Narnia Feature Articles

The Long-Awaited DVD, Special Edition

narnia@dramatic-insights.org (Greg & Jenn Wright) — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 16:02:00 +0000

The measure of any film’s success as entertainment is largely subjective, and yet objective means of measurement do exist: boxoffice figures, as well as the length of a given film’s theatrical run, certainly testify to a film’s ability to entertain. Granted, these methods can sometimes be misleading, but they do provide at least some standard of evaluating a film’s ability to captivate an audience.

And here’s where we must eat some crow.

Disc 1: The Movie
Andrew Adamson’s adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, demonstrating the “legs” that we had publically doubted in our reviews at the time the film was released, was still playing in suburban American theaters nearly four months following its initial December 9, 2005 release, racking up over $290 million in U.S. boxoffice receipts—a dead tie with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was released three weeks earlier. In the wider international market, the Narnia film repeatedly claimed the number one spot in weekend boxoffice receipts, its final high-water mark coming the first week of March 2006, just after its opening weekend in Japan and during its final market debut in China. At that point, its total receipts stood at $669 million (compared to Harry Potter’s $891 million)—not the international boxoffice king, but a solid blockbuster in a slumping film market nonetheless. Not only has the film become the highest-grossing “live-action” release in Disney’s distribution history, it is now also the all-time boxoffice champ for any Disney release in the UK, beating out Toy Story 2.

If C. S. Lewis’s Narnian tales have historically suffered from overexposure, where Adamson succeeds is in getting the exposure just right. Regardless of Lewis’s own confidence in the inability of his Narnia to be successfully adapted for the screen, Adamson’s version (written by Adamson, Ann Peacock, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely) comes fully alive in a way that has thus far been entrusted to our literary imaginations. It even manages to erase from our memories the weaker aspects of the BBC TV adaptation and other less-successful efforts. With well-integrated and surprisingly realistic CGI effects (the atomic-bomb Phoenix comes immediately to mind as a fascinating addition to the battle sequence), the film avoids the buffoonery about which Lewis was so concerned. And, of course, the New Zealand vistas add to the sense of other-worldliness that effectively separates Narnia from London.

Adamson’s artistic achievement relies not so heavily on how Lewis wrote the story, but rather how the director himself, as a missionary child, first encountered it. In some cases, Adamson’s memory of his childhood Narnian experience overwhelms Lewis’s story. His preoccupation with the witch’s threatening wolves and the grandeur of battle, for instance, go well beyond Lewis’s original text. There is, however, one specific instance in which Adamson’s own creativity works astonishingly well. The opening sequence, a literarily apocryphal exploration of how the children come to be at the Professor’s house, draws the audience into the story immediately. Adamson’s depiction of the London blitz, the Pevensie’s dazzling flight to their root cellar, and the mother’s wrenching decision to send her four children away for safety’s sake all offer the audience an early opportunity to sympathize with the children in their displacement.

More of such judicious departures from the structure of the written word might have made Adamson’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe a more interesting and aesthetically satisfying piece. Instead, it seems that the reins on his creativity were perhaps a little too tightly held. Still, for those whose hearts yearn for a steadfastly consistent cinematic reproduction of Lewis’s maiden voyage into Narnia, the movie does not fail.

Perhaps Douglas Gresham, Lewis’s stepson, is correct in asserting that adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia cannot help but succeed—in implying that the underlying power of Lewis’s tale is strong enough to withstand Adamson’s overdone game-chases. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe does indeed appear to be exceedingly robust. Audiences of all varieties simply can’t seem to get enough of Lewis’s slight, pliant, yet curiously resilient mythic tale.

Disc 1: The Bonus Features
The highlight of any DVD’s bonus material is usually the outakes or the deleted scenes. Sadly, what we’re offered with this release is a blooper reel that’s really just an extended music video that recreates in insider’s look at the fun of moviemaking. Yes, there are a handful of legitimate outakes among these “bloopers,” but for the most part it’s a fond home movie. It conveys the sense of light-hearted, bonded, on-set community that Adamson no doubt established and fostered—but it lacks the sense of spontaneity that usually accompanies outtake reels. It seems too orchestrated, as if it were scripted.

The commentary tracks have just the opposite effect. If anything, they could have used some orchestration. They reveal little of anything in the way of insight. The commentary track with Adamson and the child stars, for instance, is about as interesting as a slumber party. But maybe that’s the point. If only Georgie Henley were a little more subtle than a rugby team...

On the whole, the features on Disc 1 bring us along for the ride, but they do not invite us further up, and further in.

Disc 2: The REAL Bonus Features
Ahh, but then there’s the second disc. If you’re tempted to skip the extra five bucks and go for the single-disc edition, don’t.

We quite frankly expected this disc to be a mere repackaging of the promotional materials prepared in advance of the movie’s release. The pattern set by the Lord of the Rings DVDs, after all, was to include rehashed materials on the initial release and save the good stuff for the Extended Edition release.

Not so here. Yes—it’s pretty clear that Narnia’s extended footage is being pretty jealously guarded, still locked away in some editing room. This release contains very little hint of what may have been filmed but not included in the theatrical version. But the new featurettes produced for Disc 2 are indeed genuinely new. Even those who have been thoroughly saturated in Narnia’s media hype will find things to enjoy and discover.

Here we finally get a chance, in particular, to gain some specific insight into how much of a role Adamson really played in charting the vision for this film—his thinking behind casting, scripting and visualizations. Leading up to the film’s release, we were almost led to believe that Douglas Gresham, or even the dead C. S. Lewis, presided over the production, and that Adamson was just a means to an end. Now we can see that this really was Adamson’s show, and in what ways.

We also get a sense, perhaps, for exactly what made the film work: a chemistry which can’t help but be communicated onscreen. Yes, these relatively inexperienced child actors did indeed relate to each other as siblings, and that comes through in the relationships of their characters; but it was more than that. They truly trusted Adamson and enjoyed working with him, and he with them—and that by design. He drew them out of this world into his Narnia, for the specific purpose of ending its winter and bringing it to life. Through them, Magic has been restored to Narnia. Our windows have been cleaned, and we can once more see clearly what drew us to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the first place.

Who is Aslan? Well, symbolically, he’s supposed to represent Christ, and his voice was provided by Liam Neeson. But for these children, and for this film, Aslan is really Andrew Adamson. He’s the heart of this Narnia, and we’ve finally met him here in these bonus features.

Cleaning Our Windows

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 07:13:00 +0000

Guest analysis by Maureen Stewart.
Maureen McKittrick Stewart is a voracious reader, a perpetual student, and a gardener-of-weeds. Her cockeyed view of the world sometimes enables her to see things that others don't, and aging has exacerbated her insights. The pleasure of seeing her favorite fantasy tales on a forty-foot movie screen, naturally, has finally pushed her over the edge. Maureen's odd reflections on Faërie were first inflicted on the world through a small series of essays posted at TheOneRing.net, through which she discovered Hollywood Jesus. She hopes her writing aids others in their wanderings through the Fair Realm.

When a beloved book is transposed to the screen, critics immediately start comparing and contrasting, attempting to weigh which is better. But few seem to notice what the contrast between the two actually reveals.

C. S. Lewis was steeped in the literature and language of all of western heritage. His imagination and thought had a three-thousand-year-sized playground in which to explore. Few men in the twentieth century were as widely read—or as capable of remembering so much. Lewis labeled himself a dinosaur and encouraged people to examine him while they still could. He was definitely not “a man of his times.” Do we who have read and loved his books or those who worked so hard making the movie appreciate how wide his horizons were?

What would Lewis have thought of the recent portrayal of the Universe of Narnia as a live-action film? A lot of people have speculated about that. They have tried to construct an answer from thoughts and ideas culled from his many works. I don’t think I could presume to do that. My mind is not as well-informed or imaginative or educated as his! People who knew him say that Lewis would discuss his own works as impartially as though they had been written by another.

Instead, what I would tell him (should I have such a privilege and be able to present myself with anything like sangfroid—hah!) is that it is not only reading old books, as he advises, that reveals my hidden assumptions. Seeing a movie not quite faithful to the storyline of Narnia made by a person immersed in modern assumptions also does a pretty good job!

Even if I could quote verbatim everything Lewis ever wrote, I still would be filtering it through the assumptions of my own culture. Lewis’ assumptions were very different from our own; but, take a story I have loved for years and read to my children—and which my children have read to theirs!—and change it, and these assumptions do start to be noticeable.

As with “The Princess and the Pea,” I’m learning to discover my assumptions by paying attention to those subtle little discomforts aroused when moviemakers change books and shine a new light on familiar, beloved words and images. I’m learning some sharp lessons, too!

Lewis’ Narnia is built upon—to borrow from Chesterton—the Ethics of Elfland:

There is the chivalrous lesson of ‘Jack the Giant Killer;’ that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is manly mutiny against pride as such. … There is the lesson of ‘Cinderella,’ which is the same as that of the Magnificat—exultavit humiles. There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast;’ that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened into sleep. (Orthodoxy, Chapter 3)

Narnia is, like Faërie, a place where promises must be kept whatever the cost; where the hubris of gigantic tyrants must be punctured, where accepting Turkish delight from strangers becomes treason, where seventh sons and boys and girls from Finchley can become kings and queens. More, it is a place where joy is a solemn thing of splendor, “as sharp as swords and as poignant as grief.”

The wardrobe is like the border of Faërie in that it can be crossed only by those without any purpose except, possibly, wonder. And intentions affect one’s experience. If we have paid attention to our fairy tales, we will remember that attempting to enter Faërie with base motives of ambition or greed or gain may not get us into the Perilous Realm; but if it does, the consequences may be dire.

Narnia is also a place where magic—not the actions of kings or queens, but Magic from the Dawn of Time and Before the Dawn of Time—is the catalyst for emancipation of a land in which it is always winter and never Christmas. Kings and queens, beavers and foxes, even good giants participate, but it is the Providence of the Emperor-over-the Sea that brings all the players to their places on the stage and directs the outcome of the play.

I regret, as others have also noted, that the thawing of Narnia shifts in the film from a signifier of Advent, of the return of the immanent and imminent King-Creator, to the mere occasion for risk in crossing a melting frozen river. Where are the birds singing and the streams chuckling and the sense of new life and mysterious upwelling of power? If you watch carefully there are signs of the wondrous, exuberant fast-forward of the coming of spring; but there is not the emotional impact of Edmund, a miserable prisoner in fear of his life, seeing that “the world is charged with the Grandeur of God” (as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it) even as he doubts the outcome for himself.

Some have disliked the fact that the older children in the movie are always talking about going home. It bothered me, too. The children as Lewis wrote them understood the rules of operation in Faërie. They knew that promises must be kept, honor must be upheld, and friends who are imperiled by one’s actions must be rescued—whatever the consequences.

In our current society, decisions are made and ventures begun only when the outcome is statistically favorable. Peter, Susan and Edmund, as the script writers saw them, come from this world. Susan is the pragmatist, the reductionist. “We should go back! He’s a beaver! He shouldn’t be saying anything at all!” Peter has learned that one must weigh consequences as well as obedience to rules or promises. That is how practical decisions are made. He even expresses this to Edmund in the film’s opening scenes. Edmund is the subjective materialist. Why shouldn’t he get back at that superior Peter—and get more of the best Turkish delight?

Lucy is as yet innocent of such calculations. She understands that new friends are treasures and that there is debt incurred in friendship extended—the debt of love and of wonder to all that Faërie may reveal to us if we travel there with innocent hearts.

The movie begins by placing the children within the context of their own world—a world with a tyrant rampaging across the globe, promising the rise of supermen to rule a utopia of peace and prosperity for the few and attempting to impose his dream by force—a land where it is always winter and never Christmas. It is very telling that the White Witch’s “apple of temptation” offered to the second Son of Adam—the Turkish Delight—is the same sort of apple being offered the world on Edmund’s side of the wardrobe. Order. Uniformity. Efficiency. Guarantees. “You shall be as gods.”

Pragmatism is the Witch’s underlying philosophy—pragmatism carried to its logical conclusion in the land of Faërie and seen afresh in truth. It is ultimately a philosophy that says the poor, the downtrodden, and the scapegoats are expendable and a burden to society. Like all evil, pragmatism exists only as a parasite, elevating some goods above others in order to serve its own ends and undoing all the virtues and attributes that make us human. Inefficient, messy attributes such as mercy, compassion, and justice for the weak and helpless.

But the unfolding of the story does reveal the Ethics of Elfland and of Narnia. When the High King is called by his True Name to “Arise, Sir Peter, Wolf’s Bane!” by the One Who Names, he does arise to his becoming, the true purpose of his being in both littleness and greatness.

It is, in fact a good thing that the children do not cease being children in a big scary battle. Our customary conventions for modern tales make men and women the primary movers of the plot. Heroism today is defined as effectiveness and superior power. But in this tale it is Magic at work moving the story and enlarging its characters, and a Magician behind it all (to borrow from Chesterton again).

I cannot speculate about whether the scriptwriters were trying to make the story “more believable” by making the characters “more like real people,” or whether they understood just what their changes would evoke. Whatever the case, it is a remarkable exposition of the Winter we are calling down on our own heads in our modern quest for managing and controlling our world according to our own design. But then, as Tolkien said, that’s the purpose of Faërie:

‘Seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them’—as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness. (The Tolkien Reader, “On Fairy Stories”)

The screen adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe continues to do just this for me, as the changes the filmmakers made prompt me to examine my assumptions.

The Case of the Missing Narrator

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:39:00 +0000

Narnia Without C. S. Lewis?

Guest analysis by Sarah Arthur, author of Walking through the Wardrobe: A Devotional Quest into The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Tyndale/thirsty? 2005)

It’s bedtime, and you’re curled up next to Daddy with your favorite stuffed bear, a glass of milk, and a beloved book. Daddy clears his throat, opens the pages, and begins: “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.” Time stops. You’ve entered another world.

It’s the opening sentence of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and though you’re not yet old enough to read it for yourself, you trust the voices that carry you from the first chapter to the closing pages. Voices, you ask? Yes: voices. For not only is your father reading the story, adding his own inflections, interpreting the personalities of the characters in his own unique way, but behind his voice—or rather, speaking through him—is another voice, the voice of the narrator, the one who is telling the story from the inside.

It’s the voice of every fairytale from the beginning of time: authoritative yet personal, succinct yet chatty, a touch gossipy, even conspiring with you on matters of taste and opinion. It’s the voice of the nursery, of bedtime, of tales told by the fire, establishing a relationship of trust between teller and hearer without which the form of fairytale comes apart at the seams and becomes mere plot, either bald and flat, or bald and terrifying.

Take the classic story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, for example. Right away the narrator makes it clear just what genre we’re dealing with. This is fairytale in its purest form: an unlikely hero stumbles into another world—a magical world full of rules that must not be broken—and by luck and cleverness, the hero wins fame and even fortune beyond his wildest dreams. Without a trusted narrator, we wouldn’t dare make our first trips into this genre alone, just as a toddler will rarely enter a darkened bedroom without being carried in the arms of someone he loves. Such is the essence of fairytale, one which the filmmakers of the latest version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory understood. (Imagine how much more disturbing Johnny Depp’s performance would’ve been without the narrative asides! Those moments allowed us to exhale with relief, knowing there was at least one sane guide in the story.)

Likewise when it comes to the fairytale about a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe, the voice that carries us “further in” to the original book has a sane and even unique personality—so unique, in fact, that generations of children have sought to become acquainted with him through the postal system, though we no longer receive an answer. The narrator was—and “is”—the British scholar C. S. Lewis, of course, but a particular incarnation of Lewis uniquely suited to the form of fairytale: the form he chose deliberately for “its brevity, its severe restraints on description, its flexible traditionalism, its inflexible hostility to all analysis, digression, reflections and ‘gas.’” [1] This Lewis is the wise old Professor, the forthright and trusted guide, the fairy godfather, leading us into the murky woods of fairyland where we would never dare tread alone.

And his readers have trusted him for the past half century. During the final ten years of his life, he was swamped with mail from children who had sensed such a close connection with him through his stories that they felt they could ask him anything. [2] Though in person he wasn’t exactly a knight-in-shining-armor (as his future stepson, Douglas Gresham, fancifully envisioned prior to their introduction [3]), he certainly wasn’t alarming to the children who chanced to meet him, either—rather the opposite, as this anecdote suggests:

On [one] occasion, as I opened my front door, [Lewis] happened to be passing by. With me was my six-year-old daughter, to whom I had just then been reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A tender-minded child, she was very anxious about Edmund and had asked me to go out for a walk as she was finding the story frightening. Lewis stopped to talk with me and I told him what we had been doing. He was most affable. He wore a shabby grey-green overcoat, a battered felt hat, and he carried a knobbly walking stick. His large face was ruddy and cheerful, like a countryman’s. No-one would have taken him for an academic. When he moved on, courteously raising his hat, I said to my daughter, who had looked at him intently and in silence all through the brief encounter, “There! That is the very man who wrote the book we’ve just been reading.” She paused and then said thoughtfully, “Well, he looks as though he’d make it come out all right.” [4]

Even the tiniest child will stick it out through a scary story if she feels she can trust the teller. And that’s in part because the form of fairytale itself, when strictly adhered to, contains a kind of inevitability that is in itself comforting. Either the little pigs will find somewhere safe to go by the third round of wolf attacks, or the story is a kind of holocaust not suitable for children. Nor, we might add, can it be considered a fairytale. The pattern of threes and a happy ending are part of the form, and if the narrator sticks to the form, he or she can be trusted.

So it is with the man who created Narnia, that narrator who is just as central to our experience of the story as the parent who first read it to us by lamplight at bedtime. Without him, Narnia degenerates into mere plot, as I’ve already said: either bald and terrifying, or bald and flat.

And now, as you’ve no doubt guessed, we’ve arrived at the real point of this article, which is to review the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Perhaps I’ve said enough to give you a hint of my overall opinion on the matter, but let me say it clearly now: The chief problem with this film is the absence of the narrative voice of “Professor Lewis,” our trusted guide. Without him, the story degenerates into something less than the fairytale it was intended to be.

First let’s start with the charge of “baldness,” or that quality of storytelling which borders on mere journalism, giving us “just the facts.” Because there is no narrator telling us what the characters are thinking and feeling, we’re left with action and dialogue like a newsreel, which some of the actors manage well enough (e.g., the Beavers) while others do not (e.g., William Moseley as Peter, poor chap). While some scenes are almost entirely action, there are long stretches in which there’s nothing but dialogue—explanation without narrative interpretation (how does Susan feel while listening to the Professor?)—so the overall effect is one of poor pacing: we’re rushed through those action scenes where a narrative voice could’ve bolstered their significance, and we’re dragged through those dialogue scenes in which a narrative voice could’ve succinctly summed things up.

Now to the charge of “flatness.” Film critics of all types seem to be in agreement on this one. The movie falls flat. Perhaps poor pacing has something to do with it; perhaps poor acting—Georgie Henley (Lucy) being the startling exception overall. Perhaps it’s the tendency towards the kind of “digressions” that Lewis felt were not suited to the form of fairytale (here we can’t help thinking of the melting river scene). However, I suggest it’s primarily the lack of narrative voice, the lack of the “we” and “you” language that invites us into the story as more than mere spectators. Here’s my favorite example of that language in the book, when Mr. Beaver says,

“They say Aslan is on the move—perhaps has already landed.”

And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning—either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in his 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 realise that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

Without this narrative moment inserted into the story, all we’re left with is the camera panning from face to face, attempting to capture… what, exactly? And the soundtrack doesn’t help us figure it out (another unfortunate weakness in the film, as others have already noted). So a narrative opportunity—quite an important one, actually—is lost. The scene falls flat.

As to the charge of “terrifying,” here again we have some unfortunate examples from the film, though whether or not today’s media-saturated children experience it this way could be a matter of debate. The moments were terrifying to me, at any rate, and that’s because I’d already lost my trust in the narrator who wasn’t there, the absent and possibly even absent-minded storyteller sitting behind the camera or the television monitor somewhere in New Zealand, oblivious to my existence.

I’m speaking of the Stone Table scene. The narrator in the book is wisely self-censoring, giving us just enough of the horror and madness to sense what Aslan is up against, but veiling our eyes from the rest. He describes the “Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants,” but then adds, “and other creatures whom I won’t describe because if I did the grown-ups would probably not let you read this book…” We trust him on this. Now, you could argue that the filmmakers couldn’t exactly shield our eyes from the “other creatures” if they were to render the scene realistically—but what on earth or in hell is that bat-like monstrosity quivering on the steps in front of Aslan? It’s enough to wake me up in a cold sweat.

But scariest of all is the moment of the Lion’s death. In the book, Lewis tells us, “The children did not see the actual moment of the killing. They couldn’t bear to look and had covered their eyes.” This is a narrator who understands how trauma works, particularly when experienced by the young. The filmmakers, on the other hand, leave poor Lucy staring in horror through the whole thing, missing nothing, watching the knife fall all the way down. And I’ll be honest: My first reaction was a flare of anger at—of all people—Susan, for not shielding her little sister’s eyes. I was casting around for someone, anyone, to take care of the girls, and with them, us. I wanted my narrator back.

So I have named the charges. Baldness. Flatness. Terror. This is what happens when a fairytale lacks a narrator, particularly a narrator as gifted as C. S. Lewis. Serious charges indeed, when one considers that many children who see the film without ever reading the story will miss out on a relationship with a trusted and beloved voice of sane authority in this insane age. Needless to say, their experience with Narnia will not likely translate into later forays into Lewis’s other works, since his voice is essentially unknown to them at this point.

Yet the question remains: At whose feet do we lay these charges? Do we blame director Andrew Adamson? Do we blame the scriptwriters and their advisors? Maybe they felt it would be impossible to capture the narrative “voice” of Lewis with any one vocal talent (a sticky problem, no doubt, but Focus on the Family’s Radio Theater® has managed to pull it off quite well). Or perhaps it was the general attitude that filmmaking is such a different medium that it can operate according to its own rules. All are legitimate suggestions, I suppose, since every individual involved in making this film is in a sense responsible for the final result.

But in the end it all boils down to this insightful statement by Lewis scholar (and father of small children) Andrew Cuneo:

Forgive me lovers of the cinema, but I must stress the obvious: one mind made Narnia. As I stood watching the thousands of names during the credits who animated, assisted, and labored to make a very good film, I am astonished that it took only one man, under the inspiration of Aslan, to make an even better book. [5]

It’s this voice we learn to trust, from the opening paragraph to the closing pages of the classic fairytale called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and if our narrator is absent now, who will guide us through the rest of the Chronicles?

NOTES
1. C. S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said,” from the collection On Stories and Other Essays on Literature.
2. See C. S. Lewis Letters to Children, edited by Marjorie Mead and Lyle Dorsett.
3. See Doug Gresham’s memoir Lenten Lands.
4. As told by Barbara Reynolds in Memories of C. S. Lewis in Cambridge; quoted by Peter Schakel in Imagination and the Arts in C. S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds (University of Missouri Press, 2002), p. 73f.
5. See Narnia on Tour.

© 2006 by Sarah Arthur. Sarah is the bestselling author of numerous youth resources, including Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey through The Lord of the Rings (Tyndale/thirsty? 2003) and a new devotional on Narnia entitled Walking through the Wardrobe. A former youth director, she now writes and speaks on the role of the imagination and storytelling in spiritual formation. Visit www.saraharthur.com

Images Copyright 2005 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

Blockbusted? Ask William Moseley’s Fans

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:07:00 +0000

As The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe heads into its second month of release, the $100+ million question remains unanswered: has a franchise been spawned? The very fact that the issue remains open after four weeks puts a positive answer in doubt. But how can that possibly be, with domestic boxoffice grosses topping $230 million?

First, the success of a film is not measured by pure boxoffice, but by return on investment. While Walden Media’s adaptation of the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia was officially bugeted at $210 million (including prints and advertising costs), actual costs have likely exceeded $250 million. From that standpoint, domestic boxoffice has yet to recoup the initial investment, much less yield a profit.

Second, the film’s international boxoffice isn’t tracking with blockbuster-like performance. While runaway hits like the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films (and even disappointments like King Kong) typically gross twice the amount internationally as they do in the US, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is struggling to maintain a one-to-one ratio. So while the Narnia film’s first twenty-eight days in the US track very well in comparison with The Fellowship of the Ring (each at about $230 million), the implications of these domestic/international ratios are huge: Fellowship’s global take was roughly $900 million ($300 million of that in the US) while the Narnia film likely will gross less than $600 million internationally, with under $300 million of that total in the US. $600 million in profit (200%) would be enough to make a whole host of suits happy, and give a director final cut. A mere 100% profit ($300 million), by comparison, is only encouraging.

But how much profit is needed to warrant a sequel? We often forget that every film is a financial risk, and that there are no guaranteed returns—particularly when it comes to sequels. The Lord of the Rings franchise was the rare case in which boxoffice receipts actually climbed with each installment; and even the Harry Potter movies are anomalous in sustaining audience interest as the series has progressed. Remember how the Superman and orginal Batman franchises—even Star Wars, in its final throes—deteriorated? So given that another $200+ million would be necessary to produce and market the proposed Prince Caspian, this would consume the lion’s share of the boxoffice profits from the first film—leaving merchandising rights and video sales as the only real source of profit for the film’s producers.

Ultimately, that’s got to be pretty disappointing to Disney, considering the boxoffice potential for Andrew Adamson’s third directorial feature. Profit margins on both Shrek and Shrek 2 were much higher. Lion King-type figures are not in the cards.

Does that mean Prince Caspian is dead?

Not at all. Even before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe debuted, the studios were talking to Adamson and his child stars about returning for Prince Caspian, and in the last couple of weeks rumors—but rumors only—have surfaced that deals have now in fact been inked, and the project greenlighted.

These rumors are likely true.

Disney, we must remember, is not at the helm of this franchise. Walden Media is, and their business model is markedly different from that of a major mainstream studio like Disney. Walden is also backed by Philip Anchutz, a billionaire with a cultural agenda. And the objectives of Anchtuz and Walden Media have largely been met. Adamson delivered a film that educators, pastors, librarians and booksellers love. It’s turned a profit, and has spawned additional millions in book sales.

What’s more, it has captured the fancy of schoolgirls, thanks to the performance of William Mosely as Peter Pevensie.

By far, the most vocal response to this film that Hollywood Jesus has received has come from girls aged eight to sixteen. The last time I saw anything like this was in 2003, with the release of another Walden Media film: Holes. Hollywood Jesus was indundated at that time by hosts of young girls raving about Khleo Thomas, wanting to congratulate Khleo Thomas, telling Khleo that they, too, wanted someday to be an actor—maybe even marry him.

The same is now happening with young fans of William Mosely. One girl, for example, publicly posted the following:

Hey! I do know that this isn't like speaking directly to William, but what the hey. I'm Allie, I’m 14, I am an amazing singer, and I absolutely loved Chronicles of Narnia. I hadn't read the books yet (that's really weird because I am literally a book nerd) but I have now that I saw the movie. I want to give props to the director because that was the best flippin’ movie I've seen in a long time. You, Anna, and the rest were all amazing. It sounds like Peter's character wasn't like yours at all which must've been hard. The movie matched up perfectly with the book whereas [with] movies like the Harry Potter series the books were good but the movies left too much out. But you guys did a realy nice job. The fact that you are the cutest guy I've ever seen probably doesn't hurt either.

Others, like fangirl Nancy Lok, were a little less restrained, if archly articulate: “Wow, I just saw Narnia yesterday and it was so awesome! William Mosely is so hot and cute. Nay, BEYOND hot and cute.” But the following comment from “babyangel” had to be my favorite:

hi william. u prolly don check this but 2 all the others out there, i wtched narnia 4 times in 1 day yestrday JUST bcos of william... before i used 2 b absolutely OBSESSED wid tom felton, but when i saw narnia 4 da 2nd time nd saw "the actor who plays peter", i just dropped 2 da floor and started cryin nd beggin 4 mrcy :P and 2 mr moseley, u are i absolutely HOT guy, da httst ive seen... 2 bad hez 2 old, nw my cuzinz tryin 2 make me change my mind jus bcoz SHE fell in luv wif him, makin the xcuse that hez 2 old 4 me! hmph! if any1 knoz, or has a sngle CLUE as 2 wether mr moseley has a grlfrnd (which i doubt he DUZENT, being da hottie he is :P ) PLEASE mail me...

So critics and purists may be less than enthralled with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; and Aslan may not be Disney’s next boxoffice lion king—but Walden Media has scored a direct hit with its target audience. With some fiscal restraint and a little non-CGI creativity, Prince Caspian may yet see the cinematic light of day.

Images Copyright 2005 Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Walden Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

Lions, Witches and Tug-of-war—Oh My!

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 08:57:00 +0000

An Interview with Michael Flaherty

Michael Flaherty is the president of a movie studio that manages budgets in excess of $100 million. He’s also a Christian. If you think that this might make him the target of a lot of suspicion, you’d be right. Any time big money and religion get mixed, B.S. radars start working overtime. Mine included, alas!

But Flaherty is pretty open about the purpose of Walden Media. He recently told Christianity Today that he and Cary Granat started the company “to find a way to make more great, inspiring films that can lift people up and encourage them.” Because they realized that the “media really does have a role in influencing hearts and minds,” they decided, “rather than just to curse the darkness, to light a few candles and get more great films out there.”

“We try to be a voice for parents, teachers, pastors, youth leaders, librarians—people who work actively with kids,” Flaherty said. “We find out what stories really get these kids motivated to love reading.” So his number one agenda is not, as many liberal skeptics might think, spreading the message of Christianity. It’s also not, as many conservatives suspect, pandering to Hollywood. It’s not even, to be perfectly honest, making “art.”

“We're trying to build a brand for Walden as something that parents, pastors, teachers and librarians are really comfortable with. So if they see our logo on a movie poster, they'll know that they're going to get a certain experience.”

That “certain experience” is familiar to anyone who’s seen one of Walden’s better films: Holes, Because of Winn-Dixie, or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The movies convey a sense that Walden’s production teams really paid attention to the books upon which they were based; that the filmmakers actually liked the books; and that they know how to show an audience a good time. For better or worse, Walden’s films also lack a certain spark, the kind that elevates a film to the level of a cinematic classic.

And that’s probably as it should be, given that Flaherty’s objective is not to inspire the next generation of filmmakers.

“What I'm most excited about is already happening,” Flaherty confided to Christianity Today. “Last week, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list. And Holes and Winn-Dixie actually went to No. 1 on the bestseller list too. Walden's whole purpose is to lead people back to the book and to get them not only to love that book, but to develop a general love for literature.”

When Flaherty says this, he’s not just pandering to the Christian press. He tells the same story, for instance, to the Boston Globe, which commended Walden Media for “quietly building a portfolio of films that young audiences enjoy, critics applaud, and—surprise—authors and educators endorse. ... If moviegoers walk out of one of their films saying it was OK but the book was better, says [Flaherty], ‘We consider that a success.’”

Many evangelicals, by contrast, are hoping that moviegoers walk of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe wanting to know more about the Gospel, not other books. Those hostile to the Christian message, such as His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman, just hope that moviegoers stay away.

Somewhere in between, we have a Christian like Flaherty telling the Boston Globe how popular entertainment can ''foster academic interest rather than inhibit it."

Academic interest, eh? Huh.

But maybe the problem isn’t Flaherty. Maybe the problem is that we, as Americans, tend to buy into the idea of the “Culture War” too easily. “I think that the press is clearly obsessed with that,” Flaherty responded when I posed that question to him. “But we like to pride ourselves on being the purple company.”

Neither the Christian press nor mainstream outlets seem too much interested in a “purple” approach to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Christian publications such as Christianity Today and Christian History and Biography have devoted entire issues this fall to The Chronicles of Narnia and author C. S. Lewis. Mainstream entertainment magazines, meanwhile, simply couldn’t be bothered. Premiere, for instance, isn’t carrying a single Narnia feature article in either its November or December issues; and Entertainment Weekly’s “Holiday Movie Preview” edition ran feature articles on King Kong, Jarhead, The Producers, The New World, Memoirs of a Geisha and Rumor Has It, while snubbing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with a mere eighteen lines of text buried on page 82.

News journalists, by contrast, are circling like vultures. But like the Christian press, they’re not particularly interested in the movie per se. They’re looking for controversy, and Flaherty is genuinely puzzled about being caught in a media tug-of-war. He says he often takes calls “from journalists who are very eager to demand why we’re catering to the faith audience; and then literally the next phone call I get is from a journalist wanting to know why we’re retreating from the faith audience. I’ve never been accused of going in two different directions simultaneously—until now.”

He thinks the laregly polarized press generally fosters an inaccurate view of the real world. In his experience dealing with educators, the lines are not so neatly drawn between black and white, red and blue or evolution and intelligent design as our scribes would have us believe. “At the education conferences, we meet Sunday School teachers,” Flaherty told me, “and at the faith conferences we meet librarians.” I had to stop a minute to process that sentence. It seemed to me he’d misspoken; but he hadn’t, and my misunderstanding proved his point. “I don’t think that people truly understand how much all of our worlds constantly intersect.”

“I’m a fan of Lewis,” Flaherty continued, “and in particular of Mere Christianity, because he puts the emphasis on what unites us rather than on what divides us. There are things that all audiences can enjoy, and that’s where we like to put our focus.”

Journalists like me, of course, like convenient labels—precisely because they’re convenient. Companies like Walden Media (and executives like Flaherty) that defy easy categorization give us fits. Perhaps that’s as it should be, and it’s a good thing.

Toward the beginning of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the four Pevensie children stand on a remote train platform in the English countryside. Like thousands of other bombing-raid refugees, their mother has sent them off to a host family in a safer part of the country. Young Edmund, though, begins to suspect that no one’s coming to meet them. He picks at the tag on his coat and grouses, “Perhaps we’ve been mislabeled.”

Flaherty appears to have had just about enough of labels himself. “I just want people to see the movie,” he sighs, “and then talk about the movie.”

Flaherty will get his Christmas wish tomorrow.

Images Copyright 2005 Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Walden Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

------------------------------

Our Narnia Team's reviews of the film are up! It's a mixed bag—check 'em out.

Previews and Coming Distractions

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 16:39:00 +0000

or, The Art of Marketing and the Marketing of Art

Just yesterday, I ran across a "Noview Review" of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. "This is a review of a movie that I haven't seen," says writer Fred Stesney, "because they haven't even released it yet. Really, with all the advance publicity that they do these days, do you really have to see a movie to know if it's any good? I say, no."

I had to laugh, and even agree with his point of view somewhat. I must admit that, in the past, I have once or twice "prewritten" movie reviews based on advance publicity and then almost literally "filled in the blanks" with details from the actual screening.

Stesney's own quasi-informed assessment of the upcoming Narnia film? "The awesome spectacle runs roughshod over any objections to hammy acting, the liberal use of movie clichés, and a lack of suspense as to the outcome. " As to the meaning of the film, Stesney remarks, "If Jesus isn’t your thing, don’t worry. Lewis created the series to be a light-handed way of getting the message to kids, and Disney, needing audiences in blue states, goes easy on the salvation. Non-believers will still get an exciting story where good and evil meet on the battlefield to hack each other to pieces."

Stesney's secular cynicism is not unique. At the Past Watchful Dragons conference at Belmont University in Nashville last week, I presented a Christian-oriented paper in which I mused that "Disney’s massive and unprecedented publicity campaign for this film almost guarantees that the world of Narnia will surprise few of us, though delight us it may."

The publicity machine that the potential Narnia franchise has become was launched in earnest last May when Oren Aviv, president of marketing for Buena Vista Pictures, announced that Disney and Walden Media were planning a massive and "unprecedented worldwide trailer 'roadblock' debut." On May 7th, during ABC TV’s network premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (airing in over 106 million households), the trailer ran simultaneously around the globe to an "estimated 200 million+" viewers with "convergence" of coverage on "TV, online and via mobile phones." And quite an impressive debut it was—and debut only. The campagin has long since kicked into higher gear.

But there are legitimate reasons to be troubled about such a level of hype. This month, I will examine why various parties are concerned about how the movie's promotion is being handled, and conclude with some thoughts about how marketing considerations are likely to affect our experience of the film we finally end up seeing.

Have Disney and Walden Media "Got it Right?"

The phrase is unavoidable. As Motive Marketing head Paul Lauer observed in a recent "Narnia Outreach Training" simulcast, fans of Lewis' fantasy were justifiably excited about early news that a big-budget, live-action adaption of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was going to be produced—and justifiably apprehensive about Hollywood's ability to "get it right." Lauer's pronouncement? "I'm here to tell you: They got it right."

Well, what exactly would we expect Lauer to say? He is, after all, being paid to promote the film. And the various other "authorities" that the producers have lined up—including Douglas Gresham—naturally agree. Their enthusiasm is understandable if predictable, and their motives mostly pure.

But what does the publicity for the film actually convey? In Nashville, I shared a panel with Hugh H. Davis, who teaches English Literature at St. Mary's School in Raleigh, North Carolina. His paper offered the following excellent summation of the publicity's over-emphasis on battle footage.

As Walden Media and Disney prepare the imminent release of their adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the early media machine’s emphasis appears to focus on the novel’s final battle, a conflict between the massed armies of Aslan and the White Witch. Such a climactic struggle befits cinematic fantasy, particularly in the wake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and its epic battles, and all indicators suggest particular attention, if not hype, is being paid to the militaristic clash near the film’s end, despite the fact that this war lasts a mere few pages in Lewis’ text. While this conflict between the White Witch’s minions and Aslan’s supporters has narrative importance, seemingly the more important sequence should be the lion’s sacrifice in place of Edmund.

Advance material from the new film features only a brief glimpse of the White Witch (Tilda Swinton) on the Stone Table, focusing instead on the cataclysmic finale. The moviemakers have prepared a multi-part series going “Behind the Magic of Narnia” with five behind-the-scenes segments introducing viewers to “WETA” (the company designing the creatures and weaponry for the film), “The Director” (Andrew Adamson), “Locations and Sets,” “The Story,” and “Visual Effects.” Throughout each segment, much emphasis is placed on the number of different creatures needed, the challenge of creating two armies of five-thousand characters on one side and fifteen-thousand characters on the other, the difficulty of establishing both armies for both the creature design and visual effects departments, and the trial and ultimate satisfaction of committing an epic battle between good and evil to film. The trailers culminate in a series of shots of the two armies rushing headlong into battle.

The merchandising arm of the film—a modern necessity for all blockbusters—suggests similar early emphasis. While a line of plush toys has been solicited, with stuffed versions of Mr. Beaver, a unicorn, and Aslan, the majority of the collectibles being offered have taken a more violent, or at least action-oriented, focus. Toy shoppers may select from waves of “Battle Scale” two-packs, “Basic Battle Figures,” “Deluxe Battle Figures,” and plain and deluxe “Action Figures.” The emphasis with all of these has been on mythical creatures and presentations of the children in armor as part of the war scene. Even more “high end” items—more expensive merchandise sold to collectors—reveal this emphasis. Besides producing the creatures for the film, Weta are also releasing a line of statues and maquettes. Of the nine items on their website, four—The White Witch, the Minobaur, a Satyr, and General Otmin—are from the side of evil in the epic struggle, and two others—an armored Peter on a unicorn and Oreius, Aslan’s right-hand centaur—represent the forces of good in the same battle. The workshop does offer a maquette of Mr. Tumnus from early in the novel and a set of bookends with Aslan and the White Witch, but the only available merchandise which relates to the sacrifice scene is a statue of the Pevensie girls riding Aslan following his resurrection. Other merchandise and toy searches reveal a similarly disproportionate focus on the creatures of Narnia and their battlefield worlds, with armored and non-armored variations of the Cyclops, Ogres, and Satyrs, as well as a Disney PVC “Battle of Beruna” Playset.

The emphasis on the militaristic side of the novel might be deemed appropriate, given, as Paul Ford points out, the use of battle imagery throughout the text to describe Aslan’s movement, but it is more likely a product of a public relations machine’s efforts to entice an audience accustomed to spectacle and excess.

Davis mercifully spares us the details of the upcoming Narnia-based gaming scenarios, all of which, naturally, focus on battles, weapons and conflict. Even little Lucy gets to kick butt. The Toronto Sun reports that one video game combines "puzzle-solving and exploration with copious amounts of monster slaying." Still, says the game's Christian designer, "It's not like you're getting into a car with a prostitute, sleeping with her and killing her to get the money back." Lucky us. Davis, meanwhile, continues:

The cinema’s tendency to spectacle leads to the creation and inclusion of a glorified battle at the end of the film, but Aslan’s murder at the hands of the White Witch and her hordes—a crucifixion for this supposal’s Christ—is the true “glorious battle” of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Davis is right in observing, from a strictly literary point of view, that the true climax of the story is Aslan's death and resurrection, not the battle that follows. And his summary of Narnia's merchandizing is simultaneously deft, amusing and revealing.

Can the vision of Narnia presented by the trailers, merchandizing and game previews truly be described as "getting it right"? The "experts," presumably, are basing their opinion on something other than what the rest of us have seen.

Davis' summary of the movie's mainstream pre-selling, though, does help delineate four areas of concern: how a story with strong spiritual dimensions is being pitched to a mainstream, largely secular culture (a discussion fully covered by Davis' comments above); the multifaceted and aggressive effort being expended to convince Christian audiences that the movie's producers nonetheless "got it right"; the ideological battle of which these marketing efforts are a part; and what audiences stand to lose as a result.

The Christian Pitch

Toys, games and McDonald's Happy Meals, of course, have long been a part of the marketing options available to Hollywood. Ever since George Lucas pulled a fast one on Fox by retaining the merchandising rights to the Star Wars franchise, consumers and studios alike have been much more aware of mainstream, purely capitalist means of promoting movies. Disney is no exception, naturally. We all remember The Lion King toys, don't we? Dennis Rice, the company's senior vice president of publicity, has been quoted as saying that Disney intends to deploy "a large quiver of arrows" in their marketing campaign for Narnia—and, of course, the militaristic feel of Rice's comment has been adequately depicted in the mainstream pitch.

But Disney has also supported another handful of arrows launched in quite a different direction: that of the Christian church. And this is also nothing new. Hollywood marketing campaigns have been targeting Christian audiences for years. Grace Hill Media, described by Elaine Dutka of The Los Angeles Times as "the industry leader in church-based promotion," has pushed more than eighty films, going back to Bruce Almighty and Gods and Generals in addition to more recent fare such as Cinderella Man and Disney's The Greatest Game Ever Played. Now Grace Hill is on board with Narnia, too.

Yet the full scope of the church-based effort on the Narnia film is astonishing.

In addition to the publicists at Grace Hill, Disney has hired Paul Lauer's Motive Marketing to promote the film. While Grace Hill's efforts are focused mainly on journalists like me, Lauer—who has become the visible point man for public events in the Christian market—has coordinated the efforts of a wide range of religious organizations—in much the same manner as he did for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. In addition to the materials available through Motive's Narnia Resources website, Lauer also works closely with Outreach Inc. and the Mission America Coalition. At Outreach—a company that produces and sells licensed materials such as Narnia-themed bulletin covers, door hangers and mailers—Ron Forseth is quoted by Sandi Dolbee at the San Diego Union-Tribune as saying, "This film is going to be knock-your-socks-off good."

In the UK, The Observer reports on a number of other Christian leaders who are also on board with such gung-ho assessments:

A group called Catholic Outreach has advertised for 150 co-ordinators across the country to help promote the film. It is also organising 'sneak peak' events at which trailers will be shown to church audiences and executives from the film will talk about the project.

Other Christian groups and study centres are getting behind the film too. "We believe that God will speak the gospel of Jesus Christ through this film," said Lon Allison, director of the Billy Graham Centre at Wheaton College in Illinois.

Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that the film was an ideal way for a Christian message to be brought to people who would not otherwise go near a church. "Here is yet another tool that many may find to be effective in communicating the message of Jesus to those who may not respond to other presentations," he said.

And according to the Palm Beach Post, the Mission America Coalition has said, "As we begin to realize the potential impact of a blockbuster movie based on this premise, one that would have vast popular appeal in our culture as an epic struggle of good versus evil, but yet retain the 'deeper magic' of bedrock Christian themes such as sacrifice, resurrection and redemption, we quickly came to view the film—as we have viewed the books—as a huge opportunity for communicating the gospel message."

Naturally, scores of Christian organizations who are jazzed about such bullish predictions are piling up their own resources behind promoting the film. George Barna has even pulled together support for group bookings of the film the day before its official release. Notably, long-standing Christian boycotts of Disney films over the company's gay-tolerant business practices have been dropped this year. It's hard to generate good word-of-mouth, after all, for a film you won't let your congregation see. But hard-line stances fall easily when the situation is right, as we saw last year with Christian audiences flocking to the R-rated Passion of the Christ.

But all of this is pretty natural to see from a whole raft of folks who get paid, one way or another, to tell us what to think.

Motive, however, is also paying the Ground Force Network to mobilize and coordinate the activities of scores of volunteers. These young and enthusiastic unpaid promoters are the hands and feet of paid staffers they've often never met. The local GFN "field agent" in my area, for instance, is a student at the University of Washington who juggles a full-time course load while coordinating local customized promotional plans.

The mission of the GFN "campaign" for Narnia is not to proseletyze, however, no matter how militaristic and confrontational the GFN's lingo comes across. The object is to raise awareness of the Narnia film within the Christian community by staffing booths at Christian concerts and conventions, or by supplying interested and influential pastors with information and promotional material—and "ground war leader" Christine Bailey makes it clear that the GFN doesn't speak for Disney, Gresham or Walden Media. Further, Narnia campaign field agents—AKA "Knights of Narnia"—know that they're unpaid promoters, and are more than happy with the promise of vague incentive programs. Heck, just the chance to be an insider in the biggest media event of the season is incentive enough.

My local Knight of Narnia was on hand for the local "Sneak Peek" event I attended last week, which was far more low-key than I expected. It was hosted by a local church and laid out the educational and inspirational objectives of Walden Media. The hosting pastor started out by flipping through some Powerpoint slides presented by Ted Baehr at a regional Sneak Peek in Chicago. Then the various materials available through Walden, Motive and Outreach were described, and the trailers and featurettes available online were screened. The session concluded with a screening of Disney's closely-guarded extended preview footage of the upcoming film, which was indeed pretty stimulating. Whether or not the film ends up being any good, the folks putting together the Narnia trailers and featurettes know what they're doing. As Sneak Peek attendees left, they were laden with more free promotional materials than they could possibly shake a stick at.

Also last week, the Church Communications Network (CCN), an outfit that broadcasts satellite simulcast programs to subscribers, offered the "Narnia Outreach Training Seminar." Featuring talks by Douglas Gresham, Paul Lauer and Walden Media's Michael Flaherty, the seminar was billed as an opportunity for church leaders to learn how to "use this film as an outreach opportunity and invite your community to explore its messages of reconciliation and forgiveness, love and grace... Find out how churches, schools and organizations across the country are using the film." If I were a non-Christian, this is the event that I would be most concerned about. I'd want to know how the Christian community planned to beat me over the head with Narnia in order to convert me.

Well, I'm a Christian pastor myself, and after sitting through both the "Sneak Peek" and the "Outreach Training Seminar," I still don't have any concrete idea of how the church plans to beat anyone over the head with Narnia, much as they might want to. The seminar, in fact, seemed more like an opportunity for Lauer, Flaherty and its host pastors to slap each other on the back and be impressed that they managed to get Steven Curtis Chapman to show up and sing a couple of songs. It was merely a very effective extended cheerleading session: lots of enthusiasm about standing on the sidelines while encouraging others to actually play the game. If I didn't already have a pretty good idea of how to use films in general to connect the gospel with our culture, these events wouldn't have helped me much at all.

So in spite of the Christian community's enthusiasm about using Narnia as a means of evangelism, as far as I can tell the Christian community wants to do something it doesn't really have a clue how to do. This is probably bad news for hopeful pastors, and good news for anxious non-Christians.

Walden Media, by contrast and by mission, has done a much better job of putting together resources for secular teaching programs. And that's natural, since education is Walden's primary focus. They even managed to get The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on Florida State's "Just Read" list of recommended books. They've already also magnificently realized a secondary goal of boosting interest in the Narnia books. Reports the Boston Globe:

Sales of The Chronicles of Narnia have been rising since last spring, when the movie trailer of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was released. The box set is No. 2 on the New York Times children's best-seller list.

"We've been happily surprised by how strong sales of 'Narnia' books have been," said Joe Monti, children's buyer for Barnes & Noble. But it's not only Lewis' children's books, Monti said: "It's also his nonfiction. It's surpassed our expectation at every stage."

HarperCollins, the publishing arm of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, is pumping out 170 C.S. Lewis-related book titles—140 related to The Chronicles of Narnia—in more than 60 countries. The number represents a vast variety of editions and companion volumes. ... "We're talking millions of books," said Mary McAveney, director of hard-cover marketing for HarperCollins Children's Books.

HarperCollins and Walden Media have worked closely together on the project, sharing artwork and promotional plans, and coordinating timing.

"The more they are able to get people to read the books," said Cary Granat, chief executive officer of Walden Media, "the bigger the base to grow the film. As more people want to see the film and read the books, it will extend the franchise. It's a cultural phenomenon that needs to be managed at all levels."

The Ideological Battle

And because Narnia has become a cultural phenomenon, being managed in a very high-profile way on many provocative levels, a lot of people are uneasy. Atheist fantasy author Philip Pullman, for instance, has taken the opportunity to declare that the Narnia books are "a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice." He told the Observer that "If the Disney Corporation wants to market this film as a great Christian story, they'll just have to tell lies about it." Sadly, whether or not Pullman's assertions about Narnia are true, he's missed the point that Disney is not marketing the film as a great Christian story. Hired publicists are doing that for them, targeting a specific market demographic as only one facet of Disney's broader campaign. Even sadder, Pullman's comments have led to knee-jerk reactions like the following:

The book has long been recognised as having strong Christian themes. It's claimed that Aslan represents Jesus, the Witch represents Satan and the wardrobe is probably a bloody church or something. Or a vicar. Look, we don't know.

And if there's one thing that American cinemagoers love, it's Jesus-y films. The Passion Of The Christ: Die Harder took an incredible amount of money at the box-office, despite being nothing more than a relentless procession of screaming and guts. Disney must have noticed this, because they seem to be marketing the Narnia films as a kind of kiddie Passion.

Evangelists are already organising the use of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe as a preaching tool—even going as far as using exclusive trailers to draw audiences to church.

Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerebino chimes in, "When you can combine the forces of Disney, the McDonald's Happy Meal and Gov. Jeb Bush in one tidy package—all of them working together to cram thinly veiled Christian theology down the gullets of Florida's schoolchildren—you've got yourself a hell of a plan."

Clearly, people see what they want to see. Vicars and pastors have indeed been quoted as saying The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is like "The Passion for Kiddies," as if that's a good thing, and atheists have used the same description as supposed evidence of the movie's pernicious inanity. And both sides mistakenly claim that Disney is marketing the film to kids in that way.

Pullman and other atheists aren't alone, of course. Reactionaries on the other side of the argument are just as pugnacious, claiming that The Passion and Narnia have changed nothing. Last week, syndicated columnist L. Brent Bozell III ranted,

So why are some at Disney so uncomfortable with the religious theme in their own movie, a message embraced by 82 percent of Americans?

"We believe we have not made a religious movie,” Dennis Rice, Disney's senior vice president of publicity, told the Washington Times. “It's just a great piece of cinema that is true to a great piece of literature." The message in that is clear: don’t think this is a Christian film, because that is box-office death. Why not: “This is a fabulous story which also has a glorious message about faith and redemption”?

The reason for this unease is simple. There are people who are disturbed by the promotion of religion in the culture. Gov. Jeb Bush found this out when he promoted the first Narnia book for Florida school children in his “Just Read, Florida” program. Barry Lynn of the perpetually annoying group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State objected to this as a governmental encouragement of children’s literature with Christian overtones. You can have school teachers assign students to read books about rape, drug addiction, and accepting homosexuality as normal, but there better not be a Christian metaphor on the reading list.

All of this, of course, is part of the general climate of intellectual bullying going on in our world right now. No matter what side of any given debate one finds oneself on, it's apparently just a given these days that the other side is either demented, manipulatively evil or just plain stupid—maybe even a diabolical and contradictory combination of all three. Watching this all play out in the context of The Chronicles of Narnia is rather like watching two starving men endlessly battle to the death over a single loaf of bread—never stopping to realize that there's enough there for both to share, and never stopping to actually eat.

I have to admit that it was refreshing to see Christianity Today finally ask: When it comes to Narnia, is the church merely being used by Hollywood? But they failed to ask the equally compelling question: Isn't the church attempting to use Hollywood in much the same way? Who's using whom, exactly? And why can't the movie be genially viewed as a good thing for everyone?

Personally, I'm happy to conclude that Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia is no more a conspiracy to promote a Christian agenda than its theme parks are a conspiracy to promote a gay agenda.

What We Stand to Lose

I'm somewhat saddened, however, to also conclude that, at the end of the day, business is still business. It's tragic, really, that any artform should have such staggering income potential. When business interests and artistic decisions collide, the art usually suffers. And this is, probably, the greatest danger in this particular scenario: that the ideological tug-of-war over Narnia will translate into market pressures that compromise the right of Andrew Adamson, as an artist, to pursue with integrity his artistic vision for the film.

It would also be a shame if non-Christian audiences are so put off by Christian leaders' rather silly band-wagon-hopping enthusiasm for a film they've never actually seen that they skip the film entirely and miss out on what could be the most purely enjoyable moviegoing experience of the season. Here's a personal recommendation: If you're not interested in being preached at, just ignore the Vacation Bible School and camp programs, tell your adult Christian friends that, no, you really don't want to attend a Narnia-themed dinner at the church, and sneak down to your local multiplex when no evangelists are looking to check out the film for yourself. You'd probably cut Saw II that much slack, anyway.

It would be equally sad, of course, if utilitarian-minded Christians missed the fact that films are good for something other than evangelism. And if you don't understand that statement, I really don't know what to say.

Can we all just forget the hype when we finally go to see the movie? I hope so. The worst thing of all would be if Disney ruined the movie's chances by making us all sick of the film before we see it, or by distracting us with a useless and tiresome sideshow. I guess it's up to us to make sure that doesn't happen.

Andrew Adamson's Narnia

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 04:46:00 +0000

or, Why I Hope Disney’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is NOT Exactly Like the Book

Earlier this week, Time magazine ran an excellent summation of the specifically Christian allegorical elements that author C. S. Lewis crafted into The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: atonement for human sin, the death of a sinless Christ figure and his triumph over death and the grave. The article further laid out a “sniff test” for determining if those Christian elements actually survive in the upcoming cinematic adaptation of the story. Four specific sentences which make the book’s Christian connections perfectly clear, the article claims, must make it into the movie for it to capture “the Christian character of C. S. Lewis's book.” Considering that Time is a mainstream publication, I was surprised by the article’s implication: that a litmus test exists by which the success of director Andrew Adamson’s adaptation can, should and will be judged.

I can’t blame Time for thinking that such a litmus test is important to the Christian community. Since the massive marketing campaign for this film began several months ago, its producers (Walden Media), distributor (Disney) and publicist (Motive Marketing) have held the line that job one for this adaptation is preserving “the spirit” of Lewis’ book: bringing the themes of the story to the screen, intact and unsullied. Adamson has even remarked that whatever themes one found in the book—explicitly Christian or otherwise—one will find them in the film as well. Michael Flaherty, president of Walden Media, also reassured Christianity Today this week that Walden has complete creative control of the project—not Disney.

This is accomplished mostly through the efforts of Douglas Gresham—Lewis’ stepson from his late and brief marriage to Joy Davidman—who protects the interests of the Lewis Estate, and advises not only Walden Media but Disney and Motive as well. Gresham is himself a staunch Christian and is even participating later this month in “Narnia Outreach Training” seminars, with Flaherty and Motive’s Paul Lauer, sessions designed to show Christian churches how the upcoming film can be used as an effective tool for evangelism.

So the Christian community, in both its love for Lewis and its zeal for proselytism, has an enormous investment in presuming that Adamson’s film will convey the Christian story as effectively as did the novel which inspired it. A great many Christians will in fact feel betrayed—and a very important handful of others will have a great deal of egg on their faces—if the film somehow manages to pull a fast one and downplay the Christian elements of the story. Time is unfortunately on pretty safe ground, then, in assuming that the Christian criteria which it laid out will be the standard by which much of the Christian community plans to judge Adamson’s film.

But there is another criterion that tends to get lost amidst the utilitarian evangelical rumble and the marketing scramble to mollify the religious community: as Time also observes, Adamson’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe must first be a good film. If it is not that, it will be useless both as art and as fodder for “outreach.” If audiences don’t enjoy the film, they won’t much care about its message. And at the risk of being called a heretic, I’ll assert that the film will only be good if it is uniquely Adamson’s.

Why Even Make the Film?
C. S. Lewis rightly observed that story-telling is an art. When it is done well, Lewis said, it “can mediate imaginative life”: that is, the plot casts “a net whereby to catch something else.” So the plot of Lion, then, is Lewis’ net; capturing the vitality of the Christian story is that “something else.” But Lewis was very clear that, in his mind, the story “worked” because it was a perfect marriage of form and purpose. “I wrote fairy tales,” he said, “because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say.” According to Lewis, this form has the power to “generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies.” And what he wanted to accomplish with his Chronicles of Narnia was to pare away the “obligation” and “reverence” we are raised to associate with the suffering of Christ: “Supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”

So we might well ask: If Lewis believed that a work of literature, and a “fairy tale” at that, was the ideal form for what he had to say, why would anyone believe that a film could say those things just as well? Clearly, Lewis himself would never have dreamed of trying to convey Narnian themes in a Western novel, a drama or a pantomime—much less in a painting, a sculpture or a film. In fact, it’s a good bet that the film is the last art form he would have chosen.

“Nothing can be more disastrous than the view that the cinema can and should replace popular written fiction,” Lewis wrote. “The elements which it excludes are precisely those which give the untrained mind its only access to the imaginative world. There is death in the camera.” Lewis’ colleague and friend J. R. R. Tolkien, author of the The Lord of the Rings, elaborated: “In human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature... The visible presentation of the fantastic image is technically too easy; the hand tends to outrun the mind, even to overthrow it. Silliness or morbidity are frequent results.”

Are Gresham, Disney, Walden Media and Adamson then dishonoring Lewis by attempting a cinematic adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Are they foolishly attempting to say what can only be said through fantastic literature? Yes, to a degree; but mostly no.

First, we must understand that the cinematic arts about which Lewis and Tolkien published their comments were not what they are today. Though by 1923 George Bernard Shaw could envision the day when the cinema would “form the mind of England,” in 1947 the art of film had barely managed to get through its infancy. Cecil B. DeMille’s and David Lean’s masterpieces—the burgeoning adolescence of the art—were still a decade or more distant, and the visceral success of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings would have been literally unimaginable at mid-century. So the cinema that Tolkien and Lewis despised was but a mere shadow of the cinema of 2005—in style, substance and evocative technical potential.

Second, we must also remember that Lewis and Tolkien were fighting to legitimize an art form they loved and to defend it against “watchful dragons” of any variety—and in particular, a literary establishment that ridiculed and “depreciated” fantasy “due to the natural desire of critics to cry up the forms of literature or ‘imagination’ that they themselves, innately or by training, prefer,” as Tolkien wrote. And naturally, the same can be said of Tolkien and Lewis who, in their zeal for fantasy, depreciated the art of cinema—not because it is actually inferior, but because they preferred literature.

Third, Tolkien and Lewis were raised on books, not on television. “Having grown up as readers of the printed word,” says British editor Lynne Truss, “we may take for granted the processes involved in the traditional activity of reading... We read privately, mentally listening to the writer’s voice and translating the writer’s thoughts... Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority.” Further, Truss concludes, “All these conditions for reading are overturned by the new technologies.” Those of us raised on TV, in fact, understand the language of movies as implicitly as that of books, and when we pay for our ticket, we—like Truss’ book-lovers—“have a sense of investment and pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.” Lewis and Tolkien had no such feelings for film. In fact, as Turner Prize-winner Rachel Whiteread observes, fellow Brits such as Lewis “have an innate respect for writing or anything literary, but not for the visual arts.”

To a degree, then, Lewis’ objections to film need not be taken as gospel today. Still, even if we grant that Gresham and Adamson are not dishonoring Lewis by proceeding in spite of his outdated and biased objections, we may well be concerned about the advisability of trying to import Lewis’ Narnian themes wholesale into a film. We may love the Chronicles for what they have to say, and how they say it. But should we even ask Adamson’s film to do the same? Is Adamson wise to insist that it will?

Room for Adamson’s Unique Vision
If we deny film its status as a unique art form, or if we deny a film director the right—even duty—to communicate his own personal ideas through his art, then we have our answer. Disney’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe can and should say nothing more or less than what Lewis did in his novel. If, however, we grant Lewis the authority to say that “sometimes fairy stories may say best what’s to be said”—if, that is, we grant that all art forms are not created equal—then we must admit that movies are ideally suited to say certain things and poorly suited to say others. Film, for instance, is a very dangerous medium for pieces of propaganda such as Triumph of the Will or Fahrenheit 9/11: it is too powerful.

A key difference between a book and a film is the element of control. Ingmar Bergman, the legendary Swedish film director, said that when we watch a film, we put aside “the will and the intellect.” We enter into a contractual agreement, he says, to let a film’s director manipulate us with words, images and music. For ninety minutes or more, we are captive to the director’s spell, a spell that is very hard to break. How many films, after all—even bad ones—have we ever physically walked out on?

Books, however, are different. Though even a fantasy’s success is dependent on what Tolkien called “secondary belief”—a giving over to a story’s “inner consistency of reality”—the reader is, by nature, in complete control of when that belief begins and ends. Rarely do we read an entire book in a single sitting. In fact, when I first read The Lord of the Rings I put the book down for days (well, maybe hours) after I read of Gandalf’s fall into the abyss. Only after my curiosity got the better of me did I pick it up again. And more often than not, I actually fail to finish a book that I have begun.

So Adamson would be very unwise (and not much of director, really) if he didn’t realize that his film will have much more visceral power than Lewis’ book could ever hope to muster. The firestorm over Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ would surely have convinced Adamson of that, even if he knew nothing of his craft (which, obviously, he does). So even if he were determined to convey the same Christian themes that Lewis did, he would necessarily be required to temper the presentation in some way lest the film become more of a polemic than entertainment.

Adamson has a very fine line to walk in this respect, because it appears that a significant portion of the “grass roots” which support the marketing of his film are intent on using it as nothing more than a tool for proseletizing—and yet the very audience these Christians want to evangelize won’t come close to the film if it’s got even a hint of propaganda to it. Again consider Fahrenheit 9/11: how many Republicans went to see that film, let alone found it persuasive?

So for my part, I sincerely hope that Adamson’s film presents a unique vision of Narnia, one that none of us quite expects. In that way, it will hopefully be effective for all of us, not just a utilitarian few.

What Can We Then Expect?
First, the trailers for the film make it pretty plain that the simplicity of Lewis’ initial tale has been supplanted by an epic scope. Adamson has said in interviews that this has been deliberate because he wanted to capture the feeling of the entire Chronicles in this film, not just the tip of the hundred-year iceberg that was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Naturally, the film must also compete in the marketplace with The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. So a presentation along the lines of a BBC special just won’t cut it.

Second, sufficient plot and dialogue details have been “leaked” to demonstrate that we would be wrong to expect slavish fidelity to Lewis’ text. Jadis’ sledge, for instance, is hauled by polar bears. And when the Pevensie children first meet Mr. Beaver, Peter tries to feed him, thinking he’s a wild animal; the mammal replies, “Well I'm not going to smell it, if that's what you want."

Finally, unless Adamson has nothing of his own to say, we can fully expect—yes, even demand—that this film will convey something of the director’s own ideas, even if we don’t like what he has to say. At the very least, as was the case with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, the thematic ways in which the film and book differ will only serve to enhance the original author’s ideas, not detract from them.

Who knows? In spite of watchful Lewis-loving dragons and their criteria-toting clipboards, Adamson could even have something worthwhile and unique to say—something that might strip the hush-toned reverence from our love of Narnia and make it for the first time appear in its real potency. Could he not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I think he could.

Vocabulary

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 08:00:00 +0000

The Last Battle

Chapter 1

Panniers. Originally, these were large bread baskets slung onto pack animals. Today, these are fabric bags used in balanced pairs on bicycles and so forth. In the context of this story, these were probably general-use baskets or bags that Shift would sling across Puzzle’s back.

Chapter 2

Sapient. Wise. This is worth commenting on in this context since the human species is called “homo sapiens,” which means “wise man.” Hence, the Calormene is using this term with extreme irony in addressing Shift, who is, after all, merely an ape.

Chapter 5

Wire. A telegram. Before the telegraph, messages were delivered by hand. With the advent of the telegraph, messages could be sent electronically, “by wire.” A message sent “by wire” came to be known as “a wire.”

Rude. Today, we almost universally use this term to mean, “Behaving as if a cable news talk show host.” Lewis, however, uses the term to mean “rough” or “crude” (and no, he doesn’t use “crude” to describes those same cable personalities, either—though perhaps he would if he were alive today).

Stiff. Since locks are generally made of iron or steel, yes—most locks are indeed stiff. What Lewis means, though, is that the lock was slightly rusty, making it hard to turn the key.

Firkin. A type of cask, most frequently used to store ale. Casks were formed of staves, like barrels, but were much smaller. A firkin generally held nine gallons, or about a quarter barrel.

Chapter 6

Miscarry. Go awry. Tirian is not suggesting that he’s pregnant; he’s suggesting that his plans might fail.

Rive. To tear apart. “Riven” means “torn apart.”

Malapert. An impudent, disrespectful person. Any time a word begins with “mal,” it means something bad.

Chapter 7

Manikin. Literally, “little man.” Disrespect is meant in this usage.

Moke. Just an archaic term for “donkey.”

Touch One’s Cap. Give deference to. It used to be the custom, when passing a respectable person, to touch one’s hand to the brim of one’s cap and bow ever so slightly.

Wood Sorel. Oxalis, a wild herb.

Chapter 8

Homely. Not “a touch on the ugly side,” but just plain “home-like.”

Chapter 12

Flannel. Not so many years ago, “flannel” by definition meant “wool.” These days, we don’t wear so much wool, and flannel (almost by definition) means “cotton,” which is quite comfortable. Unlined wool flannel, by contrast, tends to be pretty scratchy stuff to wear.

Chapter 13

Tongues. This is food. Really. At one time, the tongues of various animals (usually cattle or game) were considered delicacies. Today, you can still get tongue from your butcher, but you don’t typically see tongue served with your fries at Mickey D’s.

The Stable-ity of Narnia

kathy@dramatic-insights.org (Kathy Bledsoe) — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 09:00:00 +0000

After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven… —Revelation 4:1

There is a rather trite saying going around garden stores these days. It can be found on placards made to hang in sheds or atop metal flower bed stakes or even on magnets that are sure to be added to refrigerator doors already groaning from the weight of collected “wisdom,” cherished family pictures, and coupons for cat food. The sentiment?

“Life Began in a Garden.”

In The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis presents us with a child-friendly (if sometimes gruesome) version of the Bible’s book of Revelation. And in this version, the focal point is not a really a garden, but a stable. This does not refute the Biblical truth of life beginning in the Garden of Eden, of course, but instead opens up the larger question of which life is most worth pursuing—eternal life with Aslan in His world, or eternal destruction and separation from Aslan. Just as Aslan uses the stable as the doorway of decision into the real Narnia, God used a stable as the foundation of decision for mankind—the beginning of the end, if you will.

In the Bible, Eden originally became off limits because of the sin committed there by Adam and Eve, which doomed humanity to eternal destruction. However, in an astounding display of love and mercy, God chose a Plan B—the birth of Jesus in a lowly, smelly stable—as the beginning of the story of salvation. According to that story, all who believe in and call on the name of the One born in the stable will be saved and have life forever with God in Heaven.

With pure genius, Lewis also presents the idea that life (eternal life—the only life that matters) begins in a stable, and thus the stable door represents passage from the “shadow of Narnia” into “Aslan’s real world.” The titular Last Battle is not the physical fighting between the Narnians and the Calormenes (which is a very limited part of the story) so much as the individual’s spiritual battle of choice: the stable of salvation or the stable of destruction. The irony is that both buildings are really one and the same, and Lewis uses his characters well to prove this point.

Of foremost import is the fact that Lewis chooses to capitalize the word “stable.” This is a device he uses throughout his writing, both fiction and non-fiction, when he wants the reader to take notice and get a point. It is no accident that Shift, the ape, creates an Anti-Aslan with a lion skin on Puzzle, the donkey, and houses him in a Stable.

Each character or group of characters subsequently represents a response to the invitation to enter the Stable of Eternal Life. The chosen response determines the final destination of the individual—to dwell with Aslan forever or to become fodder for Tash.

First we must deal with Shift. The Apostle Peter has two very clear warnings that pertain to who Shift is and what he is doing here:

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. —1 Peter 5:8

…there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. —2 Peter 2:1

The ape is one who knows who Aslan is but defiantly refuses to bow before Him. He creates an Anti-Aslan, but in truth is the Anti-Christ himself. He becomes the lord and “mouthpiece of Aslan,” claiming that he is “so wise that [he is] the only one Aslan is ever going to speak to.” Shift invents “Tashlan” and claims that Tash and Aslan are one and the same. Many Narnians buy into the ape’s subterfuge, but some refuse to believe the blasphemy and are persecuted, imprisoned, even sacrificed for refusing to worship Tashlan and listen to Shift.

In our own post-modern, similarly “enlightened” world, Satan’s most effective weapon has been the promotion of tolerance to undermine the path to salvation. These are some of Satan’s lies:

Christians are no different than Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, etc.
Christ is just another man, a great prophet of history, and not the “name under heaven given to men by which [they] must be saved.”
It is a silly thing to claim that the path to salvation is narrow and difficult and must be chosen. Wouldn’t Christ want everyone to be saved without such requirements? How can modern and enlightened people believe that God, who claims He is love, consigns those who do not choose Christ to eternal death?
Christianity is an intolerant religion whose claims must be suppressed and refuted.

Shift does not accept the salvation of the Stable but creates his own religion to replace it, one designed very much along the lines of our own contemporary objections. He is an ape who wants to be a man, and misuses a good thing to deceive believers and lure them into apostasy just as Satan today tempts believers to give in to the call of the world.

Puzzle, however, is an Ass: one who has enough knowledge to know there is a difference between good and evil, but one who has not developed that knowledge into a faith that can save him from being used and manipulated. He knows of Aslan but doesn’t have any personal experience with Him. He is the perfect picture of the person who believes there is a God but has not bothered to move beyond that declaration. This type of believer, one that Jesus calls “lukewarm,” is in awe and fear of God’s power to exact retribution for wrongs committed, but has no knowledge of the power of God’s love and His desire to save. The Stable is just a place in which to hide or feel confined. The door of the Stable represents only a path that must be taken—knowing full well that an awful judgment is all that is deserved and all that waits on the other side. Puzzle’s faith is really born when he finally meets Aslan face-to-face and he is saved “as one plucked from the fire.”

King Tirian and his friend the unicorn are both “jewels” in the rough: believers whose relationship with Aslan is not strong enough to give them the “peace that passes all understanding” when conflicting reports come to them. Instead of listening to the wisdom of Roonwit, the Centaur prophet, they easily fall prey to confusion and in doing so act rashly. If they knew Aslan well, they would know Him by His attributes and not just by the description “not a tame lion.” This phrase, repeated often within a few pages, leads them to ignore wise counsel and to act in anger and their own power, bringing them to commit the sin of murdering two Calormenes for beating a Narnian talking Horse—just as the Biblical Moses killed an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew slave.

Since they really do not know whom they worship or why, though they long for Aslan—He has simply become a “great” lion of the past—Tirian and Jewel are easily duped into the despair that comes from discovering that the truth they thought they understood is not the truth at all. This is very much like the believer of today, one who decides that God really intends to take a “hands off” approach and leaves it up to each of us to make decisions and run our own lives. Unfortunately, the danger is that “much evil [comes] of their rashness in the end,” and we have witnessed throughout history the horrors done in the name of Christ by Christians who believe they must take God’s business into their own hands.

The blessing is that Tirian and Jewel do come to understand who Aslan really is through the trials they have brought upon themselves and the errors they have committed. This offers to all believers the hope of complete restoration (despite some wrong turns along the way) and the joy of hearing Christ say, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” just as Aslan says to King Tirian. The walk of faith is a life-long process, not an overnight fait accompli.

Tirian discovers that when a person gets to his lowest point and finally calls on the name of Aslan, the Great Emperor-over-the-Sea responds to the prayer of faith—and acts. The result isn’t always what was expected; but then comes true understanding of the phrase, “not a tame lion.” Aslan cannot be manipulated or controlled. Aslan does not act in whimsical and arbitrary ways. Aslan can be trusted to remain true to His character and to be consistent in word and action. Aslan does not change.

What Tirian’s prayer does is to bring Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb back into Narnia. These two characters are the last of the children from the first six books who are young enough to return to Narnia. They have a firm knowledge of Aslan, and an unwavering faith in Him. These are the strengths around which King Tirian and the remaining true Narnians rally. The children’s appearance brings renewed faith to Tirian, and he finds the power within himself to boldly stand up to the lie that has been perpetrated by Shift.

Jill and Eustace embody God’s intention that a primary purpose of a believer’s life is to encourage those whose faith may be faltering. Ask any believer today and he will surely have at least one story of a time in his life when he thought he had hit rock bottom and there was no further hope. His testimony will be that other believers “found” him, encouraged him, and lifted him back to living faith. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the problem was removed, only that strength was given to remain steadfast and, often, to come through the difficulty stronger in Christ than ever before.

Thanks to the children, Tirian and Jewel (though dreading the dark portal of the Stable and what may lie beyond) have the courage of faith to hope that it “may be… the door to Aslan’s country”—and find that this is indeed the case. Still, Tirian and all the rest still went through that Stable door with imperfect knowledge, going on faith that they would never be alone.

But finally, we must address the dwarfs’ plight, for they are perhaps the characters most to be pitied and mourned. In The Great Divorce Lewis says, “Every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind—is, in the end, Hell.” The dwarfs of The Last Battle epitomize this type of hell. Aslan has been absent from Narnia for so long that the dwarfs (if not complete atheists) are at least agnostic. They feel sorely abused for having been fooled by a dressed up donkey and agree with Griffle who says, “I’ve heard as much about Aslan as I want to for the rest of my life.”

When the dwarfs enter the same Stable as all of the other characters, and when Truth stands embodied in Aslan, they cannot see Him. At Lucy’s behest, Aslan prepares a wonderful banquet for the dwarfs but they think they are eating straw in a stinking stable. “You see,” says Aslan, “they will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

Wayne Martindale, in his book Beyond the Shadowlands: C. S. Lewis on Heaven & Hell, warns, “The Dwarfs’ case is a warning that hypocrites provide agnostics with a rationalization for not believing anything. A pretender once seen through is a more powerful weapon in Satan’s arsenal than an outright atheist.” An atheist is, after all, actually in the habit of believing in something—a habit that can be turned in a different direction. C. S. Lewis provides himself as a case in point.

But what happens to Shift, Ginger the Cat, and Rishda Tarkaan? None of the three believe in anything supernatural. They create their own god, Tashlan, to manipulate those vulnerable and gullible beings around them in order to assume power. The Tash in whom he does not believe consumes Shift. Ginger loses his sanity. Rishda is carried off by a very real “non-existent” being. In the end, we can only assume that the three finally believe that Tash, at least, is real!

Agnostics, though, as we see with the dwarfs, are very difficult to persuade to believe in anything. “Once burned, twice shy” is an extremely difficult philosophy to break down. The agnostic dwarfs cannot see or comprehend the glory of the Stable and so are consigned forever to the Hell of their own minds. Significantly, this seems no better a fate than that which awaits those who pass into Aslan’s shadow.

The Stable of The Last Battle forces each character to confront what he believes and to act accordingly. The door leads either into the real Narnia (which will exist for all eternity) or back into the “shadowland” Narnia, which is swallowed up into oblivion.

The Stable in Bethlehem on that cold, starry night two thousand years ago welcomed a baby who would transform the meaning of life. When we understand the beauty of that child, and the sweet smell of Jesus’ sacrifice rising to Heaven from the cross, we have truly left the concept of the lowly and stinking stable behind and are ready to accept the invitation to “Come further up, further in!”

Further In and Further Out

george@dramatic-insights.org (George Rosok) — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 10:00:00 +0000

Near the end of C. S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, Lucy and the faun Tumnus—whom she (and the rest of us) met when she first entered Narnia through the wardrobe—discuss the world through which they are walking. Lucy and her companions have followed Aslan “further up and further in” as He instructed, passing through a series of worlds that resemble Narnia. The Narnia in which they actually lived had been destroyed at Aslan’s bidding, yet each of the worlds through which they have since passed appears to be just like Narnia—only each appears more “real” than the last. Tumnus says the progression is “like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last.”

Tumnus’ words are an apt self-referential metaphor for what Lewis succeeds in doing with this last book in the Narnia series, on more levels than one.

First, his story peels the layers of Narnia away as he chronicles the events that will eventually lead to its demise; the story starts very simply, but as it progresses the imagery and narrative become more imaginative and complex.

Second, he skillfully and imaginatively documents the end of Narnia we know, and puts the layers of the onion back together as he describes the new worlds through which the characters pass—and the imagery in the latter part of the book is the most vivid and interesting of the entire series.

Let us first examine the onion-peeling he works in building the story. It starts with great simplicity, introducing Puzzle the donkey and his “friend” the ape, Shift. Shift is a master manipulator, getting Puzzle to do almost any task by turning things on their head, and making it always look like Shift is doing Puzzle a favor.

In this way, for starters, Shift persuades Puzzle to jump into Caldron Pool to retrieve a floating object. What Puzzle nearly drowns for turns out to be a lion skin. Shift convinces Puzzle to go on a long walk even though Puzzle is worn out from struggling in the pool. When Puzzle returns, Shift shames Puzzle into wearing the lion skin as a cloak even though Puzzle worries that it might be disrespectful to the great lion, Aslan.

In the passages describing these events, Lewis writes in a simple prose. The technique is reminiscent of fables in which the characters introduce a dilemma, then go on to solve it and deliver a simple moral message. However, rather than leading to a simple resolution, The Last Battle’s humble beginning avalanches into the eventual destruction of an entire world. Shift, of course, has plans for Puzzle and that rough-sewn disguise—as we soon find out after we are introduced to Tirian, the current King of Narnia.

The King and his best friend Jewel are enjoying a bucolic morning at Tirian’s hunting lodge. They have heard Aslan may be back in Narnia after a long absence, and they are joyously hopeful. But the Centaur, Roonwit, arrives and dispels that notion, warning that the stars tell of no visit by Aslan. At nearly the same time, a Dryad appears, crying out that trees are being murdered—and then she collapses, her own tree apparently also felled.

The tone of Lewis’ prose grows more complex as the causes behind these tragedies unfold. Tirian and Jewel are eager to be off to investigate and prosecute those responsible. Roonwit counsels that Tirian should wait, but Tirian sends Roonwit to Cair Paravel for reinforcements while he and Jewel go off to the forests. They discover that the felled trees are to be sold to Calormenes and that talking animals are helping. What’s worse is that the animals say this is at Aslan’s orders. Tirian and Jewel decide they must go on and “take the adventure that comes to us.” They are determined to do this even though they are crestfallen that all they and their ancestors have believed about Aslan all these years may not be true.

At this point Lewis’ prose even becomes omniscient. He says about their decision to go on that Tirian “did not see at the moment how foolish it was for two of them to go on alone... But much evil came of their rashness in the end.” And much evil did come; but did their actions change the outcome? Not as far as we can see, because Roonwit would soon enough be killed even before he reached Cair Paravel—and Cair Paravel itself, we learn later, was already overrun by Calormenes, and its occupants killed or on the run. So at this point Tirian and Jewel are already on a path leading to Narnia’s demise—going “further up and further in” through the events that will lead to destruction, powerless to change the outcome, though they will fight with every fiber trying to save Narnia. So we must trust that Lewis’ narration at this point is omniscient. The story itself does not convince us that what the narrator tells us is true.

But events are indeed unraveling Narnia. Jill and Eustace arrive to help Tirian and Jewel, who have turned themselves over to the Calormenes, having rashly murdered two of their soldiers. Togther, the party soon confirms that the “Aslan” who has appeared is the donkey Puzzle, dressed in a lion suit and acting as the puppet of Shift who, with the help of the Calormenes, wishes to impose his avaricious whims and desires on credulous Narnians. Jill manages to capture the masquerading donkey—or rather release him, because Puzzle is eager to stop the ruse.

The situation continues to come apart as a succession of plans and hopes comes to naught. They are helpless, and each of them is forced into the stable where all expect to meet their demise either by the Calormene soldier hiding there or by the Calormene god, Tash, who has come into Narnia—unwittingly called there by Tarkaan Rishda. Once inside, though, Tirian, who is last in, is surprised to see that he is in another world lit by an early summer sun; and he is welcomed by all the “friends of Narnia”—Digory, Polly, Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Jill. And at this juncture, Lewis’ prose takes an even stranger turn, as the battle which still rages outside the stable—and the fate of Tirian’s other friends—is wholly forgotten in favor of chuckles, high language and diversions with dwarfs.

Susan is not there, however. The one purely negative critique I have of this story is the narrator’s comments about Susan. I was confused earlier in the story when the “Friends of Narnia” were short a member. In an odd aside at this point, Lewis’ story takes time to explain that Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia. The true “friends” explain to Tirian (and us) that Susan no longer remembers her adventures in Narnia as having actually occurred. Jill says, “She’s interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.” This aside seems to serve little purpose in the story. It is also a weak mini-critique of how we turn our backs on our childhood and core values as we grow older. Yet what makes this interlude even possible is the increasingly complex narrative layers that Lewis employs.

But let’s get back to the situation Tirian now finds himself in. He and all the Friends of Narnia are clean and in fresh new clothes. Aslan soon greets them, but they stand witness as Aslan directs the end of Narnia.

Lewis’ imagery now gets really interesting. A giant (Father Time from The Silver Chair) rises up and blows his horn. The stars fall from the sky, but remember—in Narnia stars are living beings. The beings fall from the sky and stand among them still glowing, lighting the landscape. Then all the creatures of that world are called and come racing toward them as Aslan stands at the door, casting a great shadow to his left. To his right is entry into the new world. As the creatures approach him, some are fearful or angry and those creatures run to Aslan’s left into darkness, never to be seen again. The others are joyful (if perhaps also fearful of Aslan), and they move to Aslan’s right into the new world.

The powerful imagery continues as a flood rises up that covers all the land. The sun and the moon come up right after each other and the sun engulfs the moon. Then at Aslan’s command the giant throws his horn into the sea and he squeezes the sun until there is total darkness. Everything becomes frozen and Aslan commands Peter to close the door—and at that the Friends and their companions believe Narnia is no more. Of course, they are very sad, Lucy in particular. And here the first phase of Lewis’ narrative layering concludes. All of the layers of the Narnia we have known before have been exposed.

But Aslan is quite happy and calls over his shoulder as he races away, “Come further in! Come further up!” Lewis is about to put the layers back together again in his second narrative phase.

As the Friends and company go further in they (and we) meet up with many old friends from past Narnian adventures. They all gradually begin to notice how this new world looks very familiar—and they realize that this world is just like Narnia, only “more like the real thing.”

They continue into this new world and there is a wonderful image of all of them diving into Caldron Pool and swimming up the waterfall to another land—which is an even more real Narnia. Then they run all the way to the West Mountains where they climb the hill (now mountain) on top of which is the garden that Digory had entered to retrieve the apple in The Magicians’s Nephew. There they find they are not simply in a garden but in another entire world—another, grander Narnia that is yet again more real than all the previous Narnias.

So Lewis and his characters peel the onion of the “real” Narnia for us, and in the end we have all discovered an entirely new Ideal Narnia to inhabit—one that will never be subject to Jadis, Miraz, Shift and the like.

Through his imagery and narrative style, Lewis provides an example we all can follow. We also can find ways to peel the layers of our lives away to find a more real and greater existence.

How often do we find ourselves consumed in our own routine, acting out an extended version of muscle-memory instead of being aware that what we do actually affects our lives and the lives of others? How much more could we accomplish by also going further up and further in?

One of my current favorite musicians is a young Australian artist named Ben Lee. The title song of his latest album is “Awake is the New Sleep.” In this song he cheerfully admonishes all of us who are holding back, just going through the motions, to “wake up and just do it.” Written half a century apart, similar advice from both Lewis and Lee is effective counsel for us all.

“Come further in! Come further up!”

“Wake up and just do it!”

Story Synopsis: Narnia News Roundup

narnia@dramatic-insights.org (Greg & Jenn Wright) — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 11:00:00 +0000

Tashlan a Scam?
Local Ape makes a Monkey out of a Donkey and an Ass of Himself
From the Daily Chronicles

Caldron Pool – Earlier this week, eyewitness accounts had rumors of Aslan the Great’s return sweeping over Narnia—and Shift, the notorious ape, had set himself up as Aslan’s “mouthpiece.” New evidence suggests, however, that there’s more to this story than meets the eye. Documents leaked to the Press demonstrate that the ape, Shift, may be in collusion with the Calormenes to promote the new myth that Tash and Aslan (or “Tashlan”) are one and the same.

Several days ago, Shift—who normally lives near Caldron Pool—suddenly claimed a new and remarkably close relationship with Aslan, who had been sighted near Lantern Waste. With the help of tradesmen from Calormen, Shift set up residence for the Great Lion at Stable Hill, where Aslan has since been making nocturnal appearances, with Shift speaking for Him. “It’s because I’m so wise,” says Shift, “that I’m the only one Aslan is ever going to speak to. He can’t be bothered talking to a lot of stupid animals.” At Shift’s insistence, many of our talking animals have been put to work assisting the Calormenes in the destruction of our friends, the trees and Dryads.

In a startling development, Shift next announced that the “old idea of us being right and the Calormenes being wrong is silly.” Tash, he says, is, “only another name for Aslan.” Ginger, the cat, and others of our people, have joined in supporting this strange alliance of Narnia and Calormen, in spite of Aslan’s apparent change since His last confirmed appearance.

Suspicion has recently surfaced among the dwarfs that this new Aslan was nothing more than some animal sewn up in a lion skin. This rumor has not been confirmed, but government surveillance photos from Caldron Pool show that Shift and his friend, Puzzle, the donkey, indeed recently came into possession of a full lion skin. Puzzle has not been seen in recent days. Unless Shift can produce both Puzzle and Tashlan simultaneously, we suspect something may be mucked up on Stable Hill.

Narnia’s King Reported Dead
Vacationing Monarch Loses Mind, Then Life, After Murderous Rampage
From the Calormen HotNews

Cair Paravel – King Tirian of Narnia, spending a holiday at his hunting lodge not far from the eastern end of Narnia’s Lantern Waste, was surprised to come upon talking beasts being used for manual labor by our fellow Calormenes, who have begun systematically chopping down Dryad trees for trade. Victims of a fit of rage, two of our innocent countrymen were murdered. Tirian and his accomplice were soon apprehended and bound to await trial. During the night, the culprits have disappeared, and are presumed dead.

The king was not alone in his madness; in addition to Jewel, the unicorn, who shared in the slaying of mere tradesmen, Tirian was known to be in league with Roonwit the centaur, who had gone on record asserting that Aslan’s reappearance had not been seen in the stars. Not long after Tirian’s misdeed, the centaur was himself slain while attempting to stir up dissension in the vicinity of Cair Paravel. A bloody police action was necessary to put down a riot later that day. Tirian and Jewel, meanwhile, claimed to have given themselves up voluntarily and sought court with Aslan, but were told that Aslan is not interested in seeing anyone personally. Witnesses at last night’s fireside congress at Stable Hill heard Tirian shouting down local officials’ assertions that “Aslan means neither less nor more than Tash.” The two culprits were then removed and bound at a distance.

Early this morning, the king’s bonds were found cut, but Shift the ape and Rishda Tarkaan report that the King was, indeed, granted audience with “Tashlan” and consumed whole. Reports of children seen with Narnia’s king are widely thought to be lies.

Cold, Hard Tash
Calormene God Makes Rare Appearance in Narnia
From The Narnia End-Times

Stable Hill – In the midst of unconfirmed and conflicting reports of Aslan the Great’s return to Narnia, and unprecedented claims for the existence of “Tashlan,” reliable witnesses are now reporting sightings of the Calormene god Tash.

In recent days, things have gone from bad to worse in Narnia. King Tirian has been deposed and is rumored to be dead. Cair Paravel has been laid waste, the majority of dwarfs have lost faith in Aslan’s very existence, and vast swaths of our forests have been decimated. Yet a new horror has come on the scene: amidst a putrid stench, moving shadow, and disheartening spiritual oppression, a vast four-armed vulture-headed figure has been seen storming through the forest, heading north toward Stable Hill.

But is all lost, we wonder? Rumors that Tirian is alive may just be true. During the night, Tirian’s friend Jewel, who had been held captive on trumped-up charges of murder, was also mysteriously freed; and once again a human boy and girl were reportedly accompanying him. Most significantly, Shift the ape has been unable to produce both Tashlan and his friend Puzzle simultaneously, thereby casting further suspicions on the ape’s dubious claims about who is inhabiting Stable Hill. Has Puzzle flown the coop, we wonder? And has Tash come to roost in his place? And where is the real Aslan in all of this?

Conspiracy Unmasked
Shift, Ginger, and Others Caught in Treasonous Pact with Invading Calormenes; Chaos Ensues
From the Daily Chronicles

Stable Hill – In what may prove to be the last battle for Narnia, King Tirian and his company last night confronted the traitorous ape, Shift, and his Calormene handlers at Stable Hill. A wild firelit battle ensued, and one by one, combatants from both sides were cast, or ran headlong into, an unknown fate in “Tashlan’s” Stable.

What truly lies inside that stable, we still do not know for certain. In an occurrence that has not happened since Narnia began, the first witness to the stable’s contents lost the gift of speech. After being mocked by now-faithless dwarfs, Shift the ape declared that Tashlan would make no more appearances; however, single courtiers could enter and meet with Him inside the stable. Ginger, the cat, a known supporter of the Tashlan regime, smugly volunteered to enter the stable and meet the hybrid god; but he exited yowling and as intranslatable as a common cat. Subsequently, at least one Calormene villain was thrown dead from the door of the stable.

King Tirian, meanwhile, who made his appearance during this charade accompanied by two heroes of Narnia-past (Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb), brought with him irrefutable evidence of the conspiracy: the donkey, Puzzle, missing since rumors began to surface. Sources close to Tirian assure us that Puzzle, like Jewel, was, indeed, rescued from the stable, having been crudely sewn into a lion skin by the scheming Shift.

As Rishda Tarkaan and Shift began to lose control of the situation at Stable Hill, armed conflict broke out. Tirian, Jewel, Farsight the eagle, and all true Narnians withstood more than one assault from Calormene forces. Opportunistic dwarfs, with the exception of one Poggin, rallied to the cry “Dwarfs for the Dwarfs!” and actively slaughtered combatants from both sides. Most of Narnia’s talking horses were slain in the melee. One by one, the dwarfs were overcome by Calormene forces, and thrown into the stable as sacrifices to Tash. They joined the ape, Shift, hurled into the stable by Tirian as the battle began. Ruefully, Tirian’s early success in the battle could not be sustained as Calormene reinforcements arrived. One by one, his companions either fell or were captured. Eustace was the first to be captured and added to the list of human sacrifices to Tash. Jill followed Eustace not long after. Finally, Tirian fought Rishda Tarkaan himself, and forcefully took him to join the rest in the stable.

What is their fate? We do not yet know. After Tirian and Rishda disappeared, the battle soon died down. Both sides now uneasily await new developments during this brief lull in the fighting. Only one thing is clear: Aslan is not here, and never was. But everyone feels that the dawn will bring an end to this chapter of Narnia’s history, and maybe an end to Narnia itself.

News from the Other Side
Aslan Triumphant; Tash Banished; Narnia Reborn
From the Real Narnia News

The Western Mountains – In a series of wholly unexpected events, Aslan has made His final victorious appearance, and all that was ever wrong has been made right.

First, the mystery of Stable Hill is resolved. Both Tash and Aslan were to be found inside, and Tash took those who belonged to him. His evil task accomplished, he slunk away at Aslan’s command. The friends of Narnia, meanwhile—the High Kings Peter and Edmund, Queen Lucy, Digory Kirke, Polly Plummer, Queen Helen and King Frank—were called by Aslan to join Eustace and Jill in this glorious triumph: this new Land of Narnia, beyond the stable door.

In a curious twist of fate, the dwarfs who passed the stable door were taken neither by Tash nor by Aslan, but by a strange darkness. As Aslan noted, the “dwarfs chose cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds.”

And as hard as it may be to believe, Aslan Himself opened the stable door on the Old Narnia, and brought it to a swift end. The spirits who were Narnia’s stars fell from the sky; Father Time snuffed the light from the sun and the moon; and every being that ever lived in Narnia came rushing to Aslan as He stood at the door and cold and darkness descended. Each one either passed into shadow, or was called “further up and further in” to the New Land—a new land for those who served Aslan in their hearts, whether they knew they did so or not. Among Aslan’s new subjects is numbered Emeth, the Calormene.

We have all journeyed through this New Narnia and beyond, in fellowship with the Heroes of Narnia, new and old, and have ascended the Western Mountains into circles of Narnia ever higher—beyond time, beyond history, and beyond death.

The Last Battle

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Well, we finally come to it. The Chronicles of Narnia culminates in one last tale, one last chance to meet new characters and expand our understanding of the scope of Narnia. We meet new villains, such as Shift and Ginger—even Tash himself. And we meet some new heroes, too: King Tirian and his friends Jewel, Roonwit, Farsight the eagle. Even Puzzle himself, in his own, well, puzzling way. And true to form, Lewis brings past heroes into the tale: Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole (even some others, too, before the tale is done).

But Lewis doesn't merely have the narrative on his mind here. He's also got some pretty significant cosmological issues to deal with from past stories. How exactly does the religion of the Calormenes jive with Aslan and the Emperor Across the Sea? What is the fate of those who worship Tash? For that matter, what is the fate of those reject Aslan? Are the two questions the same? Is it heresy to suggest that both Tash and Aslan can be found in the stable? Do we all ultimately find whoever it is that we truly seek? And if Lewis was brave enough in The Magician's Nephew to show us how Narnia began, does he have the guts here to also show us how it ends?

The options for discussion of this book are boundless—and we simply can't tackle them all. So this month, Jenn Wright synopsizes the Top Stories of all the news that's fit to print. Then George Rosok looks at the literary layers that Lewis uses to tear into (and build up) Narnia, and Kathy Bledsoe concludes our coverage of the Chronicles with a hard look at the stable itself.

But don't worry. The books may have ended, but the movie is coming...

Vocabulary

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 08:00:00 +0000

The Silver Chair

Chapter 1

Hols. Okay, it’d be easy enough to say “holidays” and let it go at that. But it’s probably worth pointing out that the British “holiday” is synonymous with the Yank “vacation.” So there’s a little more than just casual jargon working here. And the fact that the kids say “hols” instead of “holidays” tells the (British) reader that these kids are pretty posh.

Moor. On the one hand, a Moor is a person of Arabic descent. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. A moor, in this context (according to the American Heritage Dictionary), is a “broad area of open land, often high but poorly drained, with patches of heath and peat bogs.” I know, I know: How does that distinguish a moor from most of the rest of the British Isles? But there ya go.

Chapter 3

Serpent. I know what you’re thinking. “Gee, how stupid does he think we are?” But seriously: go back and look a few pages into Chapter III. This ain’t a snake we’re talking about here. The serpent was an odd wind instrument built during the 17th and 18th centuries, and shaped in serpentine form. It had six finger holes, requiring both hands to play. Which made it pretty difficult to hold, too.

Chapter 4

Crumpets. Apparently, it’s very British to burst out with something like “Crabs and crumpets!” instead of out-and-out cursing. But for the record, a crumpet is essentially what Americans call an “English Muffin.” Only better. And actually English.

Physic. Now, in others of Lewis’ books (like Prince Caspian), this word means “doctor.” Here, it most likely means “medicine.” What it doesn’t mean, in any case, is “physics,” the science, only with the s left off.

Chapter 5

Wigwam. I grew up thinking this was the same thing as a tepee. But it’s not. The tepee was used by the Plains Indians, while the wigwam (or wickiup) was a bark and skin covered dwelling used by Indians on the Eastern seaboard of America. The wigwam’s framework is shaped kind of like a beehive. So what’s a Marsh-wiggle doing in a wigwam? And how on earth does Lewis know anything about wigwams? Well, he knows about that serpent instrument, so I guess he knows about darn near everything.

Bobance. A brag or boast. Like, “I know what ‘wigwam’ means. So there!”

Fricasseed. Cut into small pieces and made into a stew called a “fricassee.” We can just guess how that darn stew got its name. (From the French word for “fry and break up,” more or less.)

Pantomime. Ordinarily we associate this with something like what you do when you play charades. You know, no talking, just gestures and motions. But properly speaking, that’s more “mime” than “pantomime.” And in the period that Lewis is writing about, the word really just meant “acting,” more or less—and specifically, a fairy-tale type of entertainment for kids at Christmastime. My British friend Hellen says, “The difficult bit for Americans to understand is that the principal boy is played by a female actor—a pantomime dame played by a man in drag!”

Road-drill. A loud machine for breaking concrete, like a jackhammer. The point here is “loud.” Really loud.

Chapter 6

Cock-shies. A game in which you toss a ball (or large rock, apparently) at another object in order to knock it off its perch.

Balustrade. Okay, this is kind of interesting, because basically we’re just talking about a railing. But it’s called a “balustrade” because the rail is mounted on “balusters,” or pillars of a sort, in order to form a protective barrier along a parapet or stair well. So we’ve all seen balustrades but probably never called them that.

Kirtle. Fancy (and archaic) word for “dress,” pretty much. It’d be best not to confuse this with “girdle,” though, because it’d be pretty funny to see some lady riding a horse in nothing but a green girdle.

Chapter 7

Puttees. Cloths wrapped around the pant legs from ankle to knee. Like with gaiters, the point is to keep water and debris from easily getting into your boots.

Chapter 8

Possets. Ooh, ouch. These are spiced drinks made from sweetened milk mixed with wine or other alcoholic beverages, which curdles the milk. Yep. Sounds great!

Comfits. Seeds, nuts or bits of fruit coated with sugar. There. That sounds better.

Caraways. Cakes or sweetmeats flavored with caraway seed.

Cock-a-leekie. Aha. Now, I actually had some of this the last time I was in Scotland. It’s a soup made from chicken and leeks. There now, that was easy, wasn’t it?

Gasometer.Before gas was piped directly to homes, it was stored in a central location in huge tanks. These were called gasometers. In science, gasometers are still used to capture gas and, floating in a tank of water, tjen used to measure the weight of the gas pumped into the drum. I actually used one of these beasties back in the dark ages, before neat little electronic spirometers were invented.

Chapter 9

Made love. Okay, hasn’t this all just been a huge exercise in how drastically our language has changed? Today this means, basically, “had sex.” Here it means nothing of the sort. It simply means “buttered up.”

Scullery. The nasty, smelly part of the kitchen where the dishes are cleaned. So this is where all the refuse piles up. Not a nice thing in big old castles filled with giants.

Scullions. The poor unlucky servants who work in the scullery.

Hooters. Owls. Owls.

Joint. Wow. Can this just get out of hand, or what? This means “piece of meat,” specifically one with the bone in. Like leg of lamb, you know?

Chapter 10

Fast. Secure. Whew!

Coil. Noise and confusion; fuss and ruckus.

Nosegay. You can kind of see, I think, how the word “bouquet” became more common, can’t you?

Chapter 13

Christian name. The name that comes before the family name: your first name. It came to be called the “Christian” name because of the once-universal Western practice of infant baptism, during which the baby was officially christened with its given name.

Chapter 14

Pillar-box. A type of mailbox or postbox fashioned by cutting a slot in a metal cylinder or hollow pillar.

Mill-race. The stream of water that moves a water wheel, the source of hydraulic energy used for centuries to drive milling operations.

Chapter 16

Warped in. Towed in by a line.

Pavender. Okay, this word has actually been used a lot in these books, and I haven’t bothered to explain it yet. So I will now. It’s a type of fish. Don’t ask me what type—because I don’t know!

Vocabulary

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 08:00:00 +0000

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Chapter 1

Tee-totaller. One who, like my parents (but not me), abstains completely from the consumption of alcoholic beverages of any type. The term apparently originated with the British “temperance” movement. (And that’s another definition we won’t get into here.)

Clothes. Now, I have to admit that the first two times I read this book, I thought the point Lewis was making was that the Scrubbs were very neat and tidy people—who, you know, unlike me, didn’t leave a bunch of laundry scattered all over the room, including on the bed. But what Lewis means by “very few clothes on the beds” is that the Scrubbs believed in sleeping more cold than warm; that is, the beds didn’t have many blankets on them. Am I a little slow in the uptake, or what?

Grain Elevators. I presume that this will be confusing for some people. Maybe not. But these are silos (tall, usually cylindrical structures used to store grain) that are outfitted with some automated means of getting the grain in and out. You really can’t ride a grain elevator. Much.

Stern. This is used as a noun here, not an adjective, so there’s no missing word. The stern is the rear portion of a ship (synonymous, more or less, with ‘aft’ or sometimes ‘poop,’ as in ‘the poop deck’—and I actually think Lewis uses this latter term far more frequently in this book than is proper for an adult).

Chapter 2

Catches. As the American Heritage Dictionary would have it, these are “canonic, often rhythmically intricate compositions for three or more voices, popular especially in the 17th and 18th centuries.” I’ll just have to take their word for it.

Lodge a Disposition. Sounds kind of like fancy language for “get something stuck in your throat.” It’s actually fancy language for “make a complaint.”

Boatswain. The crew member in charge of keeping the boat’s deck ship-shape. Heh heh. In much of sea-going jargon, this is shortened to “bosun.”

Cogs. Single-masted trading ships; typical in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of our world.

Dromonds. Speedy Byzantine sailing galleys, specifically designed for war.

Carracks. Square-rigged, multi-masted ocean-going vessels. Magellan circumnavigated the earth in a carrack.

Below the Belt. A term from the days when “being a good sport” meant something. The idea here is that it used to be considered poor sportsmanship to hit a man in his private parts. It hurts.

Poltroon. A salt’s term for “coward.”

Chapter 4

Postern. Most fortified cities naturally had large gates. That’s how you’d get big things in, like Trojan horses and such. Sort of. But cities (and castles) also had small, stout doors just big enough for people to get in and out of. A postern figures prominently in the battle at Helm’s Deep in Tolkien’s The Two Towers.

Chapter 5

Battened. When I pretended to be on a storm-tossed sea as a child, I had no idea what I meant when I shouted, “Batten down the hatches!” You just did it. But the idea is that “battening” would be used to seal the hatches so that seawater would not flood the lower decks.

Reef. To bring in the sails and lash them down. A severe wind could shred the canvas, which would be very very bad.

Yard. The cross-piece on the mast, from which a square sail would be hung.

Chapter 7

Billy-oh. Archaic British slang for “a whole bunch.”

Chapter 8

Baccy. That’s tobacco. Remember, Tolkien put tobacco in Middle-earth, too, though he later tried to get away with calling it “pipe-weed.” Nicotine and lung cancer are apparently common to all worlds.

Chapter 10

Curds. Now, this is really strange, but in societies of the past, curdled dairy product was a delicacy. And while cottage cheese is still with us, it’s hardly considered the food of royalty.

Examination. A test, not a medical inspection, or anything of that sort.

Bottom. This is a reference to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which featured a fool named Bottom.

Chapter 11

Chaplet. A wreath worn on the head.

Girdle. A wide sash worn around the waist. Used to “gird up the loins,” so to speak, if you’ve ever read the King James version of the Old Testament. I think this was probably done to prevent hernias during heavy exertion!

Lemon-squash. The British version lemonade. But it’s really not much like lemonade. I think they must crush the rind, too. But then, I’ve only had the bottled stuff. Not terribly pleasant, I must say.

Chapter 12

Boon. A granted request.

Chapter 13

Devices. Symbols. Heraldry was the art of conveying, in “devices” upon shields, banners and so on, a knight’s heritage.

Chapter 14

Quay. A weird term for “wharf.” Pronounced “key.” Useful in Scrabble.

Chapter 15

Coronets. Light crowns, mere circlets almost. My dad played a cornet, incidentally. Not only spelled differently, it's like a trumpet and doesn't fit very comfortably on one's head. Not that I ever tried, mind you.

Story Synopsis: Holiday in Harfang

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 11:00:00 +0000

Editor: The Silver Chair represents a shift in character focus for the Narnian chronicles. The Pevensie children have all aged beyond recurring magical trips to Narnia, and after his life-changing experiences in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, cousin Eustace Scrubb now becomes the main protagonist. Joining him is a school acquaintance, Jill Pole. This synopsis of the story is a compilation of two recently discovered travel diaries—Jill’s, and that of a Marsh-wiggle named Puddleglum who was their guide on an amazing journey to find a lost Narnian prince. None other than Aslan himself mandated the quest; and from this point I will allow these two to tell the story.

Jill Begins…
Alas, it is autumn and a new term at school. Today I somehow caught the fancy of the school bullies and was crying behind the gym, where Scrubb—Eustace Scrubb—found me. After talking with him for a while I realized that he has changed since the last term. He told me an amazing story of a magical visit to a place called Narnia, and we both decided to call on the name of someone called Aslan, in order to evade the bullies. We ran to the stone wall at the edge of the school property, wishing that the always-locked door in that wall would be open by some miracle. When Eustace tried the handle, the door did open. We found ourselves looking not onto the dingy heather-covered moor surrounding Experiment House, but into a dazzlingly bright and sunny different world. I was scared and worried. Would it be safe? Would we be able to get back if we entered? I didn’t have time to voice my concerns as, pressed by the advancing bullies, Eustace grabbed my arm and pulled me through the door. England vanished and we entered another world.

We soon came to the edge of a cliff. I looked down to see the tops of clouds and tiny details of a land far below us. I guess I was hypnotized by the dizzying height because Eustace tried to pull me back from the edge. In the struggle, he lost his balance and fell from the cliff. In horror I watched him fall and became aware of a huge animal rushing to the cliff edge and beginning to blow hard. It seemed to be controlling Eustace’s fall with its breath! As Eustace became a tinier and tinier speck below me, I turned to find that I was standing next to a great lion.

The lion finished blowing and disappeared into a nearby forest. I sat down and had the pity party of all pity parties. Eventually, however, realizing that I was desperately thirsty, I entered the wood to perhaps find a stream. Well, I found my stream, but right across from me laid that huge Lion. He invited me to drink but I didn’t trust him until I realized that he was bigger and probably faster than I was anyway so I might as well die with my thirst quenched. He asked me about Eustace and I found that I had to confess that Eustace had fallen off the cliff because of my need to show off. Aslan (for that was his name) also told me that we were both there because he called us—wait, because we called for him. Well, the two are actually the same, I guess.

Aslan gave me four signs needed to complete a quest for Rilian, the lost Prince of Narnia. He made me repeat them and repeat them until I became very testy, but he admonished that things in Narnia wouldn’t be as clear as they were on top of that mountain and that I must be careful to repeat the signs regularly so that I wouldn’t forget them. Aslan then “blew” me into Narnia where I landed near a coastal castle, within a few feet of a very disheveled Eustace.

We saw an old and frail king surrounded by courtiers and strange beasts and creatures who had apparently gathered to bid him farewell. The king spoke (I couldn’t hear what he said) and then boarded a ship and set sail. At that point, I tried to tell Eustace the first sign—he was supposed to greet an old and dear friend at once—but we were interrupted by the arrival of a huge, white owl. This owl, Glimfeather, took us immediately to the Lord Regent, Trumpkin the dwarf, after I stated our mission of finding the prince. Eustace nearly vomited when he realized that the old friend he was supposed to have greeted was the king who had just sailed away. It turned out that he was the Prince Caspian in Eustace’s Narnia adventure last term; and since time is different in Narnia, he was now an old man and the father of the lost prince. After cleaning up, Eustace and I had a great blame-game argument because we had muffed the first sign already. With nothing solved, we went to supper and then looked forward to a soft bed. Before I could get undressed, Glimfeather appeared at my window and told me that he was flying me to a secret parliament of owls to which he had already delivered Eustace.

There we learned that more than thirty champions had so far gone in search of the lost prince. None had returned so King Caspian ordered that no one else was allowed to even try. We also learned how Prince Rilian came to disappear. Ten years earlier, Rilian and his mother the Queen went maying in the north parts of Narnia with a group of courtiers. While the Queen took a nap in a quiet glade, Rilian and the courtiers moved off a ways so as not to disturb her slumber. The Queen’s screams drew them to turn and see a great, green snake slithering away from her. She had been bitten on the hand and, despite all efforts to save her, she died. Rilian had tried to pursue the snake but it escaped through a crack in the ground. Devastated, Rilian traveled north often, seeking to find and destroy the snake to avenge his mother’s death. Eventually he gave up on the search for the snake but became obsessed with a beautiful woman dressed in green. Not long after, Rilian disappeared. The owls were pretty sure that the Green Lady was related to a White Witch who once held power in Narnia long ago.

Glimfeather and another owl volunteered to fly Eustace and me to the home of the Marsh-wiggles who lived at the northern border of Narnia and who could guide us north into Ettinsmoor so that we could satisfy the second sign which was to “journey to the ruined city of the ancient giants.”

Editor: From this point, the story will be related from the travel diary of Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle. Puddleglum is a philosophizing Eeyore-type character who sees the glass half-empty until he discovers that it is really half-full. Marsh-wiggles have muddy complexions, webbed hands and feet, are thin as reeds, and have extremely long legs but very compact bodies. Their hair is a gray-green and they wear clothing that blends with their earthy environment.

Day One
In the middle of the night a pair of owls deposited a Son of Adam and a Daughter of Eve in my wigwam. This morning they revealed their plan to rescue Prince Rilian, asking for my help. I fully expect to fail at this enterprise but have agreed to be their guide. This will be a long trip. These non-Wiggles argue incessantly!

Day Two
We began the long climb up a rocky moor which runs parallel to the giant’s gorge. Silly Jill thought the giants leaning on the edge of the gorge were piles of rocks and I had some real work for a while trying to keep Eustace and her from panicking and getting us all killed. The giants were playing cockshies, and boulders pelted down around us everywhere but we made it through safely to camp on the exposed moor tonight.

Day Nine
Nothing much to write. Living off the land, we have traveled across Ettinsmoor,. We were seen by only one giant who just laughed at us and continued on his way.

Day Ten
We left the moor today and entered a “different and grimmer” land. Found and crossed an enormous giant’s bridge that was connected to an ancient roadway. As we came off the bridge, we encountered a visored Knight in full armor on a black horse accompanied by a gorgeous woman dressed in green and astride a white horse. The woman did all the talking. There was something not quite right about her and I had to work hard to keep Jill from giving her too much information. We did find out that the road leads from the bridge to the Castle of Harfang, home of the Gentle Giants. We took leave of the lady and her knight. After they were gone, the three of us had a great row about why I wouldn’t allow the Lady to help us in our quest. Eventually, Jill and Eustace made me promise to go to Harfang and I made them promise not to tell the giants about Narnia or Prince Rilian. Jill has quit repeating the signs I have heard her chanting in days past. That I’m sure will become a very bad thing!

Editor: The following entries are undated.

Just surviving has kept me from writing on a regular basis but I will now attempt to “catch up.” At last we have come to a plain and can see lighted windows in the distance. One more night of camp? The weather is becoming increasingly cold.

This morning we woke to snow clouds and by mid-morning we were in a driving snowstorm. We climbed a series of high ledges which brought us onto level ground and into a biting wind. Here we encountered a series of baffling dead-end trenches that delayed us for a time. Eustace asked Jill about the signs, but she just said, “Bother the signs.” When we spotted the lights again I could not keep them from charging off to reach the warmth and comfort of the castle. Of course, I was the only one brave enough to hail the Porter and we were welcomed in by a very amused giant who had the cheek to call me “Froggy.” We were taken before the King and the Queen. Now that was interesting! The King and Queen looked like they wanted to “eat” Jill and Eustace. The Queen was extremely rude to me and Jill finally burst into tears of utter exhaustion. The three of us were rushed off to bathe, rest, and eat.

Our first day in Harfang castle: Jill, Eustace and I looked out a window and realized that the ledges and trenches we crossed to reach the castle were actually the ruins of a giant city. The trenches were the carving of the words UNDER ME. We all suddenly realized that Jill’s second and third signs had been completely fouled up, too, and expended a lot of energy trying to each take the blame. We then worked out a plan to escape the castle by pretending that we loved being there while looking for a way out. We cannot open the doors because we are so small. At lunchtime we found out that we had been dining on a Narnian Talking Stag, horror of horrors! We knew this was Aslan’s punishment for not attending to the signs. Desperate to find a way out, we finally went to the kitchen and talked to the cook who innocently told us that she usually left the scullery door open a crack for the cat. While we waited for her to drift off into her afternoon nap, Jill discovered a cookbook with recipes for Man and Marsh-wiggle and we realized that WE were on the menu for the Autumn banquet! The cook began to snore and we ran out of the castle. As we approached the City Ruinous, a hunting party spotted us and we really had to run for our lives. I spotted a crack at the bottom of the lowest step and dove in followed by Eustace and Jill. We filled the opening with rocks to confuse the hunting hounds and then discovered that we could move deeper into the crevice and eventually could stand up. It was so dark that we couldn’t see a thing and suddenly we were all sliding down a long, rocky, bruising, bone-jarring slope. It was very quiet and very warm and out of the darkness came a “dark, flat voice.”

The “Warden of the Marches of Underland” said we were in the Deep Realm. The “Earthmen” struck a strange, cold light revealing a group of strange and diverse beings, all with profoundly sad expressions. We were then forced to march. We continued on endlessly through cave after cave until we came to one with water and a ship we were forced to board. Over and over this Warden had told us that “few return to the sunlit lands” and Jill finally broke under the strain of fear. I reassured her by pointing out that we were under the Ruined City and back on track with Aslan’s instructions. This calmed her somewhat.

Okay, even a Marsh-wiggle eventually has had enough! We came to a bustling port and were taken to a great castle to meet the Queen of Underland. Guess who? Yes, the Green Lady. While we awaited her, we at last were able to talk to the Black Knight who seemed quite delusional. Over dinner the Knight admitted that he didn’t know how he had come to the Underworld and that he was bound by a spell from which only the Lady could free him. Every night (how they knew it was night I can’t imagine—I’d completely lost track of time by this point) the Knight was bound to a silver chair because of some insane fit that would make him a danger to all who are near. Except the Queen, of course, who usually attended him until he returned to normal. That “night,” he made us promise not to release him no matter how much he begged—and then we witnessed the most bizarre scene. The Knight commanded us to free him, contradicting what he’s said earlier, claiming that he was sane only at this time every night. We resisted until he invoked the name of Aslan—and we realized that this was Jill’s last sign. Still fearful, we released him and he arose and dashed the chair to pieces with his sword, declaring that he was Rilian, Prince of Narnia and son of the great King Caspian. We explained to him that he had been lost for ten years.

Leaving the room, the four of us ran smack into the returning Queen. She kept her cool and tried to convince the Prince that he was not thinking clearly. She was very clever and tried to brainwash us with a combination of sweet smelling green powder thrown on the fire and the steady, monotonous tune on a mandolin she played. Finally, Jill mentioned Aslan and I stomped my foot in the fire and the harsh reality of pain brought me back to my senses. The Witch turned nasty, and I declared that we were all for Aslan and would be leaving to spend our lives in the Overland even if it was as dull as she claimed. Well, then things got really interesting! The Queen turned into an enormous green serpent that coiled itself around Prince Rilian’s legs. Grabbing the snake’s head with one hand and drawing back his sword with the other, Rilian began to rain blows upon the neck and I jumped in with my own sword (yes, I had remembered to pack one) and between the two of us we hacked off the beast’s head! Rilian’s mother was finally avenged and his ten-year enslavement was ended.

Editor: The story will be finished from Jill’s diary.

While we rested, Rilian told us that there was a new passage to the Overworld only a few miles away. As we planned our next steps we heard the creatures of Underworld running everywhere and shouting as the fires of deep earth reflected on the ceiling of the cavern and the waters of the sea rose into the city. It became clear that the Witch had programmed her kingdom to self-destruct if she was killed. Rilian retrieved his black shield that now wondrously transformed into bright silver bearing a red rampant lion. We knew it was a sign of Aslan’s lordship over our lives. We rescued horses from the stable and rode out of the city and upward toward the red glow. Puddleglum was able to catch a miserable little gnome who was terrified of us until he learned that the Queen was dead. Glog (for that was his name) and thousands of other poor gnomes were brought from the land of Bism deep in the earth, to work for the Witch in the “Shallow Lands.” With the death of the Witch, the gnomes had prepared for war—thinking that the Witch was coming to lead them out to fight in the bright Overworld, and they were going to fight her rather than go out.

We came to the edge of a deep, bright chasm from which emanated a strong but tantalizing smell. Gnomes were everywhere clambering down into what Glog revealed was the entrance to Bism. A voice came from the depths telling all to be quick, saying that the rift was closing. Glog and many other gnomes dove in just before the crack in the rock closed and we were left alone in the dim light. We returned to our ascent. Eventually, we had to dismount and lead the horses as the way narrowed and the ceiling lowered. Eustace spotted a tiny patch of light overhead and by standing on Puddleglum’s shoulders I was able to find out that it was a hole!

I managed to get my head out and was trying to tell the others when something hit me in the face. Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that I had come out into the heart of Narnia and had been hit by a snowball. I yelled for help, and the Narnians returned to dig out the rest of the group. Puddleglum and Prince Rilian were recognized and there was a great rejoicing at their return. We were ushered into a cave, given a good meal and, thankfully, allowed to rest.

Last Day in Narnia
When I awoke the next morning, I found that Rilian had gone to Cair Paravel to see his father, whom Aslan had turned back shortly after we had seen him set sail. We said good-by to Puddleglum here. We returned to the castle of Cair Paravel, arriving just as the ship we had seen upon our entry to Narnia cruised up the river and docked. We waited to see the old King come down the gangway, but nothing happened. Then four knights carried the bed-ridden King ashore. Prince Rilian knelt and embraced his father; the King raised his hand in blessing, and his head fell back on the pillows. The King was dead.

Eustace and I were so sad that I must have said, “I wish I was home” out loud. Suddenly, Aslan was there telling us that our job was done and that he had come to take us home. Instantly, we were again on the mountaintop where our adventure had begun, walking beside the stream where I had first spoken to Aslan. Looking into the stream, we saw the dead King Caspian lying on the bottom and we all wept, even Aslan. Aslan told Eustace to go into a thicket and pick a thorn which he then asked him to drive into his paw. Aslan allowed a great, red drop of blood to splash into the stream over the dead king; Caspian became younger and younger until he emerged from the water, a young man, fully alive! We longed to stay with Caspian, but Aslan was not ready for us to remain there yet. He granted Caspian five minutes in our world with us. Caspian, Eustace and I charged the bullies who had been chasing us when we fled into Narnia. Our headmistress came to see what the ruckus was, going into hysterics over the lion and flying crops and swatting swords, so we took the opportunity to slip back into school and change our clothes while Aslan and Caspian returned to their own world.

Things have been better at Experiment House since the headmistress has been removed. The school has become quite good and Eustace and I are best friends.

Editor’s Footnote: King Rilian buried his father and ruled a happy Narnia as his successor. Puddleglum’s foot healed within three weeks and he was joyful as a Marsh-wiggle can be. Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole remained friends forever. It is not known whether Eustace ever wrote down his memories of the trip they all shared. Perhaps someday there will be another journal discovered.

Contributed by Kathy Bledsoe

Missing the Signs

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 10:00:00 +0000

There’s much to be said for the value of a close look at a situation—for one thing, it allows you to see just where to place your next step. The close-up is the place where one decides to turn around, choose another route, maybe go back to the beginning and start again. The close-up is an in-the-moment view, where time is of the essence and the split-second decision must be made. Reflection can wait.

But the close-up view is also where doubt may often prevail. Regrets take seed. If only... if only... If only I had the panoramic view—the elusive “Big Picture”—when I made that decision... If only I could have seen then what I saw later. If only I could have known then what I know now.

This Close-Up vs. the Big Picture scenario occurs several times in The Chronicles of Narnia, but probably nowhere as prominently as in The Silver Chair. Interestingly, this contrast is played out not only with the story’s characters, but with the readers as well. When Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum look down on the ruins of the giants’ city and see the words UNDER ME, it dawns on them, as well as us, that they had no clue what they were stumbling through in the snowstorm the day before.

But first things first. We’re getting ahead of ourselves—one of the tell-tale signs of over-emphasizing the close-up view. To get the scene at Harfang in perspective, we need to remember that the story’s characters, to that point, have made a regular habit of missing the Big Picture, particularly regarding Jill and the four “signs” she is given by Aslan.

The first sign—that of Eustace meeting an old friend the moment he steps into Narnia, and Aslan’s command that Eustace must greet that friend immediately—is lost precisely because the children get lost in details. Of course, Jill complicates the first sign by showing off at the cliff’s edge so that Aslan must take extra time to convey the signs to Jill instead of to Eustace; and then the boy is subsequently too impatient with Jill to ask the right questions until it is too late. But the major contributing factor in the delay is that both Eustace and Jill become intent on the proceedings of the King’s send-off.

Jill’s first thoughts upon arriving in Narnia, in fact, have nothing to do with the signs. Instead, “the first thing she thought was how very grubby and untidy and generally unimpressive” Eustace looked. Her second thought? “How wet I am!” For his part, Eustace is so fascinated with “the splendour of their surroundings”—the turreted castle, the white marble quay, the tall, bannered ship and the King’s court—that he shuts Jill up with a few cross words when she finally remembers why she’s there. “Keep quiet, can’t you?” he demands. “I want to listen.” Even after Jill gets a word in edgewise about Aslan and his instructions, Eustace curtly tells Jill to “dry up.” The children find soon enough, to their complete dismay, that their attention has been sorely misdirected on the setting and ceremonies, while it instead should have been set on the Big Picture: their quest. (Eustace, of course, knew nothing of the quest when Jill arrived; but his past experiences in the world of Narnia, and the unique means by which he was conveyed over the sea, should have led him to believe that something curious was in the cards.)

Gradually, as the days pass since Jill received her instructions about the signs, Jill and Eustace, now traveling with the Marsh-wiggle Puddleglum, once again find themselves steadily becoming more and more focused on the moment at hand. For a time, though, they manage to be devoted to the Big Picture—so much so, in fact, that Jill is oblivious to things close by. She almost entirely misses the fact, for instance, that the “funny rocks” along the edge of gorge leading up to Ettinsmoor are actually the heads of giants. And she habitually recites Aslan’s signs “every night and morning.” But as the journey wears on, Puddleglum becomes more concerned with Aslan’s instructions than are the children.

Wearied by travel and chilled through, Eustace and Jill are easily taken in by the invitation of “She of the Green Kirtle” to join the Autumn Feast in Harfang—a lovely place, so she says, with splendid meals, hot baths, warm beds, and all the comforts they have thus far been missing. Only Puddleglum, whom Jill accuses of having “the most horrible ideas,” thinks to weigh the Lady’s words against Aslan’s. Yes, only the wet-blanket Marsh-wiggle stops to question the integrity of the Lady, the oddity of the Silent Knight, and the too-good-to-be-true welcome into a Giants’ house. But the children? Jill, by contrast, is simply taken with the Lady’s “scrumptious dress. And the horse!” Eustace, impatient with Puddleglum’s caution, suggests that they should all just “think about those Gentle Giants and get on to Harfang as quickly as we can.” All is forgotten for the promise of a few days’ rest for the weary. The close-up view wins out over the Big Picture.

Once again, in fact, myopia becomes the rule. The children can “think about nothing but beds and baths and hot meals,” and as the days wear on, Jill gives up her daily recitations. “She said to herself, at first, that she was too tired, but she soon forgot all about it.” In their haste to reach the House of Harfang “not too late,” they plow through a snowstorm and have a “beast of day” clambering through “squarish rocks” and a series of ledges. It would be hard enough, in the first place, I suppose, to recognize the ruins of a giant’s city; but in a blizzard? Not a chance. Close-up visions of fires, baths and hot food—and the snowflakes in their eyes, and the willfulness in their hearts—blind the children to the Really Big Picture of Aslan’s second sign: the ruined city through which they slog.

Soon they fall into strange trenches with odd sharp turns and short dead ends. At first taken in by the respite from the chill winds, the three try to find a through-way—any through-way—to keep them out of sight and out of the dreadful weather. But no such luck. Back on the surface again, Puddleglum’s suspicions lead him to ask Jill once more about Aslan’s signs. “Bother the signs!” she barks. And she incorrectly says that the second sign is “something about someone mentioning Aslan’s name.” Her retort is rather cross because she knows that she has been less than attentive lately to those important portents. And once the party manages to catch a welcome glimpse of Harfang, the twists and turns of the trenches are quickly forgotten.

Until the next day, when that fateful, Big Picture panorama of the ruined city below them becomes evident..

Forgetfulness seems to be a major obstacle to the effort of keeping the grand scheme of things in the forefront of one’s mind—forgetting the goal, forgetting the steps toward reaching that goal, forgetting everything but the present moment, and what might make it more bearable.

Thus, the three travelers unwittingly enter the House of Harfang as the main course for the Autumn Feast. Only after being annoyingly treated like children all night, and having a good night’s sleep behind them, do they reconvene in the morning in Jill’s room to see so plainly from far away what they could not see while they were in the middle of it: those becalmed trenches spelling out, very clearly, UNDER ME.
Instantly, regret and shame flush through Jill, as she remembers both the second and third signs—and her disregard for their recitation and focus. The others are also convicted of their own deficiencies in not paying better attention, in not recognizing (or speaking up about) the resemblance of the wreckage to a city; about being all too crazy about reaching the House of Harfang, which perhaps never should have sidetracked them in the first place. Generously, Puddleglum avoids saying “I told you so.”

But again, myopia is where “little” decisions are made that so often greatly affect the Big Picture. From this point in the story, because of the small but right decisions the party makes, a renewed focus on the signs leads them on a successful quest to find the Prince. When they finally encounter the fourth sign—Rilian’s mention of Aslan’s name—they have little problem being convinced that Aslan’s instructions must be followed, even though it means breaking the promise they’d made to the enchanted Prince. They free Rilian, and redeem their own failures.

Interestingly, when the Lady enters to find the Silver Chair reduced to shards, she instinctively knows that the best way to confound her enemies' minds is through the senses, those wonderful collectors of details that so often distract us from the Big Picture. Incense and music, magic and a persuasive voice, provide the Lady a near victory in defeating Aslan’s schemes. But the Big Picture prevails. Jill does not entirely forget Aslan, and Puddleglum is stirred to stamp out the fire upon which the incense burns. He rightly declares that even if the Witch is right, even if “we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and moon and sun and stars and Aslan himself,” then the made up world—one much bigger than the limitations of the Witch's visible and concrete city—”licks your real world hollow.”

Case closed, more or less.

But that brings us back to ourselves, the readers. How smug we are, sitting back and critiquing the children’s failures. We, of course, have the luxury of perspective. We can see quite clearly that Jill and Eustace are running the risk of missing the first sign at Cair Paravel. Our only concern: if they actually miss the first sign, how can the quest possibly succeed?

And when the three travelers encounter the Knight and the Lady at the bridge, it’s easy for us to think: Gee, why don’t Jill and Eustace stop to ponder where these two came from, and where they might be going? Have they forgotten the parliament of owls, and the tale of Rilian’s obsession with the “tall and great” beautiful lady, “wrapped in a thin garment as green as poison”? Could this Knight’s lady, “She of the Green Kirtle,” be the one and the same? Might it, in fact, be the very same dress?

But these are easy questions, for us, the readers. C.S. Lewis, like she of the Green Kirtle herself, has worked some very crafty magic on us.

First, we must remember that not all of the volumes in The Chronicles of Narnia are written in the same style. The Silver Chair, in fact, features some of the most descriptive prose in the series. Why? It might be easy to write it off as a necessary device to enable us to understand why Jill and Eustace are themselves distracted by details. How can we understand their fascination with the ceremony of King Caspian’s departure, for instance, unless Lewis describes it for us?

But Lewis is not just showing more consideration for his readers than Steven Spielberg usually does for those watching his films. Lewis is instead providing us with the tools of our own undoing: distracting us with words so that we get caught up in the details of the children’s failures and lose sight of the Big Picture lessons that Lewis might have in store. And the magic that Lewis weaves to this end is very effective. We are captured by his web of words. The story works, yes; and we get his point, too. The Close-up View becomes the means to the Big Picture.

Second, as the quest wears on, we, like Jill and Eustace, also become less able to focus on the signs and sort them out in advance. Why? Because Jill’s not the only one who stops reciting the signs. Lewis does, too. And unless we bookmark the early passages, our memory becomes as poor as Jill’s. In fact, as Lewis gives us less and less description of the party’s surroundings, as the details become more and more focused on what’s right in front of the searchers’ faces, we—again like them—are just as likely to miss the fact that Harfang lies a wee bit beyond the ruins that the searchers seek.

Lewis is no fool. Neither are Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum fools. And if we come away from The Silver Chair feeling somehow superior to these characters, then we have failed to correctly read the signs that Lewis lays out in this tale—and the Close-up View has won out over the Big Picture.

Contributed by Jenn and Greg Wright

This Pleasant Darkness

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 09:00:00 +0000

In chapter eleven of C. S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair we find Prince Rilian, sole heir and lost son of King Caspian the Tenth of Narnia, bound tightly to the titular silver chair in a dark city deep in the earth. He is urgently pleading with the other protagonists of the story: Eustace Scrubb, who we met in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; Jill Pole, a schoolmate of Eustace’s; and Puddleglum, a Marsh-wiggle from Narnia. Rilian wants them to cut the ropes that bind him and release him from the chair. But they do not know that he is Prince Rilian, the very person Aslan has charged them to seek and bring back to Narnia. Nor do they know that he has been under the spell of a witch, the very witch who killed his mother, the wife of Caspian the Tenth. They only know him, so far, as a silly and cruel knight who is the thrall of his “queen.”

We are all sitting in darkness in a Silver Chair. Unlike Prince Rilian, we have each built our own chair, and each chair is as unique as a snowflake. Our guilt, our behavior, our past, our hate, our fears, our possessions—and many other things in varying combinations in varying degrees—bind us to the chair. Like Rilian, we are sometimes lucid and aware of our predicament but unable to free ourselves because we don’t know how. But also like Rilian we are often unaware of the chair or the spell we are under. We are consumed in our own narrow worldview and unable to do anything about it because we don’t know we are bound. In fact, even when we are aware we are often unwilling to change. Further, we do not know that the bonds are largely illusory—we have by our choice and beliefs bound ourselves. Finally, by choice and belief we can be also be released.

Like the Prince, we look to others to free us; and others can show us the way, even remove the bonds. But how do we get out of the chair—by our own power or by grace or both? And how do we find ourselves in the Silver Chair?

Lewis shows us this. Through the journey of Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum we see how they very nearly succumb to the same situation Rilian finds himself in. Lewis also shows how by their strength and courage, and by the grace of Aslan, they are able to avoid that fate and return to Narnia with Rilian.

In chapter two Jill is on the Mountain of Aslan. Eustace has fallen off a cliff there, and, although Jill doesn’t know it, is safely drifting through the clouds on his way to Narnia. Jill is face to face with Aslan and is understandably very frightened. Aslan tells her that Prince Rilian, who has been missing for ten years and has been given up for dead by Caspian and most of Narnia, is alive. Aslan charges her and Eustace to seek Prince Rilian until they have either found him and returned him to his father’s house or died in the attempt. To help accomplish this she is given four signs—

First; as soon as the Boy Eustace sets foot in Narnia, he will meet an old and dear friend. He must greet that friend at once; if he does, you will both have good help. Second; you must journey out of Narnia to the north till you come to the ruined city of the ancient giants. Third; you shall find a writing on a stone in that ruined city, and you must do what the writing tells you. Fourth; you will know the lost prince (if you find him) by this, that he will be the first person you have met in your travels who will ask you to do something in my name, in the name of Aslan.

Before Aslan sends Jill to Narnia to join Eustace, he admonishes her to be sure to remember the signs. Aslan tells her to say them to herself when she gets up in the morning and when she lies down at night. This is reminiscent of Moses’ words to the tribe of Israel after he has delivered God’s laws and commandments. In Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Moses admonishes them: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Likewise, the four signs are commandments Aslan gives Jill so that she and Eustace will succeed in their quest—much like God’s commandments (if followed) would guide the Israelites on their quest to reach Canaan and secure a new life after they arrive.

Aslan also warns Jill that whatever strange things happen, she must let nothing turn her mind from the signs. In Aslan’s land her mind is clear, but as she goes into Narnia and further, “the air will thicken.” Finally he gives her a clear and simple instruction. “Remember the signs and believe in the signs. Nothing else matters.”

At first she repeats the signs diligently as she drifts through the clouds to Narnia. But almost immediately after arriving she and Eustace miss the first sign. Eustace fails to recognize and greet the now-aged Caspian as an old and dear friend. Jill fails to communicate effectively and quickly to Eustace the importance of this sign. Before they can rectify the situation, King Caspian has boarded a ship and has set sail for the Seven Isles because he has heard that Aslan may have been sighted there. Israel, we may remember, also immediately failed to follow God’s instructions at Mount Sinai, crafting and worshipping a golden calf. Jill’s and Eustace’s failure is not so nearly willful, but the similarity is nonetheless remarkable.

After meeting Puddleglum and journeying across Ettinsmoor to search for the ruined city of the ancient giants, they miss the second and third signs as well. When they cross the Giants’ Bridge, though they do not realize it, they meet Rilian—who is covered in armor and does not speak. He is with the witch queen, who has put him under her spell. She says she knows nothing about the ruined city and advises the travelers to go to Harfang, a castle in the north where, she says, dwell mild and courteous giants who will give the travelers steaming baths, soft beds, and plenty to eat. In fact, she knows these giants will eat Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum if they get the chance; and they very nearly do.

Only dour Puddleglum is suspicious of this woman. Her advice clouds the minds of the children so that during the hard journey they can think of nothing but the comforts of Harfang. Consequently, as they are struggling across the very ruins they have been instructed to find in Aslan’s second sign, they do not recognize them. And even though they are literally inside the letters of the writing of the third sign, they do not know it.

Jill’s failure to remember the signs at this point reminds me of the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. She is like the seed that falls on rocky soil. “It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root” (13:5-6). Jesus elaborates in verses 20-21, “The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away.” At first Jill accepts the signs Aslan has given her and is diligent about remembering and reciting them. But with the passing of time and the increasing difficulty of their journey she falls away from that discipline. Not only does she no longer recite them, she forgets them entirely. Only once they are in Harfang and essentially captives does the party look out a window and see the message “under me”— realizing that they have missed two more signs.

Nonetheless, they are able to devise an escape from Harfang and follow the instructions of the third sign by going under the ruined city. They are captured deep below the surface by the Earthmen who dwell there, and are eventually joined with Rilian in his chambers in the underground city.

There they are at least able to finally fulfill the fourth sign. While Rilian is bound to the Silver Chair and entreating Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum to release him, he finally invokes Aslan’s name. This presents them with a difficult choice because they have promised Rilian before he is bound that under no circumstances will they release him. But once he calls for them to do it in Aslan’s name, they choose to do it—even though they believe it may mean their deaths at the hand of this demented knight. They do this not knowing the outcome, but after muffing all the other signs they know they must get this one right even if they are killed. As Puddleglum says, “You see, Aslan didn’t tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do.”

This turned out to be the right thing, and Rilian immediately destroys the Silver Chair and announces his true identity. But as in life, this is far from the end of their difficulties. They are barely able to enjoy the success of finding Rilian and freeing him from his spell when the witch enters the chamber. She does not, as one might expect, fly into a rage and start destroying more furniture when she sees Rilian is no longer under her spell. Instead she plays a mandolin-like instrument and puts a green powder on the fire that produces a pleasant scent. She speaks softly and pleasantly as she plays.

Rilian tells her that he and the others will leave at once for Narnia. She argues that there is no point in doing this because Narnia does not exist. Rilian, Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum offer up Narnia, King Caspian, the sun and Aslan himself as examples of their “real” world; but she thwarts each argument with her quiet logic. The outside world is not real, she says; it cannot be. She argues that the only real world is the underground city where they now are; the only thing that is real is what they can see: the witch’s city and all that is in it. She says that all that they describe is a dream and a fantasy.

It is Puddleglum’s courage and ultimate logic that saves them all. He stamps out the fire which produces the pleasant scent clouding their minds. He burns his foot but the pain helps clear his head, and removing the mind-clouding scent helps clear the minds of the others. To Puddleglum it’s simple—her dark world strikes him as a pretty poor one. Their make-believe world “licks her real world hollow,” he says. He declares he is “on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it.” This enrages the witch and she transforms into her true self—the worm who killed Rilian’s mother. A fight to the death ensues with the worm losing the fight and its head.

We all face the same difficulty that these four faced when the witch was quietly convincing them that their world does not exist. We may get out of our own Silver Chairs, but once up we must recognize what is real and what is a spell or an illusion. Otherwise we will find the Silver Chair restored and we will be sitting firmly in it.

Oddly, we can touch a tree, walk on the sidewalk in our neighborhood, or enjoy a sunset, but that does not mean that is all that’s real. There’s more to life than what we can see, more than this pleasant darkness. We can have faith that some things which cannot be seen or touched are also real. We can choose to follow the signs that have been given us—we can believe in God. All things on Earth and Earth itself will pass, but God is forever. What can be more real?

Remember the signs and believe in the signs. Nothing else matters.

Contributed by George Rosok

The Silver Chair

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Though The Magician's Nephew, the sixth-written episode in The Chronicles of Narnia, is really the book that “ties up” Narnia's loose ends, The Silver Chair has a bit of that feel to it, too. Coming sixth in the chronological sequence as it does, the book, in fact, sets the stage for The Last Battle. Principally, it makes the point that the future of Narnia does not just lie in making little tweaks here and there, in merely defeating the likes of Miraz and Rabadash. No, these villains are only dupes in the game of Deep Magic that's being played out between Aslan, Jadis and the likes of the Queen of the Underworld.

But The Silver Chair doesn't just bring the major themes of the series to a head. This book also connects and continues the story threads of Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, connecting the imminent End Times of Narnia back to the beginning of the tale, through the Pevensies to Digory Kirke. The Silver Chair is a satisfying conclusion to the overall rising action of the series, working magnificently in its own right as well as preparing us for the Chronicles' coming climax.

Lewis here continues the roll he was on in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, offering much food for thought. This month, Kathy Bledsoe leverages her creativity upon our story synopsis, while Jenn and I offer up a collaborative look at how Lewis' craft pays off in the reader's identification with the story's heroes. Finally, George Rosok gives us a challenging analysis of the central spiritual symbol of the story: the Silver Chair itself.

Mind the details...

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 12:00:00 +0000

One criticism of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia that would be almost impossible to defend is that he repeats himself. Each of the seven books has its own character, its own unique flavor and style. In one sense, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader “picks up” the story line of Prince Caspian, giving us a glimpse of Caspian’s reign as King of Narnia. And while it’s also true that Caspian’s character is only here fully realized, Voyage is still no retread of the earlier books. In this story, we go to sea and are entertained in the fashion of classic tales like The Odyssey and Gulliver’s Travels. We haven’t seen the likes of this in Narnia before.

Paul McCusker, writer and director of the Chronicles of Narnia Radio Theatre production, has pointed out the problems of adapting the books in a different order than that in which they were published. To a certain extent, he says, Voyage works best when taken as the third book in the series, as originally published. But McCusker also points out that Voyage has the advantage of being the most literarily “mature” of the original three stories—and that Lewis further invested the story with a certain narrative weight since he conceived it as the “final” book in the series.

So in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we find Lewis at the peak of his story-telling game, and we also find compelling and moving themes. This month, George Rosok brings us our story synopsis, and Kathy Bledsoe entertains us with a review of the literary themes of the story in an imaginative fashion consistent with the creativity of Lewis’ tale. Finally, Jenn Wright uses Lewis’ imagery of the episode at the Dark Island as a jumping-off point for a meditation on how the spirituality of the novel has interlaced with her own life.

Enjoy!

The Dark Island in My Soul

j.wright@hjbooks.com (Jenn Wright) — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 09:00:00 +0000

Light… and Darkness

There is something about the basic concept of light vs. darkness that nearly always stops me in my tracks. Perhaps my pupils just have extra difficulty constricting, but it goes much deeper than that.

I spent twelve years (half of a lifetime to that point) in a darkness so bleak and devastating that I could not remember what light looked like. Just recently, due to a severe medication reaction, I spent a few weeks back in that dungeon—in agitation, panic, utter darkness.

Having corrected the medication crisis, I am once again thrust into light—and the purest enjoyment of light one can possibly imagine.

So when I read of the unfortunate man who was picked up off of the Dark Island by the Dawn Treader, my soul paid attention. Only a mere few hours removed from my own mental night, I could empathize with the madness, the wild-wide-eyed trauma-ridden expression on his face as he desperately clung to the light and equally desperately abandoned the darkness. Likewise, my thirst for the light seems to steadily increase the further I get from the darkness. But why? What it is about the nature of light and darkness that can simultaneously elicit fear and relief? Light and darkness are paradoxically and inextricably related in a way that few extreme opposites can be. One simply cannot exist without the other—darkness is the absence of light; light cannot exist in darkness; thus if you have the one, the other must be somewhere in proximity for the comparison to occur. A marriage of opposites—and, at length, a long separation.

Sailing On

On the verge of light—almost daybreak—awaiting the sunrise… “It’s always darkest before the dawn…” That’s where The Voyage of the Dawn Treader dares to bring the reader (along with the characters)—to the edge of Dawn.

I think the name of His Majesty’s ship (and thus the book) offers significant insight into what comes throughout the story—the quest for Light, treading ever so closely to the Dawn, and yet never quite experiencing the awesome sunrise. On the brink of Dawn—the ultimate Dawn, as it is described—with just a taste of its powerful light.

The stated quest, of course, for King Caspian and his men, is to find the seven men who reluctantly sailed from Narnia years ago to escape the wrath of the usurper Miraz. And in their travels, the crew of the Dawn Treader do find the Seven, or at least evidence of their presence. But they are also driven toward adventure—the truest adventure—of finding the edge of the (flat) world, and in this they are equally successful.

But light—the essence of it, its function, and especially the experience of it—is addressed by Lewis in perceptive detail, leaving enough to the reader’s imagination to perhaps spark a renewed desire for The Light: that is, the Light of Christ.

The Pagan View

The Venerable Bede, a monk from the 7th century, and credited to be the most learned man of his time, described the pagan view of life as a sort of light between two darknesses:

You are sitting feasting with your aldermen and thanes in winter time; the fire is burning on the hearth in the middle of the hall and all inside is warm, while outside the wintry storms of rain and snow are raging—and a sparrow flies swiftly through the hall. It enters in at one door and quickly flies out the other. For the few moments it is inside, the storm and wintry tempest cannot touch it, but after the briefest moment of calm, it flits from your sight, out of the wintry storm and into it again.

Rather a bleak picture, though one I am certain captures the persuasion of many people. Since we do not know what happens prior to our coming into existence on this earth, and since we have not yet experienced what comes after our leaving this earth, it is perhaps the easiest way to describe the progression of life—the Unknown being darkness, the Known being light.

But while it may be the easiest description, and the most readily accepted, there is a strong possibility that it is flat-out wrong. After all, since we do not know the precise details of what goes on before birth or after death, how can we possibly assume that both are places of darkness? Is it not equally easy to imagine that the light, warm comfort of the feast is actually a regression of sorts, and that the sparrow continues its flight out the other side because there is an innate knowledge (or at least hope) that there is something even better outside the door?

Otherwise, if the sparrow is exiting into darkness, and the feast is so pleasant and warm, why should he not alight on a rafter, soak in the heat, and nip a few crumbs from the table, rather than return to the wintry storm?

The Christian View

In Voyage, Lewis explores a different fulfillment of the coming to the edge of the world, beautifully describing the Christian’s journey out of darkness, sitting at the feast, and then entering the fulfillment of light.

The approach toward the Dark Island reaches an intensity unmatched to this point in the Chronicles. We are drawn to the darkness, wanting to know what it is, yet we, like the sailors, fear its oppression. Is it necessary to experience the darkness? Why does Lewis place the darkness here? From my perspective, from the time the Dawn Treader leaves the Dufflepuds and the Magician, the story could be interpreted as Lewis’ description of a journey toward Christ—and starkly in contrast to the flight of Bede’s pagan sparrow.

The approach of the Darkness is, indeed, frightening, but until they experience the darkness itself, the sailors have no way of knowing how deep is the darkness, how all-encompassing, how difficult to navigate, how dangerous to the psyche. They have known light and they have known darkness, but the definition of true darkness is about to be revealed to them.

Naturally, Caspian questions the sensibility of this—should we dare to enter the darkness? Should we voluntarily sail into complete and utter unknown? It is the question every person must ask himself—do I want to know what lies in the darkness—in my own darkness? It is a wise question to ask oneself, and I heartily agree, in matters of salvation, with Reepicheep’s astute observation that, in such matters, it is a creature’s “good fortune not to be a man.”

In choosing to venture forward, they lose themselves in the black. Their worst fears are confirmed by Lord Rhoop’s rescue, as he rants and raves maniacally in a futile attempt to convince them to turn around. Soon direction is lost, hope is lost, fear nearly takes over as they realize they cannot navigate their own way out of the gloom. Yet just as panic and despair threaten to sink the sailors’ psyches, Lucy utters the simplest plea—the first words spoken to Aslan without His visible presence.

And Aslan the Great answers.

Now, it must be noted that just as the plea is the first of its kind, the answer is of a different form from any seen yet. An albatross—a sailor’s good omen of deliverance—circles, Aslan in new form, whispering three words into the hopeless darkness surrounding Lucy and the Dawn Treader: Courage, dear heart. In an instant her heart is strengthened, the black fades to deep grey, then finally they enter the light again, all with a new appreciation for the blue sky and warm sun and simply the ability to see clearly.

Such is the nature of Light.

The End of the World

Throughout the rest of the story, light is a captive theme. When the sailors drink the water (see John chapter 4), their desire for food and water diminish, and their ability to tolerate the growing light increases in parallel with the brightness of the light itself. Likewise, the more “living water” we take in, the more of God’s radiance we can not only bear, but appreciate, enjoy, experience fully.

Finally, at the end of the world, the beginning of that Great Light, we know that there is more to the end of this life than darkness. Naturally, Caspian is devastated to learn that he cannot pass through with the Pevensies, as are we who must only imagine what Aslan’s land truly holds. But there is certainly a Hope, a palpable sense of excitement, rather than dread at what comes beyond.

I think Lewis counterpoints the Venerable Bede’s sparrow image beautifully here—bringing light to the end of the world, rather than the sparrow’s unfortunate flight back into the cold and desolation. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis writes:

The question was no longer to find the one simply true religion among a thousand religions simply false. It was rather, 'Where has religion reached its true maturity? Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?'... Paganism had been only the childhood of religion, or only a prophetic dream.

I believe that the vision of light at the end, rather than a flitting comfort bounded by darkness on both ends, is most certainly a more Christ-centered view. We who love this life will lose it (see John 12:25), while those who pursue that greater light—at the cost of leaving this world as the Pevensies (and Reepicheep) did—shall find something greater than they have already experienced, not a regression from their earthly experiences.

The journey of the Dawn Treader, I believe, is a picture of the pre-Christian’s walk through the recognition of his own sin; the recognition of his need for light; the frantic returning to the light (with a much greater appreciation for it); a thirst which makes increasingly brighter light (and subsequently increasing awareness of the darkness lurking in our humanity); and ultimately reaching Aslan’s land in the brightest light possible, where all is exposed, and none is afraid.

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (II Corinthians 4:4-6)

Imagination ÷ Creativity = 1

kathy@dramatic-insights.org (Kathy Bledsoe) — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 10:00:00 +0000

This month I am just thrilled to present an exclusive interview that I was able to score with the characters of C. S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Recently, I spent a delightful afternoon discussing this wonderful sea tale with Kings Caspian and Edmund, Queen Lucy, Eustace Scrubb and Reepicheep the brave and chivalrous mouse. Speaking with them personally opened up new vistas of understanding regarding this terrific children’s fantasy—and the fertile imagination of Mr. Lewis, which created the plot and this ensemble of characters...

First of all, welcome! I am so excited to spend time with you and am truly blessed to have such an amazing opportunity. I hope that your journey here was easy and eventless. You don’t look any worse for the wear...

Lucy Pevensie: Thank you, Kathy. This is quite an occasion. I daresay that Caspian and Reep may be a bit shaken since they have not had a lot of experience traveling between worlds, but speaking for myself, time travel is becoming rather a commonplace occurrence.

Edmund Pevensie: Yes, and tele-transportation is infinitely to be desired over being dumped into a frigid sea. Walking through a wardrobe, while strange, is a much drier proposition!

King Caspian: [Staring around as though completely befuddled] This is amazing. I’ve known Edmund, Lucy, Susan, and Peter... well, and Eustace... to come and go without warning, but I’ve always written it off as their being a bit daft (though in a good sort of way) and never really worried myself about it. Wait until Drinian and Rhince hear about this!

Eustace Scrubb: Is that a computer?! I never thought I’d ever have the opportunity to see one so small. There aren’t any wires. How does it work?

It’s called a “laptop.” I’d be glad to show it to you after the interview...

Reepicheep the Mouse: Far be it from me to sound rude, but I was called from a place that I really had no desire to leave and would like to return as soon as I possibly can. Could we please proceed with our purpose?

LP: Dear, dear Reep, always calling us back to focus. What would we do without him?

Yes, but point well taken, Reepicheep. Let us proceed with the task at hand. I know that you all have pressing matters to return to in your own realities.

One of the initial things that I noticed in this story that is quite different from the others (except to a certain extent in The Horse and His Boy) is that Lewis spends much more time describing his characters. For instance, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, we received one-liners here and there about the characters that, yes, did reveal traits, but we mostly learned who the characters were by their actions and often had to discover their true identities by how they interacted with other characters. We learn more about Eustace Scrubb in the first few pages of chapter one of Voyage than we did about many of you in the reading of entire books prior to this one.

ES: [Wryly] And dash it all... he insisted on including my middle name! Eustace is bad enough, but Eustace Clarence is only what my parents called me. I was quite the rotter, wasn’t I? But when one thinks about it, Lewis had to really be careful and develop his characters fully or the entire story would have gone nowhere. During the course of this tale, I undergo a complete turnabout of who I am. If the reader did not know me well, the impact of the change would have been completely buried and lost or seem really contrived. I think Lewis was so exacting and detailed because the lessons of this book were somehow more important than ever to him and he didn’t want obscurity to cloud the message.

RM: Quite, quite, but I believe that there is something more profound going on with Mr. Lewis in this book. I believe that he was maturing as a writer of children’s fantasy fiction. After all, Mr. Lewis had the examples of great imaginations like George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll and John Bunyan to guide him. He respected their contributions and considered Mr. MacDonald to be a mentor and guide for his own development as a children’s author. Moreover, both Mr. Lewis and Mr. MacDonald passionately believed that a children’s book could not be great unless it was equally enjoyed by any person (or mouse) of any age. An adult will see right through a poorly-developed story with one-dimensional characters and never pick it up again. Prince Caspian is a close call! (No offense, I hope, sire.)

EP: Yes. Yes... and I recently read an interesting article by Trevor Hart in Christian History & Biography where he explained that George MacDonald believed that since we are made in God’s image, imagination must be a part of that image and that our imaginations are “nothing other than a direct reflection of God’s own creativity.”

KC: Hear, hear, Edmund! Well read, indeed! [Evokes laughter from the group and Edmund blushes.]

LP: Careful, Caspian... you’re sounding like a Dufflepud! [More laughter]

Okay, okay, we are beginning to drift. Reepicheep, I’d like to go back to something you were saying about the writer’s maturity. Your character also becomes more “fleshed out” in this book. How do you account for that?

RM: Again, learned miss [Kathy now blushes], I believe it was due to maturity. Prince Caspian (the book) was a great disappointment for me. I was like a caricature—the very type of rodent [said with complete disdain] found in your modern day cartoons rather than the symbol of courage and chivalry that I truly am. Aslan recognized those traits and to some extent so did the children, but it was like Mr. Lewis just didn’t take me seriously even though my fellow mice had been given a very important role at Aslan’s sacrifice. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader I am finally a fully-exposed character. And, instead of “popping” in and out of the action, I am made the carrier of the greatest quest and allowed to sacrifice myself for that purpose. I am also the compass that keeps the quest alive and reminds the other characters to stay focused.

KC: [Nudging Edmund] Bet that was hard to do when Eustace had you swinging around by your tail, Reep!

RM: I will not dignify that remark with a response. If I had not tossed my rapier into the sea of lilies, you would taste the flat of it now for sure! Mr. Lewis did have his fun with all of us in this book and, upon his arrival in Aslan’s country, I was able to speak to him about that. He is most contrite!

ES: Will everyone just forget that happened? I was different then!

RM: While I forgive you, sir, I will never be able to forget such an indignity...

LP: Gentlemen, gentlemen. You’ve had your fun, but even you, Reep, are losing focus. I think that maturity of the writer is a valid point, but there is also something more profound happening in this book. Mr. Lewis falls in love with his characters.

EP: Lucy, have you gone bonkers?

KC: Leave it to a girl to go off on a romanticizing expedition!

RM: Lady Fair has a right to her opinion and though skeptical, I will hear it.

Yes, I’m intrigued. Please Lucy, elucidate. [Get it? E-luci-date?]

LP: What I mean by falling in love is that Lewis seems to have real affection for his characters. It is as if he has made friends with every one of us. We are more real and believable characters. Our interaction with each other is true-to-life and typical of people familiar with each other. The reader gets a sense that Lewis really liked this book. He is more playful with his dialogue, pays more attention to detail, clarifies points throughout the story, and paints wonderful word pictures that stir the reader’s imagination. Long before Lewis wrote the Narnia books, he penned a very good book entitled The Four Loves...

Oh, yes, I’ve read that and I think I know where you are going with this. Please continue.

LP: In The Four Loves, Lewis speaks of storge [two syllables, “hard” g], or affectionate love, as a paradox of need and gift-love.

EP: How’s that?

LP: Affection needs to give but it also needs to be needed and so seeks the gift of being loved. Lewis gives us meaningful life and in the process experiences deep affection for each of us that is demonstrated in all the points I have just made. Just look at the diversity among the characters of this book. How could a human carbuncle like Eustace Scrubb...

ES: I am rather jewel-like, aren’t I?

EP: I think she means the other carbuncle, Scrubbsie!

ES: Hey!

LP: Sorry, Eustace, you just make such a good object! How could a Eustace Scrubb become a member of such a band of close friends? How could Reepicheep or even Caspian accept him into their circle? Why would Edmund and I not just isolate him and forget about him and go on with the task at hand? Why does Lewis even have to bring Eustace into the story? Because of what Lewis calls the “glory of Affection,” which “can unite those who most emphatically, even comically, are not; people who, if they had not found themselves put down by fate in the same household or community, would have had nothing to do with each other.” Lewis is the “fate” who brings about the miracle of affection amongst this ensemble and, I believe, in the process finds himself loving not only the work of writing the story but is surprised by the joy (sorry, couldn’t resist) of truly enjoying his characters. So he, too, receives a gift—satisfaction and peace.

EP: I agree, and one really telling proof of this is that Lewis, for the first time in the Chronicles, makes great use of the first person. He interjects himself constantly into the book and really becomes an additional character. The reader learns a great deal about Lewis, especially his sense of humor, and is made to feel like a participant in the journey. This book makes a great read-aloud because it just literally shouts to be shared. You find yourself wanting to say, “Just listen to this,” or “This is so good, can I read you this part?” It’s fun being a part of that.

I agree with what you are all saying, but let me throw a wrench into the works here.

KC: I say, what’s a wrench?

LP: I believe it’s just an Americanism, but I’m not sure. These Yanks do have a strange way of speaking sometimes.

ES: She means “spanner.”

EP: They have totally destroyed the language, Lewis would say.

Sorry... what I meant was, allow me to bring up something that seems to contradict this character development that we’ve been praising. Lucy, Edmund, and Caspian almost seem like they aren’t needed at all or are just along for the ride. What do you think Lewis was doing with your characters?

KC: That’s pretty easy as far as I’m concerned. I am a bridge character, as are Lucy and Edmund. We share a common history—our adventures in Prince Caspian. Lewis would have had to have spent a lot of time explaining how Eustace came to be in Narnia (as he did with Shasta and Aravis in The Horse and His Boy) if he didn’t provide a bridge.

EP: Quite. If the reader has been paying attention to (and has read) prior books in the series, he understands that no one who has come from “our” world stays in Narnia forever. Susan and Peter have already been sent back “to come close to their own world and know Aslan better there.” You just know that Edmund and Lucy are not going to be spared the same “growing up.” Lu and I become the bridge that brings Eustace from one land to the other. The focus is mainly upon him because Aslan has chosen this story and this time for him to begin “knowing him for a little.” That is why Lewis is so careful to describe who Eustace is. Otherwise, his eventual change would be meaningless.

LP: Also, remember that the four of us—Susan, Peter, Edmund and I—were pretty insignificant characters in The Horse and His Boy, too, but were necessary to keep the book believable as one of the Chronicles. It was a departure by Lewis not to include any mention of or action out of “our” world, but it was still a rollicking good tale (I believe a Ms. Wright covered that topic elsewhere) that made the world of Narnia believable with its own history and culture.

Excellent! I see that more clearly now. Very interesting... Let’s change directions and talk about the complexity of this book. I would like to know what each of you perceives as the central theme of this story. Reepicheep, would you like to begin?

RM: Most graciously, fair lady. [Kathy blushes again but is completely taken in by the mouse’s manners.] This story is about my quest to fulfill the prophecy spoken over me by a Dryad when I was in my cradle. I am allowed to go on a crusade to find Aslan’s country or the end of the world. I am the bravest because I sail fearlessly and doggedly (mousedly?) into the unknown. I am the picture of God’s weakest thing making strong things foolish...

EP: Careful there, Reep, your pride is beginning to bulge again.

KC: I beg to differ, Reep. This is the story of my quest. Aslan allowed me to swear an oath on my coronation day. I promised that if I was able to establish peace again in Narnia that I would sail away in pursuit of my father’s friends and either find them or avenge them. I provided the transportation for Reepicheep and the rest of you just crashed my party!

ES: You’re all wrong! This story is about how I went from being a perfect blighter to being a decent, kind, and loving human being, worthy of Aslan’s desire to use me further in Narnia.

LP: And, what about me? I learned some very interesting things about myself during this trip and was the instrument Aslan used to free the Dufflepuds from invisibility. Just as they couldn’t see themselves, I couldn’t see things about myself that needed to be corrected before I could “know Aslan better” in our world.

[Everyone begins talking at once in defense of his or her individual stand and I am forced to restore order.]

Everyone, everyone, can we not agree that you are all correct? I believe you have discovered yet another of Lewis’ devices in this book—the story within a story within a story. [All nod in agreement.] As Aslan has said in previous books, each person’s story is his or her own and so of most importance to that individual. Lewis has written an amazing book that integrates each of your individual stories, uniting them into a complete and balanced scheme that thoroughly delights and instructs.

Alas, our time is drawing to a close, but I must ask this final question of Lucy and Edmund. Voyage is where we say good-by to you both until The Last Battle. It will next be Eustace Scrubb’s and Jill Pole’s turn to visit Narnia. What was it like to hear Aslan say that you wouldn’t be coming back to Narnia?

LP: I, as you read, was completely bereft. I wasn’t so upset that I would be leaving a fantasy world, but that I would never see Aslan again.

EP: That was my concern, too. How were we to continue on without Aslan in a world such as this?

LP: Of course, Aslan provided the answer as He usually does, courtesy of Mr. Lewis. We have learned to know Him here as one “by another name” who loved us, guided us, and prepared us for the time when we finally came to be reunited. And that’s not just something artificially tacked on to the story. It’s integral.

EP: Still, Lucy, you could not resist asking if Eustace was coming back!

LP: I know... [looking around they all catch each other’s eye and say in unison] “not my story!”

[The entire group dissolves into happy laughter and eventually grows quiet.]

Thank you all so much for your time, your candor, your obvious love for the work you have been a part of, and for your dedication to C.S. Lewis’ vision of Narnia. I loved you all when I discovered these books and read them to my son. I have fallen in love with you again as I have read and reread these stories as an adult. Edmund, Lucy... Voyage is a great book to “go out” on; farewell.

LP: Thank you for having us back.

EP: The pleasure has been mine.

Reepicheep, Caspian... with pleasure I send you back to Aslan’s country.

RM: [Bows] I am forever at your service, good lady.

KC: [Not to be usurped by a mouse…] And, I, too, am at your service.

Eustace... I look forward to seeing more of you soon, and so this is not good-by, but ta-ta for now!

ES: Righto! Now, could I take a look at that computer before I go?

Story Synopsis: Sailing the Pevensies

george@dramatic-insights.org (George Rosok) — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 11:00:00 +0000

As a new summer begins, the Pevensie children have been split up. While Peter and Susan are away, Edmund and Lucy go to stay with their cousin, Eustace Scrubb. Eustace doesn’t like his cousins very much and the feeling is mutual. Eustace is an annoying child who likes to bully and generally be a royal pain, unlike Lucy and Edmund—who are just royal.

One day Lucy and Edmund reminisce about Narnia while looking at a painting. Eustace teases them about Narnia, which he believes is made-up nonsense, and criticizes the picture. Lucy says she likes it because it looks like the ship is really moving. Eustace moves toward the picture wanting to smash it. Edmund springs after him because he knows magic is at work. Lucy grabs at Edmund and they all fall into the picture and then into the sea.

They are quickly rescued and when they are on the ship, the Dawn Treader, they find their rescuer is their friend Caspian, the King of Narnia. Edmund and Lucy are overjoyed, but Eustace is cranky and wants to go home, especially after he sees Lucy and Edmund’s other friend Reepicheep, the valiant mouse. Eustace hates mice.

Caspian explains that the purpose of his voyage is to search for the seven lords who had been sent by his late uncle Miraz to explore the unknown Eastern Seas. Caspian swore an oath to Aslan that he would find them or learn of their deaths and avenge them. Reepicheep has an even higher hope—to find Aslan’s country at the eastern end of the world. Cranky Eustace’s goal is to stay in his cabin and be seasick, but Lucy cures him of his seasickness with a drop from her diamond flask, which Caspian has brought along. Eustace thanks them by demanding to be dropped off at the first port where he intends to “lodge a disposition” with the British consul.

Their first port is Felimath of the Lone Islands, where there is no British consul—but there are slave traders, which they find out when they walk across the island and are captured by them. Fortunately for Caspian he is quickly sold to an honest-looking man who turns out to be the first of the Seven, Lord Bern. Caspian reveals his true identity to Bern, who swears allegiance to Caspian.

Bern and Caspian rejoin the Dawn Treader on the other side of Felimath and plan to deal with the slave traders and the governor at Narrowhaven on the neighboring island of Doorn. The ship’s company arrives impressively wearing armor and they confront the corrupt governor, who is removed by Caspian and replaced by Bern. Their next act is to go to the slave market and free all the slaves including Edmund, Lucy, Reepicheep who were sold—and Eustace, whom no one would have even for free.

After refitting the ship they set sail for unknown waters. They have fair sailing for a few days, but one evening clouds build in the west. A storm comes up behind them very fast and lasts for days, badly damaging the ship. Now in a dead sea, they are forced to ration water. Eustace feels he is being badly treated and also feels he should get more water because he feels ill, not being willing to realize that everyone is ill for lack of water. One night Eustace is desperate enough to try to steal some water, but Reepicheep, who is guarding the water supply, catches him. Eustace has to apologize and Caspian warns that anyone else caught trying to steal water will get “two dozen”—and he doesn’t mean Krispy Kremes.

The wind comes up again and after a few days they reach an island of tall mountains. The ship’s company goes ashore and after refreshing themselves start the work of repairing and replenishing the ship. Eustace decides he deserves some rest and sneaks off into the woods. He goes up a slope looking for a cool place in the mountains, but soon clouds close in and he lies down and tries to get comfortable.

Unusually, he feels lonely. He leaps up and begins a descent, but he chooses the wrong way and finds himself in an unknown valley. To make matters worse, he discovers he is sharing the valley with a dragon—albeit a tired, old-looking dragon. In fact, the oblivious dragon rolls over and dies in a pool of water. This relieves Eustace, but then it begins to rain and he dashes to the dragon’s cave. There he finds the dragon’s treasure, including a jewelled band that he pushes onto his arm. He lies down on a pile of coins and goes to asleep.

When he wakes up he is afraid another dragon is in the cave in with him because he sees whiffs of smoke and two dragon arms. He races out of the cave, and when he gets to the pool he sees his reflection in the moonlight. He has become a dragon! He feels a terrible loneliness. He decides he will climb out of the valley and when he attempts a jump he finds himself flying. Meanwhile, all the others are worried that Eustace is missing and they mount a search party. They became even more worried when they spot a dragon flying over the trees above them.

The dragon lands on the beach, and in the morning Caspian and company approach expecting a battle, but find the dragon has no desire to fight. In fact, it is in pain from the armband that is now very tight on its big dragon arm. Caspian sees by its markings that the armband belonged to Lord Octesian, another of the missing Seven. They wonder if the tearful dragon is Lord Octesian. They discover the dragon can understand what they are saying and after many questions determine the dragon is actually Eustace.

Eustace is very sorry for how he had behaved before. As a dragon he becomes very helpful, hunting wild goats and locating a new mast. He can even keep everyone warm by starting a fire or letting everyone sit next to him. He is happy being liked, but he is not happy being a dragon and often leaves the group to lie by himself.

Early one morning Edmund wakes and sees a figure walking near the woods. When he confronts it, he is surprised to see it is Eustace restored. Eustace explains that during the night a great lion appeared and led him to a garden at the top of a mountain. There was a wide well in the garden and Eustace wanted to get into the well to bathe and, hopefully, relieve some of the pain in his arm. But the lion said he must undress first. Eustace removed a layer of his scaly skin, then another, and another, but each time he still had the same rough scaly dragon skin underneath. Then the lion told him that he must have help. The lion cut deep and tore off all the dragon skin, which hurt more than anything Eustace had ever felt. Then when Eustace got into the well he discovered he was no longer a dragon. The lion dressed him, and Eustace found himself back at the edge of the wood.

Edmund explains that Eustace has seen Aslan. From that point forward Eustace begins to be a better boy. He still has lapses, but his healing has begun.

They soon set sail from what they come to call Dragon Island. After many days—and a narrow escape from an enchanted spring which had turned one of the missing lords into solid gold—they come to an island that appears to be inhabited. The lawns and gardens are obviously tended and they find a path that leads to a quiet-looking house. Lucy falls behind to get a rock out of her shoe and hears a loud thumping approach her. Then she hears voices around her, but she can’t see anyone. The Thumpers are invisible. The voices say they are going to attack the company from the Dawn Treader. Then the thumping moves toward the ship. Lucy goes to warn the others and they all go back to the ship to risk whatever waits there. They are confronted by the invisible people at the beach and find out that they had made themselves invisible because the magician that lives in the house has put an “uglifying” spell on them. Now they want Lucy to read a spell to take off the invisibleness.

Her companions advise against it, but Lucy agrees, as she sees no other way out of the predicament. The next morning Lucy goes upstairs in the house to a room where she finds the Magic Book. After nearly becoming enchanted herself, she finds the spell and makes everyone visible again—including Aslan. Lucy is very happy to see the lion, who introduces her to the magician. He takes her out to meet the Duffers who sent her to read the spell. At first she thinks there are many odd-looking large mushrooms on the lawn, but when the clock chimes three they roll over and stand up. It is the Duffers. They are “monopods,” with one thick leg and an enormous foot—and they jump to move thumpingly about.

Lucy likes them very much and eventually the rather stupid Duffers are convinced they are not ugly. The Duffers even like the name Monopods, but they keep getting it wrong and eventually call themselves Dufflepuds.

After more sailing—and an episode in which another of the missing Seven is picked up at sea off shore of a mysterious Dark Island—the party comes to another island where they find a large oblong space flagged with smooth stones and surrounded by tall gray pillars. A long table runs from end to end within it and on the table is laid an amazing feast. They find at one end of the table three men asleep and overgrown with their own hair. Eeww! They also discover that these are the remaining missing lords. The party decides the feast must be enchanted, but Reepicheep, Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace decide to stay all night with the sleepers.

During the night a tall, beautiful girl comes out of a doorway in the hillside. She is carrying a candle that she sets on the table near a cruel-looking stone knife. She asks them why they do not eat from Aslan’s table, and they explain their hesitancy. She tells them the sleep was caused when the men were quarrelling and one of the men threateningly picked up the stone knife—which was the very one the White Witch used to kill Aslan at the Stone Table.

Reepicheep has Caspian pour him some wine, and he drinks to the lady and dines. The others soon follow suit. Presently an old man who seems to glow also walks out of the the hillside. He comes to the table opposite his daughter and they begin to sing beautifully. Soon the gray clouds in the east lift and the sun rises. Then out of the sun many large white, singing birds fly to them and land on everything, even the travelers. The birds get busy around the table and when they rise the feast is consumed. Finally the old man turn to the travelers and welcomes them.

Caspian asks him how they can remove the enchanted sleep from the lords. The man, whose name is Ramandu, tells them they will have to sail to the world’s end then come back after leaving at least one of their company behind. That one must go to the utter east and never return into the world. Reepicheep tells Ramandu that is his heart’s desire.

Once they leave Ramandu’s island they begin to feel different. They do not need to sleep or eat much and there is so much light. The sun is much larger here. The sea water is also very clear and potable—“drinkable light.” Although they are already eating little, from then on they consume little else but the water. They also discover that although there is no wind they continue to move eastward at a steady clip. Lucy sees a race of sea-people who dwell on the ocean floor.

One day they see a whiteness stretched along the horizon. When they come upon it, rowers turn the ship broadside and row along it a short way. Doing this they discover that the current they moved in is only forty feet wide. They send out a small boat and when the party returns they bring lily blossoms. That is what the whiteness is—lilies as far as the eye can see. They row back into the current and go on for several days through the lilies.

The water becomes shallower until they must row out of the current and carefully find their way so they do not go aground. Eventually they can go no more. Caspian calls everyone on deck and declares that their mission is at an end, and since Reepicheep has vowed not to return they will find the sleeping lords awake when they return to Ramandu’s island. But then he surprises everyone by saying he is going to accompany Reepicheep. Edmund and Reepicheep tell him he must not, that it would be breaking faith with his loyal subjects if he did that. Caspian is quite upset by this and goes to his cabin after a bit of a tantrum.

When the others go in later, they find Caspian very unhappy because Aslan appeared and told him that he is to go back at once and that Reepicheep, Edmund, Lucy and Eustace are to go on by themselves. There is a grievous parting. A boat with the final four travelers is let down. Then the Dawn Treader turns and begins rowing west. The four do not have to row their boat because it drifts east by itself with the current. As a third day dawns they see the sun rising through a stationary wave. Beyond the wave and the sun is a huge range of mountains that they believe must be Aslan’s country.

Reepicheep says this is where he goes on alone. He takes off his sword, which he says he will need no more, and tosses it across the lilied sea and it sticks upright with its hilt above the surface. He bids the others goodbye, gets into a coracle, and paddles into the current where he is taken up and over the wave. Eustace, Edmund, and Lucy begin wading south along the wave and the water gradually becomes shallower until there is sand and then a flat lawn. They walk until they meet a lamb. The lamb invites them to a breakfast of fish and they sit to eat and it is the most delicious food they ever had.

Then the lamb becomes the lion Aslan. They are all very happy to see him, but not so happy when he tells Edmund and Lucy that they will not be coming back to Narnia again. He promises they will see him again, though. He will not tell Lucy whether Eustace will be coming back. Then Aslan opens a door in the sky and they find themselves at long last back in the bedroom at Cambridge. Eustace is a changed boy.

Vocabulary

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 08:00:00 +0000

Prince Caspian

Chapter 1

Term-time. In American schools, we usually refer to “semesters,” “trimesters” or “quarters.” In college, though, we still refer at times to “term papers,” but usually the word “term” is reserved for a prison sentence. For the Pevensie kids, this just meant it was time to go back to school.
Boarding School. Sure, we all know this is a type of school you go to live at. But why “boarding”? Because “board” is what we now refer to as “meals.” A “boarding house,” in which many of our grandparents and great-grandparents lived in the years following the Great Depression, offered both “room” and “board” for the price of rent.

Chapter 2

Dais. Okay, the big deal here is not what the word itself means. It’s a raised platform. The question is, how do you pronounce it? The answer: “day-iss.”
Jiggered. To be confused or confounded; from archaic British. Perhaps, to be lost or taken advantage of in a back alley.
Pomona. A wood-nymph known for her cultivation of fruit. She is the principal character of a fable recorded by Bulfinch.
Electric Torch. A two-dollar word for “flashlight.” Of course, we easily forget than fifty or so years ago a flashlight was a much bigger deal than it is now.

Chapter 3

Schools Baths. Swimming pools. Swimming pools!
Wars of the Roses. Not a reference to that movie starring Michael Douglas, just so we’re clear. This is reference to violent struggles over the succession to the British throne.

Chapter 4

Apartments. Rooms within a dwelling space. In America, we’d just say “apartment,” probably.
Siccus. An ancient and learned medical doctor.
Buskins. Soft, slipper-like leather shoes.
The Leads. Flat roofed areas of a castle, covered in sheets of lead.

Chapter 5

Recorder. Not a primitive MP3 maker, but a musical instrument of the whistle family.
The Orbo. A large lute. Not very helpful? Okay, I’ll also tell you that the lute was a forerunner of the mandolin. So since the mandolin is like a small violinish (but strummed and picked) guitar, the orbo must have been a violinish guitar.
Wallet. Not the thing you stick in your back pocket. Heavens, no. Caspian’s pockets couldn’t have been that big. No. A wallet of this sort is a knapsack (or backpack, of you don’t know what a knapsack is).
Career. A full-speed run.

Chapter 6

Water-butt. A portable water container. Think of a Gatorade barrel, only made out of wood.
Gay. Just happy. My, wasn’t life simpler fifty years ago?

Chapter 8

Seneschal. The main butler or steward.
Sucks. Wow. I was kind of surprised to see Lewis use this expression. I really don’t know how he intended it. Possibly, this is a shortened version of the aphorism about teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, which would make it an expression conveying uselessness.
Cricket-bat. Okay, it’s kind of odd to be discussing the game of cricket in connection to Narnia. But this is a reference to the revered British game of bat-and-ball, not a reference to a device designed to injure insects.
Poop. A section of the deck of a ship; specifically, a weather deck at the stern (back). So a “feast on the poop” isn’t what it sounds like at first. Think context!

Chapter 9

Bally. Used kind of as a substitute for the stronger “bloody.” Think of a mild term that a polite child might use instead of an expletive.

Chapter 12

Cantrips. A trick.

Chapter 13

Monomachy. Single combat, usually in the form of a duel.
Pomely. Dappled, or spotted.
Dastard. Not a misspelling. Think “dastardly.” A coward.

Chapter 14

Football. Everywhere but America, this means soccer. So I suppose that’s the case in Narnia, too!

Chapter 15

Mazers. A large drinking bowl, probably wooden.
Canny. Careful and shrewd. Not really the opposite of “uncanny.”

Vocabulary

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Sun, 08 May 2005 08:00:00 +0000

The Horse and His Boy

Chapter 1

Wheedling. The art of flattery, of getting what one wants through manipulation.

Carbuncle. In medical parlance, this is a boil resulting from an infected hair follicle, one red and swollen. In this context, however, it’s the jewel talked about in the King James Bible (see Exodus 39:10, for instance): a red gem, generally thought to be garnet.

August. Not the month. This is an adjective indicating an aspect of character that induces awe or veneration.

Plashing. No, there’s no ‘s’ missing there. To plash is to make a light splashing sound.

Foal. Since Bree is talking here, he’s calling Shasta “young.” Of course, there’s a pun there, too, with “fool.”

Chapter 2

Pasty. Everyone in Britain knows that a pasty is a type of baked meat pie, rather like a small calzone (only not Italian, and certainly not spicy). They’re rather good, though, particularly with peas and a pint of cider. I should know.

Dumb. Without the ability to speak. This is not intended as an insult. Okay, maybe it is, in this context.

Downs. Rolling hills. It really sounds funny to say “up here in the downs,” though, doesn’t it?

Cob. According the American Heritage Dictionary, a “thickset, stocky, short-legged horse.” Bree is again making a slighting reference to other, less impressive horses. Ahem.

Chapter 3

Tash. This name for the “false god” of the Calormenes is apparently derived from one of the names of Ahura Mazda, the god of Zoroastrianism. Ahura Mazda is sometimes called Tasho or Tashea, the Designer.

Posts. Messages, or letters. It’s been a long time since Americans have used that word in that way; but a “Post Office” is still where you “post” letters.

Chapter 4

Litter. A small platform mounted on poles that allow it to be carried; it also allows one or more people to ride and be carried, and that’s the point here. Special people (or people who just think they’re special) are carried on litters.

Sherbet. Not the frozen, ice cream-like dessert we know now. This is taken from the Turkish word, meaning a sometimes snow-cooled fruit drink.

Lover. Okay. Times change. In Lewis’ day, lovers were simply people who were rather fond of each other. In this context, we don’t need go any further than that (neither did Susan and Rabadash).

Hastilude. A contest of arms.

Chapter 5

Suit. Courtship. Edmund was suggesting to Rabadash that his pursuit of Susan may be coming up short.

Hyaline. Transparent, like gossamer. The wings of a dragonfly, for instance, are said to be hyaline.

Snipe. A type of bird, which really does exist. Whatever you do, though, NEVER go on a snipe hunt if someone asks you to. Trust me.

Tilt. The act of jousting.

Chapter 7

Punt. A type of small boat.

Chapter 8

Jade. A nagging, mean-spirited or shrewish woman.

Apothegm. A short pithy quote, like an aphorism, epigram or proverb.

Chapter 9

Faugh! An exclamation of disgust. The short form, apparently, of an Irish war cry meaning “clear the way.”

Scullion. A kitchen servant.

Chapter 10

Undressed. Not naked, but untreated. Bandages are wound dressings.

Chapter 12

Frowsty. Stale.

”I’d as lief…” “I’d willingly…”

Chapter 14

Bezzling. Embezzling, of course.

Galleon. That’s galleon, not gallon. One’s a big ship, the other’s a big container of liquid.

Chapter 15

Strait Promise. A forced oath obtained from the loser in a battle.

Pajock. Peacock, but used as term of contempt.

Estres. A Middle-English word meaning “inner rooms.” King Lune is proposing a full tour of the castle, not just the battlements.

Vocabulary

hjpastorgreg@hotmail.com (Greg Wright) — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 08:00:00 +0000

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Chapter 1

Air-raids. Bombing missions. During the early years of World War II, Germany frequently sent squadrons of bombers to lay waste to industrial and urban districts of England. The Allies, of course, sent similar missions to Germany, and did so more frequently after the Luftwaffe lost air supremacy in Europe.
Stag. Not an old bachelor, such as C.S. Lewis himself and his brother Warnie were, but an adult male deer.
Wireless. A radio. It’s unusual for an adjective to be used as a noun, but unusual devices sometimes acquire unusual names. In the first part of the twentieth century, the idea of receiving voices through the air (that is, via wireless technology) was as novel as cell phone technology is today.
Blue-bottle. A particular type of house fly.
Moth-ball. A manufactured product used to repel moths. Stored clothing (particularly woolens and furs) is susceptible to damage from moths.
Muffler. A heavy scarf. Much easier to wear and far less heavy than car parts (though probably not as warm!).

Chapter 2

Adam and Eve. The names given by the Bible to the first man and woman. In this context “Son of Adam” and “Daughter of Eve” mean “beings of human origin.”
Silenus. A satyr of Greek mythology, one with a fondness for wine. Satyrs were similar in appearance to fauns, like Tumnus, but apparently with fewer humanoid features.
Bacchus. The Roman name for the mythological god of wine. Narnia is an interesting place...
Christmas. As we see later in the story, a season of giving rather than the holiday with religious underpinnings which we practice in our world (the “Christ-Mass”).
Rather! A British expression indicating enthusiastic (and sometimes sarcastic) agreement. Similar to “Sure thing!” or “I suppose!”

Chapter 3

Sledge. Sometimes synonymous with “sled,” but indicating one of heavy construction and pulled by animals. (A sleigh is a lighter form of sledge.)

Chapter 4

Turkish Delight. A cube-shaped jelly-like candy. Think of sticky Gummi Bears covered in powdered sugar. Sort of.

Chapter 5

Queer. Simply “odd” in this context.
Sharp’s the word. An admonishment to be alert. In origin, used to alert shopkeepers to the threat of shoplifting.

Chapter 6

Camphor. The active ingredient in mothballs. It carries a distinctive odor (one that moths apparently dislike).
Bagged. Stolen. In origin, from poaching (illegal hunting), in which the meat was hidden in bags.
Crockery. Earthenware plates, bowls and so on. A step up from primitive wooden stuff, but still pretty rustic and certainly not fine china or the great plastic stuff we use today.
Chatelaine. The lady of a castle.

Chapter 7

Strain. A bit of the melody of a song.
Dripping. Grease or fat. Back when we all ate less healthily, it was quite common to leave the drippings from fried bacon, for instance, in the bottom of the pan. The liquid fat would solidify as it cooled and would liquefy again when reheated. Other food (such as fish, in this case) would then be fried in the drippings.

Chapter 8

Pedlars. British variant of “peddlers,” or traveling salesmen.
Lilith. The apocryphal and demonic first wife of Adam.
Jinn. Plural; synonomous with “genies.”

Chapter 9

Dunce’s caps. Back when teachers were allowed to insult and intimidate their students, slow learners might be made to wear a tall, cone-shaped paper hat to indicate that they were “dunces,” or stupid (dense in the head).
Cat-a-mountains. Mountain lions. Sometimes shortened to “catamounts.”

Chapter 10

Father Christmas. A European (but mostly British) version of Santa Claus.

Chapter 13

Boggle. Hobgoblin or bogie.
World Ash Tree. Yggdrasil, the tree of life (so to speak) from Norse mythology; as documented in the Younger Edda.

Chapter 14

Efreets. A branch of the Jinn.
Orknies. Possibly related to Tolkien’s “orcs,” or goblins of some type.
Wooses. Possibly related to Tolkien’s “woses,” or wild primitive woodmen.
Ettins. Giants. In Tolkien’s Middle-earth, the Ettenmoors are where the giant stone-trolls are found.

Chapter 15

Skirling. Shrill. A skirl is the sound made by Scottish bagpipes.

Chapter 17

White Stag. From Celtic mythology, a sign that the end is near.
Marry. An exclamation that has nothing to do with being married. Used a lot in Shakespeare, for instance.