(urth) OT: The Problem of Susan
Charles Reed
cmreed at link.com
Tue Nov 2 07:01:20 PST 2004
I've read Gaiman's THE PROBLEM OF SUSAN and have a few thoughts to share.
SPOILERS abound, so be warned.
My initial reaction to the story was one of anger and disappointment,
not so much at the story's visceral imagery as at Susan's lack of
hope/redemption/salvation at the end. The visceral imagery I mentioned
was something that I actually liked quite a bit. Well, "liked" isn't
quite the right word. Let's say I thought it was very effective in its
attempt to pull the reader into the story. The descriptions of the
battlefield, of Aslan's copulation with the White Witch, and especially
of what Susan endured after the train crash (and what she thought about
it afterward) are all disturbingly powerful scenes. Of course, it helps
if you already have an emotional investment in the character, which I
do, having been a big fan of the Narnia books ever since my fourth grade
teacher -- Mrs. Pixler from Jane Long Elementary in Abilene, Texas if
anyone's interested -- read THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE to
us. I don't know how emotionally resonant those scenes would be to
someone not familiar with Susan Pevensie.
[Side note on Mrs. Pixler: In addition to introducing me to Narnia, she
also read parts of Stephen King's THE SHINING to us, which literally
gave me nightmares and which planted within me a deep-seated distrust of
topiary that I still can't quite shake. All in all, though, Mrs. Pixler
was cool, even though I'm sure if she were to read such stuff as obvious
Christian allegories and nightmare-inducing horror to fourth graders in
today's public schools, she'd have her pants sued off. :-) ]
Anyway. Gaiman does a good job of using that pre-existing emotional
investment to create a grown-up Susan that I was really interested in
and cared about. I think, however, that he (or more accurately, the
grown-up Susan) misinterprets Lewis's (or Aslan's) reasons for not
allowing Susan to go higher up and higher in. Susan wasn't denied
heaven because she liked lipstick and boys. She was denied heaven
because she turned her back on and denied the existence of the living
God. I desperately wanted some kind of redemption for her at the end,
which I suppose is a testament to how much the story affected me. I
certainly can't say that I liked it, and its nightmarish bitterness
really left me down in the dumps after reading it, but it is certainly a
valid "take" on Susan. All stories can't end happily and hopefully, and
a consequence of Christian belief is the idea that some people will
accept God's love and be saved while others will deny God's love and be
damned. Seeing that damnation in practice is a bitter thing, even when
it applies to a person who exists nowhere but in the minds of those who
have read about her.
Charles
Adam Stephanides wrote:
>The fantasy anthology FLIGHTS, which contains a novella by Wolfe (at least
>according to the editor, though the boundary between a novella and a
>novelette has never been clear to me) also contains a short story by Neil
>Gaiman, called "The Problem of Susan." In general I'm not keen on Gaiman as
>a writer, either of comics (I regard SANDMAN is overrated) or prose, but I
>think this story is a good one, though it functions more as a critique of
>the Narnia books than as a work of fiction in its own right. As it deals
>with issues which I know are of interest to several people on this list, I'm
>curious if anyone else has read it; and if so, what did you think about it?
>
>--Adam
>
>
>
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