Escapism and
literature are two entities that intertwine more often than we realize. A reader is easily pulled away into a
different word and enthralled by the many adventures they take in the Paracosm
(fictional world); these little trips can also serve as an escape for both the
reader and the characters as they explore far off lands like C. S. Lewis’
Narnia or the Rev. W. Awdry’s Island of Sodor. While both books differ from one
another, the former about a magical land of talking animals and the later an
island of talking locomotives, both paracosms provide a place of escape for the
protagonists and even the writer.
 |
| The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe |
In
the first chapter of the Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe, the reader sees that the Pevensie children have been sent
to live with an old Professor in the English countryside in order for them to
be safe from the air-raids in London during the Battle of Britain (3). In this setting, they are seen as unable to
fight and in need of protecting, even holding this label in the Professor’s
house by the house maid:
Mrs. Macready was not fond of children, and did not
like to be interrupted when she was telling visitors all the things she
knew. She said to Susan and Peter almost
on the first morning (along with many other instructions), “And please remember
you’re to keep out of the way whenever I’m taking a party over the house.
(Lewis 52)
Here the reader
can see that the Pevensie children are still seen as something that can get in
the way. The children have been sent to
the countryside from London as they were seen as a risk and as something that
could get in the way and this value still applies to them as while in safety.
This labelling changes once the
children are in Narnia. Here they are no
longer valued as something that needs protecting. When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy are with
Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, they learn from Mr. Beaver of the prophecy foretelling
their arrival to Narnia:
…“Down
at Cair Paravel… there are four thrones and it’s a saying in Narnia time out of
mind that when two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve sit on the those four
thrones, then it will be the end of not only the White Witch’s reign but of her
life… if she knew about you four, your lives wouldn’t be worth a shake of my
whiskers!” (Lewis 82)
This except is
empowering for the children. While in
the real world of wartime Britain they are seen as something in need of
protecting, in Narnia they are needed.
In this paracosm, the Pevensie children are told by the adults that they
need to stay out of the way and to leave it the grown-ups, they are instead
told that they are needed, that they have the ability to save the paracosm from
its greatest threat, the White Witch.
In her article “Ghosts, Gremlins,
and ‘the War on Terror’ in Children’s Blitz Fiction”, Kristine Miller points
out that it is through escaping into the paracosm that the reader can gain a
better understanding of what is going on in their own world:
…
[Children’s] fiction presents fantasies of magical heroes who fight
passionately for good in epic battles against and therefore emphasizes the
relationship between the individuality of the hero and the community of shared
experience. By locating this complex
relationship within a safe and separate environment, children’s war literature
creates a way of understanding – rather than a means of escaping – the
realities of a child’s life within an embattled nation. (Miller 275)
Here Miller is
explaining that the paracosm in children’s literature is designed to help the
child understand the situation that they are in. This is apparent in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when the Pevensie children
leave the real world of Britain in 1940, which is at war, for the paracosm of
Narnia, which is also at war. The battle
in Narnia is an archetypical battle with forces of good represented by Aslan’s
army, led by Peter, and evil represented by the White Witch’s forces. At the end of the chapter, the White Witch
reaches her demise at the hand of Aslan (Lewis 177-178). Through fighting in this battle, the Pevensie
children are able to see that the reason behind the Second World War is to
protect their land from a dangerous force.
Rather than having them fight against the armies of Nazi Germany, Lewis
has the children fight against an evil witch who threatens all of Narnia to
make this point. By applying Miller’s
argument, one can conclude that in experiencing Narnia at war, the Pevensie
children are able to understand the experience of combat in the Second World War.
 |
| C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) |
 |
| J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973) |
Lewis was able to
“leave behind the world of squabbles and grown-ups” and re-entered “the world
which with he himself never left, that of childhood reading” (Wilson 220). In this way, one can see that Lewis is putting
himself in Narnia along with the Pevensie children by finding an escape from
his (in his own view) crumbling reality through Narnia, much like his own characters. Both the author and the child hero in this
case are trying to escape from the real world and enter one where they have
purpose.
This image is coupled
with a grim image of rusty engines looking frightened as they see a cutter
preparing for their demise. With the rise of
dieselization on the Other Railway and news of controllers scrapping many steam
engines, the engines on the Northwestern Railway are beginning to fear if this
new practice will find its way to the Island of Sodor.
This grim image reinforced in a
later volume entitled Enterprising
Engines. Here Gordon the big engine
mentions to the Fat Controller his fears of the changing state of the world.
Much like Lewis’ Narnia, the Rev. W.
Awdry’s children book series The Railway
Series tell the misadventures of the Northwestern Railway. Originally just stories for children that
were about steam engines with personalities just working hard to earn the
praise of the stern but loving Fat Controller, the books soon developed into a
capsule of a bygone period where steam locomotives thundered from large
metropoles to distant lands.
 |
| Stepney the "Bluebell" Engine |
Midway through the
series, an overarching narrative of the past clashing with modernization began
to develop. Throughout the 1960’s,
Britain’s nationalized railway (named the Other Railway in the series) began to
push for a modern approach to railways, axing branch lines and replacing steam
engines with diesel traction (Sibley, 280). This narrative, though noticed in earlier
books, began to become apparent in Stepney
the “Bluebell” Engine. In the
opening story – “Bluebells of England” – Percy the small engine paints a stark
image of Britain’s modernization process:
“…engines on the Other Railway aren’t save now. Their Controllers are cruel. They don’t like engines anymore. They put them on damp sidings, and then,” Percy nearly sobbed, “they… they c-c-cut them up (Awdry, Stepney the “Bluebell” Engine, 6).”
 |
| Percy's vision of what happens on the Other Railway |
 |
| Enterprising Engines |
“Cheer up Gordon!” said the Fat Controller.
“I can’t, sir. […] I keep thinking about the Dreadful State of the World, sir. Is it true, Sir, what the diesels say?”
“What do they say?”
“They boast that they’ve abolished Steam, Sir.”
“Yes, Gordon. It is true."
“What, Sir! All my Doncaster brothers, drawn the same time as me?”
“All gone, except one.” (Awdry, Enterprising Engines, 6)
Gordon’s
revelation that he may be one of the last of his build sparks a great deal of
melancholy upon him. The possible threat
of extinction in the Diesel Age is something that becomes very real for the
characters when Gordon faces the fact that all his Doncaster A3 class siblings
are possibly lost pits the engines against the progress of the brave new world
of post-war Britain.
 |
| Preparing to get Oliver to Sodor. |
Sodor becomes a place to escape in
the appropriately named story “Escape” where Oliver a Great Western 14XX class
engine escapes with his coach Isabel and a break van named Toad. The little engine’s courage inspires Douglas
to help after discovering Oliver hiding and out of steam.
…“Who’s there?” [Douglas] asked.
A whisper came. “Are you a Fat Controller’s engine?”
“Aye, and proud of it.”
“Thank goodness! I’m Oliver. We’re escaping to your railway, but we’ve run out of coal, and I’ve no more steam.”
“Is it scrap ye’re escaping?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s glad I’ll be to help ye; but we maun wurrk fast.”(Awdry, Enterprising Engines, 34-36)
 |
| Oliver, Isabel, and Toad in hiding. |
For Oliver fear of the cutter’s torch prompted
the little engine to run away across England to reach Sodor. Well aware of the risk, Oliver out smarted ‘Control’
and even hid out in an abandoned quarry for several days with diesels “baying
and growling like hounds” (Awdy, Enterprising
Engines, 40). In the ever-modernizing
world of British Rail, Oliver is just a relic that has no place in Post-War Britain;
on Sodor, Oliver can start a new life and be welcome by “all who want to see,
and travel, behind real engines” (Awdry,
Enterprising Engines, 46).
 |
| Rev. W. Awdry (1911-1997) |
Much like Lewis, the Rev. W. Awdry
found his books as a way to escape from the ever-changing world. In his lifetime, the Awdry witnessed two
world wars, the first woman prime minister of Britain, the collapse of the British
Empire, and the nationalization and reprivatisation of British railways, and –
most of all – the abolishment of steam in 1968.
By the 1960s Awdry, much like the rest of his generation, was beginning
to feel out of place. The world of Sodor
became both a pretend world for children full of talking trains but also a
world where adults can escape from a world becoming strange (Sibley, 282).
In closing, the world of the
paracosm serves as a place of escape. In
both Sodor and Narnia, the characters found safety and usefulness in a world separate
from reality; while both Awdry and Lewis found comfort from their own realities
by escaping into writing about their fictional worlds. In both cases, the paracosm served to provide
safety, comfort and uncertainty. Therefore, escape into the paracosm is a
source of comfort everyone can access.
Works
Cited
Awdry,
Rev. W. Enterprising Engines. London:
Egmont, 2002. Print.
---.
Stepney the “Bluebell” Engine. London: Kaye and Ward Ltd., 1971. Print.
Lewis,
C. S. The Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1995. Print.
Miller,
Kristine. “Ghosts, Gremlins, and ‘the War on Terror’ in Children’s Blitz
Fiction.” Children's Literature
Association Quarterly 34.3 (2009): 272-284. Project MUSE. Web. 11 Feb. 2014. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
Sibley,
Brian. The Thomas the Tank Engine Man:
The Story of the Rev. W. Awdry and his Really Useful Engines. Oxford: Lion
Hudson Publishing, 2015. Print
Wilson,
A. N. C. S. Lewis: A Biography.
London: Harper Perennial, 2005. Print.
Pictures
No comments:
Post a Comment