What Do you think could have happened to Susan?

The dream sequences are rather graphic, but I found it an interesting take on what happened to Susan afterward.
 
I've always held that Susan does find her way back eventually, I can't let myself go back on the 'Once a King or Queen, always a King or Queen.' But I also agree with Lewis in a letter of his, that I don't have handy at the moment, where he writes that a story where she returns would 'probably be longer and more grown-up than I cared to write.' I'll have to find the letter itself before long, but I do think she found her way back after a long and rather grown-up road.
 
It is so hard to say what would happen to her. I do not see how someone could lose their whole family and not find comfort without faith. Though the way Susan was talked about in The Last Battle, makes we wonder whether she would ever be a Christian or not. It is one of the things that makes that book so interesting, the never knowing one way or another.
 
This is one of the areas where the atheistic author Phillip Pullman, reaching for ANYTHING he could use to attack Mr. Lewis, went overboard. In his anti-Narnia article which I critiqued on this forum years ago, he claimed FALSELY that Susan was cruelly "turned away" from the Stable's entrance to Heaven. Anyone can see that Pullman was lying, because Susan simply wasn't there TO be turned away; she was still in mortal life, and her final condition remained undetermined.
 
I myself think that when she came out of Narnia she was brainwashed into forgetting Narnia ever existed,and she grew up,became a U.S. citizen,and is now living unhappily in an old person's home,haunted by these dreams of a talking lion and her siblings......

thats what I always imagined,anyway.
 
I completely agree that it's important to remember that we have no idea what Susan's religious life was like in England. She might have been an atheist or agnostic or Christian (probably Church of England) or any number of other things. Forgetting Narnia--or forgetting Narnia was real--or pretending to--doesn't mean anything about her relationship (if any) to Christ. It's also important to remember that all the information we have on Susan is filtered through three people (Polly, Jill, Peter) who have their own biases. It's not clear whether Susan knew about the attempt to get the rings or why she wasn't there; it's not clear how well Polly and Jill knew her and thus how well they were able to judge her motives; it's not clear what, exactly, Peter means by "no longer a friend to Narnia" (no longer a believer? no longer willing to take risks [and defy Aslan--the rings weren't supposed to be used again] for her country? no longer willing to talk about it with people other than her siblings?). So there are lots of blanks.

Plus, there are the added theological questions: if she denies/forgets Narnia but believes in Christ, is that enough? If she were to go the other way, and believe in Aslan but not connect him to Christ, would that be okay? Does Aslan operate on a once saved, always saved sort of premise? How does he feel about works verses faith? Since Lewis was Church of England, it seems plausible that Aslan would follow Anglican theology, but YMMV, and your answers to Susan's fate would probably vary with your answers to those questions.

Mostly I agree with Inkspot. I think she got married to a wonderful man and they had a child, and one day their daughter fell into another world and the two of them had to go after her, and Susan had to embrace her past. And also her husband got really confused, but eventually embraced it as well, and there was drama and adventuring and Susan being practical.

But even without the rings, I think Susan would have remembered, eventually, when she grew up; she would be old enough for fairy stories once again.
 
"it's not clear what, exactly, Peter means by 'no longer a friend to Narnia' "

Actually Animus, it is stated exactly. Susan says that their experiences in Narnia never happened. She treated it as a game they played as kids and would not talk about it with her siblings. That was why she was no longer a friend.

What would be the biases of Jill and Polly? I can understand the biases of Peter, Edmund, and Lucy as they were siblings. I could even understand the bias of Eustace, her cousin, but not Jill or Polly. They would have the clearest non-bias of the group, never having known her before.

MrBob
 
Not quite. To paraphrase:

TIRIAN: Dude wait! I aced my history class, where's Susan?
PETER: No longer a friend of Narnia
EUSTACE: And she won't talk about it and says it was a game!
JILL: And she likes nylons and lipstick and invitations and being grownup!
POLLY: She's just silly.
PETER: And this conversation is over now.

We know what Polly, Eustace, and Jill think is going on but we don't know what Peter originally meant by that line. There's no reason to assume she had a very close relationship with those three (at any rate we don't see them interact), so if there were more nuances to Susan's view of Narnia, then her siblings would be likely to have heard them. So what I mean is we don't know what, exactly, Peter knows of her journey and why he denies her (because she's forgotten? because she says she has but he knows otherwise? because she refuses to admit to her non-siblings that she remembers?). So while we know what the three of them mean by "no longer a friend to Narnia" (or rather, we know what Jill and Eustace mean; I think Polly's reaction is less about Narnia and more about Susan as a person) we don't know what he means.

Well, everyone has biases. If they don't know her, they're working off a first impression--if all they know of her is, say, a girl who whirls in in a cloud of perfume and dashes back out, why would they think to look past that? People frequently make snap, shallow judgments about people they don't know well. And if they do know her better, they still have biases; there are interpersonal conflicts between people in all groups.

(...I hope that makes sense; it's very late where I am!)
 
Animus Wyrmis said:
Mostly I agree with Inkspot. I think she got married to a wonderful man and they had a child, and one day their daughter fell into another world and the two of them had to go after her, and Susan had to embrace her past. And also her husband got really confused, but eventually embraced it as well, and there was drama and adventuring and Susan being practical.
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Nicely said. I agree, of course. :)

Animus said:
We know what Polly, Eustace, and Jill think is going on but we don't know what Peter originally meant by that line....So what I mean is we don't know what, exactly, Peter knows of her journey and why he denies her (because she's forgotten? because she says she has but he knows otherwise? because she refuses to admit to her non-siblings that she remembers?). So while we know what the three of them mean by "no longer a friend to Narnia" (or rather, we know what Jill and Eustace mean; I think Polly's reaction is less about Narnia and more about Susan as a person) we don't know what he means.

Well, everyone has biases. If they don't know her, they're working off a first impression--if all they know of her is, say, a girl who whirls in in a cloud of perfume and dashes back out, why would they think to look past that? People frequently make snap, shallow judgments about people they don't know well. And if they do know her better, they still have biases; there are interpersonal conflicts between people in all groups.
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Again I agree with Animus. We have very little information and almost nothing that explains Susan's being no longer a friend -- maybe she does still believe but doesn't want to believe because it would mean she was different from all her friends and couldn't really enjoy all the fripperies and fashions of being grown up the way she wants to ... I think people have a tendency to know a truth that they don't want to face and so they won't talk or think about it, and if you try to make them, they get mad. Maybe that's where she was.
 
Animus, so your Tirian is now being played by Keanu Reeves :p

The fact is Lewis used Eustace, Jill, and Polly to discuss Susan. It may be so that people other than her siblings can comment about her. We will never know why he chose those three specifically.

However, we do know Eustace has known Susan for allof his life and Eustace has tried to talk with her about Narnia. We, in fact, are not ever told when they started to have these conversations or whether Susan ever talked about Narnia with Eustace or Jill or Polly. She more than likely did with her siblings and probably also with the Professor.

Eustace says: "and whenever you try to get her to come and talk about Narnia, she say, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about those funny games we ued to play when we were children."

Jill says: "Shes interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown up."

Polly says: "She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now."

The way they are talking makes me think they have a pat with her. Let's pretend the seven year gap exists between TSC and TLB, they would then have all that time to meet and greet, maybe share tales before Susan goes on her downward spiral. The less time you put beteen TSC and TLB, the harder the less they may have met, but it isn't impossible for them to have met for Winter break and Spring Break in the year after Jill joins the Friends group.

I am one for the obvious examples thaty were given are the ones that are correct. Why complicate the story that Lewis wrote just because of the perceived biases of the characters? No one contradicted them.

MrBob
 
Just wait till she has a midlife crisis and begins to reassess the course of her life.

Oh, but there's more. People don't just happen to decide to give goodness another chance. The Holy Spirit actively urges people from the inside not to feel content without God in their lives. Something often happens by pure chance that gets someone thinking about God. But what often appears to be "pure chance" is a lot more pure than chance.
 
Can't it be left at:

Susan was, of course, very sad about her whole family's death and mourned for a while, perhaps remembered her times in the world of Narnia; nevertheless she just got on with her life and lived to an old age and at least the memory of the family lived on in this world to some extent, through her.

As long as she continues to be a decent, moral being, she'll find peace in life and death.
 
Of course it can be left at that. This is the beauty of CSL's not telling us what happened. We can all make our own ending for her.

As for your idea of whether all decent moral beings find peace in life and death; I suppose they do, but the thing is a definition of who exactly is decent and moral. I can think of only One ... :)
 
I hope Susan finds her way back, but I don't think she does. I think Lewis intends her as a symbol of the fact that, however much you have been shown of the truth, it doesn't guarantee that you will follow it.

I don't think that Susan could reject Aslan but still accept Jesus, since they are intended to be the same person.

Peeps
 
I think it's rather easy to figure out. As she got older and looking sexy was not on her top priority list and she felt her time clock ticking away more loudly and quickly she would think a lot about God, what happens after death, and what she's accomplished.

Furthermore I believe she would feel the inner promptings of the Holy Spirt. Nobody really ever just "stumbles upon" God becuase he actively hunts us out and holds on.

Lastly, the idea that she's no longer a Friend of Narnia is what the humans felt that were around her. It was not a telegram from God. They may have been wrong about how far she's wandered off the path.
 
"As for your idea of whether all decent moral beings find peace in life and death; I suppose they do, but the thing is a definition of who exactly is decent and moral. I can think of only One ..."

So inky, are you telling me that you are immoral and indencet? :p

I am on the last chapter of my Legacy story (yes, it has taken a long time) and Susan is in it. Hopefully by the end of the month I will have finished it and have it posted.

"They may have been wrong about how far she's wandered off the path."

ES, I think she would have found the path even if nothing else happened. It's not so much as wandering off the path for her, but rather she just stopped moving ahead, refusing to look ahead or behind her.

Her family's death would have blinded her for a while, not able to look anywhere without feeling intense grief. Eventually, there would have come a time when she figured out where she was.

MrBob
 
MrBob said:
Animus, so your Tirian is now being played by Keanu Reeves :p
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Don't get me started on Tirian, lol. Mostly I think he's useless and want him to stop flirting with Lucy.

But more seriously, Lewis was working with an omniscient narrator. If he wanted to give an unbiased view of Susan he could have done so easily; instead he chose three people who readers cannot even be sure knew her beliefs on Narnia.

MrBob said:
I am one for the obvious examples thaty were given are the ones that are correct. Why complicate the story that Lewis wrote just because of the perceived biases of the characters? No one contradicted them.
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That's sloppy writing. If I wrote "There was Sarah. I knew she was a jerk" and expected you-the-reader to unconditionally believe that Sarah was a jerk without managing to show it--especially if Sarah did unjerkish things earlier in the story--then I'm writing sloppily, and you would be perfectly within your rights as a reader to call me on it. Lewis doesn't get to remember his characters have biases only when it's convenient for him.
 
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