The entire series exists in a state of tension between the story as a story, and the story as a Christian allegory, and in The Last Battle in particular, the allegorical aspects clearly dominate.
In Lewis' Narnian version of Christian theology, it is possible and even acceptable to worship Christ Aslan without knowing it, but what is not acceptable to have known Christ Aslan and have chosen to value something else more.
Lewis considers this a real and present danger for a Christian, and so he chooses to dramatize it in this book, as a rather severe warning to the reader. The fact that Susan's decision is seemingly both inconsequential and understandable is a part of the warning. Whether this is good theology, good storytelling, or a good combination of the two, is a matter of considerable debate, but Lewis' motivations seem relatively clear.
The series is intended to do real evangelical work, as well as entertain and enthrall, and if one goal has to be sacrificed to the other, it is never in doubt which one Lewis will pick. If you consider the characters as free agents, Susan chose to throw it away. Why should that choice not be honored? If you consider the literary perspective of writing the Last Battle and you want the symbolic number 7, one has to be excluded and there aren't too many options that don't break things.
A few days later, an official from London calls upon Susan, and returns to her the effects of her siblings found in the train wreck, including a box with some rings in it. She picks up a green ring, and then a yellow one, and screams and screams. When she's done screaming, pick a pool, any pool. The parallel time rules being what they are, this adventure can last tens of thousands of years.
CS Lewis was trying to draw a Christian analogy here a common theme in Narnia. In this case, he seems to be touching on a thorny issue: Christians losing their salvation. I'll try to stay as on-topic for SF as I can for this but it does require some knowledge about Christianity in general. Jesus once gave an analogy of a man sowing seed. Based on what little we know of Susan's falling away, it seems that is the case here.
What I've seen Susan as, in the end, is simply left out of the urgency to return to Narnia. I'm going to call the group of people killed in the railway accident the Narnia Club for simplicity.
Consider how we got here. The reasons why seem simple enough. Susan clearly went on with her schooling and likely fell in with the popular crowd. How do you explain to them that there's a real world with talking animals? Oh, and she doesn't know how to go back there either to prove what she's saying is true.
I mean, if I told you Middle Earth was a real place I had personally been to, you would demand proof and, if I couldn't produce it, you would think me crazy.
Welcome to the world of faith. It's not easy to believe in things that cannot be empirically proven as real. It's not surprising that Susan got caught up and abandoned her faith in a bid to remain popular. Given Lewis' letter, I don't think he meant to leave her there. But, as he said, her path would have been longer and far more adult. Lewis himself, sadly, just ran out of time to tell it himself. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.
Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why was Susan treated so unkindly? Ask Question. Asked 5 years ago. Active 11 months ago. Viewed 55k times. Warning: Narnia spoilers ahead! And also much, much text. She is not mentioned again at all. That leaves Susan. Improve this question. Community Bot 1. When I re-read The Last Battle as a teenager, I thought that if Lewis had any "ulterior" motive in what he said about Susan, it was more of a comment on the emerging concept of "the teenager" with their own loud, raucous music and fashions who wouldn't tow the traditional line of being children until they left school and then being adults, rather than specifically because Susan was female.
If the Pevensies had been Peter, Simon, Edmund and Lucy, for instance, then "Simon" could have been "more interested in girls and going to the cinema and motorcycles and guitars than Narnia".
For further reading, Fred Clark wrote about this issue, and also went through the trouble of linking to a bunch of other's opinions and writings on the matter in his post, Redeeming Susan Pevensie. Some interesting but very lengthy comments here; I've archived them in chat.
That is, the subject has to get all his toes back behind a line, not drag a line along after him. Susan and Lucy were queens and they ruled well and proudly. Honored their Lord and their land, rang the bells long and loudly; they never once asked to go back to their lives, to be children and chattel and mothers and wives, but the land cast them out in a lesson that only one learned, and one queen said "I am not a toy!
Show 1 more comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Rogue Jedi Rogue Jedi I still wonder why her turning into that silly, conceited woman happened so entirely off-screen when it had such a huge impact on one of the main characters in the series… but I rather get the feeling from his reply here that he was perhaps a bit tired of Susan and just couldn't really be bothered devoting more time to her.
With respect to that first letter, did you find the original? Lucy gets designated as perpetually faithful from the start, the one that always believes with the faith of a child regardless of evidence see Prince Caspian.
Edmund was the redeemed traitor, so he can't go back without hurting characterization. Peter was the High King, so losing his presence in the story would hurt the story. But Susan from the start was shown as hesitant, though eventually willing, to believe. So of all the characters, she made the most sense to use as the — Turambar.
It's just that Lewis's Narnia stories ended in the middle of Susan's story. Edit: Whoops, didn't realize that other comments and answers covered this. I'll leave it, if only so other readers know to look further for more detail. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy has been found. Show 5 more comments. Let's look at the lead characters from the series: Peter - the natural leader of the group.
It would have felt out of character for him to fall. Eustace - he was fundamentally changed by his time in Narnia. It would have been silly for him to fall.
Digory - he was portrayed as wise and still a believer in his old age. He couldn't really fall. Polly and Jill - were both only covered in one book. To Queen Susan the Gentle, Susan the sure-sighted archeress? Surely you remember her. She is the second-eldest of the Pevensie children, the pretty one in the family, dark-haired, tender-hearted, and occasionally cautious to the point of being a bit of a wet blanket.
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe , she is given the representative gifts of a bow, arrows, and a magic horn that summons help wherever you might be. These gifts signify her strength, femininity, and prudence. In his reading, Independent Modern Woman gets a raw deal from a British weirdo with major lady issues. But all we are told in The Last Battle is this: Susan has turned her back on Narnia in favor of nylons, lipstick, and party invitations.
More disconcerting is her quietly alarming capacity for self-deception: We are told that she also dismisses her fifteen-odd years of memories as Queen in Narnia as the product of childish fantasy. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. Her fate is not some sexist special treatment. Wet-blanket Susan has her grouchy moments, and Peter has a fair number of blind-spots.
Even little Lucy, jealous of her older, more beautiful sister, is not beyond a touch of vanity in the Dawn Treader. Fallen human nature has its consequences, as Aslan reminds us with an occasional low growl. At the end of the Dawn Treader , Aslan tells the departing Lucy and Edmund that their time in Narnia was given to them so that they might better know Christ in their own world.
The same is true of their older siblings, and all the other human friends of Narnia. High King Peter and his royal siblings scarcely had time to grow up into saints before their lives were cut short. One of these Christian themes is the idea that many adults did have faith as children and merely let themselves grow out of it as they became older, choosing instead to follow the ways of the world and think too logically.
In the Prince Caspian novel, Peter and Susan are told they will not return to Narnia simply because they are "getting too old. As one who has lost her belief in Narnia, Susan is the only one of her siblings who never truly return. Peter finally does go back to Narnia at the end of The Last Battle and, upon arriving, asks how it was possible after being told he would never return.
Though Peter and Susan are clearly told in both the books and films that they will not return to Narnia after their second adventure, the films have left the door open just far enough to conceivably bring Peter and Susan back for either a fourth Chronicles of Narnia film or a continuation in the form of a Netflix Narnia series. This would be a wild deviation from C.
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