Tuesday, August 06, 2019

Foreshadowing in LWW?

I just noticed that Edmund humiliates and mocks a defenseless stone lion when he arrives at the White Witch's courtyard in chapter 9 -- although only once he realizes he is safe, of course:
And he stood there gloating over the stone lion, and presently he did something very silly and childish.  He took a stump of lead pencil out of his pocket and scribbled a mustache on the lion's upper lip and then a pair of spectacles on its eyes.  Then he said, 'Yah! Silly old Aslan! How do you like being a stone? You thought yourself mighty fine, didn't you?'  
This perhaps foreshadows, or establishes a pattern for, the greater humiliation and mockery unleashed by the White Witch and her minions in chapter 14, once they realize the mighty, much-feared Aslan is genuinely at their mercy.

In both cases, their fear, once assuaged, seems to goad them into acts of desecration; as if they could avenge themselves for their own timorousness on the object of their fear.

And in both cases, the humiliations or desecrations do not necessarily achieve what is hoped; certainly, despite Edmund's scribbles, "the face of the great stone beast still looked so terrible, and sad, and noble, staring up in the moonlight, that Edmund didn't really get any fun out of jeering at it."

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