At the end of chapter 12 in "Suprised by Joy", Lewis talks about his involvement in World War I. He describes the actual war quite fleetingly, and follows his descriptions with phrases like, "all this shows rarely and faintly in memory" or "the war itself has been so often described by those who saw more of it than I that I shall here say little about it." This draws a parallel of sorts to things he wrote in the Narnia books about how the children react to battle. When confronted with battle in the Narnia books we don't get detailed descriptions of the battle, instead we get brief, almost abstract comments on how the battles are won. Take Eustace ("The Last Battle") or Peter (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) for instance. In battles with the Calormen and the Wolf respectively, both are not described in war time lingo with a slash here and a block there and then a fatal blow. They are described with reference to the person in battle and what he feels. Peter is in a hairy mess with the wolf and comes out alive. Eustace was suprised when the Calormen lay dead at his feet. Is there something to be said about Lewis' reluctance to be in depth when talking about battle or war? Compare him to someone like Tolkien and consider how fleeting his descriptions of battle really are. Why is this?
posted by DCliff at 10:26 PM
4 Comments:
This has struck me as odd as well. The only thing I can really think of as an answer could be that battle is really hard to describe or explain to those who have never been in one and taking into account that Peter and Eustace are both boys, it could be that the action happened so quickly and the action they took was so instinctive due to self-preservation that they don't quite know what they did. They remember how they felt and can tell you what the result of their actions were, but to describe the fight is beyond their capabilities.
These are not grown men or elves or dwarves fighting like in Tolkien.
Another possibility could be that the first war has left a black mark on Lewis' life much like it did for many of his generation who fought in it. So by not writing too much about it or writing battle scenes into his books he is trying to distance himself from it. Not all writers found telling their war stories of the first war easy or thought lightly of letting them influence their work.
It could also be he didn't think the usual battle scenes you find in other books suitable for his stories and so instead focused on how the battles made the particpants feel.
Those are just a few of my attempts to help answer your question. I don't know if they help or not. I would love it if someone brought this topic up in class!
Last year in Western Civ.102 with Kugler we talked about how Lewis and Tolkien portrayed WWI differently. It's interesting to see how both of these men could write from such different perspectives. Lewis' wars in Narnia are quick and do not take up much of the story, whereas Tolkien's stories are very heavily war-oriented. Interesting topic, thanks for bringing it up!
I wonder if it could be that because the Narnia books were written for children, Lewis thought extensive battle sequences were unnecessary. Perhaps, then, he purposely edited the battle scenes simply as a way of keeping the books “clean” enough for young audiences (cf. Lewis’ comment in chapter fourteen of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" about how grownups would not let “you” read this book if the evil characters were described in great detail). Then again, if this is the case and Lewis really was “simply” watching his words, we might have his somewhat random comment in "The Last Battle" about cats making love* to consider!
In "Surprised By Joy," it may be that little description is given because little description is needed. He does not seem, really, to be giving a full autobiography, per se, so much as a taste of his spiritual history. True, more details would be nice . . . but, apparently, from Lewis’ perspective, seem to be unnecessary in this case. Just an idea . . .
As a random thought, the Great Battle scene of LWW is described in much the same way: fleeting, and leaving much to the imagination. In fact, it is not even told using the emotional responses of the characters, because it is told in retrospect after the battle had already taken place. I remember reading something about the recent film adaptation of LWW that discussed the difficulties of creating these scenes for the movie. The Great Battle scene is roughly 1-2 pages long in the book (depending on what edition you may have). The filmmakers pointed out that there are gaps in the telling of the battle, but, as a child, one can fill in these gaps through use of the imagination. This seems true from my own experience, as, quite frankly, I remember reading LWW many years ago and thinking this was some HUGE, epic battle . . . but, in reality, it was only 2 pages! I was a little bit shocked to come back to the book after an extended absence and realise Lewis’ brevity, since I had had it in my head that the battle was recorded in much greater detail.
*TLB, chapter ten
"Cats making love" doesn't mean "cats having sex". In Lewis's time, "making love" meant something more like "flirting". Cats who are courting on the roof make loud noises.
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