The Chronicles of Narnia
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; The Silver Chair; The Horse and his Boy; The Magician's Nephew; The Last Battle
C. S. Lewis (HarperCollins)
7 vols; 1540 pp. Nth reading, where N is a large number

Posted 15 February 2006.

Since I was a child I have had a particular love for these books.  I read them many times when I was young, and though I have in the intervening years pulled down my favourites from time to time - notably The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew - it has been many years since I have read through the entire series.  It was wonderful to do so again.
 
Readers have sometimes complained that, as an imagined world, Narnia lacks the depth and consistency of Tolkien's Middle Earth (Tolkien himself complained about this), but that never bothered me as a child, and neither does it bother me now.  Narnia has its own virtues.  Here is a land of talking animals, dwarves, dragons, and mythological creatures; a land of unexplored seas, of magic, of kings and knights; a land which, tantalizingly, has a mysterious connection with our own world; a land ruled by a great Lion, terrible in his wrath yet mighty to save the pure in heart, who, it is intimated, lives in our world as well, though in a quite different guise. Narnia is a splendid creation.
 
The seven stories that Lewis wrote about Narnia are full of a wonderful sense of discovery and adventure, and the sheer grace of the story-telling only enhances the pleasure. But as a child and also now as an adult, the things I love most about the books are not the stories per se, but rather individual scenes:  the passage through the wardrobe, of course, and the lamppost in the woods, and the faun with the umbrella, and the river frozen so suddenly that the ice shows the ripples of waves, and the stone table - and that is just the first book.  Who can resist the wonder of The Wood Between The Worlds, the lily-strewn ocean, or the mountain beyond the world's end?  These vignettes have taken up permanent residence in my memory.

Is that imaginative power enough, though, to account for the enduring popularity of these books? What is the peculiar strength of the Narnian tales? I suppose everyone might have a different suggestion, but I think that my love for them is largely a response to the moral vision they present. Narnia is a place that demands and rewards the virtues of magnanimity, loyalty among friends, and courageous service of goodness.  It is a place where, unlike the eerily familiar Experiment House, the masculine traits of bravery and chivalry are celebrated,  where it is noble to fight to defend the good, and where no one tortures themselves with self-recriminations about the 'root causes' of Calormene aggression. It is a world of wonders, but only to those who have within them the simplicity and open spirit to see things truly. It is a world that, at a deep level, and despite the conflicts and dangers that fill the stories, is undergirded by a profound assurance of the goodness of the world and of the ultimate defeat of evil. This transcendent strength is embodied, of course, in the figure of Aslan, who glides in and out of the story like a wind that blows where it will, and we cannot tell where he comes from or where he is going, and who is therefore present - at least possibly - at every moment.

This religious sensibility in the Narnian chronicles has attracted much comment. It is often said that the stories are religious allegory, but I believe this is false. Certainly it is irresistible to associate Aslan with Christ, not only because of the dramatic scenes at the stone table in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but also because of his role in the creation of Narnia (in The Magician's Nephew), his role as judge at the apocalypse (in The Last Battle), and - so as to allay all doubt in the matter - his appearance at the world's end in the form of a lamb, on a beach, cooking a simple meal of fish for his friends (in Dawn Treader). But after this easy identification, what next?  Is the High King Peter an allegorical Pope?  Perhaps. (That choice of name, at least, is unlikely to have been an accident for the theologically über-literate Lewis).  But how shall we interpret Turkish Delight?  Or Mr. Tumnus?  Or the pool with the Midas touch?  Or the silver chair?  The closer you look at the stories, the less plausible the allegorical interpretation becomes.  For Lewis, Aslan is quite deliberately a Christ-like figure - indeed, I believe Lewis intended him to actually be Christ - but beyond that Narnia is its own world, not an obscured image of our own.

I read the books in the order in which they were originally published.  When HarperCollins bought the copyright to the stories some years ago, they re-numbered the books to reflect the Narnian chronology of the tales, and so ruined many fine moments for their readers.  It must be odd to pick up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and be introduced for the first time to Aslan when you just finished reading about him in The Magician's Nephew.  It must be disappointing to encounter that perfectly odd scene of the lamppost in the woods when you already know how it got there.  Even the mystery of the wardrobe is compromised by the new ordering.  I am a zealous advocate for reading them in the order of publication (as listed at the head of this note). 

 I said at the beginning that my favourite stories have been The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Magician's Nephew. On this traversal I have become more sensible of the merits of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair, both of which were splendid.  The Last Battle remains, I think, the weakest of the set, though the closing pages, with their breathless joy and ringing shouts of 'Further up and further in!' are a fitting end to these classic chronicles.
 

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