In Recent Years the Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis's Beloved

Salvaging C. S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy for Mission and Cultural Awareness Sarah Hinlicky Wilson n recent years the Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis’s beloved receives only a brief description at the end of the first book, The Ichildren’s series, have come under attack for their alleged Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Though these four children, now sexism and racism, and indeed for the very Christian faith to on the brink of adulthood with many years’ experience as kings which the stories analogically witness. The most famous of these and queens behind them, come from our world into Narnia, they attacks is Philip Pullman’s essay “The Dark Side of Narnia,”1 are not the protagonists in HHB. Children of our world star in accompanied by his own counterseries every other one of the Chronicles, but entitled His Dark Materials.2 Such criti- the heroes of HHB are Shasta, a poor cisms amount to little more than tossing white-skinned boy growing up among pebbles at a fortress, at least as far as the dark-skinned Calormenes to the the books’ popularity goes. The cult of south of Narnia, and Aravis, a genuine Lewis, iconic as the ultimate convert Calormene girl of noble descent, along from atheism, continues unabated, and with the two Narnian horses that find the Chronicles remain beloved even by them, Bree and Hwin. those who explicitly reject the faith that Furthermore, almost all the action gave rise to them.3 of HHB takes place outside of Narnia. Christian commentators have This is not utterly unprecedented. The offered their own nuanced critiques of same is the case in The Voyage of the Lewis’s imaginative world, acknowl- Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair, but in edging his historical context and limita- those two volumes the inhabitants of the tions while offering counterpoints from other lands are by and large not human, within his own writings to address his and the few humans in them are white weaknesses. I would like to contribute and mostly Narnia-friendly. In HHB, to that effort here by examining the however, the inhabitants of the foreign fifth of the seven Chronicles, The Horse land are another and mainly hostile and His Boy (hereafter HHB), with a race of humans, the aforementioned missional lens.4 By missional I mean Calormenes. The climax of the story is paying explicit attention to the assumed not a homecoming, actual or expected, or asserted relationship between faith to Narnia, but rather a homecoming to and culture. Though the movement of its neighboring and culturally identical the Gospel through cultures is intrinsic white nation of Archenland. In HHB, to the Gospel itself (Matt. 28:19), as wit- more than anywhere else in the Chron- nessed especially in the Book of Acts and icles, Lewis depicts an alternate human Paul’s sojourns among the Gentiles, this HarperCollins Distribution Services, Evergreen Library, August 1970 culture with values alien to Narnia’s. process has rarely been acknowledged, King Miraz and his fellow Telmarines much less given a central role, in the theological task. Without in Prince Caspian may have forgotten or ignored Aslan, but their self-conscious reflection on the challenges of cross-cultural proc- culture was still shaped by his heritage and indirectly benefited lamation, many historic Christian mission efforts have taken a from it. The land of Calormen, by contrast, has never had direct tacitly imperial approach to culture. But mission is not imperial contact with Aslan, and its culture is shaped by the worship of in and of itself. Lewis’s HHB is a perfect example of the dangers Tash (a human-like creature with a vulture’s head and four arms) of an unacknowledged theology of culture; at the same time, it and associated minor deities. exhibits certain insights toward its own self-correction. Narnia vs. Calormen (or Is It England vs. Arabia?) An Outlier in the Chronicles Lewis is no Tolkien, though, and neither Narnia nor Calormen HHB stands apart from the other six Chronicles in a number of represents a serious effort at creating a totally unique imaginary ways. It is the only story-within-a-story: the plot unfolds within culture. Narnia is basically medieval England, and Calormen is the reign of the four Pevensie children, a period that otherwise basically medieval Arabia. As Rowan Williams observes in his insightful study of the Chronicles, “The Calormenes talk like Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, assistant research professor characters in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ with an effect that can be at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Stras- both comic and threatening, and they are clearly the dangerous bourg, France, is an ordained pastor in the Evan- ‘other’ where Narnia is concerned. [T]he cultural world of the gelical Lutheran Church in America and the editor Calormenes is unmistakably Arab, and their relation to Narnia of Lutheran Forum. is that of mediaeval ‘Saracens’ to Christendom as reflected in the literature of the period.”5 Williams tries hard to acquit Lewis of the accusation that the Calormenes are a bigoted portrait of Muslims, despite the Arabian flavor and other details such as 126 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 38, No. 3 the Calormenes’ currency being the crescent. Williams’s prin- seen toast before. He didn’t know what the yellow soft thing cipal evidence is that Tash is one of many gods and has human they smeared on the toast was, because in Calormen you descendants, whereas Islam is nothing if not monotheistic and nearly always get oil instead of butter” (167). The delight is is opposed to any “son of God.” not so much in going from the food of poverty in Calormen It is doubtful that Lewis was undertaking any serious to the food of wealth in Narnia, but in going from “foreign” polemic against Islam in the Calormenes, but it is also doubtful food to “natural” food. Nature utterly trumps nurture, or at that he ever paid enough attention either to the details of Muslim least cultural upbringing. belief or to the culture of actual Arabs to be able to pull off an accurate satire. It does not matter what Muslims or Arabs are Cultural Superiority of Narnia (or Is It England?) really like; all that matters is that the Calormenes evoke feelings of disgust and contempt in Lewis’s readers, with their unspoken If the primary point were that one must reside culturally in the biases against Middle Eastern culture and religion. The Calor- land of one’s own blood, then the counterpart story of Aravis menes’ very name suggests their Southern foreignness—they the Calormene girl would not work at all. Aravis, contrary to are “colored” men or maybe “hot” men (calor being Latin for her “blood,” is more than happy to leave Calormen, and by the “heat,” with cognates in other Romance languages)—and it end of the story we learn that she and Shasta get married, so she does not take much for the reader to see that they are exotic, will spend the rest of her days as the queen of Archenland. But brutal, and unwholesome.6 the movement in this direction is acceptable, because an even This is a successful narrative tactic, creating a sense of holy greater truth than the call of blood is the innate superiority of collusion between the author and his presumably northern Narnian/Archenlander culture, a fact demonstrated repeatedly European (or white American) audience. The story opens with in the course of the story. the shocking discovery that Shasta is the object of an abusive For example, Shasta is immediately taken with the delight- interracial adoption.7 The boy has never even considered this ful party of Narnians that he meets in the Calormene capital possibility before, and only when a high-born visitor demands of Tashbaan. They are easygoing, friendly, and lovely, unlike the stiff, hierarchical, power- and wealth-hungry Calormenes. Again, the plot point concerns the transition not from an An even greater truth unloving family to a circle of friends but from an inferior and “foreign” culture to a superior and innately fitting one. than the call of blood is Throughout HHB, Calormen entertains the idea of expand- the innate superiority of ing its imperial reach to Narnia, which the reader is to fear and abhor—even though the Narnian king Caspian had done Narnian/Archenlander exactly that on behalf of his own country in The Voyage of the culture. Dawn Treader. But of course Narnian culture is intrinsically just, merciful, and innocent, so the corresponding empire will be the same. Narnians value freedom, but in Calormene perspec- hospitality does an eavesdropping Shasta learn the truth. The tive “free” means “idle, disordered, and unprofitable” (108). visitor offers to buy Shasta as a slave, to which the host protests Tashbaan smells of “unwashed people, unwashed dogs, scent, with pious words of fatherly affection, but the visitor retorts, garlic, onions, and the piles of refuse which lay everywhere” “This boy is manifestly no son of yours, for your cheek is as (52), but superior Narnia has no cities at all, only an idyllic dark as mine but the boy is fair and white like the accursed but harmony between the creatures and the land. (The threat of beautiful barbarians who inhabit the remote north” (5). Lewis Calormene cities and technology arises again in The Last Battle knew no more of adoptive psychology than he did of Muslim and necessitates an apocalypse before Narnia has to figure out theology, for he reports that Shasta reacts to the news with calm how to deal with sewers, offices, and immigrants!) Calormen relief: “He had often been uneasy because, try as he might, he has no talking animals and would treat them badly if it did, had never been able to love the fisherman, and he knew that a but Narnia is full of them, free and flourishing.

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