As I was reading
through the second book in the Space Trilogy, Perelandra, I found myself reminded of The Magician’s Nephew. First off, just a quick debrief to The Magician’s Nephew: Towards the end
of the book, Digory is attempting to retrieve and apple from the tree in order
to return back home and heal his Mother. In the midst of doing that, Jadis,
tempts Digory to take a bite of the apple at that very moment. She goes on and
tell Digory that Aslan only wants the apple for himself and has Digory running
the errand for him so he didn’t have to do it himself. Digory initially
struggles but ultimately realizes that Jadis is only trying to deceive him in
her temptation of having him eat the apple.
Similarly to that very
deceitfulness, The Green Lady goes through a similar struggle when Weston does
exactly what Jadis did. Weston does his best to talk The Green Lady into coming
to the Fixed Land even though Maleldil forbids that to happen. In the midst of
the temptation, Weston feeds lies to The Green Lady telling her that the king
wants her to prove herself by disobeying him and that she needs to do what is
best for her and not listen to anyone else. In that moment The Green Lady is
also, just like Digory, able to deny the antagonist and stays obedient to her
calling.
Ultimately I think
Lewis is making a point that temptation can be really tough to deny sometimes.
We can have the whisper of the enemy telling us it is okay to get away with and
it all sounds really sweet initially but eventually it only leads to
corruption. Everyone deals with some kind of temptation in their life every day
and Lewis shows two unique ways through two spate series implying that
temptation is hard to deny but will ultimately give us more satisfaction is we
can conquer it.
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