Aslan and the crossing of the Rush
Sep. 25th, 2012 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIn Prince Caspian, there's a bit where the children are trying to find a way across country to join Caspian before his army is overrun, and their way is blocked by a steep gorge.
They conclude the only sensible plan is to follow the river downstream to the conflux with the great river, where they know there's a crossing quite close to where they're trying to go. However, Lucy sees Aslan in the distance and realises He wants them to go upstream.
When I first read it, I just glossed over this bit confused, but now I think it's an obvious allegory for people knowing what God wants them to do, but not living up to it.
However, even now, this just doesn't seem to make sense with the context of the book.
* Forget "which way along the river". Even if only Lucy saw him, whether the others find this suspicious or not, why don't they rush to where he was in case he's still there? That seems the immediately obvious thing to do, whatever he was trying to tell them.
* If you follow the geography, you realise that what they really want to do was find a place they can cross the river, which is what they eventually find, but (partly my fault), I didn't quite get this from the dialogue, so I couldn't see why they would ever go up the river if they've just said down is the way to where they're going.
* If they want a crossing place, is there any reason other than divine revelation why it's more likely to be upstream than down?
* Later on, one of the older Pevensies makes a comment implying they saw going downstream as "easier", implying they made that choice because they didn't have the determination to go upstream. But if they were tired, I couldn't see why they'd wrongly prefer to go downstream: when I'm tired is exactly when I'd want to take silly risks like "go upstream in case there's an easy crossing place that will take us right to our destination" instead of "go round the long but safe way".
It may not make much difference practically, but the difference seems to be, were the Pevensies supposed to know that upstream was better even without Aslan? Or to know deep down that it was better, but not have the moral fortitude to follow through with it, for some reason?
For that matter, Aslan never says that He's leading them to a way across. For all they know, Aslan is leading them to something else entirely, letting Caspian et al die.
Now, they know Him well enough to trust him at this point. I may not agree with the Narnian theology in the real world, but I think I know that according to the narrative, the "right" thing to do is always to trust Aslan. But "trust in God" encompasses a wide variety of difficult choices.
Is this supposed to be a case of "you know you should do X, but you're scared it won't work, or you'll be embarrassed, or you'll let everyone down" and God tells you to do X? I think that's what most revelations are supposed to be. Or is this supposed to be like Abraham and Isaac, "do this apparently horrible immoral thing because God says there's a good reason for it but won't tell you what it is"?
I think people disagree about the latter even within Abrahamic theologies.
I don't think that's the choice Lewis is trying to present, but because there's not enough logistical and geographical explanation, it feels like it might be, even though I think Lewis intended a simple "they knew that was the right thing, but failed to do it anyway" parable, he just failed to give them a reason to know it was the right thing.
They conclude the only sensible plan is to follow the river downstream to the conflux with the great river, where they know there's a crossing quite close to where they're trying to go. However, Lucy sees Aslan in the distance and realises He wants them to go upstream.
When I first read it, I just glossed over this bit confused, but now I think it's an obvious allegory for people knowing what God wants them to do, but not living up to it.
However, even now, this just doesn't seem to make sense with the context of the book.
* Forget "which way along the river". Even if only Lucy saw him, whether the others find this suspicious or not, why don't they rush to where he was in case he's still there? That seems the immediately obvious thing to do, whatever he was trying to tell them.
* If you follow the geography, you realise that what they really want to do was find a place they can cross the river, which is what they eventually find, but (partly my fault), I didn't quite get this from the dialogue, so I couldn't see why they would ever go up the river if they've just said down is the way to where they're going.
* If they want a crossing place, is there any reason other than divine revelation why it's more likely to be upstream than down?
* Later on, one of the older Pevensies makes a comment implying they saw going downstream as "easier", implying they made that choice because they didn't have the determination to go upstream. But if they were tired, I couldn't see why they'd wrongly prefer to go downstream: when I'm tired is exactly when I'd want to take silly risks like "go upstream in case there's an easy crossing place that will take us right to our destination" instead of "go round the long but safe way".
It may not make much difference practically, but the difference seems to be, were the Pevensies supposed to know that upstream was better even without Aslan? Or to know deep down that it was better, but not have the moral fortitude to follow through with it, for some reason?
For that matter, Aslan never says that He's leading them to a way across. For all they know, Aslan is leading them to something else entirely, letting Caspian et al die.
Now, they know Him well enough to trust him at this point. I may not agree with the Narnian theology in the real world, but I think I know that according to the narrative, the "right" thing to do is always to trust Aslan. But "trust in God" encompasses a wide variety of difficult choices.
Is this supposed to be a case of "you know you should do X, but you're scared it won't work, or you'll be embarrassed, or you'll let everyone down" and God tells you to do X? I think that's what most revelations are supposed to be. Or is this supposed to be like Abraham and Isaac, "do this apparently horrible immoral thing because God says there's a good reason for it but won't tell you what it is"?
I think people disagree about the latter even within Abrahamic theologies.
I don't think that's the choice Lewis is trying to present, but because there's not enough logistical and geographical explanation, it feels like it might be, even though I think Lewis intended a simple "they knew that was the right thing, but failed to do it anyway" parable, he just failed to give them a reason to know it was the right thing.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-25 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-25 04:36 pm (UTC)Ooh, that's an interesting point. And yes, I think that's basically right, that regardless of the reason, they're supposed to have listened to the one who Aslan showed himself to.
Although as a message it's a bit undermined because Peter may be In Charge, but Lucy always had a Special Connection to Aslan, so it might actually have been more of a reversal if Aslan had revealed himself to Edmund or Susan, and the others would have had good reason to doubt -- He never really singled them out before -- and learned to trust each other a lot more.
Although I guess, they didn't trust Lucy, and Edmund's speech about how they should do showed they apparently were dismissing her as a Serious Person because of her Littleness, so I guess that is the message, even if I think it might have been more interesting to the reader the other way[1].
[1] See also the speculation that the last battle might have been more interesting if it had been Peter or Lucy who stumbled in belief rather than Susan (who'd always been committed before, but was somehow the "default" choice to be at the wrong age at the wrong time, neither Important Peter, nor Reformed Edmund, nor Special Lucy).
no subject
Date: 2012-09-25 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-25 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-25 04:52 pm (UTC)Hm. I agree lots of these questions don't have answers other than "the author didn't specify that", but I feel like that is an answer.
As in, however hard you think, you're not able to deduce a logically and theologically consistent universe Lewis had in mind, because he didn't have one[1]. But you ought to be able to say this bit is clearly a reference to this bit of text, this is clearly an allegory to blah, this is clearly a coincidence that doesn't mean anything, this bit is uncertain, etc, without assuming in advance that everything has a role in the world or an allegorical meaning.
After all, I'm fairly sure Lewis intended the message of this bit to what it obviously is, but I was honestly not certain what the "obvious" meaning was, and many of the alternative interpretations have turned out to actually be really interesting, even if non-canonical.
[1] Which definitely varies, and not just "consistent is always better". Harry Potter is awesome in many respects, but questions like "how many people are there in the magical world" aren't answerable, because Rowling wasn't able to establish a non-contradictory answer to work from, even though she did a good job of making each individual part of the world seem consistent. Other stories deliberately have a more metaphoric approach to the nature of the world. But then there's something like Name of the Wind, where I would never have thought that you could look at all the background snippets of foreign language and bits of linguistics and geography, and deduce the protagonists undisclosed location from them, but you can.