D-T, I have to admit that
Last Battle is my least favourite Narnia book. It is too sad, too disastrous, though it has some great moments. I am sure that the apocalyptic scenes of Narnia's destruction are too awesome for any filmmaker, certainly right now, and the vision of Narnia's afterlife is almost too hard to imagine. For those who read the book right up until the last page, it is clear that those others who died in the train accident who weren't Narnia participants, like presumably, Mr & Mrs Pevensie, also went to a linked heaven where they could be reunited with their loved ones, their loved places etc.
When I first read this book, about 1958 or 1959, the Civil Rights movement in America was something which was not well known, though later on, in my teens it appeared on the evening news. Despite the horrors of Nazism, the lessons and implications of WW2 still had not been fully digested even by the Allies. Even after C.S.Lewis died in 1963, terms like sexism and racism were not in general use. Nor did I ever connect these terms to any of the Narnia books, even
Last Battle, until Philip Pullman chose to point this out post 2001, especially when LWW was filmed in 2005, and his own Golden Compass was fillmed the year afterwards. And I still think he is wrong and anachronistic to denounce C.S.Lewis and Narnia.
Lilygloves wrote:Besides the whole "matter of taste" thing, I think it has a lot to do with the new generation. most of the teenagers nowadays do not appreciate art or literature or culture.
I think it is more a case of teenagers today not knowing what life was like during WW2 and afterwards, not really understanding why we had to have Civil Rights movements in the first place, and not realising that there has been, since the 2000's, when Phillip Pullman's own writings became better-known, a concerted anti-Christian campaign to discredit C.S.Lewis, in particular, so that fantasy writers can boost up their own non-Christian work. That is my opinion - feel free to disagree.
D-T wrote:I have a theroy, maybe susan was her favorate character, and when she turned against narina, she hated it.
You could be right, especially if she didn't read the book properly, and wasn't old enough to analyse what went on in it, and to analyse Susan's character throughout the Chronicles, which I agree is not really the business of this particular thread. I did note earlier at the beginning of this post, that in LB, the Earthly people who went to any sort of heaven, apart from the Seven Friends of Narnia, included Mr & Mrs Pevensie, on their way to Bristol, who, along with unnamed others, had actually died in the train wreck. As Aslan said in the book, there was a real train wreck: in fact C.S.Lewis referenced it from a very real one, to explain how seven people who were conspiring to get to Narnia would manage it, even though two were on the station platform and the other five were in a compartment in the train.
I don't know why people get so upset about where Susan got to and why she wasn't in the train accident. C.S.Lewis did explain in one of his
Letters to Children (1957), that by the time of
Last Battle, she had become vain and silly, but still had plenty of time to change her point of view, and might get to heaven in her own time and in her own way.
Whenever I have read LB before 2005, I usually felt Susan must have got married and was off somewhere with her husband, who, I hoped, was a better choice than Rabadash. I wondered if Eustace or Peter hadn't mentioned Rabadash, to spur her retort to Eustace and to cause Peter's reply to Tirian.
Besides, I think what Jill, Polly and Peter says does suggest that Susan had become a perfect Bridezilla, embarrassed by childhood memories, including previous forays into romance, fussing about invitations (to what, I wondered?) and maybe commenting about dress sense not to Susan's standards.
Besides, how else did Jill and Polly meet Susan, except socially, at something like a wedding, a party or an engagement, when they weren't related to her, and not involved with Narnia discussions? Susan wasn't on the train, she hadn't attended the meeting where they saw Tirian, and was definitely elsewhere when the train accident happened. That is why Peter said on p.128 in my edition of
Last Battle: "Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia". She had merely 'grown up' and moved on, like those who were too big for fairy tales. Also, Eustace said (p.128) that whenever they tried to discuss their Narnian advntures with her, Susan would say: "What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about those funny games we used to play when we were children".
How strangely like the sorts of things the Lady of the Green Kirtle kept saying to Jill and Eustace, after she found out they had released Rilian from the Silver Chair! Only instead of work and more work, without jokes, sun or sky, Susan had embraced a world dominated by invitations, or keeping up appearances, eg by wearing lipstick correctly and ensuring that nylons were not laddered or less than straight.
Also, stockings, not nylon ones, had been mentioned before in the series. Lewis, who notoriously disliked uncomfortably restrictive high-maintenance clothes, and who had mentioned horrible stockings in PC, where they were used to make Gwendolen and her classmates conform to Miraz's Telmarine version of Narnia, wasn't necessarily referring to the sorts of things that outrage so many of his critics. Would anyone today wear nylon stockings with lines down the back of the wearers' calves?
Recently, in a book called
A home of my own, I came across these two ads from the 1940's and 1950's for lipstick and nylons:
1. Susan's lipstick
2. Susan's nylons.
Please note that female conformity to the then standards of dress and lifestyle is what is really being pushed in these ads, one of which actually mentions that girls could only be civilians. And when Polly goes on to say that she wished that Susan really would grow up, and that she had wasted her schooling to get to the age she was, it is very possible that Susan was one of those really intelligent girls who was 'no good at schoolwork',
because she wasn't prepared to work hard at school, having listened to grown-up opinions of her and what she should expect in life.
I don't think that it is sexist for C.S.Lewis to disparage this common attitude of that time, that girls didn't really need an education because they were only going to get married. I think it was just the sort of widespread attitude which would have appalled him as an educator, himself, especially as he made Polly the speaker. These very remarks were made to me, on more than one occasion, but I persevered nonetheless, thanks to C.S.Lewis, and I am glad I did.
An author called Neil Gaiman wrote a story which referenced 'what happened to Susan', called
The problem of Susan (2004 in
Fragile things, written by Neil Gaiman). This adult tale, wherein Susan allegedly became a professor and when she died, was reading her obituary which contained everyone she had known and forgotten about, also had Susan saying that someone had to survive to sort out the aftermath of the train wreck.
However, C.S.Lewis' Susan, who in VDT was 'no good at schoolwork', and who Polly said had wasted her time at school, would have then found it difficult indeed to become a Professor, getting the qualifications, experience and creditability she would need to be recognised as one. Though, Neil Gaiman's Susan did mentions there was never enough money after the train wreck for indulgence in nylons and lipstick more than was needed to conform to that society. And if not married, she would have needed to get a job without her having qualifications of any sort before she could finance further studies.
I expect that 'whatever happened to Susan' and how she would get to heaven in her own way at the right time and place would be anyone's guess.
You could probably write your own version of what might have happened. Remember that if still alive she would be a good 15 or more years older than I am (64). And I disagree that her 'fate' or lack of it, is any reason to dislike the Narnia books as a whole.