In The Chronicle of …

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Nelson defends The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe against attacks by award-winning writer and atheist Philip Pullman. Pullman pulls no punches in his disdain and revulsion of the story and its themes. Nelson, however, point by point, shows that these attacks are without merit in the areas of sexism, racism, violence, death and love. In more than one case, Nelson notes that the very thing that Pullman professes to dislike about Narnia is also featured in Pullman’s own children’s literature.

The most ironic portion:

One of the books in Pullman’s His Dark Materials series won the 2001 Whitbread Award both for best children’s book and for best book of any kind published in England the previous year — the only time the main prize has ever been awarded to a work for children. Pullman wrote the series, he says, because “I really wanted to do … Paradise Lost in 1,200 pages. … It’s the story of the Fall which is the story of how what some would call sin, but I would call consciousness, comes to us.” Over the course of three volumes, Pullman wanted to celebrate, as he thinks John Milton does, our first ancestors’ decision to rebel against God by eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge.

In Pullman’s mind, rebellion from a loving God is better than (or at least a better story than) redemption and acceptance of the gift of eternal life from that same loving God. Read the whole review for some more good irony and a good defense of Lewis’ story.

(Cross-posted at Stones Cry Out and Blogger News Network. Comments welcome.)

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!