Opinion Question #2

[Prof. Gustavo Flores]

Dear students,

I'm really sorry for the delay!! I've been trapped with lots of work! But if you wish to answer the opinion question for the second assignment, this is the space to do it! Remember it is worth 10 points!

As you already know, Susan Pevensie, Queen of Narnia during The Golden Age, is not considered a "Friend of Narnia". In C.S. Lewis' own words "The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly conceited young woman. But there's plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan's Country in the end in her own way"

So, what do you think happened to Susan at the end? Was she able to get into Aslan's Country or not?

There is no right or wrong answer, just please explain your reasoning and prediction. At least 100 words for full marks.

[Gail Allen]

I do think she was able to get into Aslan's country. I think many young people have a time in their life when they perhaps focus more on material things and on their looks than on the things that really matter. But most of them mature and grow out of it with time. And I think Susan did as well, and joined her siblings. If for no other reason than it does not really seem to fit the message otherwise. It's almost like a Chekhov's gun to mention that she might mend her ways and get there in the end. If she didn't, it will be a dramatic let-down in a sense. So I do think she does.

[Siobhan Sullivan]

I’m not sure if there’s a time limit you have to be within in order to get to Aslan’s Country in the end. But I think if there isn’t, then eventually Susan would have made it there. There are always different phases in life that everyone mostly goes through (with some exceptions, of course) including a rebellious phase. I’m not sure Susan was going through this type at the time that she decided that Narnia doesn’t exist, but it must have been something quite selfish to make her so adamant that a place that she actually visited and, in fact, ruled over wasn’t there. In any case, people tend to mature a bit as they age and so I do believe that over time Susan decided that she was being what C.S. Lewis called her and turned away from that path and toward accepting the fact that everything she experienced was real.

[Niamh Cassidy]

I do think that Susan would have been able to get to Aslan's country in the end, even if not necessarily in the same sort of way her siblings did. People do change as they grow and it wasn't as if Susan had ever been a truly bad person. It seems more likely that she was going through some sort of a phase or other bad time, and it's possible that she just wanted to have a more ordinary life for a change. Dreaming of visiting a magical land is one thing; actually having to rule over and take responsibility for that magical land is a lot more work and it may be that she wanted to be a regular girl for a time. Eventually, though, I think she would have come back into the fold, a little wiser and perhaps a little sadder.

[Prof. Sky Alton]

Susan’s fate is one thing that always irritates me about the Narnia books (but I won’t get into that here). I think that she might well have entered into Aslan’s country later in life. At the end of the series she is still trying to navigate her way in a modern world and learn what kind of person she is, outside of childhood. There’s no knowing how she might change and grow over time or what her beliefs might be when her time comes. What people seem to forget to is that Lewis was immensely cruel to Susan: he wiped out all her family and the people she loved, separating her from them if not forever, then for a long time. This kind of tragedy could have many effects on Susan: leaving her hopeless or desperate but certainly unutterably alone. I hope that the idea of Narnia and Aslan’s country might have been some hope to her during that time and perhaps that longing (the thought that the people she loved were still out there) would help her to find her way back to them. Though her loneliness and anger at the tragedy could easily take her down a different path.