I found it hopelessly nihilistic and self-defeating as a moralistic tale; the big moral struggle is against Original Sin, but it is framed in the end in some New Sin instead.
It only made sense to me as a story about one monolithic Authority being replaced by another, which institutes rules to try to prevent themselves from being supplanted by the same means in the future.
The big moral struggle is against GOD. In the end, they kill god, and then save the universe by having sex, ie by denying puritanical prudishness. Then society goes on to live happily after without god’s pernicious influence, instead of everyone living happily in heaven.
Except that it turns out they weren’t fighting god, they were fighting an apparent angel who other angels claimed was god, fighting on the side of angels who were mostly interested in making more angels. And the protagonists didn’t go on to live happily, it’s implied that they were kind of depressed for the rest of their lives. If it’s Narnia, it’s William Blake’s Narnia, not an atheist’s.
Blake’s influence is pretty clear (right down to the sex thing), and the whole thing could be interpreted as a Jesus allegory, within the framework of William Blake’s belief that Satan, not God, was in the right, but fought the war immorally. Jesus, in Blake’s works, was a divine entity who chose to oppose God morally, and so won. (Asriel and Coulter would be Satan; Lyra and Will, Jesus, who is notably absent from the story’s religions.)
It’s basically atheist narnia, so that makes sense.
...it is?
I found it hopelessly nihilistic and self-defeating as a moralistic tale; the big moral struggle is against Original Sin, but it is framed in the end in some New Sin instead.
It only made sense to me as a story about one monolithic Authority being replaced by another, which institutes rules to try to prevent themselves from being supplanted by the same means in the future.
The big moral struggle is against GOD. In the end, they kill god, and then save the universe by having sex, ie by denying puritanical prudishness. Then society goes on to live happily after without god’s pernicious influence, instead of everyone living happily in heaven.
Except that it turns out they weren’t fighting god, they were fighting an apparent angel who other angels claimed was god, fighting on the side of angels who were mostly interested in making more angels. And the protagonists didn’t go on to live happily, it’s implied that they were kind of depressed for the rest of their lives. If it’s Narnia, it’s William Blake’s Narnia, not an atheist’s.
Blake’s influence is pretty clear (right down to the sex thing), and the whole thing could be interpreted as a Jesus allegory, within the framework of William Blake’s belief that Satan, not God, was in the right, but fought the war immorally. Jesus, in Blake’s works, was a divine entity who chose to oppose God morally, and so won. (Asriel and Coulter would be Satan; Lyra and Will, Jesus, who is notably absent from the story’s religions.)