Revisiting Narnia: The Horse and His Boy (or, Adventures in Controversy)

Hi, everybody! This summer, I'm rereading C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and blogging about each book. For more details on the project, you can read the introductory post here.

You can read the post on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe here.

You can read the post on Prince Caspian here.

You can read the post on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader here.

You can read the post on The Silver Chair here.

When it comes to discussing The Chronicles of Narnia nowadays, two controversies tend to dominate the conversation. One, which Neil Gaiman obliquely named "The Problem of Susan," doesn't come up until The Last Battle, but the second one, which, for the sake of consistency, we may as well call "The Problem of Calormen," has already cast its shadow across corners of the first four Narnia books and is darn near unavoidable when talking about Narnia #5, The Horse and His Boy.

I've avoided talking about both of these issues thus far, not because I don't think they're worthwhile to discuss but rather because these are topics that have been written about so extensively that they tend to suck the air out of the room when it comes to analyzing Narnia. As I hope I've already shown, there is so much stuff to talk about when it comes to this series, and I hope I don't sound too much like a white dude when I say that I don't think the beauties and flaws of these books are solely tied to how Lewis treats women and how Lewis treats non-white characters. But there's a time and a place to discuss everything; as it happens, the time and the place to discuss "The Problem of Calormen" is probably alongside The Horse and His Boy.

So here we are.

Just in case you hadn't been paying attention in the first four books where it shows up in maybe ten sentences total, Calormen is a country at the southern reaches of the Narnian continent[1]. The climate there seems alternatingly arid and tropical, and the people of Calormen (called Calormenes) have, compared to the milky-white Narnians, a much darker complexion, grow beards, wear turbans, and worship a god named Tash[2] instead of Aslan. If that description is ringing bells in your head, it should. Calormen is pretty much Narnia's version of the Middle East (with just a touch of India thrown in). And therein lies the controversy. Well, not exactly. Obviously, just as there's nothing wrong with C. S. Lewis making Narnia a fantasy version of England, there's also nothing inherently wrong with having a fantasy version of the Middle East occupying a separate corner of that same world[3]. The controversy is that in execution, Calormen is an unflattering caricature of the Middle East, one that betrays either racism on Lewis's part toward the cultures and peoples of that area.

Just in case you didn't make the Calormen-Middle East

connection, the illustrations are here to help you out.

And I'm inclined to agree, though my stance is less intense than a lot of this issue's most vocal speakers. C. S. Lewis's depiction of Calormen has big problems. But to unpack those problems, I'm going to have to (finally!) talk about what happens in The Horse and His Boy. Here's the basic summary: The book is a prequel of sorts, taking place during the reign of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy after most of the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Shasta is a (white) boy living in a poor fishing village in Calormen with his abusive (non-white) fisherman father. One day, a Tarkaan (basically, a Carlomene lord) rides up to the fisherman's hut and demands lodging for the night. Shasta overhears a conversation between the two men that reveals that 1) the fisherman is not Shasta's real father but instead found the boy as an infant, washed up on the shore in a raft, and 2) the fisherman intends to sell Shasta to the Tarkaan as a slave. Understandably upset by this news, Shasta runs to the stable and discovers that the Tarkaan's horse is a talking horse named Bree[4] who, as a foal, was stolen from his home in Narnia and now longs to return. So the two decide to run off together "for Narnia and the North," as they say many times throughout the book. After fleeing the fishing village, they meet another pair of runaways: a talking horse (Hwin) and Aravis, a wealthy Calormene girl escaping an unsavory arranged marriage. They too are riding for Narnia, so they join forces. However, in order to get to Narnia, they must pass through the Calormene capital city of Tashbaan, and while doing so, though a complicated series of adventures, they learn that the Calormene Prince Rabadash is planning on attacking Narnia because Narnian Queen Susan (Susan Pevensie, remember), has spurned his romantic advances. Hearing this, our four heroes race across the desert and warn the king of Archenland (the kingdom directly south of Narnia) of Prince Rabadash's plans. When Rabadash shows up with his army, there is a battle, but thanks to the early warning, the Archenlanders (later joined by Narnian forces) defeat the Calormenes. Then, somewhat randomly (though not too randomly, since this is Narnia we're talking about) Aslan shows up and turns Rabadash into a donkey as punishment for his foolishness. Finally, at the novel's end, Shasta discovers that he is the long-lost twin of Archenland's Prince Corin (whom he met earlier in the novel) and the inheritor to the Archenland throne. The end.

Actually, a lot more happens that I didn't include, and I'll get to some of that later, but for now, discussing "The Problem of Calormen," this is basically what you need to know. It's pretty easy to see where the basic foundation of the controversy comes from: C. S. Lewis took the one non-white nation in his entire world and made them the bad guys. It's of course worth noting that the Calormenes aren't the only bad guys in the Narnia books, nor are all the bad guys of Arabic ethnicity: the White Witch is, well, white, as are the giants in The Silver Chair and the Telmarines in Prince Caspian. But the particular way that Lewis defines the Calormenes' villainy is unique to this situation and looks especially troublesome to many modern readers, myself included. For whereas the White Witch and the Telmarines are villainous for mythical and/or political reasons (we'll ignore the giants for now, since they don't seem to have much relation to real life ethnicities), the Calormenes are villainous for reasons that seem innate to either their culture, their race, or a combination of the two.

The most obvious example is of Prince Rabadash, who starts a war basically because he can't get the woman he wants. Taking his character in isolation, the obvious explanation of this action is that Rabadash is a foolish, petulant individual who is not used to being told, "No." Or, to put it another way, Rabadash is simply a flawed human being, and on the one hand, there's nothing wrong with having a flawed human being as your story's central villain. But on the other hand, Rabadash isn't a character in isolation. He's a member of a rigidly patriarchal society that both subjugates women (e.g. Aravis's arranged marriage at the will of her father) and emphasizes forceful coercion and especially slavery—one of the only appearances of Calormen in the previous four books is in Dawn Treader, where the nation is said to be the major administrator in the slave trade. Rabadash's villainous actions are ones that emphasize these specific flaws in his culture, a culture that is tied heavily to his race (it's telling that the two "European" nations, Narnia and Archenland, seem culturally indistinguishable, while Calormen, a nation of a different race, has an entirely different identity).

Again, there's nothing inherently wrong about having a villain in a story, or even with showing how the villain is a product of his society. What does strike me as at least (to use that grad school term) "problematic" is that the only time when Lewis wants to make the villain the product of his society is when he's dealing with the Calormenes. Heck, the only time Lewis wants to point out flaws in a culture are when he's dealing with the Calormenes. The Telmarines, to bring up the easiest European parallel, fear the woods and are rigidly realist, two things that drive their own villainous acts, but both of these are tied to the political factors of the Telmarine kingdom trying to suppress an uprising from the mystical Old Narnians. The culture flows from a temporary political situation. But with the Calormenes, it's the other way around: a temporary political situation flows from their culture, and the implication is that if the Calormenes didn't have such a flawed culture, they would be on much more peaceful terms with their political neighbors.

Even considering all of these issues, I might not even have much of a problem with the Calormenes if the Narnian culture was viewed with a similarly keen eye for flaws. But here we get to what I think is the most damning thing about the whole situation: throughout the entire series but especially in The Horse and His Boy, the Narnians (and the Archenlanders) are pretty much saints. Think about it: when are we ever shown a Narnian character with more than a merely minor character flaw? Edmund in LWW, probably, and a few dwarfs (poor Nikabrik), but other than that? It's all heroic warriors (Caspian, Reepicheep), kindly women (Lucy, Susan, Mrs. Beaver), and comic-relief-but-well-intentioned sidekicks (Mr. Beaver, the Bulgy Bears). Now, for contrast, let's think about the Calormene characters we meet: there's Rabadash, whom we've already talked about; Arsheesh, the abusive, greedy fisherman-cum-surrogate father to Shasta; Aravis's air-headed and spoiled friend Lasaraleen; the Tisroc[5], who either jails or kills his cook for giving him indigestion; and a whole host of other minor characters who share roughly the same barbaric, small-minded, and generally hostile qualities as the ones I mentioned. Of course, there's also Aravis, a Calormene character who comes off quite well in the book, but having only one "good" Calormene in a book set almost entirely inside Calormen makes her character feel more like a lucky exception than a challenge to a stereotype[6]. To put it another way: it's an exception to the rule when a Narnian is evil; it's just as great an exception when a Calormene is good. And it would be bad enough if that were just subtext, but that's actually something that the book nearly says outright. Repeatedly, characters and even the narrator refer to the North as "noble," such as when the book remarks that Shasta had "no idea how noble and free-born people behave," with the not-so-subtle contrast between "noble" and Shasta's Calormene upbringing.

This illustration has nothing to do with anything I'm

talking about, but I think it's awesome.

It would only be fair at this point for me to point out several things that complicate this reading just a little bit. The first is that there are moments in The Horse and His Boy where Lewis does not hold Calormene culture in contempt and, in fact, seems to admire it quite a bit. For example, the book mentions that Calormenes are exceptionally good storytellers, and if there's one thing Lewis holds dear besides his Christianity, it's the art of storytelling. The book also, in great C. S. Lewis fashion, goes to great lengths to describe just how delicious Calormene food is. The narrator also calls the statues of the Calormene gods and mythic heroes "impressive" (although the compliment is sort of backhanded: "mostly impressive rather than agreeable to look at" is the full quote). In fact, there's something to be said for just how detailed the book's description of Calormene life is overall; Lewis's sympathies clearly lie with Narnia, but even then, we only get sparse sketches of what Narnian culture is like—taking the text literally, Narnia seems to be a sparsely populated land with small pockets of civilization where the inhabitants like to dance in circles and occasionally go hunting. The descriptions of Calormen are positively lush in comparison, and honestly, I've got a way better idea of what it's like to live there than in Narnia. The Calormene culture is probably the best worldbuilding (in the traditional high fantasy sense) that Lewis ever did in these seven books. Finally, it's important to note that Lewis was writing this book as an aging British man in the 1950s; in 2015, it's awfully easy to feel superior to people who lived in past decades, but it's equally easy to forget that most of us (white people) would have probably been subject to the same social conditioning and virulent ideas that shaped many of these depictions of other races. Moreover, the ideas regarding what is and isn't hateful toward other races have changed significantly over time, and it's entirely possible to do something that is progressive in one era (having one sympathetic Middle Eastern character, for example) only to have it backfire into regression in another (having only one sympathetic Middle Eastern character). So I don't want to claim much moral high ground here; I don't consider myself superior to Lewis just because I'm noting some of these issues.

That said, these are still issues, and issues I don't think should be ignored. The Horse and His Boy is kind of racist about Calormenes. That's not good.

I complained earlier about the Narnian controversies sucking all the air out of the analysis of the books, so of course, I've gone and spent almost this entire blog post talking about one of those controversies. Part of that has to do with how captivating and vital it can be to discuss these sorts of hot-button issues, but in another, equally accurate sense, a big reason my analysis of the non-racial parts of the book has been so paltry so far is that The Horse and His Boy is probably the most straightforward book in the entire Chronicles of Narnia, with the possible exception of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And by straightforward, I mean that Lewis seems to have had little interest in putting as much subtext and complexity into this book as he did with The Silver Chair and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the last two entries before The Horse. By comparison with the adventures of Eustace and Pole, this book feels morally and thematically and artistically direct in a way that recalls not the older, more mythic third and fourth entries in the series but rather the more juvenile Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. Like those earlier books (but even more so), The Horse and His Boy is an often beautiful but also often unevenly plotted adventure story that emphasizes playfulness and discovery over everything but the occasional moral lessons. And that makes sense; Lewis wrote The Horse and His Boy around the same time as he wrote Prince Caspian.

That proximity to Caspian isn't necessarily a bad thing; overall, The Horse is a much stronger novel than Prince Caspian (though it's not quite as good as Wardrobe and way, way not as good as Dawn Treader or The Silver Chair); it's better at being the pure adventure story that Caspian wants to be, with the hurried journey north providing a much stronger backbone for the story than the Pevensies' trek to Aslan's How. It's also not saddled with the awkward flashback structure either, allowing for a much more propulsive, linear narrative that heightens the tension in The Horse despite that the basic plot engine—we've got to get to Narnia in time to help the king!—is essentially the same. Finally, The Horse has the distinct advantage of actually knowing what to do with its characters. Shasta is an amiable and innocent protagonist reminiscent of Lucy, though with a much clearer conflict motivating him, and the rest of the cast is similarly fun and well-defined: Aravis with her escape from her betrothal, Rabadash with his jealousy and petulance, and especially Bree (who pretty much steals the show) with his arrogant idealism about Narnian life. These characters all have actual arcs, too, which is another thing the book has over Prince Caspian; if someone has a flaw or an unresolved conflict, you can bet they'll have to confront it before the book is done.

"I just love a good roll in the hay..."

But being such a close cousin (even a superior one) to Prince Caspian means that The Horse and His Boy also shares some of that earlier book's flaws, the most troublesome one (besides race, of course) being that C. S. Lewis just does not know how to write a climactic battle scene and, what's worse, all that exciting adventure and character stuff I loved in the previous paragraph comes to a screeching halt once the Calormenes attack Archenland. The big issue with the climax is that it's narrated by one of the characters (a magical hermit) through a crystal ball, which makes the battle seem more like a sports match with commentary than a life-or-death situation. The book also has some of the clumsiest uses of Aslan in the entire series. As I discussed when I wrote on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan is a character who doesn't make much sense from a literary standpoint, more a blunt instrument for morals than a functional piece of the world, but it doesn't matter when Lewis invests the book with such rich emotions surrounding Aslan. You can out-think his role in the story, but you can't out-feel it. In The Horse and His Boy, however, most of those emotions are absent. None of the characters (save for Bree, who has an interesting mini-arc about his fear of lions) have much emotional connection with Aslan, which means that we as readers don't have much of an emotional connection with him. So all that's left is this big, thudding plot device.

I've talked a lot about how so much of the Narnia books is connected to fairy tales in some way, and what's interesting about The Horse and His Boy is that it's maybe the most fairy-tale-like of all the Narnia books. By that, I don't mean that the book has the most interesting things to say about fairy tales; what I'm saying is that this is the book that most resembles a fairy tale itself. A poor, orphaned boy escapes his past to find out that he has a fantastic destiny as both a prince and a savior of a kingdom—that's right out of Fairy Tales 101. In fact, the story of The Horse and His Boy pretty much is a fairy tale as far as Narnians are concerned; if you flip back to The Silver Chair and read carefully, you'll find a passage in which Puddleglum tells Scrubb and Pole about Shasta in the same way that you or I might tell someone a story about King Arthur or Cinderella. I think that's important to keep in mind: when we read The Horse and His Boy, we're basically reading a Narnian folk tale. So in a way, all of these flaws I've described in this post make a kind of generic sense. Of course a fairy tale is going to deal bluntly with a moralistic magical lion; of course the villains are going to be one-dimensionally awful caricatures of ethnic groups; of course the battle isn't the most exciting part of the story. These are all characteristics that play into the general storytelling mode of fairy tales, a mode that tends toward simplicity and moral straightforwardness instead of ambiguity and ethical quandaries. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader may have been the most active, vibrant distillation of Lewis's fairy tale aesthetic, but The Horse and His Boy—story beats, racism, and all—is Lewis's most focused, single-minded pastiche of the fairy tale not as an aesthetic but as a story framework.

Which I think is kind of interesting. It still doesn't excuse the flaws, racial or otherwise, in the book, but it does put them in a context that I hadn't thought about before now. I dunno. If you can't already tell, this isn't my favorite Narnia book.

But maybe it's yours! Let me know! Or even if it isn't, I'd love to talk with anyone about anything I've discussed here. I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up, so now it's your turn to say your peace.

Until next time!


1] I say "Narnian continent" and "southern reaches," though neither of these are entirely accurate. For one, we should probably call this land the Calormen continent, since, as we learn in The Horse and His Boy, Calormen is an enormous empire whereas Narnia is a country only a fraction of the size of one of the empire's provinces. For two, it's never clear just how big the continent is—for all we know, it goes on way further south past the borders of the Calormene empire, making the country in the "central reaches" of the continent. But we never learn of anything past Calormen, so I guess we'll just pretend like it's as south as you can go. Such are the ambiguities of Lewis's worldbuilding.

2] Though the Calormenes also mention "gods," meaning that they're probably polytheistic, although Tash is the only one named.

3] In fact, if Lewis had omitted Calormen entirely from his world (effectively turning it into a land of pasty Europeans) the series would probably be encountering the less intense but still dogged criticisms of whitewashing that Tolkien's Lord of the Rings sometimes gets these days.

4] Well, not exactly. His full name is Breehy-hinny-brinny-hoohy-hah, but I'm just going to side with Shasta here and shorten it to Bree. I'm deeply sorry if I offend any horse readers out there.

5] May he live forever.

6] And even if that's not Lewis's intended message, having just one noble Calormene[7] to prove that not all Calormenes are evil feels a little like having just one black friend to prove that you aren't racist. You're going about it the wrong way, buddy.

7] Though to be completely fair, there's also another good Calormene in The Last Battle. Still, two characters out of many isn't a good ratio.