Narniathon: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis

A delightful project, to read one Narnia book a month and discuss it.  Chris has posted his first discussion prompt, which I answered there, and now I'm going to set down a few of my more random thoughts about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Well, we all know the story, in which four siblings find their way into a magical land ruled by an evil witch, who can only be defeated when the true king, Aslan, arrives and sacrifices himself to redeem the world from her grasp.  It's an exciting children's story that: 

• contains layers and depths that can be endlessly discussed, that 
• many people dislike or resent, and which also 
• features a rather gleeful hodgepodge of elements from every mythos, legend, and sweet shop that Lewis could think of.
  

 I bet Lewis just liked the word wardrobe.   It is a funny and unexpected sort of word, which lends excellent rhythm to the title.  There are all sorts of ways to play with a word that starts with war and ends in obe.  I wonder just how much thought he had to put in to have a wooden item, which could be made from a magic tree and serve as a doorway, and which has a great name like that.

From the moment Lucy enters Narnia, Lewis is plying everyone with wonderful food.  By 1950, everyone in Britain was well and truly sick of food rationing, and he makes up for it with endless descriptions of buttered toast, sugared cakes, eggs, ham, cream, more butter, and bacon.

Which explains why Edmund wants Turkish Delight.  I am one of the millions of children who imagined that Turkish Delight must be some incredibly fabulous treat, only to discover years later that it's actually pretty disappointing if you've grown up able to buy endless sugary goodies at the corner store.  Edmund hasn't, and the sugariest, gooiest treat he can think up is Turkish Delight, which is a sort of sweet jelly cube covered in powdered sugar.  I get the impression that Lewis thought it too sweet.

Aslan, being both king and Christ, is surrounded by symbols of both.  Besides being a lion, which evokes the Lion of Judah as well as the king of beasts, when he is first introduced, he is surrounded by an entourage of creatures, most of which are majestic and/or have symbolic connections: centaurs, a unicorn, a pelican, an eagle, leopards, "a great Dog," and dryads and naiads playing harps.  When he is killed and resurrected, the table breaks (as the veil in the temple was rent), introducing a new era of joy.

Aslan has his Gethsemane on the slow, difficult walk to the Stone Table, but he is not left alone while others sleep; Susan and Lucy can't sleep and sense that they are needed.  They go with him and have to be ordered to let go of him.  They serve as types of Mary and the women around Christ, trying to care for him after his death and, when he disappears from the table, thinking that someone has stolen the body in order to further dishonor it.  Since he is a lion, though, they can hardly fail to recognize him as soon as they see him.

I just love Pauline Baynes. 
I'll have to write about her too.

There is a lovely little moment when they arrive at Cair Paravel, the castle by the sea, and Lewis describes -- not the castle at first -- the seashore:

...before them were the sands, with rocks and little pools of salt water, and seaweed, and the smell of the sea and long miles of bluish-green waves breaking for ever and ever on the beach.  And oh, the cry of the seagulls!  Have you heard it?  Can you remember?

The children then manage to spend some time playing on the beach before being crowned kings and queens!

At the end, it all comes full circle.  Lewis falls into an elevated style reminiscent of medieval tales to describe the adult kings and queens, but it only lasts for a few pages; Mr. Tumnus brings them news of the White Stag (which he told Lucy about during their first meeting), and they hunt it all the way to the Lantern, where they stumble through dark trees and back out of the wardrobe, children again and at the same moment that they left.

 

 

I'll end with a quick survey of the planetary flavor of this book, which is the kingly, jovial planet Jupiter.  Lewis had a great fondness for this joviality, which he felt was an...emotion? flavor?  influence? that we have lost.  It combines majesty, brightness, plenty, and merriment, and we only get it in the most idealized images of King Arthur's court, or when Robin Hood meets King Richard.  Obviously the word 'jovial' refers to Jupiter, the king of planets and called Fortuna Major.   To bring it to this story, Lewis puts in as many splashes of red as he can manage, especially in the white-and-black winter -- there is often one red thing in an otherwise colorless landscape.  Peter's shield has a bright red lion; anytime there is an image of a lion, it's red.  Anything that can be described as bright, shining, or glinting, is.  Father Christmas embodies it -- that's why he's so appropriate to the story, even though it gives people palpitations.  Tin was the Jovian metal, which is odd to us, but made sense to the people who came up with it; tin is bright and shining and strong, and is an essential element in bronze.  So Lewis brings in those things without ever saying the word tin -- there's a lot of bright, shiny metal, but he knew the actual word would jar the modern ear.  There's a lot of generosity, merriment, and feasting.  Together, all of these elements flavor the text; it's essentially jovial.  The word jovial is never mentioned, but Peter does say 'by Jove!' a couple of times!