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."
---&---
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 1:41-44In 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.
---&---
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."
---&---
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.
---&---
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.
