Dragon

dawna

dawna

New member
when eustance was talking to aslan and when aslan took him to where the well was and told eustane to take off his clothes before going to the well , eustance tried to take off the dragon form three times . Aslan says he would do it and gets the dragon form off. Does this signify taken off the old man and putting on the new man spiritly. God regenerating the new man after being saved?
 
I think it more likely refers to the scales falling off of Paul's eyes, but if you see something else there then it's there. The author is dead, after all--we take things out of texts that the author didn't think about putting in, and that's just as valid an interpretation.
 
dawna said:
when eustance was talking to aslan and when aslan took him to where the well was and told eustane to take off his clothes before going to the well , eustance tried to take off the dragon form three times . Aslan says he would do it and gets the dragon form off. Does this signify taken off the old man and putting on the new man spiritly. God regenerating the new man after being saved?
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Good question! I agree with you, Dawna, that's the way I see it, too. Eustace can't change himself into a human being again, but Aslan/Christ can. A beautiful way to describe a conversion.
This is my view. But also interesting to hear other views.
 
It represented the need for Aslan's help to remove the dragon skin. A person can't rely on himself alone, he needs G*d's help. After the undragoning, he receives a baptism from Aslan when Aslan throws him into the water.

This was his initiation into the Narnia religion.

MrBob
 
Animus Wyrmis said:
I think it more likely refers to the scales falling off of Paul's eyes, but if you see something else there then it's there. The author is dead, after all--we take things out of texts that the author didn't think about putting in, and that's just as valid an interpretation.
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Actually, Lewis even mentoned in his work Reflections on the Psalms that people had read metaphroes into his own work that were so clever, so ingenious, adn so well thought out that he wished he thought of them.
 
Sven-El said:
Actually, Lewis even mentoned in his work Reflections on the Psalms that people had read metaphroes into his own work that were so clever, so ingenious, adn so well thought out that he wished he thought of them.
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That's the coolest thing about writing, when someone says, "Ah, I love how you used the subtle imagery of Greek poetry to symbolize the hero's reaction!" and you're like, "Uh, what?"

But the cool thing is that the metaphors are still there, even when the author didn't think about putting them in--what's in the text is in the text, and sometimes only tangentially related to what the author *meant* to put in the text.
 
"But the cool thing is that the metaphors are still there, even when the author didn't think about putting them in--what's in the text is in the text, and sometimes only tangentially related to what the author *meant* to put in the text."

Said by someone who agrees with the metaphor. Of course when the metaphor is something you are diametrically opposed to, you (the generic you, not you specifically Animus) will argue that the metaphor is not there or that the author had no intention of that being there.

MrBob
 
MrBob said:
the metaphor is not there or that the author had no intention of that being there.
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And they're two different things, of course. Authors put all sorts of things in which they had no intention of putting in, or which they didn't realize they were putting in. Sometimes, unfortunately, the text supports readings which the author dislikes or even tried hard to avoid--an example might be someone who meant to avoid X trope but fell into it anyway, in a way she didn't expect.
 
Sven-El said:
Actually, Lewis even mentoned in his work Reflections on the Psalms that people had read metaphroes into his own work that were so clever, so ingenious, adn so well thought out that he wished he thought of them.
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mabe the Lord wanted them in there
 
"Authors put all sorts of things in which they had no intention of putting in, or which they didn't realize they were putting in."

Authors do not put in things they had no intention of putting in. People merely interpret the writings in such a way that they can argue one way, but it doesn't mean that the interpretation is correct.

There is a website I have seen by an uber-Chritstian organization that gives a nine part proof that Narnia is Satanic. Is it? Did Lewis intend Narnia to be Satanic? No, but just because one extremist group can prove it does not make it so.

MrBob
 
dawna, was that post intended for me? :confused:

If so, please realize I have no problem with what your original post said in terms of what the dragon could represent. It is a valid theme and is still within the context of the story. A Baptism is supposed to be about cleasning the sins of the old and starting anew, isn't it? That is what happened with Eustace as well. He was cleansed from his old skin and given a new skin.

Bob
 
I think everyone here has plenty of imagination. :)

MrBob said:
Authors do not put in things they had no intention of putting in. People merely interpret the writings in such a way that they can argue one way, but it doesn't mean that the interpretation is correct.

There is a website I have seen by an uber-Chritstian organization that gives a nine part proof that Narnia is Satanic. Is it? Did Lewis intend Narnia to be Satanic? No, but just because one extremist group can prove it does not make it so.
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Well--let us say, writers write things that support interpretations which they never intended, perhaps don't see, and might in fact be horrified by. That's part of writing. (This is more of a problem with implications--it's not like you're going to open up and find out that your book suddenly grew an epilogue or something. (Except for that one story by Neil Gaiman.)) Generally, to be totally honest, I shy away from interpreting authorial intent because I think it's a) impossible to tell and b) really unimportant. Who cares what the author meant to write--it's all about what's on the page.

Sadly, most of those sites (and I have seen a bunch!) seem to come down on the side of magic=Satan, and if that's your definition, well, then, Narnia's pretty Satanic. Though I imagine some of them may be upset by multiple sacrifices and Jesus as a lion, as well.
 
Believe me dawna, it takes a lot to offend me. You didn't even come close. This was just a misunderstanding.

"Generally, to be totally honest, I shy away from interpreting authorial intent because I think it's a) impossible to tell and b) really unimportant. Who cares what the author meant to write--it's all about what's on the page."

I would say that authorial intent is what is important. It is when people start to look for hidden meanings or try to support things that the author would have found abhorrrent that they start to get sketchy.

MrBob
 
Do you really think so? I think's it's a bit...pointless? difficult? to try and respond to what the author meant to do when they did something else entirely. And that's even assuming that you can figure out what they meant, which in turn assumes that the author had a conscious reason for whatever they wrote--and what happens if the intent changes with the writing? It is all too complicated for me to bother with.

For example, suppose an author sets out to write The Most Wonderful Romance Ever, but actually writes about a stalker and an extremely shallow relationship? Do we say, ah, well, she meant to write a romance? Or do we say "What a wonderful horror novel!" Does the author need to condone the interpretation of "the hero is a stalker" for it to be a reasonable interpretation?
 
"suppose an author sets out to write The Most Wonderful Romance Ever, but actually writes about a stalker and an extremely shallow relationship? Do we say, ah, well, she meant to write a romance? Or do we say "What a wonderful horror novel!" Does the author need to condone the interpretation of "the hero is a stalker" for it to be a reasonable interpretation? "

The author's intent is still important. In that case, the intent important to understand how the quality of their story was compared to their intent. Of course this is what high school English courses are al about and I agree that it gets tedious and monotonous but if intent wasn't important, then the Narnia=Satan people would be on equal footing as dawna's conclusion that G*d spiritually strips off the old person and allows the new person to exist. I don't think they are equal. dawna's analogy works so much more with Lewis' intent than the uber-Christians' analogy.

MrBob
 
the intent important to understand how the quality of their story was compared to their intent

But I think that only matters if you care about how well they did what they meant to do. If the question is, instead, how good a horror novel it is, does it matter if the author set out to write about romance? (This is assuming you just get a novel, and then, say, later you find out that most people think it was written to be a romance.) I've spent hours and hours of class time talking about whether Virgil meant to undermine the Roman Empire--but I don't think that matters; what matters is what the Aeneid has to say about empires.

Let us say, for instance, that Lewis had included a terribly unchristian scene (er, imagine what you will). Would his intent to write the Chronicles as Christian literature make that scene any less problematic? (And, of course, whether or not Narnia is Satanic is all in your definition of Satanic, which is something that none of Lewis's intentions will ever be able to fix.)
 
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