Wednesday, December 16, 2015

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Originally, I wasn't going to write about Prince Caspian because I didn't find a whole lot to write about in it, but then I finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (about which I did find a fair amount to write), and I figured I had to continue in the order I started.  So, while I didn't find much, here's what I found in Prince Caspian.

In Chapter Fourteen (How All Were Very Busy), Bacchus drops a pitcher into an old woman's well, and when he draws it out, "it now was not water but the richest wine, red as redcurrant jelly, smooth as oil, strong as beef, warming as tea, cool as dew."  The water-to-wine part of this was easy enough to place: Jesus does the same thing at the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-12).  What I couldn't figure out at first was: if Aslan is the Christ-like figure, why is Bacchus the one changing water into wine?  (My confusion over this is an-other reason why I initially wasn't going to write about Prince Caspian.)

Eventually, though, I think I figured it out.  First, this isn't Bacchus acting by himself.  Before Bacchus draws the water from the well, Aslan heals the old woman.  "As he [Aslan] spoke, like the flush creeping along the underside of a cloud at sunrise, the colour came back to her white face and her eyes grew bright and she sat up and said, 'Why, I do declare I feel that better.'"  The healing of the old woman is itself the miracle.  Aslan effects that, and Bacchus' changing the water into wine, which - as the old woman notes - "makes a nice change," is only an-other aspect of that healing.  Bacchus is acting under Aslan's power.  As Susan notes in Chapter Eleven, "'I wouldn't have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we'd met them without Aslan.'"

Second, Bacchus' working under Aslan is an example of how Lewis combined various elements to create his own world.  Primarily, there are the Christian elements, but here he also includes mythology.  In other places, there are elements from fairy tales and animal stories.  Having Bacchus work under Aslan provides a hierarchy into which the disparate elements are organized.

The other thing I found is a phrase in Chapter Eleven (The Lion Roars).  At first, I recognized just that the phrase "she [Lucy] fixed her eyes on Aslan" is similar to a Biblical verse, but once I looked up that verse, I found a deeper connection.  The surrounding situation is significant.  Lucy is the only one who can see Aslan, and he's told her to wake up the rest of the party and follow him.  The others are annoyed at being woken up, especially because they can't see Aslan for themselves.  "Susan was the worst," so when Lucy eventually starts leading them through the woods, she's "biting her lip and trying not to say all the things she thought of saying to Susan.  But she forgot them when she fixed her eyes on Aslan."

It's a similar situation in Hebrews 12:1-2:  "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."  Some translations (and I believe also some liturgies) have it as "let us fix our eyes on Jesus" - the same phrase that's in Prince Caspian.  Once Lucy "fix[es]" her eyes on Aslan, she forgets the not-very-nice things she was going to say to Susan, similar to how the "sin which clings so closely" is "[laid] aside" when "looking to Jesus."