C.S. Lewis? | Imamother

boysrus

Tue, Jan 04 2022, 10:04 pm

Chayalle wrote:

My experience reading the Narnia books as a child was the same as what bestbubby describes. Only later did I hear about the Xian parallels.

same
I loved those books!

mommy3b2c

Tue, Jan 04 2022, 10:21 pm

Chayalle wrote:

Agree it's not important to the series. I read them out of order. I'm not even sure they were written in order.

In any case...in terms of the first one, I always just viewed it as fantasy. I never felt it confused my hashkafos as a kid....it was as fantastical to me as Mary Poppins gliding up the banister.

Interesting. I don’t remember the books very clearly at all, but I read the second before the first and I remember that when I did read the first I was very excited when I realized the boy was actually the uncle and the piece of wood was used to build the wardrobe. I honestly don’t remember that much about the books. But that I do remember interestingly enough .

amother

Mistyrose

Tue, Jan 04 2022, 10:27 pm

I loved the Narnia series as a child, and did not realize they were Christian allegories until I was a young adult. I was devastated when I found out. Gosh, my Catholic next-door-neighbors must have thought it was pretty funny that I wanted to borrow the books from them!!
So I’ve been hesitant to allow my children to read them. I know my kids will not pick up on the allegories- they are way too sheltered from Christian ideology to understand. However, I’m wondering if it’s wrong for them to read books that were PURPOSEFULLY written to introduce Christianity. It’s a sensitive topic, but I concluded for my family, I’d need to discuss it with a Rav before allowing my children.

amother

Snowdrop

Tue, Jan 04 2022, 10:44 pm

I picked up on the Biblical references in the book that describes the creation of Narnia-- it comes straight from the chumash. And the queen who eats the magic apple and turns into a witch obviously was based on that too. (When I was older and read about the myth of Lilith I realized she was probably based on that.) I sort of got the Aslan death and resurrection = J, so that made me feel a little guilty to read it (but not that much, lol). I just thought it was cool and weird that a non Jewish book had so many references to Bereishis, but it was obviously a fantasy. And mainly it made me curious about Turkish Delight, way more than xtianity 😆

Regarding The Outsiders since someone mentioned that above...I always thought it was a rip off of West Side Story (which in it's own way is a rip off from Romeo and Juliet). Considering the author was a 15 year old girl, it makes more sense than her using it to write it as a religious allegory, but hey, you never know.