skygiants

I, unfortunately, was the Hindu child who had the Whole Thing About Aslan explained by bookish friend in the playground. I went to a nominally Christian school! Just passed me by.

My favourite thing about the books is the bit in Prince Caspian about how a thousand years have passed, and everything the kids knew has gone or mouldered or changed. It feels like a strangely adult theme but it's counterpoint to the bit in the previous where they return to England after, from their perspective, decades away. There's something really powerful about that idea, that nothing, not even magical adventures through the portal, lasts or goes unchanged. I don't know it fits into Lewis's cosmology, but I really like it. It also makes me think of the bit with Diggory as Narnia is created - where Aslan tells him, only you and I here know what grief is; in other words, only you and I know that nothing, not even this magical land we're creating today, will last forever.

Also enjoy that it is entirely unclear to me if Jadis and the Deplorable Word are a reference to the H-bomb. They should be. But Lewis was so wildly unworldly, who even knows.