The Marvel of Myth
I loved how the Magician's Nephew addressed the truth's in fairy tales and the reality of it! Magic, myth, fantasy, and fairy tales are real just as Digory professed when he came back from the in-between place. Myth, like Lewis says, is fact. We draw so much of life from myth and fairy tales. The settings are make believe but the foundation of the myth breathes life to our reality. In fact, I myself was unaware before taking this course and reading so much of Lewis how myth has effected my life and shapes it. I never thought to look at my belief in God as a myth. But it is and like Lewis says in "Myth Became Fact" we must embrace that and not be ashamed of our mythical theology because God chose to be mythopoeic and there fore we must become mythopathic. What a revolutionary concept -- at least for me. I am now able to read fairy stories again with this new knowledge and not brush them off as for children. However, I am aware of the power fairy tales have over children. From watching a documentary in Communications 250 on the "Mickey Mouse Monopoly," I saw the huge impact that those fairy tales have on gender roles. So while the base story may teach morals it is also a dangerous form of persuasion. Fairy tales subtly send a very strong message of belief and norms. The tales create a reality for children. So while the children may not think they will make a carriage turn into a pumpkin or slay dragons they will enact what the tales portray. The girls will think they're princesses and must be rescued by a man and boys will think they are supposed to be strong and rescue a girl because they are in need of a man. I could go on and on about my opinions towards Disney and their portrayals of girls and boys but I'll refrain since this blog is supposed to be about Narnia!
While reading the book, I wondered a few things: what happens if you lost a ring in mid transition from one place to another and what is the in between place supposed to symbolize? It almost seems like what the Catholics call purgatory but I know Lewis, or at least I think I know, wasn't a Catholic. It'd be interesting to pick his brain on this and many other topics!
A few other things stuck out, especially after class discussion. I thought it was really interesting that it was a boy that brought evil into existence. Not a man but a boy. And even more peculiar was that it was a male. Digory hit the bell and brought evil into existence (if it were actually ever gone...due to the aura of magic Digory felt I wonder if the Queen was merely a pawn to something much more evil) and then after that it was Edmund, another boy, that betrayed his sisters. In Eden, Eve was the cause of the fall of man and the bringing about of evil. But, if Digory and Polly were real, then they already had their Adam and Eve story so this story they got involved in was something completely separate from the creation story and the story of the fall of man. Regardless, I appreciated the depiction of gender roles to a slight degree. As a feminist (not the crazy kind of course -- I don't like the term myself) I thought it was nice to see the girl not as just an object that is the cause of the fall of man and as a constant temptation to the male -- who apparently is often depicted as having no agency when it comes to saying "no" to a woman.
Through hearing Dr. Redick's paper on how kids aren't so innocent, I began to completely agree and their lack of innocence is very apparent in Narnia. Edmund betrays his siblings, Digory hits the bell, Polly encourages the breaking and entering (basically) into other town homes to explore, and Lucy goes into the wardrobe when she was told not to. People assume youth equal innocence but it does not. It is this very assumption that causes people to question the justness of God. The ask "if God is real or if He is good then why do bad things happen to good people, why are children murdered, why do children and women starve to death" etc...the list goes on. But these questions form from the notion that we are inherently good. We ARE NOT! That is why Jesus died for us. If we do nothing we are still sinful. If we don't believe in Jesus, no matter the age, we will belong to sin. People want to justify themselves and earn merits to prove that they are good (this is for Christians and non) but the fact is nothing we do will be good enough. We will never earn God's love. That's the beauty of God. He loves us anyway and He gave us His son so that we wouldn't have to try to be good enough. Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent, the point is we are born into sin so babies to the elderly are not innocent or undeserving or wrath. And don't blame God! Blame Adam and Eve. The fall of man has been passed down through the generations. If God kept people from getting hurt then people would not have the choice to hurt others. Sounds strange but you can't have freedom without the freedom to sin. And when you sin, you ALWAYS affect someone else. So while it is sad that these things happen, it is a topic I have struggled with as well, we are inherently sinful, not good. Lewis does an excellent job in showing this through the actions of the children. People these days underestimate the sin of children, their knowledge of wrong, and, on a side note, completely underestimate the effect of myth and fairy tales on children.
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