Philia Love in C.S Lewis’ Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

Abstract

Philia Love in C.S Lewis’ Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe   Farisah Nur Shadrina English Literature Faculty of Languages and Arts State University of Surabaya [email protected]   Drs. Much Khoiri, M.Si English Department Faculty of Languages and Arts State University of Surabaya [email protected] Abstrak Tidaklah mudah untuk mendefinisikan apa itu cinta. Bagaimanapun juga, cinta telah menjadi tema umum yang digunakan dalam lagu-lagu, film-film, karya-karya sastra dan kehidupan sehari-hari. Cinta adalah komponen yang penting dalam kehidupan individual dan tampaknya seseorang tidak mungkin dapat hidup tanpa cinta. Cinta tidak hanya menggambarkan sesuatu yang erotis namun juga dapat menggambarkan hubungan antar teman, yang dapat disebut sebagai cinta filia atau persahabatan. Cinta filia atau persahabatan adalah satu tema yang paling banyak digunakan dalam karya sastra anak – anak. Skripsi ini merumuskan dua masalah; bagaimana cinta philia digambarkan oleh karakter-karakter dalam karya sastra anak – anak populer, Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe karya C.S Lewis dan apa alasan – alasan dan dampak – dampak dari penggunaan cinta filia di dalam novel tersebut. Skripsi ini fokus mendiskusikan cinta filia melalui karakter – karakter (Anak-anak Pevensie dan penduduk Narnia) di dalam novel Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe karya C.S Lewis dan alasan – alasan mereka serta dampak – dampaknya dalam penggunaan cinta filia. Riset pustaka dengan membaca secara intensif diaplikasikan di dalam skripsi ini sebagai pendekatan untuk analisa data. Untuk menjawab masalah pertama, skripsi ini menggunakan teori cinta oleh Fromm, element – element cinta filia atau persahabatan oleh Moore dan Lewis yang dibantu oleh konsep dari Aristotle and beberapa peneliti lainnya di bidang persahabatan. Masalah kedua dijawab dengan menggunakan konsep motif dalam membangun persahabatan oleh Aristotle yang dibantu oleh penjelasan Lewis dan Fromm. Terakhir, analisa data mengungkapkan bahwa Lucy membangun persahabatan dengan Mr. Tumnus dan Giant Rumblebuffin, Edmund membangun persahabatan dengan the White Witch dan semua anak – anak Pevensie membangun persahabatn dengan Aslan, keluarga Beaver dan penduduk Narnia lainnya. Hubungan ini dibangun berdasar beberapa alasan yang berdampak pada anak – anak Pevensie dan penduduk Narnia sehingga mereka dapat meningkatkan kepribadian menjadi individu – individu yang lebih baik dan membawa komunitas di Narnia hidup bahagia. Kata Kunci: cinta, cinta filia, persahabatan   Abstract It is not easy to define what love is but love has been a general theme used in songs, movies, literature and everyday’s life. Love is a necessary ingredient in individual’s life and it seems impossible to live without love. Love represents not only an erotic thing but also the relationship among friend or it is known as philia love or friendship. Philia love or friendship is also mostly used as a theme in children literature. This study formulates two questions; how philia love is represented by the characters in a popular children literature, C.S Lewis’ Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and what the reasons and impacts of employing philia love are in that novel. This study focuses on discussing philia love depicted through the characters (The Pevensie children and Narnia inhabitants) in C.S Lewis’ Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and their reasons and impacts of employing philia love. Library research by intensive reading is used as an approach in analyzing data. To answer the first problem, this study uses Fromm’s theory of love, elements of philia love or friendship by Moore and Lewis and supported by Aristotle and several researchers on friendship. The second problem is answered by using Aristotle’s concepts of motives in building friendship supported by Lewis and Fromm. Last of all, the analysis reveals that Lucy makes a friendship with Mr. Tumnus and Giant Rumblebuffin, Edmund makes a friendship with the White Witch, and all The Pevensie children build a friendship with Aslan, the Beavers and other Narnia inhabitants. These interactions are built on several reasons which can make the children and Narnia inhabitants improve their personalities into better individuals and bring the community in Narnia live happily. Keywords: love, philia love, friendship     INTRODUCTION The good and evil, love and friendship, heroes and heroine, are mostly the themes of which fantasy fictions deal with. By understanding the meaning of the themes, readers can draw some messages from them. It also encourages children readers to learn about moral values, how to build a good friendship to others, how to love everyone and be a humble person, etc. Fantasy fictions had been written a long time ago in which they were well known as classic fantasy. Classic fantasy fictions were firstly aimed for young readers such as Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. However, George MacDonald wrote his first fantasy novel for adult readers, The Princess and The Goblin and Phantastes. He was popular with his work and influenced other fantasy writers, such as J.R.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis. Tolkien was also popular with his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings and Lewis was mostly popular with his series novels The Chronicles of Narnia. His series novels contain seven books: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (1951), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), The Silver Chair (1953), The Horse and His Boy (1954), The Magician's Nephew (1955) (the #6 book which was replaced to be the #1 book by Harper Collins Press since the story tells about the history of creating Narnia), and The Last Battle (1956). Accomplished by C.S. Lewis in March, 1950, Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe had been a popular book. That it has been over sixty years from the date of firstly published, the novel gives many influences to other works. Although it is a children literature, its fantasy world has inspired many authors to create novels – not only for children readers but also for adults – that many of them also become popular, for instance J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter Novel Series. Alike the author of Harry Potter Series above, Philip Pullman used – not only the same theme, but also the same characters like talking animals – in his fantasy series His Dark Materials. The existence of wardrobe and the girl – as it is found in Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – also can be found in another Pullman’s, Northern Light. Other authors and their works inspired by Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe are Neil Gaiman’s young-adult nouvella Coraline; Greg Egan’s science-fiction short story Oracle; and Lev Grossman’s The Magician which is also New York Times best-seller.   Interestingly, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe achieved the 25 best children fantasy book at the first position (bestfantasybook.com). According to a 2004 study, almost all school in San Diego, California use the novel as a reference book read by teachers and seventh-grade students. It was also #58 on New York Time’s 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923. Based on a 2007 online poll, the novel was named “Teacher’s Top 100 Books for Children by the National Education Association in the U.S and it was one of the second most common books which read by U.K adults and children after Alice in The Wonderland. In the novel’s firstly time of publish, it had been sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_ Narnia. retrieved on October 12, 2012). Because of Lewis’ great talent in writing, he became the leading figure in English Faculty at Oxford University and being the chairman of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Beside that, Lewis accepted many achievements in his writing, such as Optimism which won Chancellors English Essay Prize in 1912, The Allegory of Love which also won Gollancz Memorial Prize for Literature in 1937, The Last Battle (the series #7 of The Chornicles of Narnia) which won Carnegie Medal for best book children in 1956 (http://www.thestonetable.com/landing_pages/1,3.html. Retrieved on October, 12th 2012).                 The struggle in saving Narnia from the cruel White Witch involves all Pevensie children and Narnia inhabitants. They discuss about plans together, they prepare the strategies to attack the White Witch and they gain their victory together. Their adventure in Narnia depicts how the children have a close relationship with the inhabitant of Narnia such as Mr.Tumnus, The Beaver, Aslan, etc. The Pevensie children love all Narnia inhabitants and the vice versa. Their love reveals a certain love which is, in term, called as Philia love. Philia love means friendship in modern Greek. Aristotle in Book VIII of Nicomachean Ethics (Ross, 2006:81), describes Philia love as a dispassionate virtuous love which includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity. It is a virtue or implies virtue, and is beside most necessary with a view of living. In ancient texts, philia denoted a general type of love, used for love between family, between friends, a desire or enjoyment of an activity, as well as between lovers (http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/general-religious-debates/76681-agape-love-vs-philia-love.html). Beside Aristotle, Lewis, who was the writer of the novel discussed in this study, said that philia love or friendship is the most prized which is independent and uncompulsively. It is also the only love which close to God or angels.                  Besides discussing the relationship between the Pevensie children and the inhabitant of Narnia, the children also depict how their relationship among themselves. The children’s friendship both among themselves and between them and Narnia inhabitants are based on several reasons or motives such as respect, utility and pleasure. These motives can bring them to different impacts. The impact of being respect as the motive is a strong friendship. One of the best examples of it is the friendship between Lucy and Mr. Tumnus. Otherwise, when the motives are pleasure and utility, the friendship will not last longer. The friendship between Edmund and the White Witch is as the example. Nonetheless, based on facts lay on background of the study above, then the problems are formulated and divided into two: (1) how is philia love represented in C.S Lewis’ novel Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe?and (2) What are reasons and impacts of the employment of philia love among the characters in C.S Lewis’ novel Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe? As referred to background and statement of the problems above, the purpose of the study are devoted as results of analyzing the problems: (1) To identify the representation of philia love in C.S Lewis’ novel Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and (2) To recognize the reasons of the employment of philia love and its impacts to the characters in C.S Lewis’s novel Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. In accordance, this study is expected to help readers to realize that the novel can be used to interpret one of the types of love, philia love or also known as friendship. Besides, the study can also help readers to understand more about the implementation of philia love or friendship. Thus, the readers can also be expected to learn how to build a good friendship. Regarding the novel type as a children literature, moreover, this study may help the readers who concerned with teaching on literature as a reference. Furthermore, the readers of the novel Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe are also expected to easily understand the content of the novel itself especially about the relationship concerned in building friendship among Pevensie children and the inhabitant of the Narnia. RESEARCH METHOD The main source of the study is from C.S Lewis’ Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe which is published by Harper Collins Press in 1994. Data are taken from the novel concerning with speeches and thoughts, actions, and attitudes of the characters which are related to the matter of discussion, philia love. It is including quotations, phrases, dialogues and monologues. The method of collecting data which is used in this study is literary research. It does not use statistical method and it is not served in numbering or table. Library research used an approach in analyzing data. The kind of library research is intensive or closely reading to search quotations or phrases and to analyze data. Reading the novel is the first step to do. Then, searching the quality of the novel is done by reading the achievements of the novels as well as the author’s. To decide an interesting topic from this novel is the next step. After drawing an interesting topic, it is important to mind-map the concepts of the topic. Collecting data concerned with the topic in some tables will help to make the mind-map. Mind-mapping the concepts and the data help arranging the thesis. After making the mind-map, the next step is to analyze the data. Theoretical framework will be used for subsequent analyzing. After that, to find the result of the discussion, drawing conclusion is completed after the analysis. The concept applied to discuss the matter in this study is philia love or friendship which is described by C.S Lewis, the author of Narnia:The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, in his book titled The Four Loves. Besides, there are some concepts of love, philia love and its characteristics stated by, Aristotle, Fromm, Moore and other researchers on friendship used in the analysis. LOVE Regardless of economics, race or status, people value love and recognize that love will shape what is good and true. To love means to care, to recognize the essential humanity of the other person, to have an active regard for that person’s development. May (1953:206) defines love as a delight in the presence of the other person and an affirming of value and development as much as one’s own. According to Warga (1983:313), love is an intense feeling of positive regard toward another person in which the needs and desires of that person are put above those of the one who loves. Love is more than an emotion. It includes the attitudes of trust, positive acceptance and approval, helpful and a wish for the good things for the loved one. It also includes some behaviors that are along with the attitude such as affection, joy, sexual desire, anger, respect, sympathy and empathy. Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving (2006:72), who had conducted many studies of thought and love, describes that love has four elements: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. They are the set of creative relationship of love. The first element is caring or usually called as a concern. According to Fromm, love is as the active concern for the life and the growth of that which people love. When the active concern is lacking, there is no love. Fromm says in Warga (1983:314), care as loving one/s’ health, growth, stability, and welfare. Care is about to share the feeling of joy and pain. Care also implies to the mutuality that means giving as well as taking. Responsibility, according to Fromm (2006:76), is an entirely voluntary act. It really means responding to the needs, both are expressed or unexpressed, of another human being. To be responsible means to be able to “respond”. Thus love, as Fromm describes it in Warga (1983:314), is a relationship of giving and taking, of mutual interaction. Love involves a sharing and returning. The third element is respect. By respect, Fromm explains that there must be an ability to see a person as he is and to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is. Thus, Respecting, according to Fromm in Warga (1983:314), does not mean to change the personality of the loved one into a certain image, but it is to accept his or her personality in the way he or she is. According to Fromm (2006:78), to respect a person is not possible without knowing; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by knowledge. He adds in Warga (1983:314) people in love must know each other. For real love, people must experience each other and for real knowing one has to know the intimate, real self, free from the mask of polite society. Obviously, there are different kinds of love. According to Warga (1983: 315), love is divided into two, sexual or erotic love and nonsexual love. Nonsexual love is also divided into two types: love of humanity and familial love. Familial love, according to Fromm, is divided into two types, motherly love and brotherly love. Motherly love is regarded for a weak and helpless while brotherly love is the friendly love that exists among equals. A fantasy writer, C.S Lewis, has similar idea about the types of love. According to Lewis in his book The Four Loves (1960), love is divided into four types. They are storge, philia, eros and agape. PHILIA LOVE Philia is the Greek word which means friendship. It also comes from another Greek word “philos,” meaning loving. Today the label “Platonic love” is commonly used to describe true friendship, referring to the ideal of non-sexual connection, deriving from the Greek philosopher Plato’s incorporeal, abstract, perfect world of ideas. According to Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1995), Philia love means to have ardent affection and feeling—a type of impulsive love. This is the natural, human type of love and affection that people have for a friend and is often defined as "brotherly love." It is also defined in  Bible, John ( 21:15-16), Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him with the agape type of love and Peter responded that he had the normal human philia type of love for Him. Philia is also a neighbourly love - the bonds of friendship that bind people together in community. More formally, the word philia is defined as "the reserve” of human warmth, enthusiasm and generosity that nourishes and stimulates the fellowship at the heart of civic life (http://www.philia.ca/cms_en/page1171.cfm). In other words, today’s communities are inherently resilient. The lens of resilience is fundamental to Philia because it makes people re-examine assumptions about how individuals and communities function and grow. It reminds them that they are not merely passive recipients in need of outside support and intervention, but have a built-in capacity to heal, adapt, transform and survive. Phillia, according to Feist (2008:353) is an intimate nonsexual friendship between two people. It cannot be rushed and takes time to grow, to develop, to sink its roots. Rollo May in Feist (2008:353) also states that Philia does not require that we do anything for the beloved except him, be with him, and enjoy him. It is friendship in the simples, most direct terms. Philia, then, can grow as love between siblings or lifelong friends. Boer in Baron’s Social Psychology Second Edition (2005:8) is also explaining about friendship growing between siblings. According to him, the relationship between siblings is different with the relationship between parents and their children. The relationship between siblings often involves a combination of the affection, hate and competition.  Floyd adds in Baron’s book that siblings are most possible to feel the closeness between them when they are able to share opinions and memories, experience friendship and help each other to overcome a difficult situation. In the relationship of siblings, one of them may take a role as a “parent” however there are some studies that also find that siblings are most often employing their relationship as a close friendship or merely an acquaintance. Lewis explores the four types of love, which are also described in Bible, in his book The Four of Loves (1960). According to him, Philia is a love among friends-it is a friendship. Philia was appreciated strongly in the ancient world but in this modern life, there are very few truly friendships among people because it is also very few people have experienced it. To Lewis, philia love is friendship which is seemed the happiest and the most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. It can be traced back to the story of Pylades and Orestes, Roland and Oliver, Amis and Amile as well as the story of David and Jonathan in Bible. Friendship are of practical value to the Community, for example Mathematics effectively began when a few Greek friends got together to talk about numbers, lines and angels. Nevertheless, it may bring benefactor to the community. As a benefactor it helps the community not to live but to live well. However, the danger to the community is real. Friendship can be a school of virtue; it also can be a school of vice. It is ambivalent. It makes good men better and bad men worse. Lewis (1960:76) adds that in a good friendship, each member often feels humility towards the rest. He sees that they are splendid and counts himself lucky to be among them