by Messenger_of_Eden » July 25th, 2006, 12:49 am
I agree--as will many people here, thus all the stories written about Susan's reclamation (there are other threads about the topic, and they are very interesting). CSL never closed the door on Susan; he left it quite open as a matter of fact.
After all, Susan was not an evil woman. She simply lacked an enduring faith that what they had experienced was real. As a young woman her priorities got messed up and this contributed to the death of her faith in Narnia and Aslan. Perhaps the fact that they always emerged from Narnia exactly as they had entered it confused her.
The Chronicles describe the childrens' memories of Narnia (the longer they had been back in our world) as dreamlike. Remember that in Prince Caspian, though Lucy had spent years and years in Narnia, growing up as a Queen, hunting, fighting, and swimming, she had trouble with swimming in school upon her return, and she related to the world as a child of her age would, not as a grown Queen in a child's body would. This tells me that to a large degree, the life they had experienced in Narnia would fade and only linger as a dream.
Perhaps the more often a child went there, coupled with the degree of faith in Aslan that they had, the more vivid and real the memory was on this side, and conversely, the less faith they had, and the fewer times they were able to go (Susan only went twice) the more muddled and dreamlike the memories would become, thus leading Susan to convince herself that they had only been playing games.
I like to imagine that she came to Christ, and in the end of her life , met Him and finally realized that He IS the Great Lion. After all, He is a Lion in both worlds. Figuratively here, yes. But we call Him the Lion.
"If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself."--St. Augustine of Hippo