This is a series of Novels and then there are Movies based on those novels.
C S Lewis is the writer of the Narnia series of novels. he was a convert Christian and he used these novels to portray the christian parallels in a sort of a fairy tale for children. This is no conspiracy theory and I am only copying exactly from Wiki Pedia.
The Point I want to make is that what is running on the screens even in the fairy tale movies and cartoons for children has a lot more to it.
We must be able to understand and only then there can be any meaningful respose.I am copying one para out of the Wiki pedia page on "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C S Lewis. This is as follows:
"Christian parallels
Specific Christian parallels may be found in the entries for individual books and
characters.
C.S. Lewis was an adult convert to Christianity and had previously authored some
works on Christian apologetics and fiction with Christian themes. However, he
did not originally set out to incorporate Christian theological conceptsinto his
Narnia stories; it is something that occurred as he wrote them. As he wrote in
Of Other Worlds:
Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say
something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an
instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what
age group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and
hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t
write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a
queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian
about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.
Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory and the author of The Allegory of
Love, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the
Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This indicates Lewis' view of Narnia
as a fictional parallel universe. As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs Hook in
December 1958:
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair
[a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an
allegorical figure. In reality, however, he is an invention giving an imaginary
answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a
world like Narnia, and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that
world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all.
Although Lewis did not consider them allegorical, and did not set out to
incorporate Christian themes in Wardrobe, he was not hesitant to point them out
after the fact. In one of his last letters, written in March 1961, Lewis writes:
Since Narnia is a world of Talking Beasts, I thought He [Christ] would become a
Talking Beast there, as He became a man here. I pictured Him becoming a lion
there because (a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; (b) Christ is
called "The Lion of Judah" in the Bible; (c) I'd been having strange dreams
about lions when I began writing the work. The whole series works out like this.
The Magician's Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia.
The Lion etc the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Prince Caspian restoration of the true religion after corruption.
The Horse and His Boy the calling and conversion of a heathen.
The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" the spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep).
The Silver Chair the continuing war with the powers of darkness
The Last Battle the coming of the Antichrist (the Ape), the end of the world and
the Last Judgement.
With the release of the 2005 film there was renewed interest in the Christian
parallels found in the books. Some find them distasteful, while noting that they
are easy to miss if you are not familiar with Christianity. Alan Jacobs,
author of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, implies that
through these Christian aspects, Lewis becomes "a pawn in America's culture
wars". Some Christians see the Chronicles as excellent tools for Christian
evangelism.
No comments:
Post a Comment