Posted: 11/12/07

WARDROBES IN COLLISION:
THE DIVERGENT VISIONS OF C. S. LEWIS AND PHILIP PULLMAN By James S. C. Baehr and Ted Baehr  

EDITOR'S NOTE: On Dec. 7, 2007, "The Golden Compass" based on the book by the same name by atheist Philip Pullman will be released in theaters throughout the world.   This article was adapted from an article written for Dr. Ted Baehr and James Baehr's book on all things C.S. Lewis entitled, Narnia Beckons.         

''When you look at what C. S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, 'It's all in Plato' -- meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better.''

- Philip Pullman on C. S. Lewis, New York Times interview, Nov. 2000.

            The implicit and explicit spiritual messages of C. S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia have inspired the faith of children and adults the world over. Not all those who have been inspired by Lewis, however, share his faith. One man in particular who considers Lewis an influence has written a trilogy promoting the theological antithesis of Lewis' work. Philip Pullman may not have set out to write a popular series of children's fantasy stories that would undermine faith in Christianity and the Christian church, but his works certainly contain a directed and conscientious philosophy that strives against Lewis: "The story has been coming to me for a long time, the idea of a very big story that would be free from the constraints of superficial realism,'' he said. ''But when you tell a story, there's got to be a worldview that's consistent throughout, and this is mine."[i] Pullman's series, a trilogy entitled His Dark Materials, has certainly achieved bestseller status, and tremendous critical acclaim. His work both draws on numerous elements from Lewis' work, and aggressively attacks Lewis theology and Christianity.

Resonance

            Pullman weaves several noticeable elements from Lewis into his trilogy. Lewis begins his Narnia series with a little girl, Lucy, sneaking into a wardrobe to find another world. Pullman names his chief protagonist Lyra, and she too steps into a wardrobe at the beginning of his trilogy. As he notes, "She carefully stood up, feeling around for the clothes-hangers in order not to make a noise, and found that the wardrobe was bigger than she'd thought."[ii] She too begins to discover another world, as she overhears Lord Asriel revealing tremendous and terrifying scientific discoveries to a group of scholars. Shortly after, Pullman introduces us to a beautiful but dangerous woman who is stealing children away. Narnia readers remember that the White Witch (a similarly elegant but evil enchantress) first tempted Edmund with a plate full of Turkish Delight. In The Golden Compass, a hot chocolate concoction does just the trick: "As it happens," she tells them, "I've got more chocolatl than I can drink myself. Will you come and help me drink it?"[iii] Come they do, creating the challenge that engulfs the protagonists of the story for many pages to follow.

            Lucy and Lyra also share similar name meanings. Lucy comes from the Latin "lux," or light. Lyra holds an astronomical meaning: "the name of the constellation in the northern sky containing the star Vega."[iv] Both names sound similar and relate to light, but both also diverge in ways appropriate for each trilogy. The etymology of "lux" is one bound in spiritual language, from Plato's views of light and darkness to Christ's proclamation to be way, truth and light. It makes sense in the context of Lewis philosophical aims. Lyra's name origin is astronomical, and appropriate for a novel about that which roots its philosophical challenges in the scientific: multiverse theory and "elementary particles." The etymological roots of the name lie in pre-Christian paganism, just as Pullman presents a view primarily post-Christian. Lyra sounds a bit like "liar" as well, correlating her character with the idea of deception, and certainly Pullman differentiates his protagonists by often making their actions ignoble. Many of the heroes in his story prove willing to lie to accomplish their objectives, in stark contrast to Lewis's heroes.

            Pullman's descriptions of character also resonate with Lewis. Pullman depicts Lord Asriel as a daunting and dangerous, if essentially good, character. His "was a face to be dominated by, or to fight; never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it."[v] These descriptions, of a wild and bestial heroism, correspond to Mr. Beaver's depiction of Lewis' Aslan Christ figure: "'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver, 'don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'"[vi] Certainly, more separates Aslan and Asrial's fundamental characters, but their opening descriptions correspond in intriguing ways.

            Lewis and Pullman's strongly share something else: an overriding sense of justice. In his pinnacle essay "On Fairy Stories," J.R.R. Tolkien shares a quote from G. K. Chesterton that helps explain the essence of children's stories. "For children are innocent and love justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy."[vii] Lewis encases his philosophy of story justice in the mouth of Digory Kirke as he chastises his corrupt Uncle Andrew:

'I didn't believe in Magic till today. I see now it's real. Well, if it is, I suppose all the old fairy tales are more or less true. And you're simply a wicked, cruel magician like the ones in the stories. Well, I've never read a story in which people of that sort weren't paid out in the end, and I bet you will be. And serve you right.'

Of all the things Digory had said this was the first that really went home. Uncle Andrew started and there came over his face a look of such horror that, beast though he was, you could almost feel sorry for him.[viii]

Of course, Digory proves absolutely correct in his analysis, and Lewis herein reminds us that his fantastical realms operate within the mechanisms of justice.

            Pullman also builds his creative world on an essential demand for justice. Throughout his trilogy, the characters fight for a more just world as Pullman sees it, whether against a corrupt god or a corrupt church. One of his heroes, John Faa, gives a nearly Old Testament view of the restoration of right as his troops prepare to save the children from torture at the hands of the General Oblation Board:

When the time comes to punish, we shall strike such a blow as'll make their hearts faint and fearful. We shall strike all the strength out of 'em. We shall leave them ruined and waste, broken and shattered, torn in a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds… the time will come under judgment. [ix]

Of course, the audience cheers Faa's demand for justice, and rests their hopes in his ability to claim it. Near the end of his trilogy, Pullman again dwells on justice and a demand for morality, as the angel Xaphania tells Lyra and Will how they can leave one window open:

And if you help everyone else in your worlds to do that, by helping them to learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly, and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious… Then they will renew enough to replace what is lost through one window.[x]

Though they differ greatly on their view of justice or the intellectual basis for that value, Lewis and Pullman find common ground in their demands for justice.

            Lewis and Pullman also set their works in an epic world, which often proves important to the fantasy genre. All of the universe hangs in the balance in both works. The Master tells Lyra before she leaves his keeping that "the powers of this world are very strong. Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current. Go well, Lyra." Similarly, whole worlds hang in the balance in the Narnia series, particularly in The Last Battle when it appears dark forces have won, throwing that entire world into despair and chaos. Both Pullman's trilogy and Lewis' series rely on prophesy to draw readers into their epic nature. In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the Beavers share the prophesy of the four rulers of Cair Paravel to the children, while the witches guard the prophesy that explains Lyra's purpose in Pullman's work. These generic conventions prove critical for both fantasy authors.

Dissonance

            Philosophically and theologically, however, Pullman's universe stands at odds with the world of Lewis' imaginings. Pullman presents a radically different view of the church, the nature of God, the afterlife, and life's meaning and purpose.

            Pullman's vision of God contrasts starkly with Lewis'. In Lewis' world, God in his variegated forms (whether as Aslan or the Emperor-Over -Sea) proves a powerful and benevolent force. His Christological lion, Aslan, miraculously saves the children in each of their adventures as they approach their direst need. This God feels deeply the pain of a broken world. This Lion weeps when he hears of Digory's dying mother: "For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself."[xi] Later, Aslan saves Digory's mother. Lewis' God is one willing to sacrifice for the sake of others. He gives his life to save Edmund Pevensie, though the boy sought to betray his family and all of Narnia. He gives mysterious but vital guidance to the children who seek to save Prince Rilian in The Silver Chair. In the very end (or the very beginning, as Lewis put it), he ushers them into the glory of a new and restored kingdom, where they will all eternally dwell.

            Pullman represents god as a decrepit and perverse angel. In Pullman's saga, god did not create the world, merely claimed illegitimate power over it. Balthamos tells Will as much at the beginning of The Amber Spyglass:

"The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty – those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves – the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself."[xii]

This Authority has dark intentions for the world, sending the dead to "a prison camp" and maintaining his power through the use of corrupt fellow angels. When the children ultimately reach him in the end, they find he is not the danger they supposed, perhaps just a puppet ruler upheld by his Regent, Metatron: "Demented and powerless, the aged being could only weep and mumble in fear and pain and misery, and he shrank away from what seemed like another threat."[xiii] When Will releases him from his "crystal cell," the being merely evaporates. This vision of god proves so starkly different than Lewis view, or the Christian view, that Christian leaders like Archbishop Rowan Williams have argued the series is not actually an attack on Christianity. These accommodating views seem impossible to reconcile with Pullman's explicit challenges to the Christian church.

            Lewis and Pullman maintain entirely different views of the Christian church. In Lewis' creative universe, the forces of Christendom lie often under siege. In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, all of Narnia has fallen under the dark enchantments of the White Witch. Those true to the faith of Aslan, like the Beavers, are reduced to running and hiding, while her spies listen everywhere.[xiv] Even after Aslan's victory, the faithful repeatedly fall under persecution. In Prince Caspian, the story starts with the true knowledge of the past nearly eradicated, saved only by the underground efforts of Caspian's tutors. In fact, in a letter Lewis wrote to Anne Jenkins on 5 March 1961, he explained that Caspian was about "restoration of the true religion after a corruption."[xv] In The Last Battle, the believers are brutally executed or brutalized by the enemies of Aslan. This world rejects them, though they ultimately take their place in the restored kingdom to come.

            In Pullman's view, the church appears a brutal force desperate on controlling all of human thought and conduct and willing to perform any means to achieve those ends. Cutting and killing children are merely part of what's necessary for them to maintain control, Mrs. Coulter notes in The Amber Spyglass as she fears for Lyra: "Killing is not difficult for them; Calvin himself ordered the deaths of children;  they'd kill her with pomp and ceremony and prayers and lamentations and psalms and hymns, but they would kill her." Dr. Malone used to be a nun until she realized that, "there wasn't any God at all and… the Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all."[xvi] Malone leaves the church because she feels it keeps her from finding love and thinking freely. "I'd made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else."[xvii] Later, she says, "I knew what I should think: it was whatever the Church taught me to think… So I never had to think about [science] for myself."[xviii] Of course, Lewis would have found this loveless, intellectually stagnant view of Christianity entirely alien. One of the churches greatest deceptions, Pullman tells us, though, is in its invocation of the afterlife.

            Pullman and Lewis' view of the afterlife prove diametrically opposed. Pullman sees the afterlife as a grey and ghostly pallor of our present world. At one point, he says the Authority set it up as a "prison camp" and that "the Authority will be powerless after" the world of the dead has been broken.[xix] Will and Lyra set out to open the world of the dead up, to free its inhabitants into the outer world, where their ghosts and consciousness will "drift apart" and become "part of everything alive again."[xx] The afterlife created by the Authority proves a dank and dark hell, but Pullman does not offer an alternative heaven. His vision proves more pantheistic: those who want to leave the darkness can lose their consciousness and become part of the nebulous elementary particles at work in the world. Pullman considered Lewis' Christian view of the afterlife as a "celebration of death." Alternatively, the death Pullman presents as so cold and comfortless on the one hand, and so nebulous on the other, purposefully seeks to emphasize the importance of temporal human life. He told The New York Times as much: ''I wanted to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife."[xxi] One of his characters in the land of the dead mentions the wastefulness of the religious pursuit, in noting the importance of the present life: "they said that Heaven was a place of joy and glory and we would spend eternity in the company of saints and angels praising the almighty, in a state of bliss… And that's what led some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary prayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew."[xxii] If this brief human span is all the vital existence we have we better make the most of it, Pullman argues, and self-denying religious pursuits do not hold the answer.

            Lewis sees the afterlife in Christian terms, and therefore as a place for ultimate "joy and glory" as well as judgment and justice. Some of the most wistful and poignant passages in The Chronicles come when the children finally reach Aslan's country. In this afterlife, ancient friends are reunited. In this world, the old become revitalized. Here, the children can run and not grow weary and swim and not grow faint. Both the time in this new realm, and the space, proves eternal: worlds upon worlds ring this kingdom for the amazed group to explore. This, though, is a place for those who choose it: Lewis' afterlife is also dark and musty and unpleasant for those who refuse to accept the copious bounty offered. The faithless dwarves of The Last Battle prove unable to enter this kingdom. Despite their efforts to bring the dwarves in, Aslan explains their predicament: "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out."[xxiii] Not even all who once believed make it into this land: we learn that Susan has accepted materialism and rejected Narnia. Some who thought they didn't believe really did: Aslan welcomes the Calormene Emeth into this new world. Lewis' depiction of the afterlife could not be much more different than Pullman's.

            Pullman and Lewis also view life's meaning and purpose in divergent ways. Within the Christian framework, Lewis' sees life as ever striving towards God and a greater understanding and submission to revealed truth: to move "further up and further in," ever increasing in knowledge, faith and contentment. Sometimes the children are unclear as to why they must obey Aslan's cryptic commands, like Jill Pole at the beginning of The Silver Chair. He rewards their trust, however, while their mistrust always proves misplaced. Most of all, they must move towards God in the "shadowlands" just as they eternally move towards Him in the afterlife.

            Pullman's view of life involves the freedom of self-determination, the primacy of open-mindedness, and the acceptance of bodily pleasure. Xaphania's aforementioned exhortations to the children outline part of that morality. Pullman also encourages bodily pleasure just as he attacks the self-denial he sees in Christianity. While Plato (and Lewis subsequently) viewed the tripartite human nature as properly ruled by the spiritual, Pullman sees the body as preeminent. Dr. Malone tells Will as much: "'the Catholic Church that I used to belong to wouldn't use the word daemon, but St. Paul talks about spirit and soul and body. So the idea of three parts in human nature isn't so strange.' 'But the best part is the body,' Will said."[xxiv] Late in the story, before parting, the children pleasure each other bodily, and experience true joy. Another value vital to Pullman seems his emphasis on free will. Will proclaims something of a life manifesto at the end of the trilogy, emphasizing his limitless decision-making ability:

"Don't tell me. I shall decide what to do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it'll feel as if I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else."

"Then you have already taken the first steps towards wisdom," said Xaphania.[xxv]

Pullman seems to emphasize that freedom over all, and subsequently, does not really offer a fully developed, catechistic framework. His trilogy seeks more to attack organized Christianity than to build up anything in its place. Still, themes of self-determination, bodily pleasure, and open-mindedness contrast with the themes of divine submission and revealed truth that dominate Lewis' work.

The power of ideas

            The Chronicles of Narnia and His Dark Materials trilogy are two well-crafted and compelling children's stories that wade deeply in waters philosophical. While they jointly rely on similar forms for their respective fantasies, they dramatically diverge in worldview. Both address fundamental questions in a spiritual worldview, though Lewis accepts the mantle of a religious tradition while Pullman seeks to emphasize a nebulous, personal spirituality with no philosophical roots or ultimate meaning. While Lewis' story resonates most strongly when he encapsulates his fundamental philosophy in his work, Pullman's becomes weakest when he attempts the same, weighed down by an ultimately incoherent and hopeless creed. If history to date is any guide, Lewis's work will continue to be read and loved for decades. If the power of their driving ideas proves any predictor of longevity, Pullman's work will most likely be forgotten.

 Note:  To learn the truth about the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, please read Dr. Ted Baehr's book NARNIA BECKONS available at www.movieguide.org or call 1-800-577-6684. Also, to help you can select the good and reject the bad at the box office and protect your children and grandchildren from wicked content, please visit www.movieguide.org or call 1-800-577-6684. Dr. Baehr is founder and publisher and Dr. Snyder is editor of Movieguide®:  A Biblical Family Guide to Movies, Entertainment and Culture.

By Ted Baehr Click here for bio and archived articles