C.S. Lewis didn’t care for magicians.
In fact, as Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, he saw the core problem that magicians were trying to solve one that was at best distasteful, and at worst something that led to actions “disgusting and impious.” That core problem: “how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.” (We won’t get into this much yet, but he saw magicians and scientists as related in this sense…something we will discuss more when we get to the Space Trilogy.)
For the “wise men of old” the core question of the universe was “how to conform the soul to reality,” but for magicians the question was how to bend Nature to one’s own desires (or, at best, humanity’s desires). “It is the magician’s bargain: give up your soul, get power in return.” The process was clear: the magician “surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power.”
Where the wise sages of old bent their soul to reality using “knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue,” the magician embraces a core selfishness, a willingness to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to attain greater power.
And, according to Lewis, this is so simple and so starkly clear that a child may recognize the signs of a fledgling magician in a few moments. Digory discovers it when talking to his Uncle Andrew, who is going on and on about how lying may be immoral for a child, but things are different for him. The rules don’t apply because he is, after all, someone special. A bit royal. A bit better than others. Digory recognizes this for what it is: “He thinks he can do anything he likes to get whatever he wants.”
Digory is right, of course. Uncle Andrew is glad to explode a few guinea pigs or experiment on children if it increases his power. After all, he is a keeper of “secret wisdom” and has a “high and lonely destiny.” Digory doesn’t much care for him.
In Uncle Andrew we see a minor magician on the beginning of his journey. He has done some awful things, certainly, and he has made terrible sacrifices to interact with “devilish” people so that his power can increase. But his sacrifices have not been so great that he has forfeited his soul…and his power is not so great yet, either.
Jadis, on the other hand, is a magician at the height of her power, and Digory is taken in by her at first. Digory and Polly arrive, after a series of adventures, in the dead world of Charn. There they find a series of statues showing the rulers of the great city. Here Lewis shows us a bit about the potential corrupting influence of ultimate power on human beings. Digory and Polly notice that the first kings and queens seem, from the looks on their faces, to be people who were almost “certainly nice.” They looked “kind and wise.” A little further along and they begin to look “solemn.” Not bad, not unlikeable—just the kind of people you’d have to mind your manners around.
When they get to the middle of the room the faces begin to be “faces they didn’t like.” The rulers here looked “very strong and proud and happy, but they looked cruel.” Further on they looked crueler still, and still further on “they were still cruel but they no longer looked happy.” They were “despairing faces: as if the people they belonged to had done dreadful things and also suffered dreadful things.”
And our final figure—who we will soon discover is the most powerful magician of all, the White Witch, the Empress Jadis—had “a look of such fierceness and pride that it took your breath away.” Digory thinks her beautiful, and when she wakes he even thinks her “brave” and “strong.” “She’s what I call a Queen!” he says. He soon learns better. But what Lewis wants us to see is the path of the magician, the danger of selling bits of one’s soul for greater and greater power.
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We soon learn that she gained her power at great cost. Jadis had learned the “deplorable word”…a word that when spoken would kill every living being in her universe except for the speaker. The ancient kings had known this word but they were too “weak and soft-hearted” to use it, and tried to hide the knowledge. Jadis herself didn’t use it until “forced” to do so by her sister. Jadis had gladly sacrificed every soldier in her armies in her battle with her sister. She was always glad to sacrifice someone else. When the children object to this, Jadis says, “What else were they there for?” She sees everyone in the world only as objects that serve her or do not serve her.
For Jadis, all of life, all of morality, is centered on Jadis herself. She defines peace, essentially, as “giving me all that I want.” Her sister is “too weak” because she has moral boundaries that include things like not destroying all life in the universe… something that Jadis sees as a moral good because, well, the rules are different for her. Sure, she’s the last Queen, but she’s also “Queen of the World.” She’s willing to kill everyone if that’s what it takes for her to get what she wants.
She questions the children over and over, wanting them to acknowledge her power, to compliment her great deeds, asking, “Has your master magician, your uncle, power like mine?” She tells them, “Remember what you have seen. This is what happens to things, and to people, who stand in my way.” Demanding to know, “Does your uncle rule a city as grand as mine?”
Jadis, we are told, is “hungry and greedy.”
Magicians are selfish. Greedy. Self-centered. They think that they have a different set of rules to follow than “commoners.” They can say and do things no one else can, and for them it’s not a moral failure. It’s something laudable because…well, can’t you see all the power? They’re getting what they want, so that means what they did must have been correct, even good. They are the best, the most powerful, the most wonderful, the strongest, and if they choose to throw someone else under the bus or pour their blood out in war, well, that’s what other people are for.
We do see a moment of terror for Jadis. In the wood between worlds she seems to have no power at all. The children are stronger than her. And yet, as soon as she gains the upper hand she completely forgets that moment of powerlessness: “… her mind was a of a sort that cannot remember the quiet place at all.”
Uncle Andrew falls into serving her easily. Why? She possesses power, and he wants it. He fantasizes that he will be her husband, perhaps, while Jadis sees him as nothing more than a means to an end, someone to be used. When she is done with him, she discards him. When the kids are not useful to her, she seems unaware of their presence.
Aslan, of course, is not impressed with her power. His power is greater than hers. But Aslan’s picture of the proper ruler is something quite different. In fact, he’s the first to put the correct descriptor on Queen Jadis: she is evil.
When Aslan trains King Frank and Queen Helen on what will be required of them as the newly appointed sovereigns of Narnia, he gives them wise advice. They are to “do justice” among their people. They must “protect them from their enemies when enemies arise.” Aslan tells them to rule with kindness, to be fair to their people, and to remember that their subjects, “are not slaves.” And if war should come, Frank must be “the first in the charge and the last in the retreat.” Their cares, and their focus, must never be on themselves. It must always be upon their people.
Our young man Digory sees all this, and understands it, and is given a chance to join the rank of the magicians. Aslan sends him to the walled garden where silver apples of immortality await. A rhyme at the gate tells us that the apples should only be taken for others, not for one’s self. Like any power, it is best used in the service of others, or it comes with a terrible curse for the one who uses it for their own gain.
Digory takes an apple, as Aslan directed. But Jadis is there, having taken and eaten one for herself. She invites him to join her, to rule at her side, to become like a god in power and longevity of life. Or, she says, he could use the apple to heal his sick mother.
Digory wavers. Wouldn’t it still technically be for someone else if he stole the apple and gave it to his mother?
But Jadis pushes too far. She tells Digory he could just leave Polly behind so no one would ever know what he had done. And Digory sees again the pure meanness of the witch, and it’s at that moment he makes his decision, to make things right in Narnia rather than use the power for himself.
It seems unfair.
Jadis gets what she wants. The apple works, even though she stole it. Aslan says so himself, “She has won her heart’s desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess.” There’s more to the story, though: “But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want: they do not always like it.”
So, we come at last to this:
In this world, as in Narnia, there are those who gain power through cruelty and spite, who see others as pawns to be used. There are those who have words of power and use them to harm, to destroy those who oppose them. There are people who would sacrifice everything and everyone around them for another day, another month, another year of power. And for a time it may work. The magic of the apple works even when that magic is stolen. People like these—the magicians —will rage when they are not properly worshiped. They will demand we bow down and acknowledge how great they are, how powerful, and if there is a moment when they are weak, when they are defeated, they will deny it or—as with Jadis—will not be able to hold it in their mind, and deny reality. And so long as we allow it, they will work great harm in the world for even the smallest benefit to themselves.
And yet, in time there will be a new coronation. Whether it’s King Frank and Queen Helen or—many centuries from now—the Pevensie children, Aslan has a way of bringing true rulers to the throne. People who are doing their best to be kind, to think of their subjects, to protect them from harm, and who use power to serve others, not serve themselves.
As for Jadis, pity her. She got her heart’s desire and it brought her only misery. And in time, Aslan will bring justice for her many acts of evil.
There are two saying of Jesus that kept echoing in my mind as I reread The Magician’s Nephew. Lewis all but quotes them. The first is this, “What profit is it for a person to gain the whole world but lose their soul?” (Matthew 16:26). And the second—a saying I see my own community of faith wrestle to believe—“whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant.” (Matthew 20:26)
Power is only great when used to serve others. When we use it for ourselves, it corrupts and destroys. Kindness is strength. And, yes, a new coronation will always come in time.
Matt Mikalatos is the author of the YA fantasy The Crescent Stone. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on Facebook.
“What profit is it for a person to gain the whole world but lose their soul?”
“But for Wales?”
I love this book, I do, it is my favourite Narnia book. I will say though, as I first read this book as a child in eighties Britain, I was amazed at how Lewis was allowed to write Margaret Thatcher into it and nobody said anything. I later learned things like timescales and so forth. Then I was just horrified that he predicted a leader like her, and nobody went and stopped her. Anyway, Lewis did create a quite horrifying and terrifying villainess in Jadis, there is no denying it.
This book is an excellent example of protagonist-centred morality.
Jadis destroys all life in her universe due to pride: she didn’t want to lose a civil war to her sister. She is shown as bad.
In the very next book, Aslan does the exact same thing, destroying all life in the Narnia-verse. His motivation seems more like boredom or indifference. Nevertheless, we are told that the being who has committed this terrible crime is good.
We are shown that all inhabitants of the Narnia-verse go on to Narnia!Heaven or Narnia!Hell. Shouldn’t we assume that the Aslan of Charn also did a sorting of good and evil people? Or was Aslan just OK with letting all of the Charnite souls be destroyed? If the latter, Aslan is truly evil.
So no. As divine beings go, Aslan is a 1/10. Would not worship.
I guess Aslan was killing the Narnians for their own good, whereas Jadis was acting out of spite?
@2/kayom. Yeah, I was reading bits aloud to a friend who asked me if Lewis somehow knew about a current politician all those years ago. it’s a good reminder that we’ve had these sorts of rulers with us for a long, long time.
@3/JReynolds and @4/Aonghus Fallon. I’ve been trying to stick to the books we’ve read together as we go through the re-read, but I think that’s a great question to explore as we get to The Last Battle. I will say, in the context of this book, Charn and Jadis are clearly meant to be a cautionary tale for modern British kids (i.e. “This could be us.”). Lewis isn’t subtle about it, either. When Polly says to Aslan that maybe the Earth isn’t quite so bad as Charn at this point, Aslan says, “It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware. That is the warning.”
The other thing that is implied but not outright stated is that this whole thing about worlds ending and beginning again are definitely things that Aslan is involved in in some way. The world that Charn is in “dries up” in the Wood between worlds after all the people are out of it, and it’s only then that Aslan begins to create the new world that Narnia is in. So I don’t know that we can assume that Aslan didn’t get involved in the world that included Charn… he certainly seems to think that the witch is under his purview.
Aslan destroys Narnia at the end of The Last Battle because the land’s time has come. The world of Narnia has reached the end of its path, and now its inhabitants must face judgment for what they have done in life. Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Jill, and Eustace act as witnesses to Narnia’s destruction. Time stops and darkness falls. Meanwhile, the creatures of Narnia move on to Aslan’s Kingdom, an afterlife free of pain and death. The Last Battle acts as an allegory for the Book of Revelation in the Bible which describes the last years of Earth.
As an omnipotent being, Aslan had the power to take those peoples and populate them in a new world, where they could live different lives and learn from their mistakes. Jadis couldn’t save one person from a destruction not her causing, even if she truly wanted to. She certainly couldn’t save herself from her myriad bad decisions.
Not that Narnia was always cozy, necessarily, but Charn always struck me as something rather different than the rest of the series. You wouldn’t be surprised to find Elric wandering around the ruins of such a world, whereas the thought of him in Narnia is rather..
Hmm. Not quite sure how to finish it that. But it is rather rather…, isn’t it?
3/JReynolds, Thanks. I was going to point that out, but you saved me the trouble of doing so.
8/ cuttlefishbenjamin, Yes, it is. Rather.
‘The world that Charn is in “dries up” in the Wood between worlds after all the people are out of it, and it’s only then that Aslan begins to create the new world that Narnia is in.’
I remember a bunch of us discussing this book on another forum. A poster pointed out that at least one guinea pig ends up in the Wood Between the Worlds. So this little guy is nosing around, nibbling on the grass – and taking the occasional sip from one of those pools (as you do) in a place where time is meaningless and it’s pretty much immortal. Just think of the consequences. World after world blotted out thanks to one thirsty little rodent….
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@10, Simone de Beauvoir’s haunting image of an immortal man, and an immortal mouse, trapped into living forever is a bone chilling image from “All men are mortal”
I always found the whole series fascinating each entry brought something different to the world he created here…. Not a catholic and miss me with his morality plays, but this was a formational series for me… including this book.
I wonder what Lewis meant exactly by the word “magician”. Would Hermione Granger, for example, be a magician by his definition?
@14/ad. If you take this book, “That Hideous Strength” and “The Abolition of Man” as his answer, he’s very much looking at people who are trying to hack the universe for their personal benefit regardless of harm done to others. I suspect Lewis would have plenty of questions about the source of magic in Potter’s world, but I don’t think he’d see Hermione herself as someone in the same sort of moral category that he puts magicians in those works.
On the other hand, he argues in “Abolition of Man” that scientists are more-or-less in the same kettle as the magicians, it’s just that they’ve been successful. So… could be that he’d have strong words for Ms. Granger.
The Deplorable Word strikes me as an allegory for the atomic bomb.
@6, I don’t buy the “its time has come” argument because there’s no standard by which to judge why this land’s time has come now as opposed to any other time. For Charn there’s an argument to be made that okay, there’s no living things there anymore, might as well pack it up, but that’s not the case for Narnia, and if you say it’s a different world, it’s judged according to a different standard, then that standard could be anything or nothing and Aslan’s whim is all. The only concrete reason we see for the ending of Narnia is the donkey pretending to be Aslan and with the result that people start doubting him and turning their backs on him. Call the donkey a false idol or the Antichrist but either way there’s no claim to ineffability here and it might as well be a matter of Aslan’s pride as Charn was destroyed for Jadis’s pride as @3 pointed out.
How long have you waited to publish this article?
As for the article itself, when I first read The Magician’s Nephew, I didn’t believe I would enjoy it, but I did! I do want to point out, that even at the end of the book, the Uncle remains infatuated with Jadis. I believe that is a metaphor on how power continues to attract those who want it.
This is strangely timely – funny how that works out.
Anyway, as an almost-scientist (didn’t end up pursing it as a career) I imagine I’d have some quibbles with Lewis on this front, but I think there kind of is something to be said for the ideas of use and power and why we do what we do and what we consider progress. As the great Dr. Malcom says, ‘your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
I also definitely do NOT have it in me right now to discuss the finer points of eschatology.
@17/misty306 Hahahahhaaaa well… I just wrote it last week. But I have to say the timing worked out nicely. And now Tor can repost it every four years forever. :)
Was so unimpressed by this book. Jesus vs magicians/scientists. The idea that any power or insight outside of a theocratic framework is corrupt is really obscene. Aristocracy is good because its enacted by God?
I don’t think people realize how utterly depraved this point of view is.
Jadis is somewhat like Lucifer in Paradise Lost, in the sense that although she’s the bad guy (and very bad indeed), Lewis perhaps inadvertently draws her with more vigour than anyone else in the book. The image of her charging around London in a hansom cab having a great time, terrorizing the horses, stuck with me long after most of the book was a blur.
The basic concept of the magician/scientist vs. the wise person, which Lewis shares with and no doubt discussed with Tolkien, strikes me as kind of bogus though. It’s getting at a real problem, but in a mistaken way. As described, it implies that anyone who ever picked up a tool is evil–and certainly anyone who ever practised agriculture! Clearing land, imposing your will on it to substitute plants of your own breeding for what would naturally be there, to gain advantage–clearly magician-type stuff. But I don’t think either of them had a problem with agriculture, or in general with any technology that had already been invented before the advent of industrialization. But that’s not a difference in kind, it’s a difference in degree. I suppose it would have been a lot less dramatic to say “If you’re going to try to gain some power to change outcomes, have some sense of proportion and know when to say ‘enough'”.
Representing scientists as being after power is also a deep misrepresentation. I’ve known a fair number of scientists and seen plenty more interviewed, read what they’ve written and so on; they vary like anyone else, but to the extent that you see a trait over-represented it’s the desire to know things, not control things. Scientists more than anything else seem to do their thing out of a fascination with what things are and how they work. And much of what they discover is beautiful.
Then in many cases capitalists come along and use those discoveries to make money, but that is a distinct issue. And again, capitalism is characterized by an insistence on endless growth and overcoming all limits and, for that matter, by basing society on bottomless greed as the desired motivator. Lewis and Tolkien are coming to these issues from a consciously pre-modern sensibility which is actually very powerful, but it can still prevent them from grappling directly with some of the issues that concern them. I would argue that their figure of the magician and scientist is a sort of substitution, not fully conscious, for the figure of the capitalist, which they can’t really talk about in the setting and can’t really grapple with from a pre-modern perspective.
I thought this article would have touched on the reluctant magician Coriakin in “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” as well. He’s a former star (no joke intended) who was made the wizard ruler of an isle of foolish dwarfs as a punishment (presumably for some prideful folly). Which in a way invites comparisons to the Istari (Gandalf, Saruman and co.) in Lewis’s friend Tokien’s work being Maiar (higher beings) stripped down to wizards to go among the people of Middle-Earth as messengers and aid them surreptitiously.
@5 “I will say, in the context of this book, Charn and Jadis are clearly meant to be a cautionary tale for modern British kids (i.e. “This could be us.”).”
I am with @16 that this was about the bomb.
But I was also struck, on re-reading part of this book recently, at how much Digory and Uncle Andrew have in common. As you point out, they’re both drawn to Jadis. They’re both intellectually curious. Digory wants to learn about new worlds as much as his uncle does, and like his uncle he’s willing to hurt Polly to satisfy his curiosity: they have a physical struggle over whether to release Jadis, and Digory overpowers Polly and hmm, that doesn’t end well at all. So it’s all the more important that Digory comes around at the end, partly because he doesn’t want to betray Polly. This is Narnia’s creation story, complete with forbidden fruit, and it’s fascinating that a main task for the main character is to work out how he’s going to manage a natural thirst for knowledge that could be either a very good thing or very bad.
@21 I took it less as a warning against science and more as a warning against the kind of power-hungry and war-like leaders, like Jadis, who direct scientists to create things like atom bombs. Nature was imbued by God (if you believe that) with all kinds of wonderful secrets, whether magical in Charn and Narnia or scientific in our world, but they can be misused by short-sighted people who only care about temporal things and like to make war on each other. It’s not an indictment of the pursuit of science as a whole. That would be myopic and unrealistic. It’s a statement the author hopes we embrace our better angels because Charn is what could happen if we follow our worser ones.
@20: I don’t know whether Lewis completely failed to see that side of the question, or would say indignantly that you’re distorting his theme — but given the number of would-be theocrats around today (start with Josh Hawley), I suspect Lewis overestimated (despite his argument in The Last Battle) the extent to which that false prophets and/or religious tyrants could be separated from those ruling justly on behalf of God. (The Narnia books suggest he believed that the latter existed; those of us who don’t buy the God mythos hold other opinions.)
@3, I’m not sure about equating the destruction of Charn with the “winding down” of Narnia. The similarities seem to me to be superficial–though I admit there are similarities. I don’t see, for instance, any intimation that Jadis cares anything at all for the beings in the place she’s destroyed, where Aslan clearly does. Aslan, remember, died to save those beings (from Jadis, actually). He knows them all. Jadis knows, insofar as I can see, none of them, nor can she conceive of any reason why she might want to.
The biggest difference for me is that Aslan made Narnia (does it, in fact, in this book), and he is the God of the place. Jadis did not make Charn, she is not any more part of it than any other inhabitant, and she has done no suffering for it. She destroys something that does not belong to her in any sense whatever. Aslan, on the other hand, in a fundamental way IS Narnia. When he winds the place down, it is not because he does not care for it, or that he wants to rule it and can’t (another major difference–Jadis destroys what she cannot rule), but that he knows the creatures there need to move on…to Narnia. Aslan destroys nothing, because everyone and everything that was part of “Narnia” now moves to the real Narnia instead. Can Jadis do this for the inhabitants of Charn? Would she even if she could? Of course not. She doesn’t care anything about them whatsoever.
You make a very interesting point in equating the two, but I think the underlying motives show that though the acts appear similar on the surface, they are in fact nearly opposites in effect and purpose.
Not sure everybody ends up in Narnia2? Don’t a lot of the naughtier Narnians disappear into Aslan’s shadow or something? So there are casualties.
In this respect I guess there isn’t a massive difference between what Jadis does and what Aslan does – ie, get rid of the trash, the only difference being that Charn (an old, cruel world) is inhabited by an old and cruel people (ie, is 100% bad) so everybody has to go, whereas Narnia – I dunno, maybe 50%? In turn, this opens up an interesting question re when to act (sort of like the Prime Directive).
@6, I am not the same person as @3, though I seem to be arguing on their side quite a bit in this discussion. I always had a problem with Aslan’s so called “sacrifice” in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, because he doesn’t give up anything for it to be a true sacrifice. He knew that his sacrifice would break the Stone Table, he knew that he would come back, and that’s what corrupts his sacrifice for me. If after he died on the Stone Table he was unable to return to Narnia, that would have been a sacrifice in truth, because he would have given up something, but no, he came back at the end of the book (in time for the battle even, I think? It’s been a while). It’s the knowledge that prevents it from being a sacrifice, Harry Potter’s sacrifice works because he didn’t know he would come back, but Aslan did, that’s the very definition of having his cake and eating it too.
I also don’t agree that Aslan somehow had a right to end Narnia because he created it, that to me is the same as saying you gave life to your children, you created them, so you have the right to end their life too. On the Jadis/Aslan comparisons, onee could argue that Jadis, by destroying everyone on Charn, sent them either to Charn heaven or Charn hell, which is as much as Aslan accomplished by ending Narnia, and not everyone in Narnia went to real Narnia aka Narnia heaven, because there is a Narnia hell, there is a difference between where people went when they went into that shed, so only some people went to real Narnia, so does that mean Aslan only cares for some people? Or is punishing those other people for eternity also somehow caring for them? And what’s the point of creating Narnia if it’s not the real Narnia? Couldn’t Aslan just put people in real Narnia to begin with? What’s the benefit to Aslan or to the people of putting them in shadow Narnia first? This for me is the problem of religious allegories, it creates the same questions that comes up against real religions and it’s never quite as well thought out.
As a professional scientist, I find Lewis’ view of scientists here a little incoherent. They’re perfectly happy to benefit from modern medical care, electricity, etc, but on the other hand they complain that we’re disrupting some sort of “natural order” ot “subduing reality”, as if humans weren’t natural or real themselves. in my experience power over others isn’t something scientists generally want; to me it sounds more like a description of politicans (and some religious leaders)!
Like @22, I think Coriakin could have merited a mention in this article as a “good” magician.
I’d also second the views in @29, creating something giving you the right to destroy it is something most find unethical. Now it’s been mentioned I find the similarities between Aslan and Jadis quite interesting – the same action from opposite motivations. I assume we’ll get on to that when we cover the Last Battle.
‘It’s the knowledge that prevents it from being a sacrifice’
I entirely agree TK. And made a similar point about the nature of faith on another forum – if God turned up in a Cadillac some day and showed you round heaven, promising you that this is what awaits if you behave yourself, then your compliance wouldn’t be the result of faith. What gives any act of faith its resonance – what defines it – is the element of uncertainty.
Re allegory. I actually like allegory (or rather, I often like the end result, with the rationale behind it being of secondary interest) but I think there are two issues – (1) allegory often distorts rather than reveals the truth & (b) this is compounded by the subject matter. A religious allegory is predicated on a belief system that is pretty opaque and entirely speculative. The result is a lot of fuzzy thinking.
Lewis insisted that LWW wasn’t allegory but this seems to have been a tactic to avoid further scrutiny. Some aspects of it are heavily allegorical but it doesn’t stand up as an allegory (anymore than it stands up as parallel version of the gospels) because there are only certain broad corollaries – betrayal, death and rebirth – but a fundamentally different story is being told.
I don’t know how germane to the discussion this is, but I am not sure I would say (or that Catholic theology which is the one I am most familiar with) would actually say parents ‘created’ their children anyway, as opposed to assisting in their co-creation.
So even that isn’t a perfect analagoy even if you accept that Aslan/God may have the right to bring the world into some new state (or destroy it) – that authority wouldn’t really trickle down to us (at least not when it comes to person).
@31: Some aspects of it are heavily allegorical but it doesn’t stand up as an allegory
Well, exactly. Besides, he wouldn’t see LWW as an allegory compared to the “true allegory” he had already written: his very first published work of fiction, The Pilgrim’s Regress (which I don’t think is on Matt’s list to discuss/?).
I have a soft spot for ‘Pilgrim’s Regress’! It’s interesting to see how certain ideas resurfaced in the Narnia sequence. At one point the mc is travelling through a wild, mountainous region inhabited by two tribes of dwarfs, red-haired and black-haired, representing Communists and Fascists (as far as I can tell), an idea Lewis reiterates later with the red-headed Trumpkin and the black-haired Nikabrik – who also represent different, conflicting value systems (if not communist and fascist).
Another great post Matt! The introduction of Jadis in the hall of statues is one of my top favorite scenes in the whole series. I still remember listening to it on audio and getting chills as an 11-year-old.
Always look forward to these reviews! Love reading your perspectives on Lewis’s work and on Aslan. Can’t wait for your thoughts on the Space Trilogy.
Thanks as always for the excellent comments all around, and I am always so impressed by everyone’s ability to disagree with kindness (and I know our moderators play a hand in that, so thanks again to the mods!).
It will be VERY interesting to put the whole “judgment of Charn/Narnia” conversation in the context of Lewis’s own thoughts about the afterlife when we get to THE GREAT DIVORCE. His picture of what happens after death is quite a bit different than the mainstream evangelical/conservative Christian standard, and no doubt it plays a role in what he’s picturing takes place in moments like these.
This isn’t a metaphor Lewis really used, but imagine mortality and this world as our school years, grades 1 through 12. Jadis is that really awful kid who thinks she runs the place. Destroying another student, getting them thrown out, she’s fine with it if it helps secure her position.
Now, imagine Aslan as the one running the school. His whole objective is to get everyone out as well. But, his objective is for them to graduate and go on to a better life. Sometimes, that’s not going to happen. Sometimes, despite his best efforts, students are going to make bad choices and set themselves up for bad lives.
Jadis could also be described as one of the life lessons, a part of the curriculum. She is, if you will, the wrong answer on the multiple choice quiz.
On the issue of science, Lewis was not anti-science but he was anti-scientism, the idea that science can be used to create its own moral system. We’re not talking Einstein, we’re talking Mengele. We’re talking about the early researcher of leprosy who was so certain it was hard to contract that he injected it into numerous people without telling them to see if any of them would develop it. We’re talking about people setting up rules for orphanages who didn’t believe children needed basic affection and would forbid child care workers to show it to them.
Many of us, raised up on modern fantasy and all that, when we see Lewis compare scientists to magicians and talking about their common roots are thinking he’s saying science is like Harry Potter. But, Lewis was writing in a time when fantasy was thought of as children’s entertainment at best. When the historical types were brought up, the images were extremely negative. He’s not talking about the medieval healer who didn’t differentiate between magic potions and medicine. He’s talking about an image more in line with Sauron.
I think the search for allegory may be going farther afield then necessary.
The Narnia books were written in the shadow of WWII. Their audience of British children – the older ones would remember the war, the younger ones were growing up surrounded by its ruins.
A charismatic leader like Jadis, who leads her world to complete destruction? That’s Hitler. (More precisely, it is “Hitler shows up in your living room, your uncle (head of household) is enamored of him, and you’re a kid and how can you stop this?”)
Prince Caspian – you’ve got the European resistance, when all seemed lost, fighting in the woods.
In TLTWATW, the kids are literally being evacuated from a war zone.
The Horse and His Boy is fleeing occupied Europe and slavery.
These were all events out of the control of the children in Lewis’s audience, and of he himself. Bigger than any one person could control.
The only solution Lewis could see to these horrors is Aslan/Jesus, because, well, he’s a theologian and that’s how he thinks.
Scratch these stories, and they are filled with the anxieties and fears of British civilians and children during and after WWII.
It’s definitely a big part of it – along with the mouthwatering descriptions of food in a culture where rationing was still in place. I’d also place Edmund’s behaviour in a WWII context as well. The notion of being betrayed by one of your own comes up in quite a few books around then – e.g. ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ & ‘Casino Royale’ (and subsequently in ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’).
When Aslan is warning the children about future dictators, Lewis is probably thinking about Communism. The book was published the same year Kim Philby was first accused of being a Soviet spy.
On another subject, it’s quite likely that we’ll soon discover a planet with all the conditions necessary for life, but with no signs of it. Mountains, rivers, oceans, rain and snow and so on, but utterly sterile. If we do, we should call it “Charn”.
@40
There’s already a candidate for that planet. It’s called Tita. (OK, maybe not oxygen breathing life, but still.)
Actually, in this book, when Lewis warns the child characters about future dictators, he’s warning about Hitler and that lot. This is the one book set well before WWII for the Earth portion.
I don’t think Lewis is actually very good at warning of or imagining the future. He’s too socially conservative, and too caught up in the symbology of the past – theology and mythology.
You’re right, I missed that.
@42 – I’m not sure what being socially conservative or enjoying mythology/theology has to do with any of it, but plenty of people seem to think a lot of his warnings were pretty right on. That said I think he’s more just making human nature observations than “predicting” anything….nothing new under the sun and all that.
@32, I guess I was using parent/child argument in a secular paradigm where God is not assumed in the creation of the child, in which case the parents would be the sole creators as Aslan is the sole creator of Narnia.
@37, The schoolyard argument makes a little more sense to me except by ending Narnia with people not having reached the end of their natural lifespan, it’s Aslan who’s making the judgment here saying that those who were sent to Narnia hell are irredeemable, that they could not have changed their lives somewhere down the road if the world didn’t end and they were allowed to live a little longer.
Just a reminder that comments should be related to the text under discussion–there are other places online to discuss the nature of various economic or political systems, but let’s keep this conversation within the scope of the original essay and the Narnia books. Thanks.
@@@@@45. tkThompson, I think Lewis would consider it reasonable for God to know when his creations have passed the point where repentance is possible. In Lewis’ The Great Divorce, assorted characters are given a chance to leave Hell and visit Heaven. Once there, they are all given the chance to stay. All but one of them reject it.
Lewis saw God as perpetually reaching out to humanity and humanity, all too often, refusing that hand. I think this is what he was getting at in Narnia’s final judgment when all of his creation sees Aslan and some love him (accept him) and others don’t/reject him.
By the way, just so we’re clear, discussion about Lewis’ beliefs and how he presents them is different than discussion about the validity of Lewis’ beliefs. I share many of his beliefs but disagree with others. If we could somehow meet today, I don’t know if he would be pleased or horrified with where I stand. That’s not the point. I’m only trying to relate what I think he was trying to say.
Interesting how we see Jadis making a very similar call in the chapter under discussion – if her sister had been willing to accept her as queen (as Aslan only wants the Narnians to accept him as their king) then she’d never have had to use the Deplorable Word.
49. Aonghus Fallon, I’d argue against that interpretation. Lewis shows a man who never believed in Aslan going to heaven and those who did evil but claimed to believe in him not going there.
Lewis’ belief, as I understand it, is that it’s always about humanity refusing heaven rather than heaven rejecting humanity. As Shaw said, the wicked are always quite comfortable in Hell. It was made for them.
I’d also say that, at least in Lewis’ fiction, worlds, like people, are mortal. In the end, they pass away because all things mortal do. When Narnia’s world dies, it’s Time who makes an end.
I’ve always found this concept to be very, very insulting to people who have beliefs different from the one making this claim, when it is pulled out by Christians to explain why “good” Jews, Hindus, Jains, etc. could wind up happily in the Christian heaven.
Somehow, a person who has had a lifelong devotion to a particular concept of the divine will happily accept that the one they loved all along is not really the one that they loved, but that someone entirely different is the one they loved all along.
If someone came along and replaced your spouse with someone of a different personality, values system, gender, and concept of what their relationship with you should be, could you accept that this was actually the person you were loving all along?
I grew up surrounded by people of many different faiths, as my mother is from India, my father from Germany, and we also were quite involved with helping exchange scientists and their families in Kodak who came in from branches in other countries for a year or two to learn how to live in our area.
And I can’t imagine that, say, one woman whom our family was close to, who was a devotee of Lakshmi, could possibly have, as someone who valued a goddess who was part of a large, complex, and often ambiguous pantheon, could possibly be okay by being told that all that she valued was really part of a trinity that was very much defined as male and mostly monotheist. She was what Lewis would consider a “good” person who ought to be happy to realize that she actually loved Aslan/Jesus, but what she was devoted to and what he wanted her to be devoted to are far too different.
It’s a sort of belief that everyone secretly knows that the Christians are right, but are in denial.
In fairness, Jadis never rejects her fellow citizens, or indeed her sister –
‘At any moment I was ready to make peace – yes, and to spare her life too, if only she would yield me the throne. But she would not. Her pride destroyed a whole world.’
So Jadis’s heart was still open.
Crucially, I don’t see how Aslan would have behaved any differently. Charn is the very antithesis of Narnia. That was Lewis’s intention. And if Aslan had been sent there as an emissary of the Emperor-Beyond-The-Sea, he’d have been rejected by its citizens too, leaving him with no alternative but to visit some Sodom-and-Gomorrah type retribution down on their heads. I guess you could argue his motives would have been slightly different – it’s debatable – but the outcome would have been exactly the same.
@51: This exactly. I used to love that scene, back when I thought Aslan was supposed to be a representation of everything good in the world, one who occasionally played the role of Jesus in Bible-inspired plotlines but was mostly his own lion. I’ve always been a pushover for the tropes of story characters in a villified group turning good, or turning out to be good. But knowing that Aslan is intended to be Jesus puts a really ugly spin on that scenario, with the message that all good people are Chrisrians even if they think they’re not.
@52: I believe Lewis intends for the reader to understand that there was nothing “open” about Jadis’s heart. She may have convinced herself after the fact that she would have spared her life too, if only she would yield me the throne, but this is merely her attempt at justification—no different from any criminal who attempts to rationalize a reasonable cause for their actions.
Indeed, Jadis’ line is just the demand of every Tyrant in history: Give me all that is yours, and maybe I’ll be nice to you.
Spoiler: They Never Are.
‘Indeed, Jadis’ line is just the demand of every Tyrant in history: Give me all that is yours, and maybe I’ll be nice to you.’
I guess – but how is this quantifiably different from what Aslan is asking of the Narnians?
You can just imagine a few Narnians comparing notes on finding themselves in the brand new iteration of Narnia. At first they’re delighted, then they discover quite a few people didn’t make it. Why? Aslan. I don’t know about you, but that kind of thing would make me a tad jumpy. And very, very polite whenever he was around.
51. Ursula, I get some of where you’re coming from. There was a show a few years back where characters from another world are stuck on Earth and given false memories and personalities to fit in. A large group were made nuns, and the writers seemed to have no idea how horrific the idea of a bunch of people falsely compelled into lives of religious devotion was.
But, start with Lewis’ core idea, monotheism. If a person tries to live a good life and seeks truth, should that person’s life be rejected because that person didn’t find the truth? Lewis’ answer was no, that life was still a good life in the eyes of God.
You use the comparison of a spouse. I think Lewis might have used the comparison of a father. If you went through life with a deeply mistaken idea about what your father was like, that wouldn’t change the nature of your father. Lewis was of the opinion that that mistake on your part would not alter your father’s love and acceptance of you.
I’m not saying this as an argument for or against Lewis’ beliefs. If you read the Chinese classic, Journey to the West, you need to accept that, in-story, Buddhism is best. If you read The Tale of Genji, poetic sensibility is the primary virtue. Shakespeare, if he’s to be judged by his plays, thought people should marry for love. Homer thought that was a good way to get your city burned to the ground. Lewis believed in one God but he also believed that God didn’t bar the gates of heaven against polytheists or theists who had the wrong ideas about deity.
@51 Usula, “It’s a sort of belief that everyone secretly knows that the Christians are right, but are in denial. ” — I can’t help but be reminded of a Rowan Atkinson sketch where he’s the devil welcoming different groups of people to hell, and one of these groups are Christians, and he says something like, “I’m afraid the Jews had it right.”
@ellynne, I had to remind myself how this line of discussion got started, and it was whether and/or how Aslan and Jadis are similar with respect to the roles they played in ending Narnia and Charn, and I think in that discussion the validity of Lewis’s beliefs is relevant because he would never argue that their actions are more similar than not. To me, God cannot perpetually reaching out to humanity but also designate a time or circumstance beyond which redemption is impossible. God reaching out speaks to his faith in humanity, whereas ending Narnia and sending people to hell even before the end of their lifespan speaks to him giving up on humanity, the two are anathema, that’s why Aslan ending Narnia doesn’t sit well with me, he made judgments when those people went into that shed, some went to Narnia heaven, some went to hell, Jadis said screw you to those who wouldn’t accept her rule and Aslan kind of did the same thing.
@56 Aonghus Fallon, “that kind of thing would make me a tad jumpy. And very, very polite whenever he was around.” — Well, it’s not like he’s a tame lion.
It’s actually Seventh Day Adventists that Toby the Devil (Atkinson’s character) tells us were right. Damn!
@57
I’m not sure that the “father” comparison helps. Given that my father was one of the wisest, kindest, and gentlest people I have ever known, any alternative Lewis could offer would be inferior and unacceptable.
Please excuse my strong response. My father died of the Dread COVID a few weeks ago, after several years in assistive living and then a nursing home due to dementia. I hadn’t seen him in nearly a year due to the strict quarantine his nursing home was working to maintain (and they had gone months without new cases before this outbreak.) One of the last conversations I remember him having was him going to the various staff working on his wing, and telling them “Gnädige Frau du bist die wunderbarste” – Dear lady, you are the most wonderful. He appreciated everyone, even those who struggled to care for him in the dementia wing of a nursing home, overworked and stressed.
So no, Lewis, even if your idea of a father is the “real” one, it is not my father, and it is not an acceptable alternative in any way.
I’d rather have no father at all, as I find myself now, that to have a father forced on me that isn’t mine.
The same is true for my brother, it would be true for my spouse if I had one, it would be true for a god if I had one – I’d rather be a Fictional Quintarian than have Lewis’s god forced on me.
The hubris and ego of thinking others will drop what they love, in favor of what you love, and have no loyalty or attachment to the specifics of what makes them love what they love, is shocking.
I am very sorry for your loss, Ursula. And I think you are definitely getting to what makes some of the explanations emotionally un-satisfying. (I imagine the answer to questions like these is beyond what we can really imagine, anyway).
While Lewis saw a connection between science and magic, he definitely didn’t think science was bad in the way magic was. This is clear in a lot of his nonfiction. He mixed with scientists and the introduction to The Discarded Image shows he had a considerable understanding of issues like scientific realism and instrumentalism.
There’s the complication that in the Narnia stories “magic” is used fairly indiscriminately for all sorts of things, from Dr Cornelius’ charmed sleep to the Deep Magic. Only in the Magicians Nephew as far as I recall does it have this more technical sense.
The tyrants (plural) no doubt include both Hitler and Stalin, ruling “great nations”. He could hardly have made the connection with the atomic bomb any clearer without naming it, and it is presented as an example of science gone wrong. Also of the incredible arrogance of rulers. I love how Jadis refers to being “forced” to use it. It sounds horribly familiar from listening to discussions of nuclear weapons.
The revelation that there are countless other worlds is amazing but of course we never see them. There’s no reason to think Charn was originally any worse than Narnia; its ancient kings and queens were apparently nice people. But _it went wrong!_ (Calormen looks pretty good compared to Charn.) Presumably like all the worlds there was a last judgment , but since Jadis had already killed everyone else and exited, this would be different from Narnia’s. Lewis doesn’t tell us but I’m guessing those groaning slaves are going to the True Charn in Aslan’s country. The torturers, not so sure.
Uncle Andrew’s claims that ordinary morality doesn’t apply to him is partly the Hegelian world-historical figure (remember that Lewis originally taught philosophy). Also Lewis’s comment on more ordinary politicians who claim that the government can’t be judged by the same morality.
Another aspect of the book, of course, is wish-fulfilment concerning his own mother’s death, described in Surprised by Joy. I suppose that accounts for the emotional power of the book. And I like the ending , which suggests that Uncle Andrew learnt something. I would have liked him to be seen in the True Narnia; I think he gets there.
I know I’m a bit late to the party here, but having just recently read Emeth’s “conversion”, if you will, I wanted to jump in. Personally, I did not get the message that “All good people of any religion are actually Christians”, but rather “Those who sincerely seek the Truth find it.”
What I saw in Emeth was a man who sought the Truth and rightness his whole life, was only exposed to one belief system, came to experience doubt when the flaws in that system were exposed, and did not have time to properly know Aslan. I have no doubt he would have followed Aslan had he known him. Aslan knew this, of course. He is the only one who can make such a call on a person’s soul.
Emeth is not rewarded for being a good follower of Tash, but for being a good man, and one sincerely wanting to follow the Right Thing. He followed as best he was able to, in spite of not having had the chance to really know Aslan.
So, my understanding is not that a good person of any particular religion would get into the “correct heaven”, but rather those who legitamately have a heart for Truth (here, being Aslan) will be rewarded for it. The Shepherd knows His sheep, and only He can determine who had a thirst to know Him. This is why we may be thoroughly surprised at heaven’s guest list one day. (And also why I was not appalled at Aslan rejecting certain animals. He knew who they would or could have been. He would judge accordingly.)