Hacker News Reader

Comment by leftyted | Hacker News Reader

> It's pretty hard to stomach for those of us who don't share his views.

I don't think this is true. I'm not a Christian and I loved his books as a kid. Tolkien and Madeleine L'Engle wrote novels in a similar vein (that are also excellent children's books). Some fiction is full of cliches and thin characters but, surprisingly, this ends up working in its favor as it takes on a mythical quality.

I also like moral ambiguity and morally complex characters but good luck getting a child to sit through The Brothers Karamazov.

View on HN

> Tolkien and Madeleine L'Engle wrote novels in a similar vein (that are also excellent children's books).

Tolkien very much did not write Christian allegory/apologia in the guise of fiction, though he did remix Christian themes. So I wouldn't say Tolkien’s books were much at all in the same vein as Lewis’s.

Tolkien said many times he despised allegory, but it is hard to ignore what could accurately be called the Christian rebirth of everyone's favorite wizard.

"I'm not a Christian and I loved his books as a kid"

As a kid the Christian overtones go right over your head.. as an adult they're a lot more glaring, and (to some of us), grating.

"Tolkien and Madeleine L'Engle wrote novels in a similar vein (that are also excellent children's books)."

I loved Madeline L'Engle as a kid, but tried to pick up A Wrinkle in Time recently, and couldn't bear all the Christian preachiness. Worked for me as a kid, though, and back then I had no idea that was in it. I guess that's saying something. But as an adult it's nauseating.

I think it may be different if you are philosophically opposed to the themes the author is trying to convey. My views do somewhat align with CS Lewis so I am biased. But the reason I specifically mentioned him is because he has many overtly Christian themes he actively portrays in his novels but I never feel like he is banging me over the head with obvious allegories. His novels are not overly complex but have much depth in terms of the characters and the people and themes they portray. Narnia is an obvious exception, but it is a childrens book. I am currently reading Till We Have Faces and would highly recommend it. It has a Christ like figure, but the more interesting part of it is the exploration of relationship and love.

With Dostoevsky I do not know if he really set out to convey a specific philosophical truth or not. To me his novels seem more of an exploration of human suffering and what living in his day was like. But I am not Dostoevsky scholar.

Tolkien may be a better example. You can easily read Lord of the Rings without picking up any Christian symbolism.

> But the reason I specifically mentioned him is because he has many overtly Christian themes he actively portrays in his novels but I never feel like he is banging me over the head with obvious allegories.

Even outside of _Narnia_, Lewis is known for rather heavy-handed and direct allegory. I mean, I guess it might seem to not be hitting you over the head if you compare it to something that goes beyond allegory to direct interpretation, like the _Left Behind_ series, but...

> Tolkien may be a better example. You can easily read Lord of the Rings without picking up any Christian symbolism.

That's because, while there is considerable inspiration from Christian morality and mythology in LotR, Tolkien was actively opposed to allegory and thus did not write it or use the kind of direct symbolism associated with it.

> Narnia is an obvious exception, but it is a childrens book.

I liked Lewis as a kid, but found him unusually preachy, even for a children book. I mean, I probably cant think of a children book that would be more obviously about hamming moral-education-point into you. While many children book try to teach some values, they tend to deal with much more nuance then Narnia.

Yeah Aslan was constantly lecturing about some awful thing somebody had done, and nobody ever had a word to say in response, unless of course they were irredeemably evil.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com