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edenfallingJadis in the garden: separation from God is only a punishment if you believe in him.
[ETA: The AO3 crosspost and the ff.net crosspost are now up.]
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Heart's Desire
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"Come in by the gold gates or not at all," the garden's maker had written. And truly, there was no need to turn aside, walk a quarter-circle around the hilltop, and clamber over the wall, but Jadis was the Queen of Charn and she bowed to no one.
She would have the apple on her own terms, as she had earned everything else in her life.
The fruit was sharp and almost painfully sweet, with a metallic tang underneath that expanded to bitter and salt in the aftertaste. The juice was shockingly dark for such a fair-fleshed fruit. Jadis licked the red-brown stain from her hand and laughed.
Pure theatrics: the apple bled. Was that supposed to induce guilt or shame?
The Lion had made this world, she acknowledged, but she had been here at the making; her magic was thus woven deep into its earth and air, inseparable from its very fabric of being. Until this world died, the Lion must adjust his plans to account for her. And even after, she could continue -- if that simpering fool had learned to travel between the planes, surely so could she! And she would learn to cross directly, without the crutch of that horrible, drowning place between the worlds.
A breeze stirred the garden, swirling petals and scent from the tree. Jadis sneezed, and then nearly gagged on the rotting sweetness of the silvery perfume. Stumbling, she turned aside, holding her arms across her face as if to block the very air from attacking her.
The air stilled. The scent dissipated.
Jadis lowered her arms and clenched her free hand, seething. So. The Lion had fashioned a trap for those who defied him and ate the fruit unbidden. But even he could not stop the apple from performing its function; already she could feel new strength coursing through her blood and bones like a river of ice, scouring away her mortality.
She had forever, now. She had new magic to master, a new world to conquer, a new foe to destroy. If the Lion thought that a mere tree would defeat her or that length of days would lead her to despair, he was a fool, as her sister had been.
Jadis ran her tongue across her teeth, savoring the iron tang of immortality, and took another bite.
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Inspired by the 4/27/09![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15_minute_fic word #108: hungry
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Near the end of The Magician's Nephew Aslan tells Digory and Polly that Jadis "has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want: they do not always like it."
I never believed him. First, people do not always get what they want; anyone who claims otherwise is engaging in sophistry or wishful thinking. Secondly, the sense I got of Jadis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was emphatically not of a woman mired in despair. Jadis is too practical to give in to despair or wallow in depressive introspection, and I am not at all sure she's even capable of misery; her emotional repertoire seems limited to anger, frustration, fear, hatred, pride, triumph, (self-)satisfaction, and sometimes a pure joy in skill and motion. Possibly also greed or covetousness, but I think even her ambition is more a surety that everything already does belong to her, and she just has to make people acknowledge that truth.
Jadis is evil, no two ways about it. She's selfish, cruel, and probably sociopathic -- other people are not real to her except as tools or obstacles. But length of days with an evil heart is only miserable if you know and care about your relative moral standing. If you don't -- and Jadis doesn't -- then length of days gives you time for everything you find pleasurable, like magic and conquest and fighting.
So with all due respect, I must disagree with Aslan (and therefore, more relevantly, with C. S. Lewis). :-)
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NOTICE! There is an extensive discussion in the comments on the Livejournal version of this post, which happened after I imported my journal to Dreamwidth. I think it is worth checking out.
[ETA: The AO3 crosspost and the ff.net crosspost are now up.]
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Heart's Desire
---------------------------------------------
"Come in by the gold gates or not at all," the garden's maker had written. And truly, there was no need to turn aside, walk a quarter-circle around the hilltop, and clamber over the wall, but Jadis was the Queen of Charn and she bowed to no one.
She would have the apple on her own terms, as she had earned everything else in her life.
The fruit was sharp and almost painfully sweet, with a metallic tang underneath that expanded to bitter and salt in the aftertaste. The juice was shockingly dark for such a fair-fleshed fruit. Jadis licked the red-brown stain from her hand and laughed.
Pure theatrics: the apple bled. Was that supposed to induce guilt or shame?
The Lion had made this world, she acknowledged, but she had been here at the making; her magic was thus woven deep into its earth and air, inseparable from its very fabric of being. Until this world died, the Lion must adjust his plans to account for her. And even after, she could continue -- if that simpering fool had learned to travel between the planes, surely so could she! And she would learn to cross directly, without the crutch of that horrible, drowning place between the worlds.
A breeze stirred the garden, swirling petals and scent from the tree. Jadis sneezed, and then nearly gagged on the rotting sweetness of the silvery perfume. Stumbling, she turned aside, holding her arms across her face as if to block the very air from attacking her.
The air stilled. The scent dissipated.
Jadis lowered her arms and clenched her free hand, seething. So. The Lion had fashioned a trap for those who defied him and ate the fruit unbidden. But even he could not stop the apple from performing its function; already she could feel new strength coursing through her blood and bones like a river of ice, scouring away her mortality.
She had forever, now. She had new magic to master, a new world to conquer, a new foe to destroy. If the Lion thought that a mere tree would defeat her or that length of days would lead her to despair, he was a fool, as her sister had been.
Jadis ran her tongue across her teeth, savoring the iron tang of immortality, and took another bite.
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Inspired by the 4/27/09
15_minute_fic word #108: hungry---------------------------------------------
Near the end of The Magician's Nephew Aslan tells Digory and Polly that Jadis "has won her heart's desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want: they do not always like it."
I never believed him. First, people do not always get what they want; anyone who claims otherwise is engaging in sophistry or wishful thinking. Secondly, the sense I got of Jadis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was emphatically not of a woman mired in despair. Jadis is too practical to give in to despair or wallow in depressive introspection, and I am not at all sure she's even capable of misery; her emotional repertoire seems limited to anger, frustration, fear, hatred, pride, triumph, (self-)satisfaction, and sometimes a pure joy in skill and motion. Possibly also greed or covetousness, but I think even her ambition is more a surety that everything already does belong to her, and she just has to make people acknowledge that truth.
Jadis is evil, no two ways about it. She's selfish, cruel, and probably sociopathic -- other people are not real to her except as tools or obstacles. But length of days with an evil heart is only miserable if you know and care about your relative moral standing. If you don't -- and Jadis doesn't -- then length of days gives you time for everything you find pleasurable, like magic and conquest and fighting.
So with all due respect, I must disagree with Aslan (and therefore, more relevantly, with C. S. Lewis). :-)
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NOTICE! There is an extensive discussion in the comments on the Livejournal version of this post, which happened after I imported my journal to Dreamwidth. I think it is worth checking out.
on theology, ethics, and authorial intent, part 3
Date: 2009-05-10 05:27 am (UTC)The thing is, I don't see any need to go that route, because as I have been saying, the books work without that supposition. If a book works when read under more than one set of assumptions, then each of those interpretations is just as valid as the other, no matter which one the author intended to write.
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I can't help you with feeling as if you are falsely proselytizing if you write Aslan as Christ. The thing is, many if not most of Aslan's attributes are Christ's: if you write Aslan as Aslan, and stay true to canon, you fall into that trap regardless because, just as many people read Aslan in CoN as Christ, they'll read your story and, if Aslan is written like Aslan, they'll see it in your fic as well.
And I am okay with that! Just as I can interpret Lewis's books without considering Aslan an analogue of Jesus, other people can interpret any portrayal of Aslan that I write as if he is Jesus, whether that's what I was thinking as I wrote or not. It would be hypocritical of me to suggest otherwise. *grin* I just can't write with that interpretation held in my mind.
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I think I mentioned it somewhere else, but since the Narnian world is not our world, the incarnation and the passion would be different: that's what Lewis is saying. It's not a one-to-one correlation because there worlds don't correlate one-to-one. And, as I mentioned, Lewis didn't start out intending to write Aslan as Christ: it just happened over time, so his characterization of Aslan in LWW was a little off.
And I think that lack of strict one-to-one correlation is what allows the books to be read as if there is no correlation at all. The parallels are there if you approach the books from a certain point of view, but they vanish or twist if your initial point of view is different.
I do wonder, actually, if the 'variant' characterization of Aslan in LWW might be one reason Lewis eventually said the books should be read in internal chronological order. Because if your first impression of Aslan is from LWW, you're much more likely to miss the Christian underpinnings than if you first meet him creating a world and a garden that has a Tree of Life. *grin* (I still think publication order is best, regardless of what that does to people's view of the religious subtext in the series, because LWW stands alone much better than MN, and is much more likely to lure people into reading further.)
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If I were to write in the Northern Lights fandom (and I don't, I petered out after the first book), I would have to take Pullman's consideration when creating that world in mind when writing in it. I couldn't have the faux!Catholic church represent anything other than what Pullman sees as a corrupt church in our own world, despite the fact that I disagree with him vastly. But to do otherwise would be un-canon. I could create a splinter group within the church which worked for good, but I could not change the foundation of it.
I don't blame you for petering out; the first book is by far the most boring of the three. And while Pullman is in some ways more technically skilled than Lewis (there are fewer holes in his world-building and his characters are more rounded), he's much less successful at subordinating his ideology to his story. I can read Narnia as pagan if I want too; Lewis left that space for interpretation in his books. I cannot read His Dark Materials as anything other than an attack on organized religion in general and the Catholic church in particular. And that annoys me, because while I am not Christian, I am religious and an active member of my local Unitarian Universalist congregation, and I dislike it when people focus only on the failings and flaws of organized religion and disregard all its virtues and benefits.
(I do love the ending, though, because Pullman doesn't cheat. He obeys the rules he set up at the beginning, and the resulting bittersweet ache is more attractive to me than any loophole-produced happy ending could be.)
Re: on theology, ethics, and authorial intent, part 3
Date: 2009-05-12 04:54 am (UTC)I guess it boils down to the fact that an Aslan written in fanfic should, in theory, be written as a character with attributes almost identical to Christ's, but that you, as an author, don't have to write Aslan with Christ in mind, just the attributes. That makes sense.
And I think that lack of strict one-to-one correlation is what allows the books to be read as if there is no correlation at all. The parallels are there if you approach the books from a certain point of view, but they vanish or twist if your initial point of view is different.
Valid point, and I think Lewis would agree. Tolkien would certainly agree, as he was none too fond of strict allegory.
I do wonder, actually, if the 'variant' characterization of Aslan in LWW might be one reason Lewis eventually said the books should be read in internal chronological order. Because if your first impression of Aslan is from LWW, you're much more likely to miss the Christian underpinnings than if you first meet him creating a world and a garden that has a Tree of Life. *grin* (I still think publication order is best, regardless of what that does to people's view of the religious subtext in the series, because LWW stands alone much better than MN, and is much more likely to lure people into reading further.)
Though I usually cringe at any mention of reading the series in chronological order first (I'm a member of the 2456317 club) you may have a point. I'm also under the impression that Lewis intended to go back and rewrite the earlier books with the later books in mind, but died before he could, which might have led to a different characterization of Aslan in LWW.
And while Pullman is in some ways more technically skilled than Lewis (there are fewer holes in his world-building and his characters are more rounded), he's much less successful at subordinating his ideology to his story.
That's what I understand, from what I've heard. It sounds like he just ran off the road with it at the end. And I truly dislike it when people have such a narrow focus of institutions and history. Yes, the church did bad things. Guess what, it's made of people and people do bad things. As my pastor says, a church is a hospital for the sick, not a museum of saints. But the church has also done a whole lot of good over the years, too.