"death is better than life"
And while I’m meditating on atheists, here’s a puzzle. As is widely known, the enormously gifted fantasist Philip Pullman has a particular loathing for C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, calling them “propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology.” The messages of Lewis’s books are: “Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-coloured people are better than dark-coloured people; and so on. There is no shortage of such nauseating drivel in Narnia, if you can face it.”
Some of these charges have more substance than others — in the fiction of Lewis and Tolkien alike it’s rarely if ever good to be “swarthy” — but it’s the charge of being on the side of death against life that puzzles me. For I can't think of another novelist who has Pullman’s enthusiasm for dying. For instance, Yambe-Akka is the goddess of death among witches in these books, and we are told that she was “merry and lighthearted and her visits were gifts of joy.” (Here’s where he gets the name.) Pullman imagines a world of the dead, a vast hopeless prison of souls from which his heroine Lyra will rescue people by annihilating them — and indeed, one can easily see how annihilation would be preferable to the almost-nonexistence of these poor souls, so like the “shades” Odysseus visits in the twelfth book of the Odyssey.
But it’s one thing to say that annihilation is less bad than eternal emptiness, another thing altogether to positively cheerlead for it. As I have written elsewhere, Pullman portrays his characters’ obliteration as a kind of joyous merging with the Cosmos. He even says of one character that the “atoms of his beloved” will be waiting for him when he disintegrates — which would be true except that his beloved has ceased to exist, has been scattered into atoms herself, and the same is about to be true for him. Atom are just atoms — whether they once belonged to good people, bad people, stag beetles, or lawn chairs — and once we’re vaporized, we quite obviously no longer have an identity to be joined with any other identity.
Similarly, Pullman writes misty-eyed descriptions of children expiring in a “vivid little burst of happiness [like] the bubbles in a glass of champagne” — as though the most wonderful thing that could possibly happen to someone is to be annihilated. In general Pullman makes death sound like a dream come true. Okay, well, fine — whatever gets you through the night. But if that’s your view, then isn't there a wee irony in your castigating someone else for thinking that “death is better than life”?
I don’t know Narnia or anything by Pullman, so I have no opinion about his opinion of Narnia or of his books.
I do think there is a gentler reading of this atoms business, if one cares to have it. Lawn chairs are lovely; stag beetles too.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 1, 11:30 PM · #
I read The Golden Compass as a satire on religion rather than as a celebration of Pullman’s beliefs.
— Kevin · Apr 1, 11:53 PM · #
Light-colored people are better, according to Pullman? So the WHITE Witch was given a better portrayal than Emeth? Someone wasn’t reading very closely.
— Stuart Buck · Apr 2, 02:32 AM · #
And “boys are better than girls”? What a perceptive guy Pullman is; he’s finally explained why LWW wants us to admire Edmund over Lucy.
— Stuart Buck · Apr 2, 02:36 AM · #
Just turned off the Captcha to see if the comment spammers are still afoot. Carry on, gentlemen.
— Matt Frost · Apr 2, 03:00 AM · #
I once pinkslipped god.
Sir Richard is just trying a hostile takeover.
— matoko_chan · Apr 2, 02:22 PM · #
I enjoyed Pullman’s work up to the point where it turned out the whole thing was just one big attack on the Catholic Church. He’s a marvelous writer and his stories – especially the first – are some of the best imaginative writing I’ve read in a while. But I’ll take Tolkien or Lewis over Pullman any day.
— E.D. Kain · Apr 2, 02:38 PM · #
From time to time, I call myself a “Christian Nihilist”. Pullman’s type of weak-kneed romantic polemic is the reason why.
It seems to me that Pulman’s style of celebrating death is simply a sign of fond cowardice. Give me an honest nihilist like H.P. Lovecraft or Thomas Ligotti any day, those who are willing to honestly say “death is better than life” because of their intense loathing for the latter. Either that, or give me an honest romantic like Lewis, Chesterton, or Tolkien who actually has a reasonable justification for his optimism.
Those are your options. But none of this stupid, cowardly portrayal of annihilation as immortality. Annihilation is annihilation. Have the courage of your convictions.
— Ethan C. · Apr 3, 03:25 AM · #
His Dark Materials SPOILER below
Can anybody explain why and how the Lyra/Will kiss causes dust to stop flowing out of the universe? The problem I have with Pullman’s story is that it doesn’t get rid of theology (which would be an interesting direction for him to have taken his story); it just replaces the evil comic book version of Christian theology with a vague dust-based theology.
— Led · Apr 5, 01:01 AM · #
Led, sorry, I can’t help. It makes no sense to me either.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 5, 06:23 PM · #
Pullman would argue that Lewis celebrates death because the ending of the Narnia series (“The Final Battle”) has a rapture-esque ending where everyone enters into a sort of “Narnia Heaven” where people are shown to live better lives then what the people were living beforehand. The afterlife and the death that gets you there is better then real life. (It also is worth noting that one of the children who “grows up” is not invited to join this world.)
Since Pullman is an atheist, he does not believe there is an afterlife. However, his fantasy novel is set in a universe where God, Angels, and other forces exist. Therefore, there is some equivalent of an afterlife for the characters of his fantasy construct. However, it is shown not to be a world worth living in because with out their bodies, peoples souls just wander and so nothing. The point that Pullman wants to make, is that what matters is not what happens after you die, but your life you lead before you die. The criticism is on people who spend an entire life worshiping, and no time living. It is not surprising that when Lyra leads people out of the land of the dead, the ones who stay behind are the religious ones who believe that if this was a world made by god, that is must be good and thus they must stay in it.
Pullman does not celebrate death, rather he shows how it is an inescapable process, and that while there is no chance true afterlife, there is a chance to achieve a sense of completeness. In addition, the Lyra makes an agreement with the harpies who guard the land of the dead that the only souls who should be allowed to have this final release, should be the souls that led a full and rich life and have stories to tell, not the souls that spent their entire life just waiting for a chance to die and get into heaven.
Pullman objects to those who see Christianity and religion’s main message being that the world we live in is a “waiting room” and that the real eternity that comes after we die is more worth it. He wants to make a case for the life you lead in this moment to be valuable.
— Noha · Apr 6, 03:10 AM · #
Noha: If that’s the case, then Pullman completely missed a major theme in CSL’s books: The people who are taken into ‘Narnia-heaven’ are the very same ones who lead a life of virtue and self-sacrifice in order to save Narnia. I’m not too familiar with Pullman’s work so I can’t honestly judge the accuracy of your summation, but to me his is a superficial and incredibly facile reading of Lewis.
— Colm · Apr 6, 03:46 AM · #
Colm: Pullman is an atheist and this mindset is how he draws out his ideas. For him, it does not matter that the people who are resurrected at the end of The Last Battle led “a life of virtue and self-sacrifice” (he would probably take issues with the specific ways in which the those virtues are presented according to christian ethics) what matters for him, is that life in the real world matters more then life in an after-world. It is not an uncommon atheist idea that a flaw in religion is that it puts too much stake in the rewards that come after death as opposed to the life itself. Furthermore, if you already have issues with elements of Christian ethics (and I suspect he does) then you would have issue with the idea of being rewarded for those sorts of ethics.
In his own words, “I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable and this world is an extraordinarily beautiful place. We should do what we can to increase the amount of wisdom in the world”. He sees Organized Religion as working against that.
— Noha · Apr 6, 08:07 AM · #
Noha:
“The point that Pullman wants to make, is that what matters is not what happens after you die, but your life you lead before you die.”
Then why the business about “the atoms of one’s beloved” awaiting one beyond dissolution? Why the “vivid little burst of happiness [like] the bubbles in a glass of champagne”? Why Yambe-Akka’s visits as the occasion of “gifts of joy”? Why not a story that celebrates life without romanticizing death?
— SDG · Apr 6, 01:51 PM · #
(It also is worth noting that one of the children who “grows up” is not invited to join this world.)
Not true, actually.
— Alan Jacobs · Apr 6, 09:59 PM · #
Alan: I thought Susan wasn’t invited? She’s missing at the end, anyway. I remember being quite horrified about this as a child.
Led: I don’t recall every last detail of the Pullman series, as the mythology of that world was rather complex, but so far as I can remember — the Magisterium (ie, Catholic Church) saw dust as a bad thing: I read it to be an equivalent of knowledge (carnal knowledge, for instance), as Eve got through the apple. This is why they were chopping daemons away from children, because it prevented dust from ever settling on them. They remained “innocent” forever (also, zombie-like, which was unfortunate).
Will and Lyra represent the anti-Adam and Eve. Thus, when they kiss (and presumably come to “know” each other Biblically), it’s the opposite of the Fall of mankind; they save the world through their natural loss of innocence, which in Pullman’s view is natural and necessary and good.
I think.
— midge · Apr 7, 03:09 PM · #
Midge:
“I thought Susan wasn’t invited? She’s missing at the end, anyway. I remember being quite horrified about this as a child.”
Susan doesn’t arrive in the New Narnia with the other children, but then, Susan hasn’t died as the others have. She’s still alive on Earth.
We are also told that Susan is “no longer a friend of Narnia,” but this is hopefully a temporary phase of adolescence. Susan’s problem is exactly the same as 10-year-old Mark Studdock’s in That Hideous Strength, spurning the pulp fantasies he once enjoyed in an effort to appear grown-up and sophisticated. It’s not that Susan and Mark grew up, but that they grew up in the wrong way. Susan herself dismissed her own Narnian adventures as “silly games” they played as children, and that is Lewis’s problem with Susan (and Mark) — not that she does care about “nylons and lipstick and invitations,” but that she is “interested in nothing nowadays except“ such things.
The problem isn’t “growing up.” Lucy says, “I wish she would grow up.” Contempt for childlike things is the mark of adolescence, not adulthood.
Notice what Lewis says in the dedication of LW&W: The real Lucy (Barfield) has gotten “too old” for fairy stories … but a time will come when she is older still and can enjoy them again, just as the post-conversion Mark Studdock learns to enjoy the pulp fantasies of his youth he had once spurned. There’s no reason not to hope that such an experience may await Susan, in the fullness of time.
— SDG · Apr 7, 05:50 PM · #
SDG: Thanks for the clarification. I haven’t read the book in years, but assumed that Susan died along with the others in the train crash.
Hope for her yet!
— midge · Apr 7, 07:45 PM · #
“Hope for her yet!”
Yep. In fact, Lewis himself explicitly said so, in a letter, I think to a young fan. (If so, it’s probably in the Letters to Children collection.
— SDG · Apr 7, 08:38 PM · #
When I originally read the scene of the ghosts expiring (vivid little burst of happiness) I thought that Pullman had also inverted Peter Pan. We, the readers, cheering on the hero and heroine are metaphorically expected to clap so millions of Tinkerbells will die.
— John S. Bell · Apr 11, 02:07 PM · #
I’m glad to see Alan and SDG tackling the “Susan went to hell because she grew up” meme. It’s become an article of faith among the secular Lewis critics. I just read Laura Miller’s book on Narnia and while she is still a Narnia fan, she buys into every anti-Lewis criticism out there, but thinks he’s worth reading anyway.
Not that Lewis is without sin—he is misogynistic at times, though I think less than he is accused of being. He’s also guilty of some form of racism—the “swarthy is bad” theme is in there, though again, to be fair, Lewis is inconsistent on this. There are good Calormenes in the stories. I think if one is going to attack him on that, the attack should be that he’s bigoted against Middle Eastern culture, not that he’s a racist in a biological sense.
— Donald Johnson · Apr 12, 05:34 PM · #
Re: loving death, the first thing that came to mind is the last of the Screwtape Letters, where the demons are so put out that the man they were trying to corrupt died and saw everything as it is. Of course, Christians and Atheists have extremely divergent views on death, “whoever loses his life for me shall find it” and such.
— Matt Bruss · Apr 14, 05:52 PM · #