The Lion, The Witch, and the Racism

Finian and I read together a lot. It’s our normal routine to sit down in the rocking chair before naps and bedtime, and we nurse and read. We’ve been doing this for ten months now, and it’s been a wonderful experience.

I figured, since they’re so young, it doesn’t really matter what I read aloud to them; it’s my voice they’re attending to, not the story. So I’ve picked fun stories that I like, things I knew I would enjoy reading.

This means we have read such gems as The Inkheart Trilogy by Cornelia Funke and The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede. We’re currently reading Redwall from the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. But it’s what we’ve just finished reading that has stuck with me, causing me to think and ponder.

We just finished reading The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, and The Last Battle is hot garbage.

A few things have happened since I last read any of these books which has completely changed my perspective on them, and kind of on everything else too honestly.

First, I’m an adult now. There’s nothing quite like being a grown up and reading children’s or young adult novels and realizing that these are children wtf. Honestly, the things I loved about many books as a child, I roll my eyes at now as an adult.

It’s wonderful to read a book and see yourself in the pages, and when you’re a child, that means reading stories about children. This is thinking that the 16 year old saving the world is a grown up and it’s completely reasonable that they have the tools, skills, and emotional maturity to handle these insane situations. This is incredibly common in young adult novels, which makes perfect sense because, didn’t we all think we were grown up at 16? I sure thought I was hot shit at 16. I knew things, I could handle things, I could totally volunteer for The Hunger Games and save Panem, right?

To be perfectly honest, I did think I was pretty grown up at 16, but I was still self-aware enough to know that I would not survive if I was in The Hunger Games. I would have sat down and cried instead of run at the cornucopia to grab weapons with which to kill other children. I would beg them to “please kill me quickly, I hate pain,” and then I would cower. Because I’m a scaredy-cat, chicken-shit coward.

I still love children’s books though, even if they are all children and it makes me gasp with horror to think of an 11 year old facing Voldemort. Could you imagine how much would’ve been different about Harry Potter if Harry had told Dumbledore, McGonagall, or even Hagrid everything? What if this literal child had told a grown up, “Hey, so like, I know spying is bad and all, but I saw Quirrell and Snape arguing in the woods and also I know that Fluffy is guarding The Sorcerer's Stone and I know that Hagrid told a stranger how to get passed Fluffy and, like, I feel like this all a little above my head at this point, because, you know, I’m 11 and can’t even make things levitate properly yet, so maybe you should, I dunno, check on that.” Or told someone other than Hermione and Ron that he was hearing someone talk about murder in the walls during the second book? I don’t know, I just think that telling a grown up would solve a lot of problems in a lot of children’s books.

A point in favor of The Chronicles of Narnia is that Peter and Susan do go to tell Professor Kirke what’s going on in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When they’re concerned for Lucy’s mental health, they go to the grown up in charge and express concern. Of course, this doesn’t stop the fact that children end up leading an army and fighting in battles, but it is nice that they talk to an adult about things anyways. It’s also nice that the adult believes them, comforts them, and suggests that, maybe you know, they should be nice to their sister.

The second thing that has changed since I last read any of these books is that I’m a parent now. This has changed my perspective on everything. While pre-motherhood but post-adulthood, I was already asking the questions, “Where is your mother?! Aren’t you too young for this? Why aren’t you telling a grown up?” when consuming children’s media, I now ask, “Is this good for a child to consume? What is this teaching children? What messages about society and relationships are being subverted?”

One of the books we read was Charlotte’s Web, which is an amazing book. However, there are things in it that made me cringe and decide we would wait to read again until Finian was old enough for us to have more critical discussions about what was going on.

See, in the book, Fern’s mother goes to the doctor because she’s concerned about how much time Fern spends in the barn and how she thinks the animals can talk. While I think Mrs. Arable was seriously over-reacting, it’s still a reasonable thing to go to a doctor when you think your kid is insane. What isn’t reasonable is the doctor’s response. He asks if Fern ever talks about any boys and then assures her mother that soon she, 8 year old Fern, will have boyfriends and no longer be interested in the barn or its animal politics. In fact, by the end of the book, Fern is off with a boy at the fair, no longer caring if Charlotte is going to succeed in saving Wilbur’s life.

Yeah, the doctor prescribes boys for Fern, who is 8 years old. Reading that to my child made me cringe a lot, so I’ll skip that if we read it again or wait until they’re old enough to roll their eyes and know it’s stupid.

I also started the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary, a childhood favorite of mine, but I quickly put those down, realizing that those were better left in my nostalgia. I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that books published in the 1950s probably don’t have the same values as I do, and I really don’t want to read such forceful gender stereotypes to my child, like the ones in Ramona.

The third thing that changed my perspective on books is a formal education on literature. There’s nothing quite like spending 5 years being taught how to critically analyze every single thing you read and how to write compelling stories yourself that really changes how you look at books.

While I know the first two things have changed my view on everything, books included, my English degree has taught me how to observe, breakdown, and criticize what I read, in ways I am sure I would not otherwise. Every word, every punctuation mark, every plot line, every character has a purpose, and I am constantly questioning those purposes.

Sometimes these are little observations, like “Wrede uses said a lot,” and “Jacques uses so few dialogue tags that I frequently don’t know who is speaking.” But sometimes it’s wondering if the scene on Deathwater Island in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has any real plot purpose. Honestly, that entire chapter makes very little sense, but that scene on Deathwater seems to just be Lewis saying, “He’s always watching!!!” Which is fine, alright, but it seems like a lot of buildup, really quickly, for something that the characters don’t even really remember. It’s weird, and I don’t get it.

There’s a thing about Narnia that’s been bothering me though, and it’s not Deathwater. Well, it’s a couple things, really, but they’re connected. As I read through this series this time, I noticed that C. S. Lewis becomes more bitter and more preachy as the books progress.

What starts in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe as a playful allegory, turns into an old man expressing his xenophobia, waving his cane at the children on is lawn.

Obviously, the entire thing is Christian. That’s the allegory, Aslan is Jesus. And all the books are furthering this, by showing The Great Lion as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He protects, he guides, he teaches, he forgives, he loves. And you can find him in our world too, but he goes by another name. Yeah yeah yeah, we all get it. Alsan is Jesus, okay? Okay.

But that playfulness, that innocence, that wide-eyed, child-like awe of Lucy entering snow-covered Narnia for the first time, that gentle spirit that starts the novels and sets the tone vanishes by the end the series. And it is depressing to read. As I read them aloud, I started being able to taste his bitterness and hatred on my tongue. Clearly the man who wrote The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe changed dramatically, and in just 6 years too.

But don’t just take my word for it, here’s my literary evidence for this. I’ll use the last two books as my examples.

First, in the 6th book of the series, The Silver Chair, the school which Eustace and Jane attend, Experiment House, is described as a horrible, terrible school. In the very first chapter of the book, we’re introduced to the bullying problem at the school, with the starting scene of Jane crying in the bushes behind the building as she hides from the bullies who are looking for her. Now, Lewis could’ve left it at that, stating that bullying is bad. That could’ve been the problem that drove Jane and Eustace together, and readers would have related to this, understood it, and accepted it.

However, Lewis gives 3 reasons for why this school is the way it is, why the bullying is allowed, why it’s so horrible and bad. The reasons aren’t given all together or even all at the beginning of the book. Instead, they’re sprinkled throughout the book, waiting for the reader to pick up on it, almost subconsciously.

The first reason was because they didn’t use corporal punishment at the school. The second reason was because they didn’t teach the Bible. And the third reason was because the head of the school was a woman.

So what does C. S. Lewis think is wrong with kids these days? They aren’t hit enough! They don’t teach Christianity in public schools! They let women be in charge! Horrifying!

In The Last Battle, Narnia is taken over by the Calormenes, because they are deceived by a false Alsan, and then the entire world is destroyed in a revelation apocalypse.

We learn in The Horse and His Boy that Lewis is a teeny bit racist, but we don’t realize how deep this goes until The Last Battle. And, boy howdy, does it go deep.

Let’s start with the false Aslan. This false prophet is a donkey, who is being bossed around by an ape. The ape is given the name Shift, and he is described as pretending to be a man and is called “Monkey” when he’s being insulted. Shift is greedy and intelligent, but only as far as getting what he wants is concerned. He eventually falls apart and loses his power because he is drunk.

But the real bad guys in this story are the Calormenes. You know, the only brown people in the story. They are pretty obviously Muslim stand-ins. They’re brown foreigners, they wear turbans, they don’t follow Aslan. I can hear the echoes of real life arguments that God and Allah are the same in the argument in the books that Aslan and Tash are the same. But Tash is the evil demon, the opposite of Aslan, who owns all evil. The Calormenes are described as cruel throughout the series, and everything about them is made to be less than the Narnians, including their dark skin.

In fact, in The Last Battle, our heroes even darken their skin to blend in to the attacking armies. We might be able to ignore this as a practical option, reasonable based on the canon, if there wasn’t also the presence of a legitimate racial slur in the book. Yeah, it’s not great, but guess what? it gets worse.

The slur is used by one group of Narnians only: the dwarves.

I’m not going to give all my reasonings for my next claim, so just believe me when I say this: the dwarves are stand-ins for Jews. This is true in Narnia and in Lord of the Rings. Probably true in other books as well, I’m not sure.

The dwarves in The Last Battle are traitors against Narnia. No, they don’t join the Calormenes. It’s not even because, like some of the talking animals, they believe the lies of Shift. The dwarves betray Tirian, the last king of Narnia, because “the dwarves are for the dwarves.” They are too cunning to follow other people, to trust in either Aslan or Tash. The dwarves fight against both sides, jeering at them both, wanting both of them to lose so they can take over Narnia for themselves.

As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, it is the dwarves, the vessel for Lewis’ antisemitism, who also get to be the vessel for the racial slurs thrown towards the only people of color in the books.

Needless to say, I skipped a lot of sections of dialogue when reading to Finian, not because I thought my infant knew what I was saying, but simply because I could not bring myself to say it, especially to my child. I frequently felt sick when reading it. I kept reading for one reason only: I wanted to see all of it. The good, the bad, the ugly. And I did. And it was often ugly.

There was one good dwarf and one good Calormene in the story. The dwarf was a Red Dwarf, as opposed to a Black Dwarf. Because, naturally, the ones coded as darker, although it was hair not skin, were the more evil of the two types of dwarves. You can see this for the first time in Prince Caspian. The good Calormene, Emeth, was described as almost pretty for someone with dark skin and somehow has a Narnian look about him, which leads me to believe this is code for a light skinned Calormene.

There is so much that is good and beautiful in The Chronicles of Narnia, but the racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, islamophobia, and sexism that gets stronger and stronger as you read them is not either good or beautiful.

C. S. Lewis condemns Susan to hell because she likes lipstick and pantyhose. The beauty he gave her, that he constantly talks about as one of her most regarded characteristics is then what he uses to condemn her, sighting vanity, shallowness, and attention from men as the things which cause her to fall from Aslan’s grace.

And, in conclusion, that is why I think The Last Battle is hot garbage.

This is also why I picked up a book about mice to follow it. The racism in Redwall is against Rats. Hopefully, I won’t discover bullshit hidden in its pages, but my hopes aren’t very high, honestly. At least this one is from 1986, instead of the 1950s. That’s a little more modern anyways.

What I really need to read are things written by POC. Comment suggestions! My personal library is unfortunately very white. Also very male. And very British. I would appreciate some different perspectives, and I look forward to your suggestions.