Lucy wakes Susan in the dead of the night. "You've got to follow me! Aslan is waiting!"
Susan does not believe her. She grumbles along behind the group until at last they reach the destination they could not reach alone, and the sun rises to reveal the great, shaggy lion before her. "You have listened to your fears, child." Those are his words to her.
That phrase becomes more and more poignant for me. I used to not understand it. I thought she was infuriatingly stubborn, irritable, impatient, and willfully blinded. Kind of an idiot. The anti-Lucy. The not-believer.
Now I see that she is only one thing: afraid. What have her fears told her? Is she afraid of looking foolish? Afraid of trusting her sister? Afraid of her sister being right and not her?
Is she, in fact, intimidated by Lucy? Is she afraid of her power? Does she resent it? Does she feel it overwhelms her own light?
What could Susan have been if she hadn't been intimidated by her fear of not being seen?
Susan does not believe her. She grumbles along behind the group until at last they reach the destination they could not reach alone, and the sun rises to reveal the great, shaggy lion before her. "You have listened to your fears, child." Those are his words to her.
That phrase becomes more and more poignant for me. I used to not understand it. I thought she was infuriatingly stubborn, irritable, impatient, and willfully blinded. Kind of an idiot. The anti-Lucy. The not-believer.
Now I see that she is only one thing: afraid. What have her fears told her? Is she afraid of looking foolish? Afraid of trusting her sister? Afraid of her sister being right and not her?
Is she, in fact, intimidated by Lucy? Is she afraid of her power? Does she resent it? Does she feel it overwhelms her own light?
What could Susan have been if she hadn't been intimidated by her fear of not being seen?
No one who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring a twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. - C. S. Lewis
Susan would have been an original... if she hadn't been intimidated by the beautiful around her, intimidated into feeling she didn't have something to offer.
If she hadn't listened to her fears.
If she hadn't listened to her fears.