“Ours is a high and lonely destiny.”
Many fantasy novels involve wizards. Thanks
to Harry Potter, most of these novels deal with wizards positively; they are
beneficent and friendly towards the protagonists, if not protagonists
themselves. If there are evil wizards, there are just as many good wizards, and
in the end these good wizards will win.
The Magician’s Nephew is one of the few
fantasy novels that portrays wizards in a wholly negative light. The only two
wizards in the novel are titular magician Andrew Ketterley and Jadis, better
known as the White Witch of sequel the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Andrew is a preening, vain buffoon who in
his cowardice sends two children into an unknown realm instead of going
himself. The White Witch, meanwhile, is an arrogant and entitled individual who
kills an entire planet with the powerful Deplorable
Word spell, simply out of frustration for losing a war to her older sister.
The rationale they use for their actions is
that they are supermen, bound to a “high and lonely destiny” which allows them
to ignore common moral laws. Although they speak very highly and very well of
themselves, even child protagonist Digory can see that the emperor isn’t
wearing any clothes – in his words, they’re just individuals who think they can
do what they like with no consequences.
Not exactly what Nietzsche had in mind.
One could rationalize this away as Lewis’
strong Christianity and resultant contempt for magicians – however, I believe
this does a disservice to him. Lewis wasn’t a Jesus-obsessed Luddite, he was a
very well-read and well-spoken professor at Oxford University. A close reading
of the text reveals a very different stance; in The Magician’s Nephew, magic is
a metaphor for science.
What makes this stance clear is the novel’s
ending. Aslan mentions that soon humanity may create a weapon with power
comparable to the Deplorable Word’s. Written near the beginning of the Cold
War, it would be obvious to then-contemporary readers what weapon Aslan was
referring to.
I find this metaphor fascinating because of
how well it lines up with then-contemporary science fiction trends. C.S. Lewis
was in fact a science fiction writer himself! Even his Narnia books incorporate
science fiction themes other than the ones being discussed – the concept of
Narnia time was derived from Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance.
Before WWII, science fiction was focused on
the wonders and marvels of technology. Humanity (well, Europe, at least) had
progressed to a point where they no longer had to wage wars! Science fiction
reflected that; in the world of sci-fi, enough technology made the need for war
obsolete.
This notion was, of course, always complete Eurocentric nonsense. Even before WWII we had the British-induced Indian Famine and Leopold’s abuses in the Congo, to name a few. The War just brought human cruelty to Europe’s front door, eradicating any lie Europe’s people could use to justify naivete and apathy towards it.
World War II thoroughly disillusioned
everyone of that notion. The atomic bomb made people realize that technology
gave us more destructive power, not
less. Similarly, the Holocaust made it clear that human cruelty was not only
alive but thriving on an industrial
scale. More technology doesn’t curb the worst in humanity, it exacerbates it.
After WWII, we saw in writers a kind of
fear. People realized that technology was, at its core, a kind of power; they had seen the worst excesses
of this power with their own eyes. Instead of the wonders of new technology,
writers wanted to deal with the people that created and used said technology.
And the conclusion they came to was as contemptuous of those people as Lewis
was of his magicians.
C.S. Lewis was not concerned with what
magical laws the rings or the Deplorable Word operated under. Rather, he was
concerned with the kind of people who had access to it. It didn’t matter to him
if magic worked through the law of sympathy, the law of attraction or through
nuclear fission. What matters was what it could do, and what kind of person
would seek it out.
To my knowledge, the real world does not
have magic words that can kill every living being within it. It does, however,
have weapons capable of similar levels of destruction. And the people with
access to them don’t have fancy titles like Magician or White Witch – their
titles sound more like President or Prime Minister.
So, do you trust these people?
Pictured: U.S. President Donald Trump, North Korean President Kim Jong-un, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
I know I don’t.
