What About Narnia?
While I was an undergraduate at my college, some new books began to creep into our ken. They were fairy tales. Everyone seemed to be excited. I did not pay much attention to it all, even though I was a "Lit" major. The thing was, I found myself put off my stride by the zeal with which my friends went on about these books. So I made the sad mistake of not reading them.
I think it was while I was in the Army four years later, in the late fifties, that I began to read them. I had nothing to do, a private office in a quiet chapel separated from our Battle Group, and hours of solitude.
Fancy my discomfiture when I found myself in tears — not just over the Passion of Aslan (that, of course), but over passage after passage which described Joy. At this point readers of the Narnia Chronicles will hop onto the stage here with clamorous cries of "Me, too! What about that bit when Reepicheep sets sail in his coracle for the Utter East? And what about when the whole rout of them go racing 'farther up and farther in,' led by Jewel the Unicorn, to be greeted by Reepicheep with his little red plume, courteously welcoming them in?" "And how 'bout when Digory brings the Apple of Life to his mother?" Yes, yes, yes: I shed floods of tears there in my office, hoping against hope that no recruit would pop in and see the chaplain's assistant sobbing and mopping his eyes.
What I did not then grasp was that we had been presented, not merely with some very good children's stories, worthy to take their place on the shelf with A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Graham, and Lewis Carroll, but with a Himalayan eminence in the history of literature and of sensibility.
Lewis's Achievement
When it comes to assessing the full impact of C.S. Lewis's achievement in these tales, one way of putting it would be to say that Lewis burst open the shutters leading from the claustrophobic, noisome room of Modernity, out onto the huge vista of Glory.
By this I mean that he, in effect, said to us all, stifled as we are in this mephitic air, "Look!" And he showed us things that have long since been jettisoned under the scepter of 18th- and 19th-century rationalism and materialism, not to mention 20th-century ribaldry — things that only the rare child nowadays would ever hear about in his own house (the parents, alas, were educated in and after the seventies), and most certainly not in his school (God bless the home schoolers), and, worst of all, in his parish church where CCD is more often than not punctiliously tailored to satisfy Political Correctness and all contemporary taboos.
For a start, Lewis hailed us with sheer Goodness, a quality which, if it is not jeered at in our day, is deeply suspected of being either humbug or trumpery. In this general category of Goodness we find ourselves, in Narnia, regaled with such forgotten, or derided, qualities as nobility, valor, civility, reticence, courtesy, purity, merriment, and something the Greeks called aidos, for which we have no English word. It denotes the capacity in one to be awed by what is authentically awesome (as opposed, say, to loud noises and strobe lighting and ear-splitting profanity and nudity on stage): real, hereditary majesty, for example; or excellence in the craftsmanship that has gone into a sword or a chair; or a sunset; or great Alpine peaks glittering in the sun; or the voice of a splendid operatic soprano; or, interestingly enough, homespun simplicity or charity in a good household. Not to mention holiness in a man or woman. Aidos recognizes all of these qualities, and revels in them.
The debauched mind, on the other hand (and here we come to Evil) can only react to these lovely categories with catcalls and harsh, humorless cackling. It has lost utterly the capacity to rejoice, or even to believe in, any of the above perfections. Readers of any of Lewis's books will long since have learned that Hell is the region of all that is stultified, and of ennui, imbecility, inanity, grotesquery, cruelty, violence, hatred, hauteur, stupefaction, and derision. Readers of this article may draw their own parallels, if any, between that Hell and our own epoch.
If we leave Lewis's achievement in the Narnia Chronicles merely to his having jolted us all awake with Goodness and Evil, we will, of course, have short-changed him. Pure beauty, for example, and tenderness, and rollicking good stories forsooth — all of this and much more is there. But for our purposes here, perhaps we may consider only these two enormous categories. And there is no better method than to march into the tales themselves.
Goodness Embodied
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, for example, we come upon the old Professor right at the start. Here is a man whom we glimpse only very few times in the seven books, but in whom we may observe plain Goodness at work. He is altogether at home in what Lewis elsewhere calls "the great platitudes," that is, the permanent things (T. S. Eliot's phrase) — the things which are true from the beginning and cannot be redefined or replaced. Hence the apparently pejorative word platitudes. The moral foundation stones of the universe are there, and have been articulated for us mortals since not long after the expulsion from Eden, and, since they cannot be better articulated than they were by the ancients, they are platitudes. This point of view, of course, stands at a polar extreme from the contemporary mind's dilettantism, which forever seeks something new and original and titillating. Alas.
But we are about to lose our Professor here. It is in his house that we find the four Pevensie children whom all readers of Narnia know. He has a salty, old-shoe, merry wisdom that time after time recalls the children to common sense. For example, when Lucy and Edmund return from Narnia, back through the wardrobe in his house, and bring contradicting tales as to what happened there, the Professor asks them whose word they are more inclined to accept, since they know both Lucy and Edmund intimately. We readers have already recognized Edmund as a cad and Lucy as virtually innocent, but we might not have thought of the Professor's question as a way of settling the conflict. And at the very end of the whole saga, we have him wondering, having heard the children's delight and astonishment over the blisses of Narnia, what "they" teach them in school these days, since "it's all in Plato." Platitudes, in other words, or, shall we say, Truth.
Lucy, of course, is a major character throughout. If we may light upon the single greatest thing about Lucy, it may be that she is ordinarily the first to become aware of Aslan's presence. This might seem to be a trifle; but here we have Lewis the narrator working a mighty mystery into the very texture of his tale. Lucy is a woman, and if Catholic readers will pause for only a moment, they will realize that it is a woman who is for us the very icon of such awareness. But it is not solely the Blessed Virgin in whom we find this finely tuned capacity to know that God is near. Every woman, unless she is debauched, knows in her bones and marrow a very great deal that we men spend our lives thrashing in search of. (Is this why it has been men ordinarily who have cranked out philosophy, and sailed to the ends of the map, and rummaged amongst their microscopes and telescopes, and hammered out symphonies, and tried to depict great things in their paintings? Certainly women can do all of that: but are they hag-ridden, as men are, with this perplexity that drives the men to try to find out and articulate it all? The women "know" it in their deepest being. Well — only a hunch on my part and I won't fight anyone about it; but I think Lewis shared this hunch.) Like Joanna and Susanna and Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene and the Blessed Mother herself, Lucy seems to be instantly attracted by, and to perceive, Goodness incarnate when it approaches.
Two of my all-time favorite characters in the Chronicles are Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. Very Unimportant Persons, the big busy world would call them. But veiled under their (apparently) humdrum life, we find a purity and generosity and nobility that are redolent of Goodness itself. Mr. Beaver is altogether aquiver with the expectation of Aslan's arrival. And he is eager to welcome the children since they might, against all possibility, be the "sons of Adam and daughter of Eve" whom he and his wife long for, since their advent will herald Aslan's approach. The Beavers know this from old rhymes, like Simeon and Anna who, wholly obscure, awaited the Redemption, and like all good Jews who from time immemorial also cherished that hope, seeing it in psalms and prophets.
We come upon Mrs. Beaver at her sewing machine (always a good sign), with the potatoes boiling on the stove (also good). And it is she who thinks of making sandwiches for the group as they set out for the Stone Table where, it might be, they will encounter Aslan. It may be remarked here that whenever we find ourselves in a scene of simple domesticity in any Lewis narrative we may be sure that we are in the precincts of Goodness. Such scenes are virtually an infallible test on this point. Mr. Tumnus the faun, for example: although the poor creature is in (half-hearted) service to the White Witch, we cannot believe that he is a card-carrying villain, since he lays out a lovely tea by his fireplace for Lucy. The Witch, on the other hand, can only mount a travesty of such homespun hospitality with her lethal Turkish Delight. The Beavers stand at the opposite pole from all sophistication and razzle-dazzle, which Lewis abhorred, for very good theological and moral reasons. (It may be remembered here that to sophisticate something was originally to adulterate it with impurities: "This wine has been sophisticated," a man in the 18th century might complain when he suspects that someone has added water.)
We stumble upon a major (theological?) point about Aslan in an exchange between Lucy and the Beavers. "Then he isn't safe," asks Lucy. "'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver. '. . . Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'" Most of us may never have quite articulated the matter, but upon reflection we know that we are familiar with just such a mighty figure. And, upon further reflection we may admit that these "fairy tales" are very weighty stuff morally and theologically. Lewis told me in the one visit I had with him in 1963, when I asked him, that fairy tales furnish the chance to squeak in titanic truths "by the side door," thereby catching readers unawares, when their defenses are down. Many of the same readers would heartily resist any thought of going to hear an evangelist.
Which brings up Peter, the oldest brother in the Pevensie family. Upon hearing Mr. Beaver make this remark about Aslan, he says, "I'm longing to see him." Readers will already have noted Peter's noble and courteous responses to all situations, as over against Edmund's sullenness, egocentrism, and malice. English schoolboys call a boy like Edmund a "tick."
I had some blithe notion, when I embarked on this essay, of ambling along through all seven of the Chronicles, noting this and that as we go along. But I find that I have reached 2,000 words out of the 3,000 which the editors are allowing me (most generously, I may say) and here we are still in the first volume. So let me end this section on Goodness by merely naming three others who, in my view, incarnate Goodness in arresting ways. We all love Reepicheep. We find nothing but sheer nobility and courtesy in every word and act of his, and not only this, but pure charity also — as when he visits and comforts the unhappy Eustace, who has become a dragon because he is a dragon, and who has horribly insulted Reepicheep. There is no vengefulness in our mouse.
Then there is Puddleglum, surely the most unlikely, and the gloomiest, creature we have ever run across. But he is wholly good. He doesn't like the look of things when the children agree to wander aside from Aslan's instructions; and he finally rescues the situation by a burnt sacrifice of himself — extinguishing the Green Witch's soporific fire with his bare webbed feet. And finally, Frank the London cabby, and his wife Helen, with soapsuds up her arms. Frank is no philosopher — indeed, has he had any schooling at all? But he has been square and honest with all of his customers; and he cares most tenderly for Strawberry his horse; and he loves Helen, who herself is the very model of housewifely simplicity. Because of these qualities, Frank is given to see the Creation, as Aslan sings it all into being, as awesome. (Uncle Andrew, a thoroughly wicked man, finds it irritating and boring, and falls asleep in the fetal position.)
Evil Incarnations and Redemption
But what about Evil as it appears in the Chronicles? Well, I have mentioned Edmund at least twice above. In the first scenes, we find ourselves slowly forced to the opinion that he is altogether tiresome, if not worse. He is bad-tempered, spiteful, then mendacious, and finally treacherous. Even this sequence is significant: Evil does not suddenly show up, full-blown, in the ordinary run of things. One (apparently small) thing follows upon another. Or, shall we say, grows out of another. What might be dismissed as merely childish obstreperousness turns out to be the soil in which Hell can plant its seeds. The frightening thing about Edmund is that his "childishness" prepares the way for him to grow into a Judas Iscariot figure. The good outcome of all of this is characteristic of Lewis (not to mention God): Edmund is saved and becomes a thoroughly good person. A favorite line of mine is when, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Eustace asks Edmund if he knows Aslan, Edmund remarks, "Well — he knows me." Not bad theology that.
Of course the towering figure of Evil in this first volume is the White Witch, who turns out before the end of the Chronicles to be one with the Green Witch and Jadis — all of them "incarnations," so to speak, of Lilith who shows up in Cabbalistic lore as Adam's first wife, who, wanting her own way, left Eden, to wander in wastelands for all of history, appearing at cradles to curse newborns and in households as the wicked stepmother (we all remember Disney's wicked queen whom Lewis thought was the very archetype of all wicked stepmothers) and as Keats's belle dame sans merci, and so forth. The point is, Lilith hates fruitfulness, domesticity, happy marriage, children, the lot. Readers may draw their own parallels here with very shrill voices in our own time.
Anyway, the White Witch has only a travesty (Hell can only come up with travesties of Goodness) of "hospitality" at her disposal, and offers Edmund Turkish Delight by way of luring him into her clutches. The whole episode (Edmund succumbs totally) is what the seventeenth century called an "anatomy," that is, a detailed scrutiny, of temptation. Its allure, the apparent rewards, and then the baleful fruit — it's all in Sacred Scripture, to modify the Professor's remark about Plato. The Witch also shows her Lilith-like power in so far as she cannot bear the sight of rabbits, squirrels, fauns, and other innocent creatures enjoying a picnic. She must turn them to stone with her wand. (It takes Aslan's warm breath to restore them to life and joy.) Narnia turns out to be in the same moral universe as our world is. Evil and Good are identical in the two worlds. We may not see things so luridly (rabbits turned to stone), but Evil is equally dehumanizing (for us men) here as it is in Narnia.
Lewis, by the way, has pointed out that you cannot write any story that does not draw on the moral fixities. You may applaud licentiousness or bravado or cynicism. But you cannot make them, or treachery or cowardice or pusillanimity or venality or vituperativeness attractive. Ayn Rand may have tried to do so with egoism, but who of us finds his heart warmed by this lady's tales?
With an eye on my word-quota here, let me jump to the last volume of the Chronicles, skipping, alas, Miraz and Eustace Clarence Scrubb and Nikabrik and the Green Lady and Jadis and a dozen others, and lighting upon Shift the Ape. He is well named. Everything about him represents a travesty — that is, a shift — from Goodness. His paper crown: pure rubbish. His ghastly authority: a nightmare. His delusions perpetrated on poor little Puzzle the donkey — and upon all of Narnia: horrible parodies of all that obtains in Aslan's realm. Lewis worked this out in grim fashion in That Hideous Strength, where we are dragged, until we are nearly suffocated, through the toils of Belbury whose bonhomie and "fellowship" and pretensions to being a "family," and so forth, are Hell's own botch of the true bonhomie and fellowship and family that we find in St. Anne's (or, shall we say, the Church when it is being what it should be). The upshot for Shift is that he is destroyed when he meets the god Tash whom he has served so assiduously. Need we belabor parallels here?
I have run over my quota. What about Narnia? Yes — what about it?
Dr. Thomas Howard writes from Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. He is the author of Narnia and Beyond: A Guide to the Fiction of C.S. Lewis from Ignatius Press.
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