Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian The Movie

We went to see the Prince Caspian movie Friday night. We enjoyed it immensely. Yes, Prince Caspian is a hottie for all ages so says this mother and her tween daughter. I am going to reveal some plot spoilers so fair warning…

Having never read the entire Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, I was on the edge of my seat at times for this cinematic offering (unlike the first movie The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe of which I had read some of that book and seen prior adaptations of.) I worried throughout the duel between Peter and the wicked King of the Turmalines (sp?) that Peter would actually get killed.

One of my favorite scenes was when Peter and Prince Caspian considered letting the Witch out of her icy imprisonment in order to use her power to help free the Narnians. Of course it was Edmond who destroyed her, reminding me of the Apostle Peter and how well he had learned his lesson with Christ, never turning his back to him ever again.

Lucy, of course, with the faith of a child, was the only one who could see Aslan but even she had her moments of doubt and fear. Faith is believing in that which you cannot see but know is there.

I wondered how Susan was going to go back to London and end up with some Joe Blow, like the one hanging around her at the train station, after she’d met Prince Caspian and fallen for him. Spinsterhood would be a better alternative than to always wish she’d stayed with the Prince while married to a regular guy. Why couldn’t she have stayed with Prince Caspian?

And, as always, we are reminded that the sacrifice of a life is often required and the highest calling in the fight against evil.

When the trees came to life and crushed the catapults, rescuing the Narnians, I was reminded of something I’d read in a biography about JRR Tolkien. Lewis and Tolkien were friends, as you all know, and they discussed their work together. Here was Tolkien spending a decade of his life, devoting intense energy and devising detailed plans in order to write The Lord of the Rings. On the other hand, Lewis was quickly putting out The Chronicles, with Joy’s sons in mind. They read each other’s scenes. Tolkien often had problems with Lewis’s fantasy. Tolkien pushing for fantasy being comprised of the author inventing a new world, rather than travel between the world we live in and the invented one.

From Tolkien’s On Fairy-Stories: “Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker’s art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of belief”. But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator”. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable.”

 

As so I get back to the trees. Did Lewis ’borrow’ the idea of trees coming to life from Tolkien? Tolkien had a thing for trees: he loved them. He was worried his countrymen were cutting too many trees down in his beloved countryside to make way for industrialization. Trees are living things. My husband loves trees also. He rescues them from homeowners who would cut them down to plant a different one. My husband digs them up, or even rents a big digger, and he brings them home to live with us. Our yard is full of these big beautiful rejected trees. My guess is that Lewis did ‘borrow’ the tree idea from Tolkien. Maybe for all the best reasons.

 

But this is what scares other writers from sharing their work-in-progress with other writers. I have been in critique groups where I started wondering about certain other writers, that they were borrowing heavily. Did I leave the group? Not for that reason. I borrow ideas all of the time. There is a quote somewhere that the best writers do.