'The Golden Compass' Author Philip Pullman Explains Why He "Hates" C.S. Lewis' 'The Magician's Nephew'
Philip Pullman, the author of the Golden Compass and the His Dark Materials series, explained why he hates C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew.
In an interview with atheist Alex O’Connor on his Within Reason show, Pullman shared, “In one of the other books, I can’t remember which it is, there’s a boy whose mother is dying, got cancer or something. And he goes to this other land, whether it was Narnia or somewhere else and he’s told there’s a magical apple tree, where if you take an apple, one of these apples, and eat it, it cures you of any disease. But he’s a good boy and he doesn’t do it because he’s been told that stealing is wrong. So he doesn’t do it. And he doesn’t take the apple.”
“He goes home. But wonder of wonders there’s a magic apple on his pillow or something. Anyway, he gives it to his mother she’s all right,” he added.
Next, he explained why he hates this, “What a lie. What a filthy lie. And I say filthy because there are children who are reading that book who themselves have a mother who is dying of cancer or something and who he's trying to persuade that their behavior will make a difference to their mother living or dying.
”If you're a bad boy, your mother's going to die. If your mother lives, it's because you are a good boy,” he continued. “It's a filthy lie. I hate that. I despise it."
In The Magician’s Nephew, Aslan explains what would have happened if Digory had stolen the apple and taken it home to his mother, “Understand, then, that it would have healed her; but not to your joy or hers. The day would have come when both you and she would have looked back and said it would have been better to die in that illness.”
The narrator continued, “And Digory could say nothing, for tears choked him and he gave up all hopes of saving his Mother’s life; but at the same he knew that the Lion knew what would have happened, and that there might be things more terrible even than losing someone you love by death.”
However, Aslan then allows Digory to pluck an apple from the tree to give to his Mother. It mirrors Christ’s instruction that he will answer prayers. The Gospel of Matthew states, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.”
Pullman not only took issue with The Magician’s Nephew, but Lewis’ entire The Chronicles of Narnia series, “The way he treats his characters. To have the children go through this adventure with all sorts of voyages to different places and see different things and then dispatch them in the end in a railway accident seems to me the most ghastly way out.”
”He couldn't face the responsibility of making them grown up. He didn't want them to be grown up. He wanted them to turn away from things like, was it nylons and invitations and things,” he continued. “Which is a terrible thing to do to a child who's on the verge of growing up. Children don't want to be sent to heaven. They want to grow up and be men and women.”
”The promptings of sexuality in the teenage body and and the teenage mind are important and wonderful and valuable things and just to dismiss them in that off-hand way, terrible, terrible thing,” Pullman stated.
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This is so telling of the Atheist mindset.
They think it is better for children to be trapped on Earth for a whole meaningless (according to Atheism) adult life, and that because its what children want, well, naturally that's what's best for them and they should get it, of course. Who could want anything more than a long adult life with no purpose other than chasing dopamine hits? Certainly, a poignant self sacrifice or an early rescue from this miserable fallen world is not something an Atheist can imagine. How ironic--a fiction writer with no imagination.
Is it sad for children to die--yes, of course. But it is not sad for them, it is sad for everyone who loves them and wanted to share life on Earth with them and vicariously feel their innocent joy before (a blind, pitilessly indifferent) adult life drained it all away. It's unconscionably selfish to wish a long meaningless life on others. Pullman is the ghastly one here.
Atheists like Philip Pullman are the filthy liars. If they were honest, they would be nihilists, but they don't have the courage of their self-professed convictions.
And they always, always, always, lie about Christianity.