Chronicles of Narnia

Jadis learns how to use it anyway and does so just when she's about to lose a civil war with her sister because, as she has no problem proclaiming, she'd rather wipe out every living thing in existence than give up her throne.

The book also directly says that every world has a version of the Deplorable Word and hints really heavily that nuclear weapons are our version of it.

Presumably no one figures what it is for Narnia.

Well, Aslan technically counts...

Aslan is better described as the natural end state. The Deplorable Word and its equivalents are something cruel tyrants "who care no more for joy and justice and mercy" than Jadis use for their own indulgence.

Jadis puts herself in a room of life like copies of her ancestors, and the kids notice a gradual change in how the kings and queens expressed themselves over the years. The first set, the oldest, are said to look wise and kind. The next set lose the kindness in their expressions, being described as solemn. Further up the timeline the monarchs start looking "strong and proud and happy, but they looked cruel." After them come even crueler monarch, and after them the faces look cruel but lose the happiness in their faces.

Interestingly, the very last set is described as both cruel and despairing. These are Jadis' most immediate predecessor. Presumably once the leaders have gotten to that stage, they lose any unwillingness to use the Deplorable Word.

Ransom's whole experience also shows how devoid of thought the antagonist's insistence on wiping out the natives is. Morality aside, he gets along just fine with the three species native to Malacandra. There's no reason they can't coexist. He even wonders if humans were meant to regularly communicate with other species and if pets are an attempt to recapture some instinctive sense of interspecies community we lost in the past.

Probably says something that colonizing and wiping out the natives is exactly what the Telmarines did to Narnia. Thankfully they missed a few. Notably the Narnians don't return the favor when they take back the country. All Narnian humans from Caspian's reign onwards are descendants of Telmarine invaders who integrated with the original Narnians.

That links back again into the giant-ass plothole that Lewis accidentally added into the series though. Like...what happened to Archenland? It was sitting there, right next to Narnia, the whole time that the White Witch was trying to keep humans out, and it kinda seems to...evaporate after that. It also gets a weird one-off reference out of absolutely goddamn fucking nowhere in Magician's Nephew where Digory just points off in the distance and goes "that must be Archenland!" and it's like...how do you know that? Why do you know that? It's just some random place that no one lives in at the time. The really odd bit is that it seems to still be there when the Telmarines take over, and the location of the southern border of Telmarine Narnia is very clearly the northern border of Archenland.

And then in the Last Battle, I think it doesn't get mentioned at all, despite the Calormen army presumably marching right through it.

Honestly, I think it mostly just exists because Lewis realized that the humans in the Narnian court had to come from somewhere and this little friendly country right next door was the least convoluted option.

Edited by Zendervai on Sep 5th 2023 at 11:15:18 AM

I've been reading Bret Devereaux' blog, and one thing I now realize is that this series runs right into the old medieval fantasy trap of... where are all the farmers? What are all those Narnians living off, exactly? Do Narnians even farm at all? They seem to have lots of forests and wild nature, but I don't think I've ever seen a farm mentioned.

Then again, this is probably the sort of realism Lewis would have scoffed at.

There's farms mentioned on the Lone Islands, at least.

It's probably worth remembering that out of seven books, five of them cover time periods or locations where farms in Narnia would never get mentioned or would logically not exist. Magician's Nephew, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Horse and His Boy and the Silver Chair. I think farms are actually mentioned in Prince Caspian (one guy is mentioned to be a farmer) and in the Last Battle, the events mean none of the characters would be paying much attention to that.

Edited by Zendervai on Sep 5th 2023 at 11:57:38 AM

There are no pastoralists either, though I guess that would feel very weird in a world of talking animals.

Can you imagine a talking sheepdog herding a bunch of talking sheep?

Edited by Redmess on Sep 5th 2023 at 6:10:50 PM

It wouldn't surprise me if Puddleglum and his fellows farm something out of that swamp they live in.

You gotta read back a bit. Aslan tells the new king of Narnia that some of his descendants will inherit his Narnia throne, while others will become the rulers of Archenland and points out where that will be.

Also that all his kids married elemental spirits. So, interestingly, the Archenlanders aren't fully human.

It's been a long time since I've read it, but I think most of the Calorman army snuck into Narnia in disguise.

I recall one book going into detail about the breakfast of centaurs and they do eat various farm produced foods. Which makes me wonder if they attach the plows to themselves.

Sheepdog: Alright, everyone! Now... Left! No, your other left! That's just back to where you star- No, don't spin! By the Lion, this is why interpretive sheep dancing has never taken off.

"We raise seasonal depression. It's not much but it's honest work."

Centaurs tend to be snobs, I don't see them lowering themselves to pulling a plow or doing manual labour. I bet they get other animals to work the land for them.

Per Mr. Tumnus's first appearance, Narnia also has grocery stores we never see.

Yeah, that seems to be one of those digs at Tolkien that he didn't really follow up on because that was ultimately not really the kind of world he was building, just like the sowing machine in the Beaver dam.

I think of all those weird little anachronisms to needle Tolkien, he only kept the lamp post.

Lewis didn't really care about overall coherent worldbuilding. He was very obviously making it up as he went along. Which is usually fine, but it tends to cause weird moments and elements.

You also get odd bits like how the world of Narnia is actually really small but it's not written like it is. Like, Tashbaan is pretty clearly stated to be at the center of a vast trading empire with...no one. The only known options are Telmar (which was apparently very poor and in bad shape) and a few islands. The city is also put in the weirdest place, being on a river (makes sense) that's right next to a huge impassable desert (this is weird). It raises a question of who their huge trade empire is even with and when you combine that with how massive the eastern ocean seems to be, the implication is that there's a lot of countries other than just Telmar that Lewis never mentions. But because there's no focus or mention of any of them, it makes Calormen feel really strange. (Not helped by how, uh...racist the portrayal kinda is)

Edited by Zendervai on Sep 6th 2023 at 8:45:38 AM

Yeah, and there is this huge wilderness behind a massive cliff to the west, too, which everyone seems to just sort of... ignore? And it has the actual garden of Eden up there. I wonder what the Narnians think of that, to say nothing of the other countries.

Telmar's out there somewhere. That's about all we know. It's presumably not in the same spot as the garden.

Or what was Telmar at any rate. From the back story we're given it sounds like the famine made just about everyone pack up and ditch the place.

Well, at the time of Horse and His Boy, Telmar is presumably still there.

But yeah, it might have been one hell of a famine to get an entire country to just pack up and leave.

I hate that the adaptations of the Narnia only seem able to scratch of Narnia

Prince Caspian also notes there was notable age gap between the Telmarines who chose to stay in Narnia and coexist with the Old Narnians, and those who went back to Earth. Most who chose to stay were in the younger generations, particularly those who were like Caspian and grew up hearing cool stories about Narnians from before the Telmarine conquest. Most who chose to leave were from the older population, particularly if they had been officials under Miraz.

That raises some questions itself too. Like, the Telmarines had been in Narnia for long enough that Caspian is Caspian the 10th and the one who brought the Telmarines to Narnia was Caspian I. And the book never really makes it clear if it was all Caspians or if other names were in there somewhere.

Like...why is it that after centuries of the Telmarines ruling Narnia, it's this latest generation that's randomly really focused on the stories?

Although, I guess the intent was that the Telmarines gradually got their sense of wonder forced out of them.

I vaguely recall the book saying the Telmarines had like a - I don't know what the proper name for this is, a cultural fear? They as a people were freaked out by the forest. They still had horror stories from the first invaders fighting the forest spirits and Talking Beasts. Those could have been passed on from generation to generation.

But times change. Yesterday's boogeyman is today's top fad. Gradually the younger age groups lost that sense of fear from the stories their elders told them. When they heard the tale of a talking tree picking up a soldier and chucking him across the river, they didn't focus on the soldier who probably drowned, they focused on "There's a talking tree! How cool is that!"

We can see this a bit in Caspian's reaction when his tutor reveals he is actually a dwarf. Well, half-dwarf, but Caspian doesn't know that just yet.

Narnia is also about children playing make believe. That is why time happens there differently. That is why grown ups can't go there etc.

That's what you think!

Edited by Redmess on Jan 17th 2024 at 6:13:22 PM

Technically, adults can go to Narnia, The  Telmarines ,Jadis, Uncle Andrew, Frank and his wife, etc.

It is just that, for the  Pevensies Aslan feel that it is better for them to focus their adulthood in their own world since they have learned all they need from Narnia.

Not that they have a long life ahead of them, except for Susan.