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No, I haven't seen, the LWW movie, but I did just read the book for the first time. I think Rob (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
buffyannotater) is right that at least for children, the first story ought to be LWW not The Wizard's Nephew. I don't doubt if the child wasn't warned about the Christian tie-in that the 'chronological' order would be very confusing, and still might be even with preparation.
Given the real world relationship between Tolkien and Lewis it's fairly easy to make comparisons between LWW and LoTR. At least at the moment I have less feelings of the both stories as being about self-sacrifice (and they are), and more feeling about what they both say about temptation. In LoTR the ring is infused with evil magic, in LWW it's a plate of candy. In both the object is so infused with magic it's nearly impossible to resist especially if one has tasted of the narcotic like direct effects. In both there is a false promise of power to go along with it. Not being Christian any more myself, I don't think either story is very optimistic in the long run. In LoTR in the end Frodo fails, and the world is saved only by the yet greater greed of Gollum. In LWW Narnia the world is terrorized for ages and is saved entirely because a little boy shows up literally out of nowhere as far as Narnia is concerned, does a few naughty things and can't redeem himself. In The Wizard's Nephew, we even learn that the devil in Narnia arrived as refuse from another somewhat naughty boy (or at least one flawed by too much curiosity) trying to clean up after himself. Both worlds are essentially hopeless. One is saved by perseverance that leads to a bit of good, dumb luck, the other is saved by a deity whose rules of conduct don't seem to make much sense unless you are convinced that the human race is the epitome and ultimate, never-to-be-surpassed end-product of all creation, (which unfortunately I am not in the least convinced of).
Whatever my feelings about the philosophy of the book, I did come to the realization that either my brother, my sister or both read LWW when I was too small to read. At one point in my early youth I remember a discussion between my parents and my elder siblings about what Turkish delight might be. Also a warped version of Narnia was told to me by my brother and sister. Wardrobes as furniture were long out of style when I was little. But there was an extremely dark and mysterious place in the house. In those days most furnaces in the Midwest still burned coal. My brother had the dual nasty jobs of pulling the waste called 'clinkers' from the furnace itself, and to climb into the coal bin and push the coal around so that it would all work its way into the auger in the bottom, which fed the furnace automatically. Although it had a light bulb inside the coal bin was truly a terrifingly dark place for a small child. Being basically a timid little boy, I heeded the warnings from everyone about staying out of the coal bin. But, at some point no doubt after at least one of them read LWW my brother and sister told me about a magical land that lay beyond the coal bin. In keeping with the my family's optimism it was not a troubled land of perpetual winter, but a green and happy land of perpetual Christmas! The story I was told was that you could only go there if you were very, very good, and naturally, mature enough to be allowed in the coal bin. So I couldn't go there, because if I went in the coal bin without permission I'd be bad and never get to go there. Actually there were two very interesting truths about the coal bin story. First, the story about the bright-green, happy land beyond the coal bin was absolutely true. Compared to the dark, dank basement and the abyssally dark coal bin, the outer coal bin door (which I knew perfectly well about) did lead to a much more friendly place where it was bright at least half the day and vivid green more than half the year. Second although my brother told me, he had been to the other side to the magical land, I also realized that he had come back. In my mind that while it was very much true he could have stayed on the other side, there was very much on this side of the coal bin to come back and live for that wasn't over on the utopian side.
buffyannotater) is right that at least for children, the first story ought to be LWW not The Wizard's Nephew. I don't doubt if the child wasn't warned about the Christian tie-in that the 'chronological' order would be very confusing, and still might be even with preparation.Given the real world relationship between Tolkien and Lewis it's fairly easy to make comparisons between LWW and LoTR. At least at the moment I have less feelings of the both stories as being about self-sacrifice (and they are), and more feeling about what they both say about temptation. In LoTR the ring is infused with evil magic, in LWW it's a plate of candy. In both the object is so infused with magic it's nearly impossible to resist especially if one has tasted of the narcotic like direct effects. In both there is a false promise of power to go along with it. Not being Christian any more myself, I don't think either story is very optimistic in the long run. In LoTR in the end Frodo fails, and the world is saved only by the yet greater greed of Gollum. In LWW Narnia the world is terrorized for ages and is saved entirely because a little boy shows up literally out of nowhere as far as Narnia is concerned, does a few naughty things and can't redeem himself. In The Wizard's Nephew, we even learn that the devil in Narnia arrived as refuse from another somewhat naughty boy (or at least one flawed by too much curiosity) trying to clean up after himself. Both worlds are essentially hopeless. One is saved by perseverance that leads to a bit of good, dumb luck, the other is saved by a deity whose rules of conduct don't seem to make much sense unless you are convinced that the human race is the epitome and ultimate, never-to-be-surpassed end-product of all creation, (which unfortunately I am not in the least convinced of).
Whatever my feelings about the philosophy of the book, I did come to the realization that either my brother, my sister or both read LWW when I was too small to read. At one point in my early youth I remember a discussion between my parents and my elder siblings about what Turkish delight might be. Also a warped version of Narnia was told to me by my brother and sister. Wardrobes as furniture were long out of style when I was little. But there was an extremely dark and mysterious place in the house. In those days most furnaces in the Midwest still burned coal. My brother had the dual nasty jobs of pulling the waste called 'clinkers' from the furnace itself, and to climb into the coal bin and push the coal around so that it would all work its way into the auger in the bottom, which fed the furnace automatically. Although it had a light bulb inside the coal bin was truly a terrifingly dark place for a small child. Being basically a timid little boy, I heeded the warnings from everyone about staying out of the coal bin. But, at some point no doubt after at least one of them read LWW my brother and sister told me about a magical land that lay beyond the coal bin. In keeping with the my family's optimism it was not a troubled land of perpetual winter, but a green and happy land of perpetual Christmas! The story I was told was that you could only go there if you were very, very good, and naturally, mature enough to be allowed in the coal bin. So I couldn't go there, because if I went in the coal bin without permission I'd be bad and never get to go there. Actually there were two very interesting truths about the coal bin story. First, the story about the bright-green, happy land beyond the coal bin was absolutely true. Compared to the dark, dank basement and the abyssally dark coal bin, the outer coal bin door (which I knew perfectly well about) did lead to a much more friendly place where it was bright at least half the day and vivid green more than half the year. Second although my brother told me, he had been to the other side to the magical land, I also realized that he had come back. In my mind that while it was very much true he could have stayed on the other side, there was very much on this side of the coal bin to come back and live for that wasn't over on the utopian side.