Revisiting Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (or, the Unpleasant Realization That C.S. Lewis Apparently Doesn't Believe in the Oxford Comma)

Hi, everybody! This summer, I'm rereading C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and blogging about each book. For more details on the project, you can read the introductory post here.

What exactly do we want out of fairy tales?

This is an important question for a number of reasons, but most relevantly to this blog series, it's important because C. S. Lewis himself identifies the Chronicles of Narnia—or at least The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the series' first published entry—as a fairy tale. "You are already too old for fairy tales," he writes to Lucy Barfield, his goddaughter, in the dedication to TLtWatW[1], "but some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it." It's a funny, melancholy, and entirely sweet way to prologue a series that, if memory serves, is itself funny, melancholy, and sweet; moreover, it serves as the most direct statement of purpose for Lewis's ambition contained in the whole seven novels that make up the Chronicles.

So, it stands to reason that any fair assessment of TLtWatW should take into account that Lewis considered the novel first and foremost a fairy tale—not high fantasy, as this series is sometimes mistaken for (sorry, 2005 movie adaptation), or even a psychologically observant character piece, as novels are often expected to be. Nope, this is a fairy tale and a darn good one at that. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

For those who don't know, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tells the story of four siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy—who, during World War II, leave their bomb-riddled home in London for the safer countryside manor of Professor Kirk, a elderly friend of their mother's. Lucy, the youngest, discovers a wardrobe in an abandoned corner of the mansion that transports her to Narnia, a magical land ruled by the White Witch, who has (in what seems like a hell specifically crafted for my own torture) plunged the country into a cursed freeze in which it is "always winter and never Christmas." When Lucy returns via the wardrobe, none of her siblings believe her story at first, probably because the wardrobe, in typical furniturial sadism, no longer contains a passage to Narnia when Peter, Susan, and Edmund check. Eventually, however, they all make it into Narnia and, alongside some kindly (and talking) forest creatures, join the forces of Aslan, the lion-king/deity of Narnia, in fighting the White Witch, although Edmund initially aligns himself with the Witch when she gives him some really delicious Turkish Delight (a confection that is disgusting in real life, by the way). Aslan trades himself for Edmund, though, and for this, dies at the hands of the Witch—only to come back to life the next morning to kick butt and take names. He doesn't do much name-taking, actually, and it's not long before he's killed the Witch and placed Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy as kings and queens of Narnia. The end.

So we're definitely in the realm of fantasy—even, yes, fairy tales—here. This novel was published in 1950, and from what I can tell (which, of course, means: "according to Wikipedia"), the vast majority of children's novels of the time tended toward literary realism; in general, the taste-makers of the day considered fantasy to be at best frivolous and at worst harmful. So it was a pretty big deal that C. S. Lewis, who at that time was best known as a theologian and literary critic, wrote a fantasy novel for kids. It may seem counter-intuitive in an era where fantasy seems to be the default genre for most children's literature, but back in the late '40s when Lewis sat down to write this thing, the idea of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was very much against the grain of culture. And that's really cool, not only because it makes Narnia kind of countercultural (a label I assure you will not be applied to this work elsewhere—you heard it here first, folks!) but also because it means that Wardrobe is one of the most influential pieces of children's literature ever.

 C. S. Lewis: author, apologist, punk

All that is well and good. But historical significance and counter-cultural impetus mean little for anyone but history buffs if the associated work isn't any good. So, is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe any good? Well, the short answer is that it depends on what rubric you're using, but in general: oh yes. Now for the long answer.

For starters, the novel is a fantastic display of efficiency. The book barely cracks 200 pages in my edition (the 1994 HarperCollins, if anyone is curious), and that's with a generous font size and frequent illustrations. He doesn't get nearly enough credit for this, but C. S. Lewis is an extraordinary prose stylist, not in the virtuosic, experimental way of his literary contemporaries like Nabokov or Kerouac but more in line with prose traditionalists like E. B. White, where above all, the priority is to be clear, witty, and quick with your sentences and plotting. Lewis manages with dozens of words what it takes many writers hundreds to sort out. I mean, it only takes the book six pages (counting an illustration!) to get Lucy into Narnia. As another example, let's take what is perhaps the most iconic image from the Narnia series, the the lamp-post in the snowy woods as Lucy enters Narnia for the first time. Do you remember that lamp-post? Of course you do; everyone does. But do you also remember that Lewis introduces that lamp-post with just two sentences of prose? Here's all we get when Lucy first sees it: "It was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it, wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what to do next, she heard a pitter patter of feet coming toward her." Not just two sentences, but two sentences that have a lot else on their minds than just the lamp-post and still manage to make that image seem lovely.

Lewis does this constantly throughout the book, where he'll drop in this indelible image or concept or plot detail like the Stone Table or Edmund's struggles in school (or even the entire reason the kids are in the country—"because of the air-raids," is all Lewis's narrator says) and then just move on because, man, this book has places to be! Narnia is mysterious, not J. J. Abrams-style mystery where it's teasing out suspense but in a gently awestruck, thoughtful way not unlike Lucy's own reaction to the lamp-post. In the book, magic isn't belabored with too much explanation or even examination; it simply is. What this ends up meaning is that Wardrobe is a novel that is nimble without feeling airy, fun without feeling trivial, beautiful without feeling ponderous.

This is, in many ways, the primary way that TLtWatW works in the fairy tale mode. Like a lot of fairy tales, the book strives to be evocative, not rigorous. Why does Rumpelstiltskin collect first-born children? I dunno, he just does. It certainly evokes feelings about a whole lot of anxieties floating around in humanity's collective unconscious (the loss of a child; kidnapping, greed), but the story itself doesn't comment on it much. Wardrobe does similar things. Why is there a lamp-post in the woods? There just is [2]. And as far as anxieties go, there are definitely ghosts of WWII and fear of fascism in the depiction of the White Witch's totalitarian rule and brutal police enforcement (even more terrifyingly, a brutal wolf police enforcement), but these aren't connections that the story highlights. In fact, you have to dig for them. This evocation-over-explanation technique is what gives so many fairy tales their strange, non-sequitur quality, and that's in no short supply in Narnia either (who invited Santa Claus, anyway? And what on earth are the "people of the toadstools"??). As much as C. S. Lewis gets touted as a theologian and the Narnia books get labeled as theological (more on that in a second), there's a very real way in which a large part of Narnia is simply just Lewis reveling in the pleasure of imaginative fantasy, allegory be damned, and that's on full display in TLtWatW.

Now, of course, it's entirely reasonable to point out that this story is not truly a fairy tale because it is, in fact, a novel, a genre that, unlike fairy tales, does not live through oral folk tradition but must exist on the printed page in a much more precise manor. Another reason I brought up all that stuff about fairy tales at the beginning of this post is because so many of the "flaws" in TLtWatW as a novel can be explained away by approaching it as a fairy tale, a genre with a whole different set of rules and priorities. And here's where we get to what you might call the "gripes" section: this novel, while a ripping fairy tale, is not always a great novel, at least not in the Austenian/Flaubertian tradition.

To be fair, sometimes it is a great novel on those terms. At various points in the novel, Lucy and Edmund both are fantastic characters with complicated psychologies. This is especially true of Edmund. He's a royal snot (or to borrow Peter's colorful language, a "poisonous little beast"), a character type that Lewis proved to be really good at writing over the course of this series. Whenever there's a sulky, mean child in Narnia, you know that he's going to absolutely come alive on the page, and Edmund's no different. His selfish frustration with his older siblings—particularly Peter—is gloriously rendered, and we get just enough of his relationship with his family to both understand the roots of his frustration and realize his own selfishness that drives it on. As such, his psychological journey from entitled "beast" to broken wretch to wizened survivor is quite affecting. Lucy doesn't have quite the dynamism in her arc, but she's similarly given life through precise rendering of personality. I get the idea that these two characters, the awestruck believer and the sullen bully, are the two most autobiographical elements of Lewis's writing in this book, though that's just a hunch from my familiarity with his non-Narnian works.

But the rest of the characterization—the building block of most novels—is wildly inconsistent. I'm just going to be honest: Peter and Susan are terrible bores, and when you're pretending like your novel has four protagonists (as Wardrobe often seems to want to), it's a problem if fifty percent of those protagonists are dull as paste. Susan is the worst, really, alternatingly a nag and the voice of reason (and once a damsel in distress); very early in the book, Edmund accuses Susan of "trying to talk like Mother," and although I don't know Mrs. Pevensie personally, I'm inclined to agree with him. It could be interesting to see her attempt at surrogate motherhood collide up against the distinctly un-parental logic of Narnia, but nothing much ever comes of it. Peter comes off slightly better; he at least has a discernible arc wherein he starts the book bravely and becomes even braver after slaying a wolf, but even then, he's still just one police chief father away from being the third Hardy boy. The rest of the characters in the novel don't fare too well, either, being either archetypes (poor Mrs. Beaver) or weird non-entities (the Witch's dwarf). These characters are often entertaining in their simplicity, and there's something commendable in that. In fact, if we're reading this novel as a fairy tale, these characters don't need to be complex; fairy tales thrive on simplicity, and that's definitely at play here. But if we're talking about the novel's ability to make me care for them, I'm afraid it's just not there.

And here we come to the elephant (er... lion) in the room: Aslan. Look, guys, I just don't think Aslan works as a character in this novel. On a psychological level, he's aloof and opaque and fluctuates wildly in tone, none of which makes for a compelling character. On a narrative level, he doesn't quite add up either. He's king of Narnia, so how do Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy become royalty at the end? He's also clearly powerful enough to stop the Witch's evil rule at any time, so why doesn't he? Why does he wait 100 years to swoop in and save the day? The novel doesn't spend nearly enough time with him before his death either, not enough the justify the emotional stakes of his execution. And while we're on that, the whole "rising from the dead" thing is pretty much a deus ex machina explained away with a cryptic "deeper magic from before the dawn of time" hand wave, a rule we weren't privy to until it became important for justifying impossibilities. This is what we in creative writing workshops call, "Not earning your ending;" also known as: cheating.

Peter, always the ham, shows off his latest dance moves.

Now, just to be clear: I get that Aslan represents Jesus and that his resurrection is borrowing specifically from the biblical accounts and generally from a whole tradition about resurrected deities. The allegoric (or, as Lewis calls it, "supposal") nature of this story is not lost on me, and I realize that, in fact, by questioning the story like I am, I'm raising some theological questions as well. But here's the thing: even divorced from allegory, I think Aslan does work, just not as a character in a novel normally does. Aslan works as a fairy tale presence. He is evocative, not explained. When we hear "Aslan is on the move," it means nothing much specifically but it evokes, in Lewis's masterful efficiency, a feeling about the kind of entity he is. The same goes for the kids' interactions with Aslan; in a novel, his personality would be unconvincing and aloof (as I've described it before) because of the lack of precision, but in a fairy tale, we believe that lack of precision because it evokes an effect that wins us over. Aslan is a tremendously effective presence even if he is not an entirely convincing character, which is why my reaction to his death on this reading was a curious mix of sadness and unsuspended disbelief. I can out-think this novel, but I can't out-feel it.

The fact of the matter is that while I've been pretending this whole time that the fairy tale and novel elements of this book are somehow separable, they really aren't. You can't have one without the other. Without the brilliance of characterization afforded to Edmund and Lucy by the novel format, Aslan (and the story as a whole) might float away on easy-stakes fantasy. But without the fairy tale roots, there's no real impact to the images, plot, and even characters in this book. It's a fascinating and messy undertaking that C. S. Lewis has here, and I'd say that, warts and all, it's quite an accomplishment. To paraphrase one of the more famous passages from the book: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn't flawless, but it's good.

And that's it! Let me know what you think! What are your feelings about this book? Also, tune in next time when I take on this book's sequel, Prince Caspian. I know this post was a long one, and I'm not sure how many subsequent posts I can make this long. I guess we'll see.

Until next time!


1] I'm sorry, folks. Horrible as that acronym is, there's no way on God's green earth that I'm going to make it through this review if I have to type the novel's title in its entirety every time.

2] The Magician's Nephew notwithstanding, that is.