{"id":3878,"date":"2015-08-16T18:04:37","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T01:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=3878"},"modified":"2015-08-16T18:04:37","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T01:04:37","slug":"literary-punishment-juneau-alaska-08122015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=3878","title":{"rendered":"Literary Punishment \u2013 Juneau, Alaska \u2013 [08\/12\/2015]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all the fantasy autho\"Entering-Narnia\"<\/a>rs out there, CS Lewis still strikes me as the cruelest.<\/p>\n

Not necessarily to his readers, but to his characters<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I am sure that there are those who would argue that someone like GRR Martin would rightfully top that scale, but I respectfully disagree. Let\u2019s \u2013 as Susan Penvensie w ould say \u2013 look at this \u2018logically\u2019<\/p>\n

Martin – bathes in the blood of his characters, but that\u2019s just it \u2013 he just kills them. You learn quickly not to be attatched because of that. But they\u2019re just dead. For the most part.<\/p>\n

Barrie \u2013 Neverland makes you forget and if you leave and grow up you forget you were ever there (\u201cSee that man with the briefcase who doesn\u2019t know what story to tell his children? That used to be John<\/em>\u201d \u2013 Peter Pan)<\/p>\n

Carroll \u2013 Wonderland is a dream (or possibly a drug trip if you believe some theories)<\/p>\n

Eddings \u2013 characters always live to their destiny and pretty much get the happy ever after<\/p>\n

G.G Kay \u2013 political, characters come out a bit scathed, but see destiny thing. Also, those that are dead, are just dead.<\/p>\n

But Lewis? Lewis will not allow his characters to forget<\/em>. More than any phyiscal torture, not being able to forget\u2026think of what that would do to you, what it would do to your soul, your entire sense of being \u2013 who would you be<\/em>? An adult, a powerful<\/em> adult, trapped in a child\u2019s body, forced to grow up all over again ,to go through it all over again \u2013 and to never ever be able to talk about what you\u2019ve done, what you\u2019ve accomplished, what you\u2019ve seen\u2026to watch the world fail and flail and fall around you and know that once you could have fixed that, that once you did<\/em> fix it\u2026and now you\u2019re 14 and stuck<\/em>\u2026and you can\u2019t<\/em> ever forget that.<\/p>\n

Cruelest words ever spoken in fantasy:<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia\u201d<\/p>\n

And why would you ever go back? Why? Except that you had forgotten the \u201creal\u201d world, and by the time you remembered it was already too late. You could forget on one side of the wardrobe, but not the other<\/em>. C.S Lewis gave his characters the world and then expelled them from it\u2026and then forced them to remember<\/em> forever what they had lost. And most of them never are allowed to return to that world\u2026one is expelled forever simply for the crime of forcing<\/em> herself to move on (ah the \u2018problem\u2019 of Susan).<\/p>\n

I dedicated one of my most popular posts to the idea that Susan was in fact the smart one in the Pevensie family, that she alone had the courage to force herself to forget what she could no longer have. To block out what had been stolen from her. I felt sorry for Susan as a child, now I admire her backbone. She got on with her life. What other choice would you have?<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just the Pevensie family. People who have only seen the movie trilogy don\u2019t realize the fact that the Professor of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/em> is in fact Diggory from the (in reading order not publication order) first book. The wardrobe itself is made of the wood from a tree that sprang from an apple that was birthed when Narnia was young; a tree that tumbled in a London windstorm, and Diggory who was unable to forget<\/em> his time in Narnia, could not bear to have the only physical reminder of his time there turned into kindling, so he turned it into a wardrobe in his great house in the country.<\/p>\n

Lewis tortured his characters.<\/p>\n

My apologies for the random literary rant, this is what happens when you spend your IPM day working on cross-stitch and half-watching The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the fantasy authors out there, CS Lewis still strikes me as the cruelest. Not necessarily to his readers, but to his characters. I am sure that there are those who would argue that someone like GRR Martin would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-10y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3881,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878\/revisions\/3881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}