Talk:The Magician's Nephew
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[edit] Aslan, the Creator-Christ
From the article, as it stands:
- Aslan acts in the role of the Creator. There is no reference to the distant "Emperor over Sea" who had been paralleled with God previously in the series. Presumably this was a deliberate simplification by Lewis to keep the complexity at an appropriate level.
Or possibly Lewis was being thoroughly orthodox about all this?
- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. John 1:1-3
- [Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. Col. 1:15-16
What I mean to say is Aslan acts in the role of Creator because orthodox Christians believe that God the Father created the universe by his Son. The "Emperor over the Sea" may well be parallelled with God the Father; but Aslan, parallelled with God the Son ought (by virtue of the analogy with Christian theology) to be the one by whom Narnia is created. Lewis did it because it's good theology, not because it's simpler this way.
Of course, all this is too abstruse for me to be able to work into a WikiArticle, but if someone else reads this and is able to, please have a crack. The worst that can happen is I come back and completely re-write it. : D Wooster 20:27, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
- I do agree. If I find a way to restate it right off, I'll try to write this into it. If not, then, I'll leave it for someone else to do. -- D. F. Schmidt (talk) 18:17, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
- My thanks to the IP-addressed editor who worked this into the article. I beefed up the Trinitarian aspects of the edit slightly (it never hurts) just to make it quite clear what Lewis up to. I also moved an ambiguous bracket to the correct position and removed the claim that Narnia was under British rule. I half-understand the motivation for that claim, but even in the books, the Crown doesn't recognise Narnia as one of its dominions. Rule by Brits is not the same as British rule. What else? Oh yeah, is it encyclopaedic to observe that similarities with Tolkien's creation myth will be because they both used the same source material for ideas? I'll bung it in; please remove if you think it's inappropriate. Wooster 16:21, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Aslan the Funny
I added a comment on "The First Joke," saying that it shows Christ's sense of humor. If someone minds, they can restate it, but it is important to me that it should at least be there in some form. As well, I don't have the book before me, so if I've misquoted, please correct me. -- D. F. Schmidt (talk) 18:34, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
- I love this bit. Yes, God has a sense of humor, and I know it from personal experience and the experience of others! :) I've adjusted the wording slightly to make it more accurate to the original; it's abbreviated (and should stay that way imo - it's not sufficiently vital to the section to justify verbose quoting) but accurate. Rosuav (talk) 16:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Social class
The present article states: "The reader is also left in no doubt about the precise social class of each of the English characters, with the implication that this matters to God; the cabby is of common origin and his wife is a washerwoman." This seems a decidedly eccentric reading. Social class was a hugely important reality of the era the story is set in, and was a pretty big fact of life in 1950s England when the book was published. But surely the calling of Frank the cabby to be king would indicate that it doesn't matter to God. Also, inheriting wealth as a form of happy ending was hardly invented by Lewis. Compare E. Nesbit, who was an influence on him. She used this sort of thing in her children's books despite the fact that she was a socialist!
A point that touches on class is that Lewis clearly favours the country over the town. You could make a case that the fact that Frank is really a countryman (and reverts to his real, good, country roots, leaving behind his nasty city coating) is something to do with class attitudes to the urban working class. Actually though I think it is probably mainly just Lewis's own prejudice about the country - in his writing the country is usually good and city bad. (His heaven is mountainous rather than a City.)
Suggestions?
- I agree with you whole-heartedly; the article clearly needs to be changed a bit. Also, this section implies that Lewis was guilty of a certain Anglocentrism, which I highly doubt. He was actually Irish and said some fairly chauvinistic things about the English. Joey1898 23:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Commentary
I restored the "Commentary" section as it needs to be reworked to an NPOV rather than just excised in toto. There is some useful material in there. Ellsworth 23:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] The Rings
This is very poor quality. I would edit it myself, but I haven't read the book in years, so I think someone more qualified should handle it.
- I've fixed the factual part of it. The book ought to have pride of place on my shelf, along with the rest of the series, but someone's gone and shifted it :( All the others are there, but not The Magician's Nephew. However, I know the rings are this way around (remember the mnemonic for the "homeward" (really "outward") rings - G for Green and R for Right, which are the first two letters of GReen). Rosuav (talk) 16:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Time setting
"The story begins in 1900 ..."; I've seen that date elswhere, but is there any text-evidence? This seems awfully late, since by Lion (1940?) Digory Kirke is a "very old man" (or seems so to the four children). All I can find to date the story is that "this happened when your grandfather was a child" and the reference to Sherlock Holmes and E. Nesbit's Bastable children, which I guess puts it in the 1880s or '90s. —wwoods 07:57, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Trivia
The trivia section says:
- Of the seven Narnia books, The Magician's Nephew is one of the only two that does not feature the Pevensie children (the other is The Silver Chair). The Silver Chair however does mention them.
- The Magician's Nephew is arguably the only book that spends a significant amount of time in our world.
- Only during The Magician's Nephew do adults travel between worlds.
Some thoughts:
- Nephew mentions Lucy, although not by name.
- "Arguably"? Well, I guess so—Lion also spends (an unclear amount of) time in our world.
- At the end of Caspian, a whole lot of adults travel between worlds.
Is any of this worth keeping? —wwoods 05:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
- Dunno, I couldn't figure a way to get it in the article body so I left it in. And you're right - Eustace does briefly mention his cousins = "the two Pevensie kids" to Jill at the beginning of the Silver Chair, so I deleted that bit. Ellsworth 03:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Jadis
The article says that she changes colour and shape. She undergoes a colour-change but se doesn't change shape. It also says that she becomes less beautiful. It never says that. Just because your skin turns white doesn't make you any less beautiful. Some people might say it makes you more beautiful.
[edit] Diggory's ill mother
I think mention should be made of the fact that Lewis lost his own mother to disease at the same age as Diggory; thus the scene in which Diggory is tempted to steal the apple to save his mother's life had tremendous resonance for Lewis; and is not just an additional episode in a story.
The idea that Jadis' life will be immortal but miserable because she stole the spell is repeated by J.K. Rowling in HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE, concerning Voldamort and unicorn blood. CharlesTheBold 04:48, 2 February 2007 (UTC) CharlesTheBold
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[edit] Citations needed
Much of the article, even the untagged portions, seem to contain a lot of original research. Accurate to be sure, but it'd be nice if someone familiar with the commentaries on Lewis' fiction could supply a few sources. --Tim4christ17 talk 01:46, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Plot Summary Length
There have been some back and forth edits edits pertaining to the length of the plot summary for the last few days, and as I'm about to revert to the shorter version, I wanted to explain why. Plot summaries are meant to summarize the plot. This is different from summarizing the book itself. Here's the relevent section from Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Style guidelines
- Plot summaries should be short and an integral part of the article. According to WP:NOT#INFO, "Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot. A plot summary may be appropriate as an aspect of a larger topic."
- A plot summary should be no more than three or four paragraphs (for example, four paragraphs for a complex plot such as that found in Charles Dickens' Bleak House). Shorter novels and short stories should have shorter summaries. Plot summaries should not contain an explication of every subplot in the novel nor need they be told in the same order as the novel itself. Well-written plot summaries are extremely difficult to achieve and one of the ways to make your article look like Sparknotes rather than a respectable encyclopedia entry is to detail the plot of every chapter rather than to attempt to truly summarize the novel. A summary details the most important events and character relationships in the novel.
But maybe I'm missing something here; if you have a good reason why the plot summary should be 20 paragraphs instead of 6, let me know. LloydSommerer 12:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] For reference
This is probably an illegal copy, so I don't think it's appropriate to put it in the article itself, but this appears to be accurate. The surrounding text is all non-English, but the text of the book itself is literal and untranslated from the original.
http://www.ilit.cn/literature/books/book135/index.aspx
If you don't have a copy of the book handy and need to check something quickly, this may be of value.
Rosuav (talk) 16:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Plagiarism in plot summary
The last section of the plot summary appears to have been copied from the end of the book. Especially noticeable in these sentences: "The lamppost which the witch had accidentally planted burned brightly through the generations until it was happened upon years later by a young girl in another story."
" Though he never discovered the magical properties of that wardrobe, someone else did and thus began the travels between Narnia and our world."
Why can't we just mention that that the young girl was Lucy? The fact that the last section appears to have been copied verbatim is one reason why the plot summary is too long. I don't think the fact that Uncle Andrew later boasted of what happened should even be noted. Cerberusc (talk) 18:23, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
