The problem of the human heart
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ON FAIRY STORIESC.S.Lewis’ friend, Tolkien, wrote an essay called On Fairy Stories, where he suggested that the Christian account of the world “embraces all the essence of fairy stories.” The Bible’s story is the greatest story of all—the story of our world from beginning to end—and yet the Christian story does not make other stories redundant. No, says Tolkien, “in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small”. He suggests that other stories actually resonate for us to the extent that they remind us of the Big Story, and thus they contribute to the “the multiple enrichment of creation.”98 This is certainly true of the Narnia stories. Lewis claims that he did not set out to write stories which secretly conveyed Christian ideas to an unsuspecting reader, as if he “drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out allegories to embody them.” Rather, he recalls, “[e]verything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion.”99 Yet he became increasingly conscious that he was communicating basic Christian ideas through his stories. The stories do resonate with the Big Story, and Lewis the teacher saw the advantage of this: I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. . . . [S]upposing 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.100 Thus the ultimate test of Narnia’s success is not only how good the stories are. Lewis himself invites us to measure them by a second criterion. The real test is whether the stories manage to steal past the watchful dragons. Do they send the reader back to the Big Story of which the Narnia stories are only an echo—the Bible’s story of creation, of human rebellion and alienation, the story of God’s great renewal program, with its climax in the story of Jesus, his life, his death for sin and his resurrection—and bring that story to life in a fresh way? Do they, in this context, slay the dragons which insist that sin is interesting and creative and life-giving, and make us see and feel and taste that sin is self-destructive? Only the reader can decide. Tolkien suggests that it is in The Big Story that “legend and history have met and fused”, where “story has entered History.”101 And this, in a sense, is the point of Narnia. At the conclusion of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the children are surprised to learn that Aslan exists in their world, as well as in Narnia. “Are—are you there too, Sir?” “I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” 102 The watchful dragons have to give way before the energy of a renewed spiritual imagination. 1 C.S.Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (London: Geoffrey Bles 1950; London: HarperCollins 1980), 23. 2 Ibid. 38. 3 Ibid. 39. 4 Ibid. 42. 5 Ibid. 75. 6 Ibid. 65. 7 Lewis’ understanding here is similar to that The Gospel of John, where people are moving either towards the light or away from the light, and those who love the light will welcome Jesus’ coming, e.g. John 3:19-21. 8 Lion 80. 9 Ibid. 82. 10 Ibid. 103. 11 Genesis 3:5. 12 Luke 15:11-24. 13 Lion 105. 14 Lion 126. 15 Ibid. 126. 16 Ibid. 128 17 C.S.Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew (London: The Bodley Head 1955; Harmondsworth UK: Puffin Books, 1963), 19. 18 Ibid. 23. 19 Ibid. 22. 20 Magician, 24-25. 21 A similar character is the scientist Weston, in Out of the Silent Planet, who proclaims with similar self-centred motives, “Life is greater than any system of morality.” C.S.Lewis, The Cosmic Trilogy (London: The Bodley Head, 1938; Pan Books 1990), 121. 22 Genesis 3:5. 23 Some consciously try. “Each soul is its own God. You must never worship anyone or anything other than self. For you are God. To love self is to love God.” Shirley Maclaine, Dancing in the Light (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1986), 343. 24 Magician 94-95. 25 To be “practical” in Narnia is not particularly a compliment. Witches, for example, “are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.” Magician 71. 26 Magician 103. 27 Ibid. 109. 28 Ibid. 117. 29 Ibid. 116. 30 Ibid. 158. 31 Ibid. 171. 32 E.g. Battle 141. 33 C.S.Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawntreader (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1955; London: HarperCollins 1980), 7. 34 Ibid. 27. 35 Ibid. 10. 36 Ibid. 27. 37 Ibid. 71. 38 Ibid. 73. 39 Sin “begins with a grumbling mood . . . Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticise the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.” C.S.Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946; Harper Collins, 1977), 69. 40 In the same way, the shock of realising that the White Witch did not really care for him was the beginning of Edmund’s transformation in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 41 Voyage 74. 42 Ibid. 83. 43 Ibid. 84-87. 44 Ibid. 87 cf. Lion 45, 55; Magician 28-29. 45 Ibid. 89. 46 C.S.Lewis, Prince Caspian (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1951; Harmondsworth UK: Puffin Books, 1962 ), 110. 47 Edmund comments elsewhere, “Lucy sees him most often.” Voyage 87. 48 Prince 112. 49 Ibid. 113. 50 Ibid. 125. 51 Magician 117. 52 e.g. Deuteronomy 6:6-9. 53 C.S.Lewis The Silver Chair (London: Geoffrey Bles 1953; London: Collins 1980), 30-31. 54 Ibid. 84. 55 Mark 4:18-19. 56 Ibid. 91. 57 Ibid. 85-86. 58 Prince 125. 59 Silver 29. 60 Ibid. 145. 61 Lewis writes elsewhere about the First Servant in Shakespeare’s King Lear, who does what is right and gets killed for his pains. He only speaks eight lines in the play. Yet, says Lewis, “if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted.” “The World’s Last Night,” in Fern-seeds and Elephants (London: Fountain Books 1977), 76. 62 “Augustine, Aquinas and Dante all characterized pride as the ultimate sin, while Milton and Goethe dramatized it.” D.H. Tongue, “Pride” in The New Bible Dictionary (London: Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1962). 63 C.S.Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Geoffrey Bles 1952; London: Fontana Books 1955), 106. 64 C.S.Lewis, The Horse and his Boy (London: Geoffrey Bles 1954; Harmondsworth: Puffin Books 1965), 18. 65 It was a sign of Edmund’s redemption that he “had got past thinking about himself.” Lion 128. 66 Horse 26. 67 Ibid. 46. 68 Elsewhere Lewis comments that this is not the worst kind of pride. “It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are, in fact, still human.” Mere Christianity 110. 69 Horse 123. 70 Ibid. 128. 71 Ibid. 128. 72 Ibid. 129. 73 Ibid. 169. 74 This reference probably reflects Lewis’ disapproval of the liberal theology of his day. See Perry C. Bramlett, “Theology” in The C.S.Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia, ed. Jeffrey D. Schultz and John G. Wrest Jr. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 1998). 75 Horse 169. 76 Similar “confession” scenes occur in Lion with Peter (118), with Lucy in Prince (124-125) and in Silver with Jill (28). 77 Horse 176. 78 Here is another metaphor suggesting that sin makes us something less than human. 79 Horse 172. 80 Ibid. 188. 81 C.S.Lewis, The Last Battle (London: The Bodley Head 1956; London: Collins 1980), 17. 82 Mark 3:28-30. 83 Battle 24. It had been a sign of Narnia’s health centuries earlier when the four kings and queens “made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down.” Lion 166. 84 Ibid. 31. 85 Cf. Lion 45, 46, 55, 139. 86 Ibid., 77. Mr. Beaver is speaking of the White Witch, who wants to be human but is not. 87 Battle 35. 88 Ibid. 156. 89 Ibid. 80. 90 Ibid. 105. 91 Ibid. 146. 92 Ibid. 156. 93 Ibid. 140-141. 94 Ibid. 66. 95 The second World War ended in 1945. The Last Battle was written in 1956, when the memory of that war was still fresh, and war trials were still continuing. The verbal echo is almost certainly deliberate. 96 Battle 81. 97 Ibid. 172. 98 J.R.R.Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories”, in Tree and Leaf (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. 1964), 62-63. 99 C.S.Lewis “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said”, in Of This and Other Worlds (London: Collins Fount Paperbacks, 1984), 72. 100 Ibid. 74. 101 Tolkien 72. 102 Dawn Treader, 209. 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