The Horse and His Boy
Is the excitement building, or what? Just last night the trailer for this December's cinematic Narnia release made its historic, world-wide debut. And the film's vision is pretty epic.
Oddly enough, the Chronicles of Narnia themselves, in book form, don't really begin to get the epic feel so early in the game. Not until this third chronological story, published fifth of the seven books, does the sweep and scope of author C.S. Lewis' vision become so apparent.
This month in the Hollywood Jesus Narnia coverage, Kathy Bledsoe provides a synopsis of the basic storyline of The Horse and His Boy. Jenn Wright then presents a summary of what makes this particular book so effective and how it amplifies the Narnian vision; and George Rosok wraps up with a look at the unique dimension of Aslan that the tale presents.
posted by Greg Wright, 5/08/2005
2 Comments:
Though a lifelong fan of these books, I admit to being a bit bothered by the latent racism in A Horse and His Boy, which pits the dark-skinned, sinister Tarkhaans against the blond and virtuous Narnians. This may not even have been deliberate on Lewis's part, himself a child in the last days of the British Empire that ruled vast sections of the dark-skinned world. I'll forgive him his uppity English manners for the sake of his vast contributions to Christian apologetics.
It seems to be a given that the heavenly bodies in Narnia behave much as ours do -- that is, that it's hotter in the south and colder in the north. That being the case, I'm not sure what else southerners could be but dark skinned. So I'm not sure it's racism at all. Don't African and Indian stories generally feature dark-skinned people? And aren't northerns (the villains, of course) naturally light-skinned? I wouldn't call that racist, either.
So I think you can take it a little easier on Lewis on that score!
Thanks for reading!
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