Re: The LotGK and the White Witch: What's the Difference?
Posted: Nov 06, 2014 11:47 am
Anhun, that idea about LotGK feeding on Depression and inner darkness is spot on. I am sure it is no coincidence that the perkiest Marsh-Wiggle, Puddleglum, is the Narnian sent to challenge her, no more than it is the bravest Narnians (Ourius, the Beavers) who are sent to challenge Jadis the tyrant.
Lucy once asked Aslan if he is in their (our) world. Aslan replied Yes, but that "there I have another Name. You must learn to know Me by that Name. It is for this purpose that I brought you into Narnia," so that the Pevensies might know Aslan better, by the Name here, in their own home.
Therefore I would argue that the witches are different for the obvious reason that the children are different. The Pevensies met Aslan during World War II, a time when assorted tyrants controlling assorted armies attempted to inflict assorted forms of death upon us all. (Which, BTW, if the one in Germany had not been so reckless as to attack the one in the USSR, the Allies might not have won the war.)
The Pevensies therefore challenge a tyrant-sociopath in Narnia. I use the term in the Diane Duane sense of her description of the tyrant T'Rehu (The Romulan Way). Duane reports
(Having said that, Jadis would wipe the floor with T'Rehu, who deteriorated into a financial failure after her military success.)
Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb, however, meet Aslan in the post-war world in the care, if we can call it that, of practical, Gradgrindish, reductionist schools. The world having had enough of high passions, its horizons to the eyes of "Pole" and "Scrubb" were limited to only what they could see and test and reproduce according to a sort of scientific protocol. Indeed, this early stamp on their impressionable souls continues to leave its mark, as the characters still call each other Pole and Scrubb to the end of the series. Does Aslan call His beloved one "Pole"? Of course not. That's impersonal, and Aslan is an intensely personal Being.
Therefore Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb, to learn to know Aslan by another Name in our world, were sent against a practical witch. With apologies to our atheist friends here -- LotGK is one of the militant ones, not one of the let's-talk-about-this ones -- LotGK struck me from the first as the angry atheist. She tries to hypnotize Puddleglum and the children to reject Sun, Aslan and Sky as just immature, buy-me-a-pony fantasies about mundane tangible things like cooking fires, kittycats, and cells. Then, when she fails to break her prisoners, she flies into a murderous rage and literally becomes a snake-in-the-grass. C.S. Lewis made constant digs at schools and schooling through his writings, and it makes sense that two children and a Marsh-Wiggle should face the challenges he faced and then actually win.
Summary: of course the villains are different people. The children they face are different people.
As regarding the argument that they could be the same people because they might be immortal, well, Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman all started out immortal, and no one thinks they're the same people. We could have a long discussion about why each age got each villain -- Morgoth versus Feanor's pride, Sauron versus Celebrimbor's survivor's guilt, Saruman [lit., "smarty-pants"] versus "dummies" like trees and mostly illiterate horse-herders -- but that's a debate for another thread.
Lucy once asked Aslan if he is in their (our) world. Aslan replied Yes, but that "there I have another Name. You must learn to know Me by that Name. It is for this purpose that I brought you into Narnia," so that the Pevensies might know Aslan better, by the Name here, in their own home.
Therefore I would argue that the witches are different for the obvious reason that the children are different. The Pevensies met Aslan during World War II, a time when assorted tyrants controlling assorted armies attempted to inflict assorted forms of death upon us all. (Which, BTW, if the one in Germany had not been so reckless as to attack the one in the USSR, the Allies might not have won the war.)
The Pevensies therefore challenge a tyrant-sociopath in Narnia. I use the term in the Diane Duane sense of her description of the tyrant T'Rehu (The Romulan Way). Duane reports
"She was one of those people with that inexplicable quality that Terrans call 'charisma' and Rihannsu call 'nuhirrien' ['look-toward'] .... She simply had that quality of being followed. Some have used the word 'sociopath' to describe her, but the term loses some of its meaning in Rihannsu culture, where one is expected to reach out one's hand and take what one wants" [as T'Rehu assuredly did].
(Having said that, Jadis would wipe the floor with T'Rehu, who deteriorated into a financial failure after her military success.)
Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb, however, meet Aslan in the post-war world in the care, if we can call it that, of practical, Gradgrindish, reductionist schools. The world having had enough of high passions, its horizons to the eyes of "Pole" and "Scrubb" were limited to only what they could see and test and reproduce according to a sort of scientific protocol. Indeed, this early stamp on their impressionable souls continues to leave its mark, as the characters still call each other Pole and Scrubb to the end of the series. Does Aslan call His beloved one "Pole"? Of course not. That's impersonal, and Aslan is an intensely personal Being.
Therefore Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb, to learn to know Aslan by another Name in our world, were sent against a practical witch. With apologies to our atheist friends here -- LotGK is one of the militant ones, not one of the let's-talk-about-this ones -- LotGK struck me from the first as the angry atheist. She tries to hypnotize Puddleglum and the children to reject Sun, Aslan and Sky as just immature, buy-me-a-pony fantasies about mundane tangible things like cooking fires, kittycats, and cells. Then, when she fails to break her prisoners, she flies into a murderous rage and literally becomes a snake-in-the-grass. C.S. Lewis made constant digs at schools and schooling through his writings, and it makes sense that two children and a Marsh-Wiggle should face the challenges he faced and then actually win.
Summary: of course the villains are different people. The children they face are different people.
As regarding the argument that they could be the same people because they might be immortal, well, Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman all started out immortal, and no one thinks they're the same people. We could have a long discussion about why each age got each villain -- Morgoth versus Feanor's pride, Sauron versus Celebrimbor's survivor's guilt, Saruman [lit., "smarty-pants"] versus "dummies" like trees and mostly illiterate horse-herders -- but that's a debate for another thread.