The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

This post contains spoilers.

A week or two ago, I finished re-reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  I think this was only the third time I've read it, and I found a lot of things that I'd missed the other two times.

The first thing I noticed was Edmund's comment about fauns.  At the end of Chapter Four, after Edmund's met the White Witch, Lucy tells him that while she (the Witch) calls herself the queen of Narnia, she really isn't.  When Edmund asks her where she learned this, she says, "Mr. Tumnus, the Faun," and Edmund replies, "You can't always believe what Fauns say... Everyone knows it."  The narrator explains that Edmund is "trying to sound as if he knew far more about them than Lucy."

What I found interesting here is that Edmund's comment about Fauns is similar to the Witch's comment from (in my edition) the previous page:  "Fauns will say anything, you know."  Not only is Edmund refuting Mr. Tumnus' opinion about the Witch, but he's doing it in a way that's like the Witch herself.  It demonstrates the power that she has over him since he ate the Turkish Delight.  In Chapter Eight when Mr. Beaver says that Edmund looks like "one who has been with the Witch and eaten her food," eating the food seems more metaphorical than literal, and at the beginning of the next chapter, the narrator seems to confirm this, saying that "there's nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food."

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Last time I read the book (which was last year), I thought I found a reference to Luke 1.  This time I was able to pay more attention to it.  In Chapter Seven when they first hear the name of Aslan:

each one of the children felt something jump in its inside.  Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror.  Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous.  Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her.  And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

Throughout the book, there's an overtone of Aslan as Christ, particularly in his sacrifice for Edmund and his returning from the dead.  The reactions that the children have to his name are similar to Elizabeth's reaction in Luke 1:

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb.  And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!  And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.' - Luke 1:41-44

In the next chapter, when Mr. Beaver talks about Aslan again, the children have "once again that strange feeling - like the first signs of spring, like good news."  The "good news" in particular hints at that Aslan-as-Christ overtone, since the word Gospel comes from words that mean "good news" or "good tale."

Edmund's reaction to the name of Aslan is different from the others' though.  At the beginning of Chapter Nine, the narrator says that "the mention of Aslan gave him a mysterious and horrible feeling just as it gave the others a mysterious and lovely feeling."  He doesn't have the same reaction as the others because he's still under the Witch's influence.  After he's been with her for a while, he begins to see that he's allied himself with the wrong side.  When spring comes (since Aslan is drawing nearer) in Chapter Eleven, "his heart gave a great leap (though he hardly knew why) when he realized that the frost was over."  He finally catches up to the others in his reaction to Aslan.

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At the beginning of Chapter Twelve, as the beavers and the children (without Edmund) are just about to meet Aslan at the Stone Table, the narrator describes the setting:

They walked on in silence drinking it all in, passing through patches of warm sunlight into cool, green thickets and out again into wide mossy glades where tall elms raised the leafy roof far overhead, and then into dense masses of flowering currant and among hawthorn bushes where the sweet smell was almost overpowering.

The "cool, green thickets" here caught my attention.  It's the same description that the narrator gives in Chapter Nine (The Founding of Narnia) in The Magician's Nephew:  "They stood on cool, green grass, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups."  Not only is Narnia returning to spring after the years-long winter, but it's returning to the Narnia it was at its founding.

I think the "cool, green" description might also be a subtle reference to Psalm 23:2 - "He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside still waters."  There's a connection of character descriptions here:  Aslan as Christ and Christ as the Good Shepherd.

In the next chapter, which returns to Edmund in the Witch's captivity, there are more descriptions that seem to be taken from Psalm 23.  The Witch "halted in a dark valley all overshadowed with fir trees and yew trees," and "it was so dark in this valley under the dark trees."  Lewis even repeats the "dark" in that second description.  Both of them are like Psalm 23:4 - "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

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In Chapter Sixteen, Aslan revives the statues that the Witch has made her enemies into, starting with a lion:

He had bounded up to the stone lion and breathed on him.  ...  Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his white marble back - then it spread - then the colour seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a bit of paper - then, while his hindquarters were still obviously stone, the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stone folds rippled into living hair.

This bears some resemblance to God's creation of man in Genesis (and therefore also connects to the similarities between the Founding Narnia in The Magician's Nephew and the Genesis Creation account).  Specifically, both have the breath of life in common.  "Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." - Genesis 2:7.

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An-other subtle characterization of Aslan-as-Christ is in the final chapter, Chapter Seventeen.  After the battle against the White Witch, "they slept where they were.  How Aslan provided food for them all I don't know; but somehow or other they found themselves all sitting down on the grass to a fine high tea at about eight o'clock."  This is a similar situation to the Feeding of the 5,000 (Matthew 4:13-21), in which Christ feeds 5,000 men, along with women and children, from only five loaves and two fish.  Both Aslan and Christ feed a large group of people through miraculous means.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew

I just wrote a short post about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, but - as it usually happens - after I posted it, I found something else I could have added.

Last July I started reading the whole Bible.  I'm only in Job so far, but I recently read something about Creation that seems to be an-other one of the Biblical parallels in the founding of Narnia that I wrote about last year.  God asks Job where he (Job) was when the earth was created:

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding.  Who determined its measurements - surely you know!  Or who stretched the line upon it?  On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"  (Job 38:4-7)

Because I'd just read The Magician's Nephew, "the morning stars [singing] together" sounded really familiar.  In Chapter Eight, the whole company of characters are standing in darkness when they start to hear singing.

Then two wonders happened at the same moment.  One was that the voice was suddenly joined by the other voices; more voices than you could possibly count.  They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale:  cold, tingling, silvery voices.  The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars.  ...  The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time.  If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

I'm not sure if the stars' singing is meant to be a reference to that passage in Job, but since the founding of Narnia has connections to the Creation account in Genesis and since that Job passage also deals with Creation, I think there's something to it.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew

I recently started re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia books (I read them all around this time last year).

In Chapter Five of The Magician's Nephew, the Queen explains The Deplorable Word to Digory and Polly:  "It had long been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it."

I didn't realize this the first time I read that part (because The Deplorable Word comes first), but The Deplorable Word is sort of the opposite of what Aslan does in Chapters Eight and Nine.  He sings Narnia into existence:

When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she [Polly] felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before.  And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction.  Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) "out of the Lion's head".  When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked around you, you saw them.

Where Aslan's singing brings things into life and existence, the Queen's Deplorable Word "destroy[s] all living things."

Creation Parallels in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew

Last month, I started reading The Chronicles of Narnia (I have an edition where all seven books are printed in one volume).  While reading The Magician's Nephew, I found multiple parallels between the founding of Narnia and Creation.

Chapter Nine (titled The Founding of Narnia) starts with "The Lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song.  ...  And as he walked and sang, the valley grew green with grass."  Polly notices that there's a "connection between the music and the things that were happening" and that "when you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked around you, you saw them."  The Lion's singing is similar to God's speaking at Creation.  The first six days of Creation start with "And God said," followed by the existence of whatever God called into being.

A few chapters later (in Chapter Twelve), Aslan (The Lion) gives a horse wings.  He then asks the horse whether it's good, to which the horse replies, "It is very good."  It's not as similar as the parallel between God's speaking and Aslan's singing to call their respective worlds into existence, but it does bear some resemblance to the repeated "And God saw that it was good" throughout the account of Creation.

In Chapter Eleven, after the creation of Narnia, Aslan tells the Cabby and his wife that "You shall rule and name all these creatures, and do justice among them, and protect them from their enemies when enemies arise."  Aslan gives them dominion over Narnia in the same way that God gave dominion over the Earth to man:  "Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.  And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name" (Genesis 2:19).  Chapter Nine details how Aslan also brought forth creatures from the Earth:  "The humps moved and swelled till they burst, and the crumbled earth poured out of them, and from each hump there came out an animal," which is similar to God's forming the animals from "out of the ground."

Both accounts (Creation and the founding of Narnia) also contain the entrance of evil into the world.  In Chapter Eleven of The Magician's Nephew, Aslan declares that "before the new, clean world I gave you is seven hours old, a force of evil has already entered it; waked and brought hither by this son of Adam."  This parallels with the serpent's deception of Eve, which results in man's "knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:22).  Aslan's calling Digory a "son of Adam" strengthens the Biblical connection.

Both entrances of evil are linked with a tree, although not in the same way.  In the Bible, the tree is what evil uses in order to enter the world; in The Magician's Nephew, the tree will provide the seed for an-other tree that Aslan will plant in Narnia so that it will be protected from the Witch, the representation of evil.  The trees function differently, but both are accompanied by temptation.  The serpent tells Eve that if she eats of the tree in the Garden of Eden, "your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5).  In Chapter Thirteen of The Magician's Nephew, the Witch tells Digory that if he eats the fruit of the tree within the gates, "you and I will both live for ever and be king and queen of this whole world."  This tree within the gates actually bears some resemblance to the second tree in the Garden of Eden - the tree of life, which would grant man life forever if he ate of it (Genesis 3:22).

I've only just started to really get into C.S. Lewis' works, so while I've recognized a lot of the Biblical parallels he includes in The Chronicles of Narnia, I don't really know why he includes so many.