't quite the doctrine of Turbo Jesus as we see in the Left Behind novels, but you see the roots here in this earlier work. The commonalities are all here: an appeal of power besting power (rather than love subverting power); the gloating 'neener neener' attitude; the lack of any reconciliation to Christ in favor of breakage. Rabadash--and the bullies whipped at the end of Silver Chair--isn't won over with peace and love and compassion. He isn't brought around to recognizing his perversion of his religion is displeasing to Tash by, say, Tash showing up with Aslan to scold him. There is no reconciliation in the text between Aslan and Tash as equals. Aslan's enemies are efficiently ground into dust so the heroes can dance on the ashes. Power wins, and Aslan has the power. Now that Rabadash has been immobilized, it's time to moralize at him. “Let me down, Edmund,” howled Rabadash. “Let me down and fight me like a king and a man; or if you are too great a coward to do that, kill me at once.” “Certainly,” began King Edmund, but King Lune interrupted. “By your Majesty’s good leave,” said King Lune to Edmund. “Not so.” Then turning to Rabadash he said, “Your royal Highness, if you had given that challenge a week ago, I’ll answer for it there was no one in King Edmund’s dominion, from the High King down to the smallest Talking Mouse, who would have refused it. But by attacking our castle of Anvard in time of peace without defiance sent, you have proved yourself no knight, but a traitor, and one rather to be whipped by the hangman than to be suffered to cross swords with any person of honor. Take him down, bind him, and carry him within till our pleasure is further known.” This is a fascinating bit of hand-wavery and I think it's wise that Lewis had Edmund remain silent for most of it. Let us be clear: Rabadash is a villain. We know he is a villain because Lewis has been very careful to show us this. Aravis overheard his temper tantrum with the Tisroc, which included a bloodthirstiness for all the people of Narnia plus a distressing desire to kidnap Susan and keep her in sexual slavery. We also overheard him on the road when Shasta implausibly crossed paths with the invaders during the night, at which time he expressed a desire to wipe out the people of Archenland. He is not a good person. More than "not a good person", Rabadash is not what Lewis and Lune think of as a "knight". Lune calls him a "traitor", which is a curious choice of words. He appears to mean Rabadash is a traitor to the concept of chivalry itself, to the Exalted Knighthood of Noble Men. We have never actually seen Rabadash profess to be a member of these particular northern notions such that he can be accurately labeled a traitor now, but that doesn't matter to Lune or Lewis because chivalry is a universal moral constant to them. Yet if chivalry is a universal moral system, Lune could stand to gather Narnian and Archenland planks from various eyes before he offers to remove specks from Rabadash's eyes. Corin has been running away from his chaperones and beating anyone who upsets him, from random commoner boys to the dwarf assigned to guard his life in battle. Nor can Corin claim to have treated the Queen ladies with the respect due to their station; he ran away from Susan and left her distraught and anxious in Tashbaan, then gossiped about Lucy to Shasta with his whole not-quite-a-man-but-as-good-as-a-boy discourse earlier. None of that is appropriate to the chivalric notions Lune pretends to uphold. Then we have Edmund and his "person of honor", and why it was so very wise for Lewis to not write any dialogue for him in this scene. As far as Rabadash can tell, Edmund visited his country under false pretenses, not truly intending to marry his sister to him. Then, instead of notifying his host that they had decided to decline the marriage offer and return home, they lied to him. They made Rabadash believe Susan would accept his offer, asked permission to prepare a banquet on their ship for him, then left under the cover of darkness. This is a diplomatic disaster, and not one Rabadash or the Tisroc could easily cover up. Their honor has been insulted, with the Narnians loudly indicating that they believed the Tisroc's and Rabadash's offers of safe passage and return were lies. Lune may not know about all this. He hasn't had a chance to talk to Edmund yet, and was strangely incurious about events in the brief window during which he had a chance to interrogate Shasta over such things as "where is my son" and "why is he coming home early". But by the same token, he really shouldn't know for certain that this is a "time of peace" and Rabadash's attack was unprovoked. All he knows about the situation is secondhand and incomplete from Shasta. Lune does know that his son was in Tashbaan, and he knows that a prince of Corin's age would be expected to represent his country in everything he does. I'm not inclined to blame Corin for Susan's honorless flight in the night, laughing at their Calormen hosts and waving merrily as they pull away from port, but the chivalric code Lune wants to invoke here would implicate the boy in these actions. In short: We can agree Rabadash is a villain, but we have the advantage of knowing what he planned to do in the future. In terms of what people have done in the past within the pages of this book, no one has come out shining with honor. Aravis and Shasta and Bree and Hwin lied and stole and sneaked their way to freedom. Susan and Edmund and Corin lied and stole and sneaked their way to freedom. Rabadash's response to their lying and stealing and sneaking was violent, disproportionate, and wrong, but "attacking people who lied to, stole from, or disrespected authority" is at the ethical heart of Narnia. His actions so far aren't less honorable than those of everyone else on page, but he does those acts in service to Tash rather than to Aslan. Strong hands wrenched Rabadash’s sword from him and he was carried away into the castle, shouting, threatening, cursing, and even crying. For though he could have faced torture he couldn’t bear being made ridiculous. In Tashbaan everyone had always taken him seriously. Worth noting, again, is that this flaw of hubris isn't unique to Rabadash and yet it is treated as his special sin. Lewis couldn't bear being made ridiculous, and arguably his greatest hatred towards women in his books is saved for the women who laugh at him. His white male heroes are no better and demand equal respect. I cannot think of a scene where Peter or Caspian or Rilian endured ridicule by letting it roll off their back, yet I can think of several scenes where their masculinity was challenged and it was treated as vitally important for them to prove their serious worth at all costs. We'll come more to the breaking of Rabadash in a later chapter, but hold onto this post for now. At that moment Corin ran up to Shasta, seized his hand and started dragging him toward King Lune. “Here he is, Father, here he is,” cried Corin. “Aye, and here thou art, at last,” said the King in a very gruff voice. “And hast been in the battle, clean contrary to your obedience. A boy to break a father’s heart! At your age a rod to your breech were fitter than a sword in your fist, ha!” But everyone, including Corin, could see that the King was very proud of him. I keep beating this drum but it bears repeating: Corin breaks the rules of chivalry and disobeys his father and his lord in order to please his violent impulses. But his father is proud of his serious manly violent nature and doesn't really mean the threats he issues in response. Yet when Rabadash breaks the rules of chivalry to please his violent impulses, he is a traitor and no knight. “Chide him no more, Sire, if it please you,” said Lord Darrin. “His Highness would not be your son if he did not inherit your conditions. It would grieve your Majesty more if he had to be reproved for the opposite fault.” Nor is this just a Lune problem! The whole court (written by Lewis) chimes in to praise Corin's disobedient tendencies and violent impulses. Indeed, it is better for him to break his knightly vows of obedience to his lord in order to pursue glory and fame on the battlefield than for him to be so naturally meek that he manages to control himself. “Well, well,” grumbled the King. “We’ll pass it over for this time. And now—” What came next surprised Shasta as much as anything that had ever happened to him in his life. He found himself suddenly embraced in a bear-like hug by King Lune and kissed on both cheeks. Then the King set him down again and said, “Stand here together, boys, and let all the court see you. Hold up your heads. Now, gentlemen, look on them both. Has any man any doubts?” And still Shasta could not understand why everyone stared at him and at Corin nor what all the cheering was about. Chapter 13 ends there and it won't be until the next chapter that the twin revelation occurs. I'm not sure why Lewis drags it out so long, since it's hardly a mystery and there's no foreshadowing (since most of the details of Shasta's backstory aren't available to the reader until he text-dumps them to Aravis). <div style="clear: both;"></div></div> Tue, 28 Nov 2017 01:00:01 +0000 Ana Mardoll's Ramblings: Narnia: Aslan's Moral Event Horizon http://www.anamardoll.com/2017/09/narnia-aslans-moral-event-horizon.html <div class="post-body entry-content"> [Narnia Content Note: Religion, Conversion, Violence, Self-Harm] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I45UFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001I45UFM&linkCode=as2&tag=anamarsram-20&linkId=4OC54CHQSTC34T6A" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B001I45UFM&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=anamarsram-20" width="134" /></a>Narnia Recap: The fight against Rabadash has been won and we're doing narrative clean-up now. Obligatory note about racism, intent, and Lewis is <a href="http://www.anamardoll.com/2015/09/narnia-cruel-and-ancient-people.html">here</a>. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I45UFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001I45UFM&linkCode=as2&tag=anamarsram-20&linkId=4OC54CHQSTC34T6A">The Horse and His Boy</a>, Chapter 14: How Bree Became a Wiser Horse I tend to ramble a lot in my blog posts and then I feel guilty for rambling and then I remember I named this website Ramblings because that's literally what I do and what (I hope) you're here for. So if you like ramblings then today is your lucky day, gentle reader! I haven't updated in a while (sorry!) because I've been trying to finish a book, or rather the first draft of one. I have now done <a href="http://www.anamardoll.com/2017/09/metapost-book-i-wrote-one.html">this</a>! And so of course I have a lot of thoughts on writing and editing and story structure running around in my head, and I'm coming to Chapter 14 with said thoughts freshly thunked, and here is my first thought I want to talk about: Half the job of writing is figuring out which order to put the words in. This ordering of words isn't easy in a first draft! It's arguably not even conducive to the first drafting process. First drafts are for getting words on the paper, and yes, I like to have the words in the bestest order possible for a first draft, but the final form of the story comes together in the editing stage. So much of editing for me is going "okay, I like THESE words and I like THOSE words and I like THEM words here, BUT what if all the sentences were in slightly different order?" <a name="more"></a> The thing is, narrative structure is often a straight line, but humans don't think in straight lines. Humans think in spirographs, swirling around and around an idea until a beautiful picture is created. Great for day-to-day living, but easy to lose people in writing--such as when you trickle out hints to an upcoming climax too much before the actual climax, thus robbing it of narrative impact. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5t92Dxk_D2I/Wa70QMoTDbI/AAAAAAAANBk/U0BqH3WDua8bKTsaJZFEEK3IerM0EUlFwCLcBGAs/s1600/spirograph00009.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Spirograph "Rose"" border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5t92Dxk_D2I/Wa70QMoTDbI/AAAAAAAANBk/U0BqH3WDua8bKTsaJZFEEK3IerM0EUlFwCLcBGAs/s320/spirograph00009.gif" title="" width="320" /></a></div> (This "spirograph thinking" is why my blogging is so rambly, and why it's hard for me to brain-shift between formal writing and blog writing when I have a big project going, because they both require very different brain patterns for me to traverse. Blog writing can be relaxing, free-flowing, and reactive; whereas my formal writing is an attempt at being more rigorous, and actively guiding the reader through a path I want to show them.) Anyway, all this is on my mind for Chapter 14 because this is the chapter in which we get the climactic reveal that Shasta is actually the twin brother of the Archenland prince we keep running into! And the reveal is actually not very good! I'd like to talk about why that is and how we can do better with our enlightened future space-age writing techniques! Let's start with what I think Lewis was going for. I believe he wanted a white Narnian protagonist for many reasons: (1) an insert for the presumed white audience, (2) a 'coming home' tale to parallel Bree's escape from captivity, (3) a narrative reversal of fortune (from slave to king), (4) a means to get the reader into the room during the scene with Queen Susan and King Edmund, and (5) undeniably royal and not a case of mixed-up identities (thus, an identical face to Corin). Those are the more charitable reasons. I spent a lot of time typing up and then deleting a few other possibilities that I suspect were on Lewis' mind and which I find problematic, but which would probably be futile to argue over. (Intent being non-discernible in any event.) However, I will note there exist subtle points in the narrative which suggest Lewis felt a brown Shasta simply would not work, such as when Bree seems to trust him and break his silence for a white slave when he never has before with a brown one. So if you've set your heart on a Narnian (er, Archenlander) protagonist for this adventure, I agree it makes a certain kind of sense to go whole hog and make him royalty. As much as fantasy is filled to the brim with too many of the higher social class, I admit that the story of coming home to find you're a king is a bit more climactic than coming home to find your parents were potato farmers before they died in last year's plague and the farm was gifted to a member of the up and coming middle class. I suspect this is how Lewis started with the idea of a white royal protagonist rather than ending there with the realization that Shasta "needed" to be white and royal for the story to work. Once you've decided to pull off a Royal Twin twist, the next question is what impact you want the reveal to have. Do you want it to be a key plot moment, where the fact that the protagonist is a twin is used to save the day? In that case, you'll want to set up a scenario where the two boys are needed to do something (*waves author hands vaguely*) during the battle with Rabadash such that his confusion at there being two "Prince Corin"s leads to his downfall. Or Shasta could be a decoy to lure him into a trap, for example! Alternately, instead of being used to save the day, the Royal Twin could be used to ramp up the stakes and make things worse: Shasta could be captured by Rabadash and lead to Archenland being imperiled because they opened the gates to save their prince. Really, there's all kinds of plot-hay you can make out of a royal twin. Plot doesn't have to be shooty-chasey-explodey things, of course. You can also use the Royal Twin for emotional impact. Aravis, Bree, and Hwin could interact with Corin and come to realize what they like about Shasta--a boy that Aravis and Bree have ostensibly scorned up until now (in much the same way that women and lower classes are wont to scorn their betters for being better than th-- wait, I said I would try to be charitable today). King Lune could interact with Shasta and express relief that his temperament is better than Corin's, and talk to him about what he considers to be good and kingly qualities. Lewis wants to do that--the conversation about Good Kings is coming--but instead of contrasting his Royal Twins, the speech is a bunch of platitudes that amount to "be like your brother but older and more mature-like". But the point I'm spirographing around is that if you're going to have a Royal Twin in your story, the fact that they are a twin should do something to change or advance the plot. Of the reasons listed above, #1-3 don't require twinliness and #5 could be easily massaged away with an acknowledgement from Aslan regarding pedigree or a Harry Potteresque "you have your mother's eyes" marker. Only #4 needed Shasta to look like Corin so that the Narnians might mistake him, but a brief mix-up for information they arguably didn't need in the first place is a very small thing to use a Royal Twin for! That kind of narrative overkill is like sandblasting a saltine cracker. What you don't do, at least if you want to give the reader a satisfying twist ending, is: (a) trickle out blatant hints that make the other characters look stupid for not noticing, (b) while obscuring the parts of Shasta's backstory that would actually be interesting to the reader because you're saving those for a huge text dump (c) that occurs after the action is already over and Shasta's status no longer has any real bearing on major events. Like, he'll either be royalty or a decently well-off peasant with an unusual resemblance to the local prince, but either way we know he's going to be fine. There's no tension here, no stakes, no human interest. It's not a bad first draft--words on paper, after all--but an editing stage was needed to say "okay, now how can we make this interesting to the reader?" The other pre-ramble I have on my mind today concerns conversion narratives because Chapter 14 is when everybody gets saved and they all work on their flaws. This is a staple of Christian literature and perhaps with good reason: I think saved people should work on their flaws. Christians may be "not perfect, just forgiven", but they're called to try their best. But since flaws are often what make a character interesting, fixing them up and/or calling them out as bad and silly and punishment-worthy is a good way to leave the reader feeling unhappy. The ideal life may indeed be for everyone to try to emulate Jesus, but a book full of nothing but Jesus would not be an interesting read. And here's the thing: it can be narratively very interesting to see characters grapple with flaws and move forward on fixing them. But there needs to be build-up and pay-off for the reader, not just a brief "and then he got saved and did better on those areas". That's almost the opposite of a satisfying ending: we're told the characters changed in ways that made them different (albeit arguably better) people, but we don't get to see any of that. It puts me in mind of a romance novel that spends the entire plot building towards a relationship and then instead of us seeing any of that, a third character wanders on-stage at the end and assures us they totally got together. ...which is about to happen literally with Shasta and Aravis marrying, so I suppose I should get into the actual text. WE MUST NOW RETURN TO ARAVIS AND the Horses. The Hermit, watching his pool, was able to tell them that Shasta was not killed or even seriously wounded, for he saw him get up and saw how affectionately he was greeted by King Lune. But as he could only see, not hear, he did not know what anyone was saying and, once the fighting had stopped and the talking had begun, it was not worthwhile looking in the pool any longer. WHAT. Sometimes I really do want to shake Lewis by the shoulders and demand to understand his priorities. How is it "not worthwhile" to continue looking? I don't care if you can't understand what's being said, you can see what people are doing. What's being done with Rabadash? What's being done about all the Calormen soldiers who fled the battlefield and are now armed and desperate in a strange land? Is anyone coming for Aravis and the Horses? Should they flee while they have the chance? We know that Lune is a softie who will condone her marriage to Shasta, but she has no reason to assume that a Calormen girl will be treated well in this land after what's just happened. She wasn't fleeing to Archenland anyway; she and the Horses wanted to get to Narnia. Speaking of: Next morning, while the Hermit was indoors, the three of them discussed what they should do next. “I’ve had enough of this,” said Hwin. “The Hermit has been very good to us and I’m very much obliged to him I’m sure. But I’m getting as fat as a pet pony, eating all day and getting no exercise. Let’s go on to Narnia.” “Oh not today, Ma’am,” said Bree. “I wouldn’t hurry things. Some other day, don’t you think?” “We must see Shasta first and say good-bye to him—and—and apologize,” said Aravis. “Exactly!” said Bree with great enthusiasm. “Just what I was going to say.” “Oh, of course,” said Hwin. “I expect he is in Anvard. Naturally we’d look in on him and say good-bye. But that’s on our way. And why shouldn’t we start at once? After all, I thought it was Narnia we all wanted to get to?” “I suppose so,” said Aravis. She was beginning to wonder what exactly she would do when she got there and was feeling a little lonely. I genuinely don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, we have some characterization for Aravis and that's a nice state of affairs. She probably should be lonely. She's left behind all her family, every friend, and all of her culture, and she'll never see any of it again. They're reaching the end of their journey, which means that the 'friends' she's made on this trip will likely go their own way and at last she'll be alone in a strange land. On the other hand, I'm fully aware that this is a rush to lay the groundwork for her marriage to Shasta, and I'm still angry that the last time we saw Aravis with someone she genuinely cared about Lewis trod all over her characterization in order to force her to hate on Lasaraleen. Speaking of: “Of course, of course,” said Bree hastily. “But there’s no need to rush things, if you know what I mean.” “No, I don’t know what you mean,” said Hwin. “Why don’t you want to go?” “M-m-m, broo-hoo,” muttered Bree. “Well, don’t you see, Ma’am—it’s an important occasion—returning to one’s own country—entering society—the best society—it is so essential to make a good impression—not perhaps looking quite ourselves, yet, eh?” Hwin broke out into a horse-laugh. “It’s your tail, Bree! I see it all now. You want to wait till your tail’s grown again! And we don’t even know if tails are worn long in Narnia. Really, Bree, you’re as vain as that Tarkheena in Tashbaan!” I continue to be furious that these people do not understand that Lasaraleen was wielding social power with her 'vanity' and also oh-by-the-way that she saved their ungrateful lives. You people do not deserve Lasaraleen. And note that it's the older, wiser, ostensibly kinder woman who issues the condemnation of the young vain woman: a framing we will repeat later when it's time to criticize Susan in The Last Battle. I'm not the biggest Bree fan in the world, and I do think his tail concerns are a bit overblown, but honestly they have no way of knowing whether or not he's right. The Hermit presumably wasn't describing how the Horses wear their hair in fashion right now and they couldn't see into the pool, so they don't know. Bree is presented here as fearing for his pride, but it makes perfect sense to fear for one's social standing. He's been a slave dreaming of freedom, but now he's a free Horse and dreaming of what's to come. Will they be outcasts for the marks of slavery on them? Will they be able to fit into society? These are valid questions that have bearing on basic survival! “Bree,” said Aravis, who was not very interested in the cut of his tail, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a long time. Why do you keep swearing By the Lion and By the Lion’s Mane? I thought you hated lions.” “So I do,” answered Bree. “But when I speak of the Lion of course I mean Aslan, the great deliverer of Narnia who drove away the Witch and the Winter. All Narnians swear by him.” “But is he a lion?” “No, no, of course not,” said Bree in a rather shocked voice. “All the stories about him in Tashbaan say he is,” replied Aravis. “And if he isn’t a lion why do you call him a lion?” “Well, you’d hardly understand that at your age,” said Bree. “And I was only a little foal when I left so I don’t quite fully understand it myself.” (Bree was standing with his back to the green wall while he said this, and the other two were facing him. He was talking in rather a superior tone with his eyes half shut; that was why he didn’t see the changed expression in the faces of Hwin and Aravis. They had good reason to have open mouths and staring eyes; because while Bree spoke they saw an enormous lion leap up from outside and balance itself on top of the green wall; only it was a brighter yellow and it was bigger and more beautiful and more alarming than any lion they had ever seen. And at once it jumped down inside the wall and began approaching Bree from behind. It made no noise at all. And Hwin and Aravis couldn’t make any noise themselves, no more than if they were frozen.) Editor's Note: Find a better segue than "I've been wanting to ask". Feels clobbered into position for the reveal. Consider spreading out the conversation with more remarks on Aravis' side--possibly with reminders that they've just been terrorized by a lion? The event is highly topical to Aravis and would make the conversation seem less pointed for the immediate convenient reveal. Remove parentheses around the block of action; the paragraph is not an "aside" to the reader, but rather an essential part of the scene unfolding. “No doubt,” continued Bree, “when they speak of him as a Lion they only mean he’s as strong as a lion or (to our enemies, of course) as fierce as a lion. Or something of that kind. Even a little girl like you, Aravis, must see that it would be quite absurd to suppose he is a real lion. Indeed it would be disrespectful. If he was a lion he’d have to be a Beast just like the rest of us. Why!” (and here Bree began to laugh) “If he was a lion he’d have four paws, and a tail, and Whiskers! … Aie, ooh, hoo-hoo! Help!” For just as he said the word Whiskers, one of Aslan’s had actually tickled his ear. Bree shot away like an arrow to the other side of the enclosure and there turned; the wall was too high for him to jump and he could fly no farther. Aravis and Hwin both started back. There was about a second of intense silence. Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh and trotted across to the Lion. “Please,” she said, “you’re so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I’d sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.” “Dearest daughter,” said Aslan, planting a lion’s kiss on her twitching, velvet nose, “I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.” Hwin is one of Lewis' few perfect women, and she does so largely by being mostly silent at all times and deeply respectful to men and authority when she does speak. She's spent the bulk of the novel being largely subservient to Bree, which is only now reversed in this chapter because he's to be humbled. Now she comes forward to the Jesus-Lion in a statement of faith which is meant to be touching but which troubled me even as a child: she's offering him her suicide, saying death at his hands would be preferable to life. Kinda creepy? I understand that this is supposed to be a depth of devotion moment, but 'hi yes please murder me' is not quite the glowing statement of love and affection and worship to me that Aslan seems to find it. This is doubly creepy because they were just mauled by a lion yesterday--or was it two days ago? I've lost count. They know lions hang about these parts and they've been attacked by one. Hwin apparently has no trauma related to the experience, no lingering PTSD that might be triggered by the site of a creature that recently drove her to a frothing terror and (she thought) nearly leaped on her to drag her down and kill her. Given that Lewis was in battle himself, it's troubling to me that it hasn't even seemed to occur to him that Hwin might still be shaken from that violent encounter. Then he lifted his head and spoke in a louder voice. “Now, Bree,” he said, “you poor, proud, frightened Horse, draw near. Nearer still, my son. Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true Beast.” “Aslan,” said Bree in a shaken voice, “I’m afraid I must be rather a fool.” “Happy the Horse who knows that while he is still young. Or the Human either. Draw near, Aravis my daughter. See! My paws are velveted. You will not be torn this time.” “This time, sir?” said Aravis. “It was I who wounded you,” said Aslan. “I am the only lion you met in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?” “No, sir.” “The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like.” “Yes, sir. Please—” “Ask on, my dear,” said Aslan. “Will any more harm come to her by what I did?” “Child,” said the Lion, “I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.” Then he shook his head and spoke in a lighter voice. “Be merry, little ones,” he said. “We shall meet soon again. But before that you will have another visitor.” Then in one bound he reached the top of the wall and vanished from their sight. That's all we get, and I feel cheated. Bree is a "fool" but there's no talk or examination of how he might have done differently or better. Would that have hit too close to home, having to examine all the times he used his adult male status to talk over the others? Or having to consider how many times he pulled rank over the others and insisted that he knew better because he was an experienced war horse and they were women and children? Likewise, Aravis "needed to know what it felt like" but we never understand why. Why did she need to know the cruelty her father and step-mother inflicted on a human being they immorally maintain ownership over? And where does it stop? To what lengths is Jesus-Lion willing to go in order to maintain this sudden, weird, arbitrary, never-explained and never-before-mentioned rule of eyes for eyes and a tooth for each tooth? When does forgiveness enter the picture and erase away punishment? [Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault] Rape and sexual assault are endemic in slavery. If Aravis' father had raped the servant, would Aslan have felt compelled to rape Aravis so she'd know how that felt? This seems preposterous, of course! Jesus-Lion would never rape someone. That is because rape is Wrong, too wrong for Jesus to do, even when making a point. But... if raping a young women is too wrong for Jesus to do, why is assaulting her, whipping her, scratching her, tearing her skin open and making her bleed... any less wrong? This is what has always stuck with me in this scene and where the scales fell from my eyes as a child: Lewis believed that Jesus would flay a little girl like me. He didn't consider that a moral line Jesus would refuse to cross in the same way (I would hope) he would consider rape or sexual assault a moral line. Here is how TV Tropes defines <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon">Moral Event Horizon</a>: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Named for the boundary around a black hole from which there is no escape once crossed, this trope uses the black hole as a metaphor for evil; the Moral Event Horizon refers to the first evil deed to prove a particular character to be irredeemably evil. Note the word irredeemably. It is a demonstration of permanent evil; as in, the first evil deed whose role in the story is to tell us they will always be a bad person. That moment where you know for sure that it is simply not possible for them to wash their hands to get rid of the damned spot of blood. The moment any Freudian Excuse they may have loses all meaning. And of course, many villains stay evil throughout, but we're talking "If you can find it in your soul to even consider forgiving this person, there's something freakishly wrong with you." Their existence is a blight on humanity. They. Are. Vile.</blockquote> Moral Event Horizons can be subjective and argued over; the classic case, of course, would be <a href="http://www.anamardoll.com/2017/03/index-enders-game.html">Ender Wiggins</a>, who was carefully constructed by his author to be Unaware Hitler. So I want to be clear that one person's MEH (my, what an unfortunate acronym) isn't some objective measure that everyone else has to agree with. But here was where something became rotten in the state of Narnia for me: to Lewis, the physical and sexualized assault of a young brown girl fleeing rape and forced marriage was not a moral event horizon for Aslan to cross. On the contrary, because Aslan is Jesus, the act was not only not-evil, it was explicitly good and necessary. Ravaging Aravis was the right thing to do, because Jesus did it and Jesus only does what is right. And we didn't even get a goddamn explanation. Not only did we not get an explanation for why it was right for Aslan to ravage Aravis, we never get an explanation for why it was right for Aslan to not ravage the white boys who've been running around being as careless and reckless as she supposedly has been. Caspian and his tutor did exactly the same thing she did in Prince Caspian: they drugged the guards in order to escape. Caspian then rampaged his way around the world, ruining lives and condemning good people to slavery and magical body modification. Not a bit of that ever came back on his head. But Aravis drugged her guard to escape actual, literal rape and she was ravaged for it without a bit of explanation--and without even the slightest hint of concern by Aslan for the servant now. He doesn't care about the servant, and never did; no effort will be made to save her, either on Aslan's part or Aravis'. Instead, Aslan and Lewis uses her as a whip to wield against Aravis. The servant isn't a person, just a weapon. And that is why I had to do this series in order of publication rather than canonical order. Because everything that came before, every sin that didn't culminate in whipping a white boy, is context that can't be swiped away now when we're faced with the ravaging of a brown Muslim-coded girl. Strange to say, they felt no inclination to talk to one another about him after he had gone. They all moved slowly away to different parts of the quiet grass and there paced to and fro, each alone, thinking. We'll cut here. Shasta appears in the next sequence. (Along with all the twin stuff I rambled about here, ah well.) <div style="clear: both;"></div></div> Fri, 1 Dec 2017 01:00:00 +0000 Ana Mardoll's Ramblings: Narnia: The Horse and His Boy http://www.anamardoll.com/2017/10/narnia-horse-and-his-boy.html <div class="post-body entry-content"> I feel like I always open these by explaining why they're late, so for once I'm doing that above all the Narnia matter so you can skip over it! So here goes: This post is late and I'm sorry. There are reasons for this--I took a much-needed vacation that lasted for two days but mentally occupied me with preparation and packing for two weeks; I worked on Patreon stories (which are my main source of online income right now, and my highest of spoon-priorities); I played Breath of the Wild for many wonderful good hours; I became briefly sick with food poisoning from rancid shortening; I dealt with an unexpected air-conditioning outage that I'm still trying to sort out; and so forth--and I never know how long to spend on those reasons. It's not that I feel I have to justify myself (you're all incredibly understanding about delays!) but I'm always torn between "wanting to let people know what's happening in my life" and "not wanting to constantly complain". So this post is late and here are the reasons why. I'm alive and I'm as well as someone can be in 2017, which is not very well at all but here we are. I love you all and miss you and I hope you're well. <hr /> [Narnia Content Note: Racism, Violence] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I45UFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001I45UFM&linkCode=as2&tag=anamarsram-20&linkId=4OC54CHQSTC34T6A" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B001I45UFM&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=anamarsram-20" width="134" /></a>Narnia Recap: The fight against Rabadash has been won and we're doing narrative clean-up now. Aslan has briefly visited Aravis, Bree, and Hwin to convert them. Obligatory note about racism, intent, and Lewis is <a href="http://www.anamardoll.com/2015/09/narnia-cruel-and-ancient-people.html">here</a>. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I45UFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001I45UFM&linkCode=as2&tag=anamarsram-20&linkId=4OC54CHQSTC34T6A">The Horse and His Boy</a>, Chapter 14: How Bree Became a Wiser Horse This is a second-parter to the last post, so if you haven't read that one, I suggest doing so first <a href="http://www.anamardoll.com/2017/09/narnia-aslans-moral-event-horizon.html">here</a>. When we last left Chapter 14 it was morning when Aslan showed up and he didn't speak with them for more than maybe a half hour? Tops? This is in retrospect disappointing. Can you imagine Hwin's point of view? She got a whole sentence from her creator and then was ignored afterwards. Even his terrorizing of her was for someone else's benefit: Aravis and the servant girl. (When does Aslan need to know how Hwin felt being chased by him? An eye for an eye, Lion Jesus!) Strange to say, they felt no inclination to talk to one another about him after he had gone. They all moved slowly away to different parts of the quiet grass and there paced to and fro, each alone, thinking. About half an hour later the two Horses were summoned to the back of the house to eat something nice that the Hermit had got ready for them and Aravis, still walking and thinking, was startled by the harsh sound of a trumpet outside the gate. “Who is there?” said Aravis. “His Royal Highness Prince Cor of Archenland,” said a voice from outside. <a name="more"></a> I'm trying to get a handle on the timeline here. The battle was yesterday, some time after breakfast and apparently concluding while the sun was still pretty high. (There was no mention of darkness or of the Hermit having trouble seeing in his pool.) So maybe twenty hours have passed? And the Hermit's hut seems to be an hour's ride from the castle, if you have a good horse and know the way. On the one hand, I imagine it took a while for everyone to settle down and listen to Shasta; it seems in character for adults to be so busy celebrating their lost prince that they wouldn't pay attention to said lost prince saying things like "please can you send someone to check on my friends because I left them at the Hermit's place and a bunch of Calormen soldiers fled into the woods near his house". On the other hand, we've yet to see any evidence that Shasta is thinking about his friends or is particularly concerned; once he parted from them to carry on the message, he seemed to forget about them entirely. He doesn't once think about Aravis being wounded, or whether she recovered from those grave wounds. He doesn't seem to worry that the Hermit might not be treating the Horses well, despite being given every reason by his "father" to distrust elderly old men. He doesn't seem to care that Calormen soldiers will be desperate for food and water, making the Hermit's house an attractive target for a raid, nor that they will need horses to get back home, meaning the Horses are in danger of recapture. And even if Lewis didn't want to raise the specter of sexualized violence in a kids' novel--though it's about 100 pages too late for that--Aravis is in mundane danger as someone worth kidnapping and ransoming back to her father. Shasta considers none of this. Shasta is, in fact, so deeply unconcerned about his friends that I almost wonder if they weren't a later addition to an earlier idea. The last third of the novel, where Shasta is separated from the others and they essentially stop existing as far as the narrative is concerned, reads like a drabble that Lewis stapled onto the end. But here we are and we're left wondering why it took Lune--who is supposed to be the picture of a good Lewisian king--twenty freaking hours to send someone to check on the helpless wounded girl and Narnian kidnapped-into-slavery refugees who brought his son back to him. Furthermore: Why is their first encounter with Shasta? Why didn't Lune send messengers ahead to check on them? Lewis was outright stealing from The Arabian Nights in the first third of the book, but he couldn't take the narrative device of a strange and mysterious benefactor sending servants ahead of him to lavish gifts and favor onto his audience? Not to mention this would be a better way of establishing Shasta's rise to power, as well as giving us some idea of what power even means in Archenland. Hell, we could've seen some character building, too: how would Aravis react to presents at this stage in her journey? Would she be relieved to have her wounds dressed in silk? Would fine cotton feel odd to her after days (weeks?) on the road, leading her to realize something fundamental inside her has changed? Would she feel relief or trepidation at the idea that some local king has set his sights on her? Speaking of, this is how Aravis meets "Prince Cor". Aravis undid the door and opened it, drawing back a little way to let the strangers in. Two soldiers with halberds came first and took their stand at either side of the entry. Then followed a herald, and the trumpeter. “His Royal Highness Prince Cor of Archenland desires an audience of the Lady Aravis,” said the Herald. Then he and the trumpeter drew aside and bowed and the soldiers saluted and the Prince himself came in. All his attendants withdrew and closed the gate behind them. The Prince bowed, and a very clumsy bow for a Prince it was. Aravis curtsied in the Calormene style (which is not at all like ours) and did it very well because, of course, she had been taught how. Then she looked up and saw what sort of person this Prince was. She saw a mere boy. He was bare-headed and his fair hair was encircled with a very thin band of gold, hardly thicker than a wire. His upper tunic was of white cambric, as fine as a handkerchief, so that the bright red tunic beneath it showed through. His left hand, which rested on his enameled sword hilt, was bandaged. Aravis looked twice at his face before she gasped and said, “Why! It’s Shasta!” I'm almost at a loss for how disappointing this is. I actually closed the browser for a bit and went to complain at Kristy. I need a rewrite of this book that treats Aravis as a character. Gives us a sense of what she's thinking, and of who she is. Even the reveal is oddly stilted and cardboard: "Why, it's Shasta," not "Why, it's you." We get no sense of how she feels about any of this. There's a trumpeteer at the door announcing a prince. Has she heard of Prince Cor before? Lewis seems to forget that Aravis is a member of the gentry and within spitting distance of royalty, so it's entirely possible that she has learned the names of the Archenland royal family as part of her education. Does she know about the Lost Prince Cor? (No, no-one does. This is impossible but I've beaten that dead lion enough.) Does "Cor" sound sufficiently like "Corin" that she could mistake this one for that one, or posit an older relative? That alone would strike fear into my heart: the idea that Prince Corin might be calling on me. Is she afraid? Anxious? Curious? Relieved? What emotions does she feel at the sudden and unlooked-for presentation of a prince on her doorstep? Is he here to send her back to her father, thus avoiding more diplomatic tensions when the two nations already teeter on the brink of war? Is he some Narnian (er, Archenlandian) lout come to claim her as a bride or mistress? What is her official status here? Hwin told her Narnian maidens live free, but Hwin is a sweet soul speaking about her memories from childhood; Aravis should know reality is always more complicated. Is she about to be wooed or forcibly carried off? Are they even here for her or do they want to see the Hermit? Should she play ignorant and hide herself, or should she assert herself as nobility and wield the power of manners against them? Is now the time to press herself into an advantageous marriage she may not want but would prefer to being sent back or enslaved or worse? WHAT, IN SHORT, IS SHE THINKING? We don't get to know what she is thinking. In a few short sentences we come to the reveal: the unlooked-for and unexpected prince is Shasta. Her... friend? companion? person she knows and has traveled with for somewhere between two-and-five days total? What does she think about this? Is he sexy now, like the girl in the teen movie taking off her glasses for the first time? Does Aravis feel as though she's seeing him for the first time? Is he "righter" somehow, like the fine clothes and rich wardrobe suit his inner spirit? Is he "wronger" under those clothes, but she can still see the clean goodness in his humble face? Lewis didn't want to write romance (except no-one is forcing him to pair the two main characters hastily off, so he has no-one but himself to blame!), but he can't even moralize properly. Here was a golden opportunity to talk up Shasta's richness of spirit or humble <strike>carpenter's</strike> fisherman's face, but instead we know more about Shasta's clothes than we do about him. Give me honest eyes more than red tunics; give me a humbled face rather than white cambric. Give us something to show us how Aravis feels about him and his character--especially given their incredibly hasty marriage that will soon be hurled at our faces. Shasta all at once turned very red and began speaking very quickly. “Look here, Aravis,” he said, “I do hope you won’t think I’m got up like this (and the trumpeter and all) to try to impress you or make out that I’m different or any rot of that sort. Because I’d far rather have come in my old clothes, but they’re burnt now, and my father said—” Wait, they burned his clothes? Why on earth would they burn his clothes? He didn't have scarlet fever or anything; he was poor. He wasn't allowed to keep them in a hope chest or whatever as a reminder of where he'd been and all that he'd come from? This honestly distresses me, like, why would you do that? He's lost everything from his childhood and those clothes were his last connection to Calormen. “Your father?” said Aravis. “Apparently King Lune is my father,” said Shasta. “I might really have guessed it. Corin being so like me. We were twins, you see. Oh, and my name isn’t Shasta, it’s Cor.” “Cor is a nicer name than Shasta,” said Aravis. I think Lewis' books persist because we have to fill in these blanks. Presented with cyphers, our minds fill in the missing details. Why does Aravis say this? Does she really think that Cor is a nicer name and she's just bluntly sharing her opinion, banishing his old name the way his new father burned his clothes? Does she not know what to say and this is a clumsy attempt to comfort him? Our brains are forced to filter the options and pick a reason--and a matching characterization stemming from that reason--because nature abhors a vacuum. “Brothers’ names run like that in Archenland,” said Shasta (or Prince Cor as we must now call him). “Like Dar and Darrin, Cole and Colin and so on.” “Shasta—I mean Cor,” said Aravis. “No, shut up. There’s something I’ve got to say at once. I’m sorry I’ve been such a pig. But I did change before I knew you were a Prince, honestly I did: when you went back, and faced the Lion.” “It wasn’t really going to kill you at all, that Lion,” said Cor. “I know,” said Aravis, nodding. Both were still and solemn for a moment as each saw that the other knew about Aslan. Aravis, having converted to the church of Aslan, now speaks British fluently. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1oMhMwUbgc">Oh, I say, we are grand, aren't we? Oh, oh! No more buttered scones for me, mater; I'm off to play the grand piano.</a> Suddenly Aravis remembered Cor’s bandaged hand. “I say!” she cried, “I forgot! You’ve been in a battle. Is that a wound?” “A mere scratch,” said Cor, using for the first time a rather lordly tone. But a moment later he burst out laughing and said, “If you want to know the truth, it isn’t a proper wound at all. I only took the skin off my knuckles just as any clumsy fool might do without going near a battle.” “Still you were in the battle,” said Aravis. “It must have been wonderful.” “It wasn’t at all like what I thought,” said Cor. *sigh* Aravis has left the book--fled, perhaps, when it became clear Aslan wasn't going to apologize--and left behind the Aravisbot 2000 for Shasta to ineptly woo. The real Aravis had a brother who was in battles all his life. He died in a battle, if I recall correctly. She kept his armor in her room and polished it to a high shine and missed him with all her heart. At night she probably told herself that if he were still alive he would speak to their father and talk him out of the disastrous marriage Aravis dreaded enough to flee. When she did run, she wore his armor--for protection and disguise, yes, but also because it was the one thing she couldn't bear to leave behind forever. Where is that armor now? She took it off to go into Tashbaan, but she wouldn't have left it by the roadside. It must be in Hwin's tack now. I had a momentary panic that perhaps Aslan tore it to shreds, but Aravis had no reason to be wearing armor across the desert ride. I hope it's still in good condition, for her sake. But she doesn't romanticize battles as something dreamy and wonderful to witness. Battles are glorious and terrible and bloody, not (*dreamy sigh*) (*chinhands*) ~ w o n d e r f u l ~. That is something Lasaraleen would say--and be despised for by Lewis for saying it. Here is the infodump most of you have already seen in my previous post on the topic: “But Sha—Cor, I mean—you haven’t told me anything yet about King Lune and how he found out who you were.” “Well, let’s sit down,” said Cor. “For it’s rather a long story. And by the way, Father’s an absolute brick. I’d be just as pleased—or very nearly—at finding he’s my father even if he wasn’t a king. Even though Education and all sorts of horrible things are going to happen to me. But you want the story. Well, Corin and I were twins. And about a week after we were both born, apparently, they took us to a wise old Centaur in Narnia to be blessed or something. Now this Centaur was a prophet as a good many Centaurs are. Perhaps you haven’t seen any Centaurs yet? There were some in the battle yesterday. Most remarkable people, but I can’t say I feel quite at home with them yet. I say, Aravis, there are going to be a lot of things to get used to in these Northern countries.” “Yes, there are,” said Aravis. “But get on with the story.” “Well, as soon as he saw Corin and me, it seems this Centaur looked at me and said, A day will come when that boy will save Archenland from the deadliest danger in which ever she lay. So of course my Father and Mother were very pleased. But there was someone present who wasn’t. This was a chap called Lord Bar who had been Father’s Lord Chancellor. And apparently he’d done something wrong—bezzling or some word like that—I didn’t understand that part very well—and Father had had to dismiss him. But nothing else was done to him and he was allowed to go on living in Archenland. But he must have been as bad as he could be, for it came out afterward he had been in the pay of the Tisroc and had sent a lot of secret information to Tashbaan. So as soon as he heard I was going to save Archenland from a great danger he decided I must be put out of the way. Well, he succeeded in kidnapping me (I don’t exactly know how) and rode away down the Winding Arrow to the coast. He’d had everything prepared and there was a ship manned with his own followers lying ready for him and he put out to sea with me on board. But Father got wind of it, though not quite in time, and was after him as quickly as he could. The Lord Bar was already at sea when Father reached the coast, but not out of sight. And Father was embarked in one of his own warships within twenty minutes. “It must have been a wonderful chase. They were six days following Bar’s galleon and brought her to battle on the seventh. It was a great sea-fight (I heard a lot about it yesterday evening) from ten o’clock in the morning till sunset. Our people took the ship in the end. But I wasn’t there. The Lord Bar himself had been killed in the battle. But one of his men said that, early that morning, as soon as he saw he was certain to be overhauled, Bar had given me to one of his knights and sent us both away in the ship’s boat. And that boat was never seen again. But of course that was the same boat that Aslan (he seems to be at the back of all the stories) pushed ashore at the right place for Arsheesh to pick me up. I wish I knew that knight’s name, for he must have kept me alive and starved himself to do it.” “I suppose Aslan would say that was part of someone else’s story,” said Aravis. “I was forgetting that,” said Cor. I really cannot imagine a worser way to spill all this out. The main points (lost prince, twin) were foreshadowed so clumsily as to make everyone in the story look like fools, while the details (evil chancellor, epic prophecy) weren't foreshadowed at all, so they seem like unnecessary additions. Why did Shasta even need to be prophesied to do something great? The only point of this detail seems to be motive for the Chancellor to take the baby, which is adding unnecessary complexity! There are, after all, always good reasons to kidnap a royal baby. Why, too, did the evil chancellor need to be in the employ of the Tisroc? This is a completely new development regarding diplomatic relations between the two countries, which seems rather important in a book that has largely been about those two countries going to war. As it is, it feels like an extra little dig at Calormen: oh, yeah, they were also the evil jerks financing the guy who kidnapped Shasta. Were there any good Calormen in this book? Wikipedia's discussion of racism in this novel makes a big deal of Aravis being a Good Calor(wo)man and marrying into the royal family (because how could a country be racist if the king marries a foreigner? this is sarcasm, to be clear!), but being the designated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahab">Rahab</a> for the book doesn't mean THAHB has a free get-out-of-racism-free card. Shasta's adoptive father was abusive; Aravis' biological father was abusive; Aravis' fiance was abusive; Prince Rabadash was abusive; the Tisroc was abusive. The only Calormen man who we aren't sure was abusive is Lasaraleen's nonentity of a husband, and I have my suspicions about him. Oh, yeah, and the guy who wanted to buy Shasta was abusive. So were most of Rabadash's generals, if their names and titles are anything to go by. Now we find out that the one person in Archenland who was well-disposed towards Calormen was of course an evil embezzling traitor who kidnapped a royal infant not just to be a jerk or for ransom money, but because the infant was prophesied to save Archenland and I guess the Calormen-loving Chancellor wanted the place to burn and left behind not one friend or loved one. This is what happens when you associate with Calormen, kids! (/story moral) “And I wonder how the prophecy will work out,” said Aravis, “and what the great danger is that you’re to save Archenland from.” “Well,” said Cor rather awkwardly, “they seem to think I’ve done it already.” Aravis clapped her hands. “Why, of course!” she said. “How stupid I am. And how wonderful! Archenland can never be in much greater danger than it was when Rabadash had crossed the Arrow with his two hundred horse and you hadn’t yet got through with your message. Don’t you feel proud?” The Aravisbot 2000 claps her hands with pride while actual Aravis shakes her head in the distance and points out quietly to herself and her horse that she saved Archenland just as much as Shasta did. More, actually, since she was the one who overheard Rabadash's plan. All Shasta contributed to the ride was picking the wrong direction that was slower but had more water for an army. “I think I feel a bit scared,” said Cor. “And you’ll be living in Anvard now,” said Aravis rather wistfully. “Oh!” said Cor. “I’d nearly forgotten what I came about. Father wants you to come and live with us. He says there’s been no lady in the court (they call it the court, I don’t know why) since Mother died. Do, Aravis. You’ll like Father—and Corin. They’re not like me; they’ve been properly brought up. You needn’t be afraid that—” “Oh stop it,” said Aravis, “or we’ll have a real fight. Of course I’ll come.” Nothing could be less attractive an offer than "come live at a court full of men" except possibly "come live at a court full of white men who will hypersexualize you for being a brown-skinned foreigner". I realize--and I hope Lewis realized--that Aravis' presence as a lady at court would bring more ladies with her, since she'll need servants and maids and ladies in waiting and gentry girls to socialize with, but still she's going to be signing up for an incredible amount of social pressure. You know who would thrive under those circumstances? Lasaraleen. You know who has been characterized as hating court and polite socializing, and would presumably prefer to retire to a quiet country estate and hunt in peace for the rest of her private life? Aravis. “Now let’s go and see the Horses,” said Cor. There was a great and joyous meeting between Bree and Cor, and Bree, who was still in a rather subdued frame of mind, agreed to set out for Anvard at once: he and Hwin would cross into Narnia on the following day. Here's what I don't get or like: Why aren't the Horses welcome at court? Lewis made a situation where Horses aren't horses; they're intelligent and talking. They have interests and hobbies and are just as much people as you and I. But Aravis and Shasta are going to go live in a castle while Bree and Hwin are going to live in a field and eat the same grass the commoners eat. Why? We can accept that perhaps they want it that way, but in order to do that we have to consider why the humans are making the choices they are. Why is Aravis going to court when she has been established as hating court? Why is Shasta going to be a king when that's the last thing he wants? They would be as justified retiring to a private life as Hwin and Bree would be! So why is it just assumed that the humans will be royalty for the rest of their lives while the Horses will go be commoners? They did just as much work to get here and save Archenland as Aravis and Shasta did. Indeed, why is the happy ending for Bree and Hwin that they get to go be horsey and do horsey things? They've been silent in captivity for their entire life. Why doesn't Hwin go to court and become a famous storyteller, employing the techniques she watched with quiet wise eyes as she waited in the Tashbaan market for her mistress to return from the shops? Why doesn't Bree travel the world as a singing bard, regaling audiences with tales of battle and bravery in the southern lands? Why don't they have happy endings doing and being something more than "horses in a meadow"? All four bade an affectionate farewell to the Hermit and promised that they would soon visit him again. WHY. They aren't friends! They barely know him! He's been the bare minimum of polite to them! I mean, good, okay, whatever, but this is more Generic Endingtron 5000. "And then they petted the goats and promised to bring them crunchy carrots..." By about the middle of the morning they were on their way. The Horses had expected that Aravis and Cor would ride, but Cor explained that except in war, where everyone must do what he can do best, no one in Narnia or Archenland ever dreamed of mounting a Talking Horse. This reminded poor Bree again of how little he knew about Narnian customs and what dreadful mistakes he might make. So while Hwin strolled along in a happy dream, Bree got more nervous and more self-conscious with every step he took. “Buck up, Bree,” said Cor. “It’s far worse for me than for you. You aren’t going to be educated. I shall be learning reading and writing and heraldry and dancing and history and music while you’ll be galloping and rolling on the hills of Narnia to your heart’s content.” “But that’s just the point,” groaned Bree. “Do Talking Horses roll? Supposing they don’t? I can’t bear to give it up. What do you think, Hwin?” “I’m going to roll anyway,” said Hwin. “I don’t suppose any of them will care two lumps of sugar whether you roll or not.” “Are we near that castle?” said Bree to Cor. “Round the next bend,” said the Prince. “Well,” said Bree, “I’m going to have a good one now: it may be the last. Wait for me a minute.” It was five minutes before he rose again, blowing hard and covered with bits of bracken. “Now I’m ready,” he said in a voice of profound gloom. “Lead on, Prince Cor, Narnia and the North.” But he looked more like a horse going to a funeral than a long-lost captive returning to home and freedom. Thus ends Chapter 14, and I want to scream a little. It's so little and so late. Like, yes, good, Bree feelings of ambivalence at being "free" but finding yourself a foreigner in your homeland. But we get nothing from Hwin except her constant cardboard acceptance of Lewis' will, and the Aravisbot 2000 seems equally placid. Only Bree is worried and his valid worries--social acceptance is important! people live and die based on their positions in society!--are treated as childish and silly. Here I will add that I have always been upset by the "no humans ride Horses" social barrier. It's a sudden and unnecessary retcon after a series full of humans riding centaurs, Horses, Owls, unicorns, dragons, and even Aslan himself, and it only serves to instill a sudden social distance between Shasta and Bree--they can't even ride together now that Shasta is a prince. This feels less like a thoughtful social rule and more like something put in at this midnight hour to shame Bree: he mocked Shasta for his terrible riding skills, but little did he know that every time he let Shasta "mount"* him, he was demeaning himself as a Horse. [* I'm trying very hard not to make this "mounting"--Lewis' word in-text--sound sexual, but Lewis' issues about sex and power exchange infest these books so much that it is sometimes difficult to tell where the power-kinks end and the sex-kinks begin. See also the extremely uncomfortable bit in The Silver Chair where Jill whips girls with a riding crop.] There's an impression created here and left with me as a child that Bree and Shasta won't see each other again much, if at all, and certainly not as equals and friends. Shasta is off to become a king, for all that he pleads that he has it worse. (Nice white male entitlement showing from the most privileged in the group!) Bree is off to become a commoner with odd social behaviors that will set him apart from his peers--a situation he dreads and which he's allowed to dread!--and if he meets Shasta and Aravis again, it will be as a subject meeting a king. Not as a trusted friend and older mentor; not as an equal. As a kid I had imagined a happy ending where Bree and Hwin would visit Shasta and Aravis once a year. The Archenland King and Queen would run away from their duties for a much-needed vacation and would ride on-and-with their friends out into the countryside. They would reminisce together about those days when they rode for their lives and saved themselves and their countries; they would eat in the wild and sleep under the stars. They would remain friends and companions and never be separated by courtly distance or stilted Narnian customs**. How could they? They weren't Narnian. Blood didn't determine nationality. They were a unique and beautiful blend of Narnian and Calormen, bicultural in a way no one but the four of them would ever understand. [** How do the Narnians even have this custom? Or indeed any customs at all? Everything is new to them! Vive la révolution! Humans are new! The White Witch was thrown out less than two decades ago; before that it was one hundred years of winter and not a human in sight. How can there possibly be a moratorium on riding horses such that "no one in Narnia or Archenland ever dreamed of mounting a Talking Horse"? Lewis clearly means humans--I can't imagine a Horse would begrudge a tiny Sloth a ride rather than have to set a matching pace when traveling with the other--but how are there humans here it makes no sense.] Then Lewis smashed it all with his social customs designed to stratify Power and Respect and Honor. Which wouldn't necessarily be wrong--haven't I complained enough about how the Talking Animals are treated like animals?--except that the Talking Animals have been treated like animals all this time. You can't give the Horses a "happy" ending of "and then they were horses, basically" but then expect me to feel like you Respect Their Proud People And Culture because of an arbitrary tacked-on no-riding rule. That isn't respect! It is the flimsy trappings of the respect we ought to have been showing them all this time yet never were. So here is the real ending. Shasta, now Cor, became a king not because he had to for his blood and kin and country, but because he saw how irresponsible Corin was and he couldn't let his brother have a crown. He'd been raised in poverty and so he took a throne in order to prevent any more little Shastas being abused in his realm. As much as he possibly could, he adopted young children into his court and made sure they had a safe place to live and grow and learn useful trade skills in a caring environment. Aravis moved to the Narnian court to live with Lucy and Susan. She learned to enjoy life there and the girls helped her adapt to this new world; Lucy and Susan hunted with her (a pastime she continued to enjoy immensely) but also helped revive the social skills she'd learned as a child but then scorned and buried when she grew older and tried in vain to become a son to replace the one her father lost. The Narnians were kind to her and she even let herself enjoy a few courtly flirtations, but she could never shake the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land. When she ran into Shasta again many years later at a court event, it was like meeting an old friend you didn't know you missed. The two of them reconnected almost overnight, romance and passion blossoming alongside the wonderful complete feeling of being with someone who understands you in ways no one else ever could. She became his queen and co-ruler of Archenland, sharing his vision of making the world a better place, and Lasaraleen was assigned to permanent diplomatic residence in the Archenland court. Lady Lasa was instrumental in bringing to freedom a certain servant girl Aravis had never forgotten; the young woman became Aravis' most trusted lady in waiting. Hwin settled in the Narnian court as a skilled poet, and even read one of her own creations at Aravis' wedding. She did not relocate to Archenland when her friend married, but she visited often. The Pevensies (who reigned long and died happy in their beds at an old age) greatly respected their court poet and rained praises and honor upon her; she returned their love and lavished words on them which set in stone the goldenness of their golden age for generations to come. Without Hwin, the Pevensies would not have been remembered the way they were--she made them famous in ways their own words and deeds never would. Bree tried his hoof at being a warrior in King Peter's army, but he found he didn't magically enjoy fighting more as a free horse--he longed to live a life of peace and he came to realize it was not cowardly to want good things for himself. He traveled the lands as a bard, singing and storytelling about the battles he'd seen and witnessed. Somehow, in his stories, he was always the clever-and-wise horse carrying the brave-but-foolish hero! You would think he had been owned by every infamous Calorman and friend to every Archenland hero ever to walk the land. But his stories were so clever and skillful you could never doubt the truth of them. When trade with Calormen opened to Talking Animals and it was safe to visit without fear, Bree was one of the first to travel to Tashbaan, leading others through the desert with the aid of his experience and memories of the land. He told stories for coin in the market of Tashbaan and a new generation of Calormen bards were influenced by his style and turn of phrase. Though dozens begged to apprentice to him, he took only one human student in his lifetime: a little Calormen slave boy he bought from an owner who used to beat him in the Tashbaan square. Bree raised the boy as his own son and successor. "Shasta"--the name Bree gave his son, for the boy could remember having no other name and Bree had always been troubled by the way Cor shed his after all the grand deeds he'd accrued to his fine name--grew up to be the greatest storyteller in Calormen history. Even now to this day, everyone in Tashbaan knows which Shasta you mean when you say his name, much as we know our Shakespeare. And that is the story of The Horse and His Boy. <div style="clear: both;"></div></div> Tue, 5 Dec 2017 01:00:00 +0000 Ana Mardoll's Ramblings: Narnia: Doggy Hands and Cut Throats http://www.anamardoll.com/2017/11/narnia-doggy-hands-and-cut-throats.html <div class="post-body entry-content"> [Narnia Content Note: Racism] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I45UFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001I45UFM&linkCode=as2&tag=anamarsram-20&linkId=4OC54CHQSTC34T6A" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B001I45UFM&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=anamarsram-20" width="134" /></a>Narnia Recap: Shasta has reunited with Aravis, Bree, and Hwin and now they are returning to King Lune and Narnia. Obligatory note about racism, intent, and Lewis is <a href="http://www.anamardoll.com/2015/09/narnia-cruel-and-ancient-people.html">here</a>. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I45UFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B001I45UFM&linkCode=as2&tag=anamarsram-20&linkId=4OC54CHQSTC34T6A">The Horse and His Boy</a>, Chapter 15: Rabadash the Ridiculous There is one chapter left in this book and it is difficult to analyze for reasons which I think will become apparent as we did in. I am going to try my best to wade through here, but appreciate your patience as we go along. [Confession: I think, too, as this deconstruction has gone on that I've come to put pressure on myself more with each post. What was a few years back a project of "read a chapter, have reactions on the internet" has now been built up in my mind as "no, I must post a perfect post that captures every nuance of the chapter and if I can't do that then I might as well not even try". I'm going to try to get out of that mental rut because it's not helpful for me, but we'll see how that goes. So here is a short post and I'm not going to apologize because there is nothing wrong with a short post. Right?] <a name="more"></a> THE NEXT TURN OF THE ROAD BROUGHT them out from among the trees and there, across green lawns, sheltered from the north wind by the high wooded ridge at its back, they saw the castle of Anvard. It was very old and built of a warm, reddish-brown stone. Before they had reached the gate King Lune came out to meet them, not looking at all like Aravis’s idea of a king and wearing the oldest of old clothes; for he had just come from making a round of the kennels with his Huntsman and had only stopped for a moment to wash his doggy hands. But the bow with which he greeted Aravis as he took her hand would have been stately enough for an Emperor. I'm the first person to like down-to-earth kings and I recognize that Lewis didn't have much space left to cram Lune's folksy better-than-those-fancy-Calormen stiff upper British lippedness into the narrative when this is the last chapter, but I do need to point out that this makes no sense within the narrative we've been given. Can we just... back up a bit? Yesterday (yes? pretty sure!) a prince from another kingdom invaded, and a king and queen from the next kingdom over popped by to help. The kingdom's long-lost son showed up to fulfill a prophecy that everyone has agreed was a pretty big deal, and there is good evidence that his appearance came about through the meddling of a local god who has a tendency to pop in. That's a lot of royalty to suddenly have around and a lot of things that need doing, but here Lune is in his jeans and favorite scruffy band t-shirt playing with his doggos. I hope he has a kickass chancellor taking care of shit. Oh and also, he knows his long-lost son is coming back with a Calormene Tarkheena with ties to the royal family. No big deal, nothing you wanna get fancy for. By the way, I am stunned that Prince Cor was allowed to wander off himself with no more escort than a couple of trumpeters to announce him at the Hermit's hut. I feel if my long-lost son showed up after a decade or two of thinking he was dead, I wouldn't want him to leave my side for a couple days. Of course, Lune has already demonstrated his fatherly devotion by losing Cor in a fog because he wasn't a good enough horse-rider to keep up with the pack, so we are perhaps not on the same parental page here. But I do note that there are desperate Calormen warriors who fled into the forest after the battle and I feel like maybe you don't want your young heir to the throne traipsing around in those conditions. Why didn't they send people to get Aravis, Bree, and Hwin and bring them back? “Little lady,” he said, “we bid you very heartily welcome. If my dear wife were still alive we could make you better cheer but could not do it with a better will. And I am sorry that you have had misfortunes and been driven from your father’s house, which cannot but be a grief to you. My son Cor has told me about your adventures together and all your valor.” “It was he who did all that, Sir,” said Aravis. “Why, he rushed at a lion to save me.” “Eh, what’s that?” said King Lune, his face brightening. “I haven’t heard that part of the story.” Then Aravis told it. And Cor, who had very much wanted the story to be known, though he felt he couldn’t tell it himself, didn’t enjoy it so much as he had expected, and indeed felt rather foolish. But his father enjoyed it very much indeed and in the course of the next few weeks told it to so many people that Cor wished it had never happened. This part I will not criticize. Let it never be said I cannot be kind or fair. Then the King turned to Hwin and Bree and was just as polite to them as to Aravis, and asked them a lot of questions about their families and where they had lived in Narnia before they had been captured. The Horses were rather tongue-tied for they weren’t yet used to being talked to as equals by Humans—grown-up Humans, that is. They didn’t mind Aravis and Cor. I don't like this, and now I feel unfair again. Arguably this is an accurate depiction of abuse: the horses have had to pretend to be mute for years (really, their entire lives since childhood) and now they're struggling. Maybe it's a good thing to not have all that trauma wiped away in a single page. But... we've done that with Shasta, more or less. We don't see any fear or reticence in being accepted into Lune's family. He isn't wary of having a new father after the old one was so abusive. Nor does he see red flags in his new brother having a policy of "beat up anything that argues with me", despite that being the modus operandi for Shasta's abusive adoptive father. Shasta doesn't read like a survivor of abuse, so it's a touch frustrating that Bree and Hwin do, especially when that depiction is an excuse to (once again!) side-line the Animal characters and keep them from having lines. Why, for that matter, are Aravis and Cor different? The Horses had to be silent around all humans, not just children, so why wouldn't Aravis and Cor be practice? For that matter, they have in the past few day(s) been speaking to the Hermit and they have also recently spoken to God Himself. I feel like after all that, I could handle a schlummy dude with doggy hands. Presently Queen Lucy came out from the castle and joined them and King Lune said to Aravis, “My dear, here is a loving friend of our house, and she has been seeing that your apartments are put to rights for you better than I could have done it.” “You’d like to come and see them, wouldn’t you?” said Lucy, kissing Aravis. They liked each other at once and soon went away together to talk about Aravis’s bedroom and Aravis’s boudoir and about getting clothes for her, and all the sort of things girls do talk about on such an occasion. Both Lucy and Aravis are established as not really caring about decor and clothes and girl things, except for when they do. The pattern seems to be that when girlier girls are around--Susan, Lasaraleen--then these girl things are to be scorned and hated by the tomboys, but when the girly girls are gone then Lucy and Aravis must take up the narrative role of girl lest they transcend their gender framework and become boys. All of which is fine for actual people, but makes for terribly inconsistent characterization for the sake of shitting on feminine things and the people who value them. Coming back around to "gee, it's awfully inconsistent who reads like an abuse victim and who doesn't", it's troubling to me that we spend almost no time on Aravis' reactions. She come from a place where royalty are descended from actual gods--and she's just met the local god on her way here. (And she knows him to bear a grudge against her and to be willing to enact violence upon her if he is moved to do so!) She's also coming from a patriarchal culture where her father was determined to sell her into marital slavery over her many tearful objections. Given all that, I would be a wary about Lune and his intentions! He seems nice enough, but so did her father. At what point is Lune going to sell her off to one of his courtiers? Will she have any choice in the matter? I see no attraction whatsoever to Shasta and Aravis is a clever girl capable of politicking; the Aravis I've come to know would be devising either an escape plan or a marriage contract to one of the younger, pliable, and wealthy nobles on hand. (Or both! Both is good.) She would not, based on what we know of her with Lasaraleen, give a shit about talking with Lucy about the drapes. The thing is, if I squint I can almost see Lewis recognizing that he didn't have the chops to write Aravis settling in? So he has her shoved off-stage with Lucy and we're meant to sort of understand that Lucy explained everything ever and now Aravis is up to speed and on the same page. Okay. It's not the bravest or most elegant solution, but it'll get you there in a pinch. But... I don't know, it just sticks in my craw a bit that Lucy is brought in consistently to serve plot reasons without really being allowed to have a character on the page. And the character we do see is utterly bland, lacking any of the personality touches we could arguably have said existed way back in LWW. After lunch, which they had on the terrace (it was cold birds and cold game pie and wine and bread and cheese), King Lune ruffled up his brow and heaved a sigh and said, “Heigh-ho! We have still that sorry creature Rabadash on our hands, my friends, and must needs resolve what to do with him.” Lucy was sitting on the King’s right and Aravis on his left. King Edmund sat at one end of the table and the Lord Darrin faced him at the other. Dar and Peridan and Cor and Corin were on the same side as the King. “Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head,” said Peridan. “Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins.” Ugh. Just. Let me edit this? After lunch, which they had on the terrace (it was cold birds and cold game pie and wine and bread and cheese), King Lune ruffled up his brow and heaved a sigh. Lucy sat on the King’s right and Aravis on his left. King Edmund sat at one end of the table and the Lord Darrin faced him at the other. Dar and Peridan and Cor and Corin were on the same side as the King. Addressing them all, Lune said, “Heigh-ho! We have still that sorry creature Rabadash on our hands, my friends, and must needs resolve what to do with him.” “Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head,” said Peridan. “Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins.” THERE. Establish seating first, not in between conversation as a hasty after-thought. This reads like such a first draft and I just. *waves hands* Respect your craft, Lewis! Okay. After lunch, which they had on the terrace (it was cold birds and cold game pie and wine and bread and cheese), King Lune ruffled up his brow and heaved a sigh and said, “Heigh-ho! We have still that sorry creature Rabadash on our hands, my friends, and must needs resolve what to do with him.” Lucy was sitting on the King’s right and Aravis on his left. King Edmund sat at one end of the table and the Lord Darrin faced him at the other. Dar and Peridan and Cor and Corin were on the same side as the King. “Your Majesty would have a perfect right to strike off his head,” said Peridan. “Such an assault as he made puts him on a level with assassins.” “It is very true,” said Edmund. “But even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did.” And he looked very thoughtful. “To kill this Rabadash would go near to raising war with the Tisroc,” said Darrin. “A fig for the Tisroc,” said King Lune. “His strength is in numbers and numbers will never cross the desert. But I have no stomach for killing men (even traitors) in cold blood. To have cut his throat in battle would have eased my heart mightily: but this is a different thing.” *rubs my forehead* Lune, the Tisroc just sent hundreds of men after you in a single afternoon and apparently they had no trouble whatsoever crossing the desert. You appear to have fifty fighting men, tops, and you keep your gates open all the time. I'm pretty sure you aren't anywhere near as impregnable as you think you are. This is particularly frustrating to me because Lune is supposed to be an example of a Good and Wise king, but these foolhardy words would sound perfectly natural in Rabadash's mouth. So once again I cannot tell the heroes from the villains if we remove the speech tags! And that's before I even get to Lune's grossly specific bit about cutting "that creature" Rabadash's throat in battle. Not "defeat him in honorable combat to the death" or anything flowery here, no sir. Just visceral gore for Lune the Soft King. I wish to speak to the manager of this establishment, okay. “By my counsel,” said Lucy, “your Majesty shall give him another trial. Let him go free on strait promise of fair dealing in the future. It may be that he will keep his word.” “Maybe Apes will grow honest, Sister,” said Edmund. “But, by the Lion, if he breaks it again, may it be in such time and place that any of us could swap off his head in clean battle.” So I guess Edmund has stopping thinking that "even a traitor may mend". What even is character consistency? If I were Aslan (and if Aslan were worth a damn as an actual Jesus metaphor), this is the point where I'd pop in and smack Edmund up the head with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Unforgiving_Servant">Parable of the Unforgiving Servant</a> and also maybe the parable of the asshole who negs his sister's ideas in public. I'm going to pause here because (a) it's late over here in my time zone and (b) I want to give Rabadash's "trial" its own post. <div style="clear: both;"></div></div> Fri, 8 Dec 2017 01:00:01 +0000 End of archive has been reached. End of archive has been reached. 2017-12-12T01:00:02