The Deplorable Word?

[The First Joke]

Could someone explain this to me? When Jadis uttered the Deplorable Word, how come Polly and Digory didn't die? I haven't read the book in awhile, so maybe I'm going crazy... or maybe I just don't remember.

[PrinceOfTheWest]

She'd uttered it years before. She didn't utter it in their presence, since there was no need to. It was when she was having a war with her sister over the throne of Charn, and her sister was on the verge of winning. She spoke it, and it killed everything but her. Then, finding herself with little to do, she put herself in enchanted sleep in the Hall of Images to await someone else to come along and awaken her. Years (centuries? millenia?) later, Digory and Polly showed up.

[The First Joke]

o. duh. lol. told you i'm going insane.

[inkspot]

Do you think CS Lewis imagined the Deplorable Word as an allegory for something in our world, like nuclear weapons or secular humanism or the Macarena -- something that if embraced would destroy life as we know it?

[Malacandra]

inkspot, I think sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. It made a useful plot element and conveyed just how utterly horrible Jadis was - willing to murder every living thing on her planet rather than come second to her sister.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but in the very good fantasy computer game Ultima VI (about fifteen years old now) the player at one point more or less has to learn a spell from some extra-dimensional creatures called Wisps. The Wisps warn him that this "sample" magic was once supplied to another world and contact with that world was lost shortly afterwards, possibly through misuse of the "sample". It is important not to give way to curiosity as this does indeed lead to the immediate extinction of everything, everywhere.

The inspiration for this game element is obvious, but I do not know how closely the parallel was intended or whether Charn was meant to be the "other world" (it's not that unsual for fantasy games to reference famous fantasy novels). :)

[inkspot]

You mean in the game, if you said the spell, you were ruined and had to start over?

You know people always say the Ring in Tolkien was a symbol for nuclear weapons or industrialization and whatnot -- I just wondered about the Word here...

[General Oreius]

What the Deplorable Word stood for would have been a good question for C>S. Lewis. I wonder if he ever answered someone or wrote down an answer.

[PrinceOfTheWest]

Well, I know he scornfully rejected any attempt to tie the Deplorable Word to atomic weapons, just as Tolkien rejected the equation of the One Ring with them. Not only did neither of their minds even run along those channels, they were both too canny and versed in human nature to postulate that a mere thing like a bomb could be innately evil. Both the Deplorable Word and the One Ring symbolized the depths to which the rebellious will will sink to impose itself on others.

[MrBob]

Without getting into the English-Charn language barrier, and how Jadis could understand English so quickly, what was very intersting was that when she tried to harm Aunt Letty, the spell she uttered in Charnese did not work. I wonder if the Deplorable Word only worked in her own world and in other worlds, there are other Deplorable Words.

MrBob

[Malacandra]

Without getting into the English-Charn language barrier, and how Jadis could understand English so quickly, what was very intersting was that when she tried to harm Aunt Letty, the spell she uttered in Charnese did not work. I wonder if the Deplorable Word only worked in her own world and in other worlds, there are other Deplorable Words.

MrBob

The language thing is interesting, since everyone who goes to Narnia understands the local lingo instantly and perfectly - but then, as Xena would put it, "A wizard did it"; since you can get there only by magic in the first place, there's no reason why the magic shouldn't confer understanding of tongues.

Who knows whether a Deplorable Word was only feasible in some of the multitude of possible worlds? In our world, flying fire-breathing dragons cannot exist, but in Narnia they're perfectly feasible, if rare. Were a DW to be possible on Earth, it's reasonable that a magician as powerful as Jadis could find it out, but as I recall, it was a herculean task for her to research the Word in her own world, and she would have to start by working out whether any of the kind of magic she was used to was even possible, since nothing that she was used to using at home worked on Earth.

@inkspot: More or less. Everything in the world of Britannia died, from mighty Lord British down to the rats and mice. You still had the birds'-eye view of the world that you normally had in the game, but you pretty soon got tired of looking at the dead bodies. I personally found it important not to give in to curiosity, at least until I'd already won at the game.

[EveningStar]

I call your attention to the book. The language was a strange one written by the bell. After Digory stared at it for a while the shapes of the letters changed into his own language.

It is a given, absolute given, that if EVERYTHING on the planet died the only one that could ring the bell would be an outsider. Surely Jadis thought of that. Failing that she could have used international icons like the ones in the airport so he would know how to ring the bell, find the bathrooms, and not ride the belt in baggage claim.... ;)

[Malacandra]

Whereas, on the other hand, Lucy had no trouble reading Mr Tumnus's books, and Jadis was perfectly well able to make herself understood both to Polly and Digory and to everyone she met in London as well. (More or less, at any rate. Some of her demands appear to have been a little hard to meet. :) )

[PrinceOfTheWest]

And don't forget that when Jadis went to "blast" Aunt Letty, she did so in a strange language, which one would assume to either be "Charnish" or whatever language the magicians of Charn used to cast their spells in.

All in all, I think Lewis didn't attend to the "language question" of Narnia as well as he might have, and certainly not as well as Tollers did (or even he did himself in his Interplanetary Trilogy, where language was a huge concern). This omission never bothered me as a kid, and doesn't bother me much as adult. I still remember wondering why the Calormenes, who would clearly been of Persian or Turkish extraction, spoke understandable if idiomatic English.

[Samwise Gamgee]

I think the word is like the monder day curesing words? Maybe, but it shows that words can be more powerfull than arms and horses, knights and magic. That one single word compleatly didtrode a world. Of course Digory and Polly came about five years maybe[looking at the time line of Narnia] after the word was uttered and the world of Charn was destrode.

[Aslan son of the Emperor]

I don't think Lewis really touched on the language issue that much in "The Magician's Nephew" because I don't think that was really the issue at hand. I think that the world of Charn was an example of what could happen to our world if we continue down the path we have been going for last few hundred years. Infact, Aslan warns Digory and Polly of this potential outcome if their world doesn't change. I also know that Lewis denied having what happened in Charn be in anyway related to a nuclear apocalypse but I do think that his use of the deplorable word can be related to modern day politics and standing militaries.

In a rapidly technological advancing world less and less we are finding barriers in speech. Most educated people no at least a little of another language or are even able to converse with someone in another language. This started to become normal shortly after WWII as the world realized how small it actually was, and recognized a need to actively engage in diplomatic talks between nations. However, many nations refuse to converse with members of other nations, religious sects, or racial sects. These grudges can be traced back threw history, in some instances, for many centuries. What makes this even more unnerving is the fact that many of these groups that hate each other want to destroy each other. Furthermore if you think about it wars have been started over smaller things than religious or racial grudges. I think what The Magician's Nephew is getting at is that you had two people who couldn't compromise, eventually they're differences grew to encompass their whole world, and in the end led to the end of it. I think the fact that language isn't an issue in the other worlds is just another tie in to the rapid world we live in today.

[Narborg]

On the language question: Ive always put it down to magic, but then agian, t could be just some Lewis didnt think about.

About the deplorable world representing someting: remeber at the end of the book Aslan says something about it being possibe that someone could find out a secret which could destroy all human life. I think there is something there, thoght I dont know what. Or maybe he didnt have someting in mind, but used it as a gernreal worning to us.

[buckmana]

Well, I think the nature of Jadis' power changes for whatever world she happens to be in.

In Charn, she had powerful magic.

In our world, she had none. But she retained her great strength.

In the Wood between the Worlds, she was completely powerless, having no magic or strength.

In Narnia, she also had powerful magic, but probably not enough to allow her to do to Narnia what she did to Charn.

[Daishi]

inkspot, I think sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. It made a useful plot element and conveyed just how utterly horrible Jadis was - willing to murder every living thing on her planet rather than come second to her sister.

Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but in the very good fantasy computer game Ultima VI (about fifteen years old now) the player at one point more or less has to learn a spell from some extra-dimensional creatures called Wisps. The Wisps warn him that this "sample" magic was once supplied to another world and contact with that world was lost shortly afterwards, possibly through misuse of the "sample". It is important not to give way to curiosity as this does indeed lead to the immediate extinction of everything, everywhere.

The inspiration for this game element is obvious, but I do not know how closely the parallel was intended or whether Charn was meant to be the "other world" (it's not that unsual for fantasy games to reference famous fantasy novels). :)

I agree a cigar is usually just a cigar, but this time I think it's a bonfire, because Aslan says our world is heading towards the same end as Charn.

[Ephinie]

Well, since we are here and not in Charn, the Deplorable Word can't really do anything. So... I don't mind telling you all that the Deplorable Word is...

asparagus

[Sven-El]

Ni! That's the Deplorable Word! :D

But in seriousness I think, much like the One Ring, it's not specificallly the A-Bomb, ( to even suggest it is far to simple an interpratation) as much as a message of power. People always have and always will be willing to look for some means by whuch they dominate and destroy all life. Power is about saying "MY will be done." In that search for power it will only corrutp and destroy it's seeker.

Then you have the converse: humility. That's Aslan's sacrfice. It shows that true "power" is about humility, love and willfully submitting oneself to a greater will than your own.

[Copperfox]

Sven-el, "ni" WAS the Deplorable Word, but later the word "it" became the Deplorable Word.

As for the power and self-will meaning of the D.W.: did you ever see the World War Two historical movie "Is Paris Burning?"? It takes place before and during the liberation of Paris (really by the Americans and Brits, but the French tried to believe that they had done it themselves). Hitler had given orders that, if the Nazi forces found they absolutely could not hold Paris against the Allies, they should plant incendiary charges before they retreated and burn the city to ashes behind them. Paris was spared this fate, but Hitler's desire to wipe it out shows a parallel with the White Witch. Hitler would have to have known that burning Paris would contribute absolutely nothing to his chances of being able to avoid ultimate defeat; yet he still wanted to do it out of sheer spite. Jadis had that sort of stubbornness; using the D.W. left her with no subjects to rule, but she did it anyway out of spite.

[Sven-El]

Ooo, that's right!

I havent' seen it. Actually, if you've read the book "Through the Wardrobe" ( a collection of essays on Narnia) one of the authors looks at the (unintentional) parallels between Jadis and Hitler.

[BarbarianKing]

inkspot, I think sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Except in our case, the Macarena, played continuously over a long period of time can cause the destruction of life on Earth as we know it.


Well, since we are here and not in Charn, the Deplorable Word can't really do anything. So... I don't mind telling you all that the Deplorable Word is...

asparagus
But what if you say it in other languages? how about Spanish? ESPARRAGOS!. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ..................................You all still there?

[queenaravis707]

Well, when Jadis said the Deplorable Word in England, it made no sense whatsoever. Maybe it didn't affect anyone or anything in England because the Deplorable Word didn't work in our world and didn't affect people of this world. Because Polly and Digory were humans from our world, it probably didn't affect them either. I don't know if I'm right, kinda something I just thought of.:D