Ranger Reads - Blog Posts

Anyway, it’s not about the character being redeemable or irredeemable, it’s about whether the character takes the opportunities for redemption or passes them by.

Reading book two without first reading book one:

“Some people read with their feet,” is a quote that’s been relevant since the day I heard it (and before that, to be so honest), and something else that’s rattling around in my brain is some post (I’ve got no hope of finding the original as I can’t even recall what website I saw it on) saying something along the lines of “it tracks that the Pevensies are British and that the moment they found themselves in an unfamiliar place they declared themselves its royal family.”

If you want to talk about colonialism, talk about colonialism, but it does frustrate me to see a point missed so thoroughly. I hate to see it missed and I love this particular aspect of the series, so I’m going to take a moment to talk about it.

The Pevensies did not declare themselves royalty. Becoming kings and queens was not their idea. This was an expectation that the people of Narnia had for them, and when the kids were informed of this expectation, they found it daunting, to say the least.

This theme recurs almost beat-for-beat with Caspian, who is very openly unsure of himself and his ability to rule Narnia. It evolves with Eustace, who begins his arc unable to even consider the possibility of himself doing something important for Narnia or vice versa. It returns with Jill, who gets angry at being saddled with a mission that feels altogether too big for her.

The premise that keeps coming up throughout the series is this concept of worthiness and capability. The takeaway is not that some people are made superior or that people can make themselves superior. The takeaway is that you will feel inferior. In fact, if you feel superior, you are probably delusional: a danger to yourself and others. You will feel inferior, but that is neither a sentence to accomplish only little in life, nor an excuse for only accomplishing little in life. You will be afraid and insecure and uncertain and embarrassed, but you can and must do great things nonetheless. We are, all of us, made for greatness.