Monday, July 14, 2008

Pop-culture cross-breeds

I was re-reading Prince Caspian from the Narnia books on the flight to Georgia this morning, and I happened upon a funny paragraph that never really caught me before.

It comes after the Pevinses children and Trumpkin the dwarf kill a wild bear (not a talking bear) that ambushes their party:

"Such a horrible idea has come into my head, Su."
"What's that?"
"Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here and still looked like men, so that you'd never know which were which?"


... this from a book that was written in 1951, three years before I Am Legend was originally published, 18 years before Night of the Living Dead, and a good 50 years before 28 Days Later. Granted, I'm sure Lewis meant it as Christian allegory (it is a Narnia book, after all), but zombies, vampires, and doppelgangers were the first thing that popped into my head when I read about little Lucy and her worries.

1 comment:

Noel said...

As in 1954s _Lord of the Flies_ and Tokien's ring trilogy, Lewis may have been commenting on the total depravity of man with WWII very much in mind.

...Two summer weeks (this one plus the week of the ill-structured sandwhich) in the Atlanta area: that sounds sweaty when one isn't inside.