Images of Paradise: comparisons

[littlemanpoet]

It suddenly hit me, thinking about a couple stories I love, how similar are Tolkien's "Niggle's Parish" in Leaf by Niggle, and C.S. Lewis's paradise in The Great Divorce.

The obvious similarities are the scenery, but does it go deeper than that? If so, how?

What important differences are there between the two?

Are there other stories in western literature that have a Paradise that could also be included in this thread? The Divine Comedy? Others?

[Lathriel]

Actually the Ivory Tower from the Neverending Story comes to mind. It compares to Gondor although the number of magical creatures is higher. It seems to be a great city and nobody seems to be in great need whne they are there. Also the description of the gardens also remind me of a paradise. However this is also a white city just like Gondor. Gondor was also close to a paradise to its inhabitants untill the war of the ring.

[littlemanpoet]

I've never read The Neverending Story; it seems like it might be a little long..... Sorry, bad pun.

Anyway, I was struck by a few particular similarities between Niggle's Parish and the plain that leads to the Mountains in The Great Divorce.

There is the effect of distance. What does distance say about paradise? It seems like it's associated with desire somehow, but Niggle had a kind of numinous experience from just perceiving distance. In mundane life, distant things are magical to us, and so we close the distance to get near them, but when we have gotten to them, they have lost their magic; Niggle's experience is that distant things retain their magic even in proximity. What does that mean?

The Tree in JRRT and the people from the Mountains in CSL are depicted as having a wholeness, which is very much at odds with the way they are remembered. The Tree in JRRT is unfinished and sketchy, but in Niggle's Parish it is all there as Niggle imagined it, but even better. The people in CSL are whole whereas, to listen to the ghosts who have just arrived on the bus, they were failures, sinners, murderers, and so forth. They're transformed, which in most cases comes as a disgusting shock and scandal to the ghosts.

How does Neverending Story compare? Or other stories of paradise?

[mark12_30]

I really want this thread to take off-- but I have nothing to add right now! Except, is there a reason why you are leaving Valinor out of the comparisons? Just curious...

[littlemanpoet]

I wanted to start with Niggle's Parish in Leaf by Niggle and the plain before the Mountains in The Great Divorce because those were the two that seemed to bear the greatest similarity; which gets me wondering which was written first and who influenced whom, if that happened at all.

Now that I think about it, there is a second reason for leaving Valinor out, that must have been at a subconscious level for me at first. It's that LBN and TGD are not mythical per sé, but more allegorical, though not completely. They are both stories primarily about dying and going to heaven (or not). By contrast, wheras that theme can be found in both LotR and The Chronicles of Narnia, it is one among many, however important. The stories, LBN and TGD, are extrapolations on our own experience of life rather than of a Narnia which is in another world, or a Middle Earth lost in the deeps of time.

That said, a comparison of Valinor may yield some answers to the questions I've raised so far. Differences between them may be more helpful to our understanding than the similarities.

I'm also interested in the end of Danté's Purgatorio, particularly the top of the Mountain of Purgatory, which is depicted as a lush paradise through which flows the River Lethe (spelling?), and is revealed as Eden. It has been too long since I read it, and I'll have to get back to it for the sake of this thread, but it came to mind as soon as I tried to think of other comparisons besides the original two.

[Shelob]

Like mark12_30 I want to see this continued but have little to add now...I would make these few, quick, points though...

A) Though I can't recall all of The Neverending Story right now elements of it most certainly relate somehow to the idea of 'paradise'...Once I have more time I'll relook at that book though...

B) littlemanpoet, you suggested that distance has something to do with desire which has something to do with 'paradise'...the only other possibility that I can think of right now would be that distance is representative of 'the unknown' and that the innate human (or what-have-you) desire to find and understand 'the unknown' (the most famous example would be that of Eve in the garden of Eden) The only problem I can see with this idea is that in every example I can think of (the one of Eve and two others from Greek Mythology) the person who gets 'the unknown' loses something...Eve lost Eden... Orpheus lost his love Eurydice...actually, upon thinking on it, I believe the character in The Neverending Story lost all sense of who he was, for a while at least, while after some seemingly unattainable goal...

C) This may not be the best fitting but has anyone read Yevgeny Zamyatin's book We? I mention it only because littlemanpoet said "The stories...are extrapolations on our own experience of life" which made me think of dystopia novels, which made me consider this one. Out of all the Dystopia novels I considered this one because I was just thinking of H.G. Wells book The First Men in the Moon on the basis that there the moon's surface was like a pardisical garden reborn every morning and dying each night. This book (We) flows from that idea because in it the regimental civilization (that which lends it it's place amonst dystopia novels) is contrasted to the 'green wall' (Free Nature). As a dystopia novel this story is a (somewhat negative) extrapolation of real life which holds an element of 'paradise', beyond the green wall the people lived free and happy (and, as above, it was seemingly unattainable)...unfortunately this being a dystopia novel the narator has his imagination wiped and becomes completely, heart and soul, irreversibly and forever a member of the regimental civilization.

Well, that is definitely more than I intended to write...and definitly only almost fitting, sorry about that...hope it helps (for some definition of 'helps')

[Lathriel]

I've noticed that most of the places where the good characters in books come from are some sort of paradise which is closely tied to the Shire in imagery. For example the farm Garion lives on at the beginning of the Belgariad (By: David Eddings) He lives in a country with rolling hills, farmland,big trees, and other lucious vegetation. (Opposed to the evil characters who live in some sort of desert or swamp)
I also see Rivendell, a place of learning, represented by the wizard's vale. There a group of Sorcerers whom study magic while at the same time it's also a quiet haven where no evil can enter. Just like Rivendell it offers the heroes a time of peace and respite from their adventures.

[littlemanpoet]

I've noticed two different definitions of [b[paradise[/b] at work in this thread. Both are worth talking about.

#1: paradise as utopian garden land, usually either bucolic or airy/elvish, as Lathriel indicates.

#2: paradise as home of those who have passed from this life to the next

I am currently more interested in #2.

In that vein, my interest in Valinor would therefore be limited to the Halls of Mandos. What's Tolkien's description for it? I don't recall any really thoroughgoing description in The Silmarillion. Is there in HoME?

It might be that we could sort of talk about Tol Eressea, since Frodo and Bilbo go there, but they're technically not dead yet. Like Men, I believe the Hobbits, when they die, leave Arda altogether, don't they? Which makes it hard to talk about LotR and #2 paradise.

What other literature depicts #2? Not, I take it, The Neverending Story.
What about Pilgrim's Progress? I have a feeling that has somewhat the same feel as Niggle and Great Divorce; and that brings to mind CSL's other paradise allegory, "Pilgrim's Regress". Anybody else read that one yet?

[Shelob]

What about cases where Paradise#2 also qualifies as a Paradise#1?

I'm just asking because the image of Paradise#1 (ie: gardens) is probably so ingraned into most cultures as the setting for Pardise#2s (Paradises#2?) that the only real difference would be the factor of whether this was a real place or one where only the dead can go. By this I mean that Paradise#1 would be an actual, reachable location while Pardise#2 would be located in the spirt world. And if this were the case how strict would you consider it...living people entered the Greek Hades (not often, and they were usually on quests...Heralces on his 12 labours...Orpehus in search of Eurydice...Odysseus on his way home) but it was much more a part of the spirit world and certainly meets your definition of "home of those who have passed from this life to the next" (well, part of it qualifies as 'paradise' at least...Hades had three parts as I recall, the Elysian Fields for heros, a section for sinners and a third section for your everday, average person).

[littlemanpoet]

Good questions, Shelob. The trouble with making distinctions is that they often kill something inbetween. Thanks for keeping that something alive. You're quite right that there is a lot of overlap. Like I said, both are fine to talk about, especially as they dovetail - I just have a focus on the one over the other.

You mention how the Greek myths had it that the living could pass into the lands of the dead. This is also true in Celtic myth. LeGuin writes it into her EarthSea series, too, and Pullman has it in his Dark materials trilogy; however, the land of the dead in those two trilogies has the darkness, grayness, lack of hope, that seems to be more associated with Greek myth, as opposed to Celtic and Tolkien and Lewis; then again, aren't the Halls of Mandos like the dark and gray, too?

[davem]

This is a difficult one for me to get into as I'm familiar withg Niggle but have only read TGD a couple of times a good few years ago. I suspect, though, that a couple of Middle English works,
Sir Orfeo &Pearl (the later particularly) may have influenced Tolkien's concept of 'Paradise' in Niggle. As far as the Dante connection goes we know that Charles Williams was a member of the Inklings during WW2 & Williams was one of the great Dante scholars - his book The Figure of Beatrice is a major contribution to Dante studies, but Tolkien didn't get on with Williams' ideas generally, so we don't know whether Williams ideas had any effect on Tolkien. We do know that Tolkien didn't much care for Dante's theology though...

[Lathriel]

Well, the paradise Pullman describes is very different. Let me rephrase that. After the dead are freed they become part of the earth,trees,grass etc. This has a peaceful feeling (for me). However, Tolkien's paradise (#2) is where people are actually still in a whole form whereas in Pullman's books they go back to the earth. Very different but from both I get a sense of tranquility.

[littlemanpoet]

Pullman's diffusion of the souls of the dead had a (somewhat) peaceful feeling for me too. Which was disconcerting, considering Pullman's blatant anti-Christian polemic in the trilogy. Of course, Pullman is a good enough writer to set it up such that his "realm of the dead" is hopeless and dreary enough for a diffusion of the soul to be a sweet resolution.

In a sense, there is something more satisfying with Pullman's diffusion of the soul as
compared to the traditional western "bodily consistency through eternity", since, if you allow yourself to contemplate that continuance into eternity, it can be quite a fearsome, panicky thing to think about. I know that I have to stop myself and touch something four-square tangible in to stop feeling so out of control. So Pullman's idea of diffusing back into the matter of the universe, really, ceasing to exist as an individual, seems somewhat like falling asleep compared to the everlasting consciousness of Life Eternal.

(By the way, there's another thread not unlike what I've begun to talk about, called Nebulous It and Absolutes.)

That said, Pullman's diffusion of the soul feels like a copout, an escape from reality as compared to most monotheist constructions.

[davem]

(Bit of a mad rant....)

I have to say that I only vaguely remember Pullman's book, but cannot for some reason even bring myself to skim it again. I remember feeling disappointed by the hopelesseness if the ending. It was as if Pullman, in deciding to 'liberate' humanity from God felt he also had to 'liberate' us from hope as well. He disguises the hopelessness by dressing it up in 'clever' terminology about 'building' a 'republic of heaven' (though, as I've said before, how, exactly, one can physically 'build' what is a metapysical concept - 'heaven' - is beyond me).

Tolkien refuses this cop out. He leaves us with the difficult metaphysical conundrums: How can a loving God permit suffering? What happens after death? What is the meaning of our existence? What Pullman does, as I said, is kill off God & by extension kill off those very questions, leaving us with a sense of emptiness, which we may not immediately feel because we're caught up in our sadness at the eternal seperation of Will & Lyra, & in the (apparently) 'profound' nonsense about this 'republic' of heaven. Pullman has no images of Paradise, because he clearly believes 'Paradise' is one of the 'childish things' that 'grown ups' must put away.

Its perhaps strange at first sight that Tolkien, who lived through the horrors of the Somme, saw his sons go off to fight in WWII, & experienced the unbelievable made fact (the death camps & Hiroshima) could still hold to a hope beyond the circles of the world, while Pullman, product of a safe, secure society which had not known or directly experienced true horror, can dismiss such a thing as almost an 'evil' fantasy needing to be grown out of. But I don't know. Perhaps its the very security Pullman has known that has given him a kind of 'safe distance' from true horror. Certainly he happily plays with the idea of the 'devil', in the form of Lord Azriel, as a kind of Miltonic Satan, heroic anti-hero, defiant to the last, going down in a blaze of glory.

Tolkien, on the other hand, had seen true evil for what it is - his evil ones are vicious, cowardly & cruel - 'monsters' in the true sense of the word. Pullman can only imagine 'evil' in the form of an intolerant 'church' attempting to rule the world & & tell everyone what to do. A simplistic worldview. True 'good' for Pullman is everyone being sensible & grown up about things - generally everyone being nice to each other. I suppose his 'heaven' is a 'heaven on earth', bound within the circles of the world - hence not a 'heaven' at all. His 'vision' (ie the 'hope' he offers) is one stripped of the metaphysical, & so of mystery. In both Tolkien & Pullman we find an account of the end of 'magic', of the world of myth, but in Tolkien the metaphysical dimension remains, & thus so does hope, & possibility. In Pullman it is replaced by blandness & the everyday. But then his conception of 'good' & 'evil' in HDM is equally 'bland'.

(Told you...)

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by lmp

#2: paradise as home of those who have passed from this life to the next

I am currently more interested in #2.

In that vein, my interest in Valinor would therefore be limited to the Halls of Mandos. What's Tolkien's description for it? I don't recall any really thoroughgoing description in The Silmarillion. Is there in HoME?

Now I come to think of it, it is interesting that in LotR there sems to be little said of the paradise which awaits mortals, yet they do seem to be secure in its very existence, which is a particularly Christian view. What does intrigue me is that mortals in Middle Earth are obviously aware of the existence of Valinor, so how would this affect a person's view on life after death? Would this add to the certainty of knowing there is 'somewhere else'? Or might it make a mortal feel jealousy of some kind? Surely this would give rise to a number of different beliefs, even if we looked at it in terms of the theology/cosmology of Middle Earth?

Originally Posted by Lathriel

After the dead are freed they become part of the earth,trees,grass etc. This has a peaceful feeling (for me). However, Tolkien's paradise (#2) is where people are actually still in a whole form whereas in Pullman's books they go back to the earth.

We can't possibly do much more than speculate on what the ancients believed happened after death, and at any one time they possibly held the multifarious beliefs that we hold today, but one possibility is that they believed human 'souls' were returned to the earth. There is some evidence of this with the practice of excarnation, where a body would be either deliberately stripped of flesh before burial, or more interestingly in terms of this discussion, it would be left for the elements and wild animals to deal with. This would not mean just dumping the body, on the contrary, it would be placed in a special place, often an enclosure. It is quite possible to infer from this that the intention was that the 'soul' would be returned to the living world in this way by providing nutrients in its turn. The practice is not allowed today, as it would be impractical to have bodies lying about our hillsides! But there is an echo of it in the popular 'green' burial where the body is not marked with an ornate stone but with a young tree.

To me, this is all incredibly peaceful and somehow 'correct' and I can see that it is this concept which Pullman was getting at. Looking at death with physics in mind, we do go on, as we are all made of matter and energy and you cannot destroy these. But can you destroy consciousness?

That is where the traditional ideas of paradise come in. In these, humans have constructed places where consciousness survives, and identity. Each different paradise though, has a 'code', and it is ruled by the God to which it corresponds, and entry is not generally possible without acceptance of that God (though even within Christianity there are exceptions to this where acceptance is not necessary). Is this what Pullman was getting at with his Republic of Heaven? His paradise could be a democratic paradise, which allows for all faiths and beliefs and non-beliefs. He was trying to make out that there could be a possibility that Paradise could be all things to everyone. But only a possibility, as the very fact that he showed the possibility of infinite worlds might mean that there could be infinite Heavens. The Heaven his characters were waging war against was one Heaven, a particular one which was dominant.

I agree that the book finally skipped over the important and quite maddening questions which we always seek to answer. And it did seem that to 'grow up' was to resign yourself to something. But what it served to do for me was to underline how thoroughly depressing I find absolute atheism. A famous quote, but not so famous that I can remember who penned it, mentions atheism as something like a 'bright and breezy highway'. Alas, I find it to be quite the opposite.

Having experienced what can only be described as a sense of deep disappointment as what seemed certain death reared up, I now know that it is important not to waste what life is made available to us, as we cannot bank on getting another life. I feel I can delineate between the things which are truly fulfilling and those pursuits which are mere time wasting (e.g. devoting precious hours to notions of status). I think that experiences of trauma bring that cold sense of realisation to a person, and Tolkien was one of these people.

Having been through horrors he could appreciate what was worthy and what was not, and this is why he painted grim pictures of people like Grima and Saruman and Gollum, all 'trapped' by some need, whether for status, power or an object of desire. In this he did not shirk from addressing the big questions. And I think that this is the difference between Tolkien and Pullman. The former experienced horror and came out of it ready to address ideas and accept some kind of belief, while the latter has not (to my knowledge) lived through that kind of experience so is 'safe' enough to cast off what might seem to be non-pragmatic ideals. This contrast in itself could apply to the world Tolkien admires, one where the past is respected, and our modern one where we feel change is all-important. I hope this makes any sort of sense, it's way past my bedtime!