Poor Beasts

[DeplorableWord]

Umm... just curious... did anyone feel sorry for the animals in MN that weren't picked to be talking beasts when Aslan was creating Narnia??? :(

[EveningStar]

Nope. We forget that other creatures have lives worth living and they don't spend their days moping about because they are not like us. ;)

God gave every living thing both the opportunity to live and the spice of life to draw it into the game.

[elfjad]

I didn't feel sorry for the other animals. It wouldn't be very special if they all talked. I think the non-talking ones must have populated the countries outside Narnia as the ability to speak is one of the distinct traits of Narnian animals throughout the books.

[Puzzle dear]

Yeah, besides there had to be dumb animals for hunting right?

[DeplorableWord]

Ya, true, it's just kinda sad... by the by... I didn't want anyone *cough Chakal* to take offense by this... it was just a comment. :D

[Puzzle dear]

Ya, true, it's just kinda sad... by the by... I didn't want anyone *cough Chakal* to take offense by this... it was just a comment. :D
none taken

[Deeper_Wonderment]

I mean, imagine what would happen if Talking beasts had to stalk other Talking beasts for dinner? That'd be a little grim.

[lionessofgod]

Ohh....of course! I would be unhappy too.

[EveningStar]

It happened once. The giants in The Silver Chair. "That stag was a liar." Alas, one cannot trust Bambi's cousin to tell you if he's tough and stringy or not...

Thank you for helping me make my 100th post. :)

[Susan's_Shadow]

If some of the animals didn't talk there wouldn't be any meat............
I think someone already said that.........
Sorry

[slideyfoot]

The caveat "its ok, they weren't talking beasts" crops up repeatedly in Narnia. There are also hunts (the Archenland royalty in The Horse and His Boy, for example), and certainly no restrictions on eating meat unless its a 'talking beast' - the aforementioned example from The Silver Chair:

..."Don't eat another bite."

"What's wrong?" asked the other two in a whisper.

"Didn't you hear what those giants were saying? 'That's a nice tender haunch of venison,' said one of them. 'Then that stag was a liar,' said another. 'Why?' said the first one. 'Oh,' said the other. 'They say that when he was caught he said, Don't kill me, I'm tough. You won't like me.'" For a moment Jill did not realize the full meaning of this. But she did when Scrubb's eyes opened wide with horror and he said:

"So we've been eating a Talking stag."

This discovery didn't have exactly the same effect on all of them. Jill, who was new to that world, was sorry for the poor stag and thought it rotten of the giants to have killed him. Scrubb, who had been in that world before and had at least one Talking beast as his dear friend, felt horrified; as you might feel about a murder. But Puddleglum, who was Narnian born, was sick and faint, and felt as you would feel if you found you had eaten a baby.

A similar repulsion is voice by King Tirian when he realises that talking horses are being used as beasts of burden. In fact, that repulsion is so great that it sends Tirian into a murderous rage:

...Up til now Tirian had taken it for granted that the horses which the Calormenes were driving were their own horses; dumb, witless animals like the horses of our own world. And though he hated to see even a dumb horse overdriven, he was of course thinking more about the murder of the Trees. It had never crossed his mind that anyone would dare to harness one of the free Talking Horses of Narnia, much less to use a whip on it. But as that savage blow fell the horse reared up and said, half screaming:

"Fool and tyrant! Do you not see I am doing all I can?"

When Tirian knew that the Horse was one of his own Narnians, there came over him and over Jewel such a rage that they did not know what they were doing. The King's sword went up, the Unicorn's horn went down. They rushed forward together. Next moment both the Calormenes lay dead, the one beheaded by Tirian's sword and the other gored through the heart by Jewel's horn.

Simply by enabling an animal to communicate, what was once fair game for both our dinner plates and manual labour needs becomes an equal (or at least, near-equal; Aslan, like the christian deity, gives human dominance over the animal world in The Magician's Nephew). Its an intriguing idea - if that piece of cheddar cheese you were about to eat suddenly started a conversation, how would you feel? Would you still eat camembert? Or stop eating all brands of cheese? There are examples of this in the real world - say you have a pet duck, do you still enjoy the same species in roasted form for lunch? Or perhaps you're a dog owner, and enjoy Korean cuisine?

'Talking' beasts raise a lot of questions, and relate to a number of debates. Its clear Lewis himself had no concerns about eating meat - after all, he disparages the Scrubbs for being vegetarians. I'd be interested to hear a vegetarian take on the issue, not being one myself.

[Christine Marie]

Not really, since ignorance is bliss.In other words, they wouldn't have known better so they wouldn't have known they were missing out on anything

[PrinceOfTheWest]

I think the issue is more that the Talking Beasts bore the Image of Aslan (read carefully the blessing Aslan pronounces on them when He gives them the gift of speech - He gives them Himself) in the way that we humans bear the image of God. Creatures that bear Aslan's image can love, and are respected as such.

Interestingly, even in the Judeo-Christian tradition, eating meat was not done until after the flood, when God pronounced that because man's effort had saved the lives of all the beasts, all their lives were henceforth forfeit to man. All men were forbidden to eat blood, though - because it contained "the life", it was God's property alone.

Lewis, being a steak-and-kidney Englishman, could not have imagined a magical world without his sausages!