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Good Calormenes

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Good Calormenes

Postby Larry W. » July 8th, 2004, 11:34 pm

Are there any good Calormenes besides Emeth? Lasaraleen, who is quite friendly to the Narnians in The Horse and His Boy, is rather silly, but otherwise is not so bad. But it seems as if the Calormenes are more often portrayed unfavorably, although it is not because of their race. (Isn't this similar to the way Klingons were presented on the original television series of Star Trek?) Perhaps there should have been more Calormene heroes to provide more racial diversity in the books.

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Last edited by Larry W. on July 9th, 2004, 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Alan » July 9th, 2004, 11:03 am

Well let us try and say something in favour of Arsheesh.

After all he did rescue Shasta ( Prince Cor ). Without a doubt he had his pound of flesh from him but he did rescue and feed a starving and abandoned baby and raise him single handedly, which ( as any of us who have had children will know ) represents years of hard work and drudgery before you see a return in your investment. He could have pushed the boat that Prince Cor was in back out to sea and nobody would have ever been the wiser. A somewhat strange 'Good Samaritan' but for my money a good Samaritan nonetheless.

I tend to think that deep down and long forgotten there was a spark of real decency in Arsheesh the fisherman.
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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby jo » July 9th, 2004, 5:31 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Larry W. » July 9th, 2004, 5:49 pm

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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Guest » July 9th, 2004, 6:06 pm

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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Stanley Anderson » July 9th, 2004, 8:14 pm

[from ryderd]:
>Shame on me, but everytime a Calormen was mentioned, all the
>behaviors seemed so believable because I have seen men and
>women act the same ways. They were unfortunate that they
>lived in a land that officially rejected Aslan and imbraced Tash.
>Living in a dark land does make it harder for those trying to be
>good.

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. Especially when one looks at The Last Battle. In that book it is easy to think of the "bad guys" as the invading Calormenes. But they are only the "tools", if you will, of God's will carrying out a sort of "judgement" against the real bad guys -- the Narnians themselves! For it is their own comfort and willingness to compromise their faith that has allowed the land to slip into the darkness that embraces it by the middle of the book.

I think of the land of Calormen as being one of the "hot" or "cold" places that the Lord would rather it be than the "lukewarmness" of Narnia that He will spit out of his mouth. Of course many from both lands will be redeemed or condemned (the two branching pathways in the door to Aslan's left and right), and both Narnia and Calormen (and even including the desert between them!) will be renewed in "Heaven" as we see at the end when Lucy looks out over them. But if Lewis had any "judgements" against any countries, it was certainly against Narnia first and foremost, whatever else happened in other lands.

We can see this as a call to look to ourselves for the evil we sense (and one can see this in very nearly all seven of the Chronicles), and not to those "out there". One of Lewis' main themes in all of the Narnian books is not "us against them", but "us against us".

If I have a chance at home, I may try to scan a Tim Kirk image of Tashbaan that sends shivers of Joy up and down my spine. I just want to "be there" (along with lots of othe places). Sure there are bad Calormenes, just as there are bad "Englishmen" (or whoever the men of King Miraz' kingdom in Prince Caspian are), or bad giant in Ettinsmoor or whatever. This is story-telling.

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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Guest » July 17th, 2004, 10:03 pm

at the time narnia books were written, racial diversity was not really an issue to caucasions.


also, it would seem that it is arabs that are being portrayed as calormenes.
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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Alan » July 19th, 2004, 9:52 am

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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Guest » July 20th, 2004, 2:04 am

I think that MOST of the Calormenes that were mentioned in the Chronicles of Narnia were projected as bad to the reader. Not everyone in an entire country can be bad. Their only fault was the fact that they did not believe in the presence of Aslan, which really wasn't most of their fault because they were raised to believe in Tash. So of course Calormenes are good.
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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Larry W. » July 20th, 2004, 6:07 am

Here in the United States, there was much the same thing in the fifties and early sixties when blacks and whites were segregrated at lunch counters in the deep South. Shouldn't C. S. Lewis have been more aware of racial equality and diversity and have created a more positive view of Calormene culture in the Narnia books? A few good ones like Emeth aren't really enough to balance the picture. Even the Calormen cities, e.g. Tashbaan are portrayed somewhat negatively. Lewis seemed to like Archenland, but why couldn't he have more of an admiration for Calormen and its people as well?

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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby loeee » July 22nd, 2004, 7:13 pm

Alan, I think that "political correctness" was not a big thing when the books were written. I doubt Lewis even thought about whether he was portraying racial equality or vilifying a particular culture.

The culture he portrays in Narnia (and to some extent in Archenland) is very like European culture of the late middle ages and early renaissance — the "enemy" of that culture was Islam (remember the crusades).
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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby carol » July 24th, 2004, 1:47 am

I was under the impression that the West Indian (Afro-Carribean) immigration was in the 60s?? I remember an exhibition at Southampton Port which was very much 60s...
Whereas Lewis wrote these in the 50s.

And the further away from London one goes now, (except of course places like Bradford), the fewer the non-white faces. Perhaps this was how the world around Oxford was, in the 50s.
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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Guest » July 24th, 2004, 7:49 am

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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Alan » July 26th, 2004, 10:22 am

That's very true Malcolm. However at the time ( and a long time ago it was - so my memories are dim ) that's not quite the way it was presented in the British newspapers.

Thank heavens nobody uses the 'W' word any more, but at the time it had common parlance. When the British Army were given orders to display a show of strength and mustered a section of the infantry comprising men of 5' 10" and over the order was to 'Show the W's what we are made of'. That it failed to impress and the subsequent retreat was not laid at the feet of the USA but directly attributed to the Egyptian leadership of General Nasser. General Nasser was almost universally refered to as 'That bloody W'.

So to get back to the original point that Dana made - I still have to say that in the fifties issues surrounding race and colour were very much on everyones lips and as these events lead to Sir Anthony Eden resigning as Prime Minister, they would hardly have gone unnnoticed even in Oxford.

Carol - the Empire Windrush ( the most famous of all the ships carrying people from the West Indies to start a new life in Britain ) docked, for the first time, but by no means the last, at Tilbury on June 22 1948. By the mid fifties even sleepy backwaters like Nottingham had the beginnings of a sizeable West Indian enclave working at Raliegh bicycles, Players cigarettes, down the mines and in Boots pharmacuticles - to say nothing of the hospitals. So effective was this that in the mid sixties Enoch Powel - the then transport minister ( yes him ! ) put up adverts in Jamaica calling for more immigrants to come and work on British buses.
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Re: Good Calormenes

Postby Guest » July 26th, 2004, 6:11 pm

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