Did the Winter Last 100 Years?

I just read the part of LWW where they first meet with the Beavers. Where do you (anyone) get that the Beavers have been around for the whole of the hundred-year winter?

MrBob
 
Herein lies one of the problems with the story where a plothole may be unresolvable. The water is still flowing underneath, but the frost froze the water above, which would normally be impossible, except for the idea that this was magic.

But again, this dam may have been the "family dam" for generations.

MrBob
 
Ice floats. It also insulates liquid water beneath from sub-freezing temperatures above.

What's more, winters do not stay subfreezing every hour of every day unless you happen to live in places like South Georgia Island or Kotzebue.
 
MrBob said:
Herein lies one of the problems with the story where a plothole may be unresolvable. The water is still flowing underneath, but the frost froze the water above, which would normally be impossible, except for the idea that this was magic.

But again, this dam may have been the "family dam" for generations.
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As ES says, not impossible but in fact quite normal.

I have considered the idea of a family dam, but the way it is discussed in the text is strongly against it - see this quote:
LWW said:
Just below them a dam had been built across this river, and when they saw it everyone suddenly remembered that beavers are always making dams and felt quite sure that Mr Beaver had made this one. They also noticed that he now had a sort of modest expression on his face - the sort of look people have when you are visiting a garden they've made or reading a story they've written. So it was only common politeness when Susan said, "What a lovely dam!" And Mr Beaver didn't say "Hush" this time but "Merely a trifle! Merely a trifle! And it isn't really finished!"
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So the text doesn't directly say that Mr Beaver had built it, but it strongly implies it, and his response is strange if it was just an ancestral dam - you would expect him to say something like, "Ah, yes, my great-grandfather built this."

Peeps
 
"Ice floats. It also insulates liquid water beneath from sub-freezing temperatures above."

Let me rephrase it, ES. The manner the river froze was impossible. The top ice was froezen in wavy patterns as if the water had been flash frozen. But would only the top part have flash frozen if it got that cold that quickly? Why didn't the rest of the river freeze?

As for the Beavers, who knows. It would not make sense that the beavers would be over 100 years old; it also wouldn't make sense that the dam was not finished after 100 years. Maybe a dam is never finished to a beaver.

MrBob
 
I have wondered about whether the river could freeze that quickly, but I'm not convinced that it would be more likely to freeze the whole river that quickly than just the top few inches.

As for the unfinished dam, I assumed it was unfinished because the frost prevented further work.

Peeps
 
Let me get this straight...you're talking about the special effects in the Walden Media movie of LWW as evidence that the book did not indicate a true 100 year winter?

Can you say "Narnian Hermeneutics"? I thought you could! :D
 
With the two-week temp-in-the-teens spell we are having here in Nashville, I don't want to even THINK about a 100-year winter--lolbrrrrrr
 
Peepiceek, I not only read the book several times but saw numerous films of it.

Feel free to "remind" me and even to cite the passage....
 
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* From the box set of paperbacks sold after the 2005 mvoie, page 76:

"And below the da, much lower down, was more ice, but instead of being smooth this was all frozen into the foamy and wavy shapes in which the water had been rushing along at the very moment when the frost came."

* page 78-79:

"he {Mr Beaver} went out of the house (Peter went with him), and across the ice of the deep pool to where he had a little hole in the ice which he kept open every day with his hatchet...Mr. Beaver sat down quietly at the edge of the hole..., looked hard into it, then sudddenly shot in his paw, and before you could say Jack Robinson had whisked out a beautiful trout."

The ice had flash frozen to the point it froze in the exact shape it had been moving, yet there was a flowing stream underneath. I don't know if that would be possible. The Walden movie made more sense in that the whiole river flash froze, but then getting to the fish would require much more work as they would have to break up all the ice around them to find them, yet it looked fine to me.

MrBob
 
I reread the book through with this dilemma in mind, and one thing cropped up that caught my attention:

At the beavers the children eat a tea, which includes potatoes and Mr. Beaver's beer. Also, Mr. Tumnus serves Lucy a cake. Perhaps potatoes could grow in those wintry conditions, I don't know, but surely not cereal crops. Where then did the food come from - could it have lasted 100 years?

There are explanations of course, the food was traded from other lands (though would the Witch be so thoughtful as to provide food for the Narnians) or perhaps smuggled in.

I don't know - what do you think or is it simply a plot hole?
 
waterhogboy said:
I reread the book through with this dilemma in mind, and one thing cropped up that caught my attention:

At the beavers the children eat a tea, which includes potatoes and Mr. Beaver's beer. Also, Mr. Tumnus serves Lucy a cake. Perhaps potatoes could grow in those wintry conditions, I don't know, but surely not cereal crops. Where then did the food come from - could it have lasted 100 years?

There are explanations of course, the food was traded from other lands (though would the Witch be so thoughtful as to provide food for the Narnians) or perhaps smuggled in.

I don't know - what do you think or is it simply a plot hole?
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Yes, I've wondered that too. Trade is possible, but then it seems unlikely that Tumnus would be unaware of the humans living in neighbouring countries, nor that the Witch would want contact with them. Maybe the people found ways to grow enough vegetables to live on. Someone else has suggested that maybe the Witch provided food, and her control of food was one of the ways she was able to attain and retain her power.

I don't think this helps my case in proving the Winter was shorter than 100 years, since even in a winter of 15 years there would be the same problem of lack of food.

Peeps
 
I think the orbit of the sun around the flat earth was not perfectly circular. It was eliptical and processional, similar to the track you draw with a spirograph toy. Each time it went around the sun would get closer, closer or further further to the ground.
 
I don't think we should think of Narnia in the same sense as we would consider our world. It's not even necessarily in out universe remember? But I always thought that it was just Narnia that was cursed with the winter, like it says in The Horse and His Boy, not Archenland or Calormen. So they must've had to buy food from those other countries...
 
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