In February 2008, the British educational charity Booktrust—“dedicated to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to enjoy books”—voted The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the best children’s book of all time. Lewis’s winsome narrative may have laid the foundation for this award; many would say that Baynes’s illustrations clinched it. Perhaps in the end Lewis would have agreed. After all, he replied to Baynes’s letter of congratulation when The Last Battle won the Carnegie Medal for best children’s book of 1956 by including her in his achievement: “Is it not rather ‘our’ Medal? I’m sure the illustrations were taken into consideration as well as the text.”573
The Reading Order of the Narnia Series
Lewis originally envisaged The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a stand-alone, self-contained work—and it can still be read and appreciated as such. The other Narnia novels radiate outwards from this work, even in the case of The Magician’s Nephew, which is presented as chronologically prior to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. By allowing us to enter Narnia in the midst of its history, Lewis makes us want to know about its past, as well as its future. The Magician’s Nephew is a flashback, a way of illuminating the present by looking back to the past.
The seven works can be read in three ways: according to their date of writing, their date of publication, or the internal chronology of the events the volumes describe. These three quite different approaches point to the following reading orders:
ORDER OF WRITING
ORDER OF PUBLICATION
INTERNAL CHRONOLOGY
1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
1. The Magician’s Nephew
2. Prince Caspian
2. Prince Caspian (1951)
2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
3. The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”
3. The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” (1952)
3. The Horse and His Boy
4. The Horse and His Boy
4. The Silver Chair (1953)
4. Prince Caspian
5. The Silver Chair
5. The Horse and His Boy (1954)
5. The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”
6. The Last Battle
6. The Magician’s Nephew (1955)
6. The Silver Chair
7. The Magician’s Nephew
7. The Last Battle (1956)
7. The Last Battle
The collected edition of the Chronicles of Narnia published by HarperCollins (2005) includes this statement: “Although The Magician’s Nephew was written several years after C. S. Lewis first began The Chronicles of Narnia, he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series. HarperCollins is happy to present these books in the order in which Professor Lewis preferred.” This seemingly straightforward assertion is actually a questionable interpretation, rather than a direct statement, of Lewis’s views.574 Lewis made it clear that they could be read in any order, and was cautious about stipulating any prescribed order.
After all, Lewis’s late essay “On Criticism” emphasises the importance of establishing the chronology of composition in the interpretation of a series of works—noting, for example, some influential misreadings of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that arise on account of confusion on this matter.575 Furthermore, Lewis is adamant that the author of a book is “not necessarily the best, and is never a perfect, judge” of how it is to be read and interpreted.576
These points should be given due weight, as the chronological approach raises considerable difficulties for readers. For example, the events of The Horse and His Boy actually occur during, not after, those of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This makes the reading of the work quite problematic if strict internal chronology is used as the criterion for determining the correct order of reading.
The most significant difficulty concerns The Magician’s Nephew, the last in the series to be written, which describes the early history of Narnia. To read this work first completely destroys the literary integrity of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which emphasises the mysteriousness of Aslan. It introduces him slowly and carefully, building up a sense of expectation that is clearly based on the assumption that the readers know nothing of the name, identity, or significance of this magnificent creature. In his role as narrator within The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis declares, “None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do.”577 But anyone who has read The Magician’s Nephew already knows a lot about Aslan. The gradual disclosure of the mysteries of Narnia—one of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’s most impressive literary features—is spoiled and subverted by a prior reading of The Magician’s Nephew.
Equally important, the complex symbolic structure of the Chronicles of Narnia is best appreciated through a later reading of The Magician’s Nephew. This is most helpful when it is placed (following the order of publication) as the sixth of the seven volumes, with The Last Battle as the conclusion.
It is perfectly possible to read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings without needing to read its later prequel The Silmarillion; so it is with Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Having read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the reader naturally wants to move both forwards and backwards, exploring both what happens next and how Narnia came into being. Both options are open to readers; neither is to be imposed upon them.
Finally, there is a clear—and generally overlooked—literary clue to Lewis’s true intentions in the subtitles of three of its novels. These subtitles are generally omitted in recent printings of the works. One of these is Prince Caspian, the full title of which is Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. Its illuminating subtitle clearly suggests that this work ought to be read immediately after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Lewis provided only two of the remaining novels in the series with subtitles—the identical phrase A Story for Children. Significantly, these are The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle.
Why is this important? Lewis, who as a professional scholar of English literature was well versed in literary and rhetorical devices, uses this subtitle as an inclusio—a literary device widely used in biblical and secular literature. The inclusio allows a writer to “bracket” material to indicate that what is enclosed constitutes a single or coherent unit.578 The opening and closing of the bracket (or envelope) are indicated by the repetition of the same memorable term or phrase. Lewis uses the subtitle A Story for Children for two, and only two, works of the Chronicles of Narnia—namely, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle. This phrase, “a story for children,” is Lewis’s inclusio. The remaining five novels are thus bracketed or enfolded within these two bookends, which define the start and end of the series. The decision not to reproduce these subtitles in recent editions of the Chronicles of Narnia has obscured Lewis’s use of this literary device, and thus somewhat concealed his purpose.
Animals in Narnia
One of the most striking features of Narnia is the prominent role played in its narrative by animals. Some dismiss this as childish drivel, seeing it as a reversion to Lewis’s childhood world of Boxen, populated by dressed, speaking animals. But there is rather more to Lewis’s narrative than this.
The Chronicles of Narnia include criticisms of attitudes that were prevalent within the so-called “progressive” thought of Lewis’s age—such as its widespread acceptance of the practice of vivisection in laboratory experiments. Lewis had no hesitation in criticising fashionable ideas of the 1930s and 1940s—such as H. G. Wells’s enthusiastic advocation of eugenics and vivisection—which would today be rejected as dehumanizing and immoral. In Lewis’s 1947 essay “Vivisection,” he joined forces with the great Oxford children’s novelist of the nineteenth century, Lewis Carroll (1832–1898), in protesting the infliction of torture on animals. For Lewis, the practice of vivisection exposed an inner contradiction within Darwinian naturalism. At one and the same time, it emphasised the biologica
l proximity of humans and animals, while asserting the ultimate authority of human beings to do what they please with animals.579
Furthermore, as we discussed earlier (pages 235–237), Lewis shrewdly noted how support for eugenics and vivisection leads to some morally uncomfortable conclusions. The eugenics theories of the 1930s—which found embarrassingly wide support in socially liberal circles in western Europe at this time—involve the assumption that certain human beings are inferior to others, and that the survival of the human race thus demands that only the “best” be allowed to reproduce. The liberal elite of Europe loved this idea in the period between the two world wars. But where, Lewis wonders, does this dangerous idea take us?
Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men.580
It is easy to depict the Narnia novels as an infantile attempt to pretend that animals speak and experience emotion. Yet Lewis’s narrative mounts a deceptively subtle critique of certain Darwinian ways of understanding the place of humanity within the natural order, and offers a corrective. Lewis’s portrayal of animal characters in Narnia is partly a protest against shallow assertions of humanity’s right to do what it pleases with nature.
The rich depictions of animals in the Chronicles of Narnia are partly informed by the “bestiaries” of the Middle Ages—classic accounts of animal life which emphasised their distinct identities and roles within the created order. Each was seen as witnessing to the complex interdependency of the natural world. Lewis adds to these by portraying animals as conscious moral agents.
Where vivisectionists saw animals—such as mice—simply as fodder for laboratory experiments, lacking any inner feelings or intrinsic value, Lewis portrays them as active, conscious agents in Narnia. The most obvious example of this is Reepicheep, a mouse of nobility and virtue, who ends up teaching Eustace Scrubb about honour, courage, and loyalty. This inversion of Darwinian hierarchies does not represent a lapse into irrational sentimentality, nor is it regression to the “Dressed Animals” of Lewis’s childhood world of Boxen. For Lewis, the true mark of the primacy of humans over animals is “acknowledging duties to them which they do not acknowledge to us.”581 Noblesse oblige, as the French say. Human dignity demands that humans show respect for animals. More than that, animals can enable human beings to develop compassion and care. Lewis’s theology of creation leads him to insist that human relationships with animals can be ennobling and fulfilling—both for animals and for humans. There is, of course, one animal in Narnia that stands out above all others—the mysterious and noble figure of Aslan, whom we shall consider in greater detail in the next chapter.
Narnia as a Window on Reality
For Lewis, the narrative of Narnia has the capacity to re-enchant a disenchanted world. It helps us to imagine our world differently. This is not escapism, but is about discerning deeper levels of meaning and value in what we already know. As Lewis pointed out, the readers of such a children’s book do not “despise real woods” because they have “read of enchanted woods”; instead, their new way of seeing things “makes all real woods a little enchanted.”582
Lewis himself spoke about this process of “double seeing” at several points in his works—most notably, in concluding a lecture given at the Socratic Club in Oxford in 1945: “I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”583 We can look at the sun itself; or we can look instead at what it illuminates—thus enlarging our intellectual, moral, and aesthetic vision. We see the true, the good, and the beautiful more clearly by being given a lens that brings them into focus. They are not invented by our reading of Narnia, but they are discerned, lit up, and brought into sharper focus. And more than that, we see more, and we see farther, by looking through the right lens.
We should read Narnia as Lewis asks us to read other works of literature—as something that is to be enjoyed on the one hand, and something with the capacity to enlarge our vision of reality on the other. What Lewis wrote of The Hobbit in 1939 applies with equal force to his own Narnia books: they allow us into “a world of its own” which, once it has been encountered, “becomes indispensable.” “You cannot anticipate it before you go there, as you cannot forget it once you have gone.”584
The seven Chronicles of Narnia are often referred to (though not, it should be noted, by Lewis himself) as a religious allegory. Lewis’s early work The Pilgrim’s Regress is rightly described as a religious allegory. Each of its elements has a representational quality—in other words, they are all disguised yet specific ways of referring to something else. But within a decade, Lewis had moved away from this form of writing. It is possible to read Narnia as an allegory; however, as Lewis once noted, “the mere fact that you can allegorise the work before you is of itself no proof that it is an allegory.”585
In 1958, Lewis made an important distinction between a “supposal” and an allegory. A supposal is an invitation to try seeing things in another way, and imagine how things would work out if this were true. To understand Lewis’s meaning at this point, we need to consider the way in which he expresses this notion:
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents Despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, “What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as he actually has done in ours?” This is not allegory at all.586
Lewis thus invites his readers to enter into a world of supposals. Suppose God did decide to become incarnate in a world like Narnia. How would this work out? What would it look like? Narnia is a narrative exploration of this theological assumption. Lewis’s own explanation of how the figure of Aslan is to be interpreted makes it clear that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a supposal—the imaginative exploration of an interesting possibility. “Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.”587
In The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis describes a forest full of entrances to other worlds. One of these entrances leads to Narnia, a new world soon to be populated with sentient creatures, both animal and human. Yet Lewis is quite clear that there are worlds beyond Narnia. Narnia is, so to speak, a theological case study, capable of illuminating our own situation. It provokes thought, rather than answering questions. It demands that we work out the answers for ourselves, rather than accept them predigested. Lewis uses Narnia to show us something without really arguing for it, relying on the power of his imagery and narrative style to allow our imaginations to supplement what reason merely suggests.
Narnia and the Retelling of the Grand Narrative
It is impossible to understand the deep appeal of Narnia without appreciating the place of stories in shaping our understanding of reality, and our own place within that reality. The Chronicles of Narnia resonate strongly with the basic human intuition that our own story is part of something grander—which, once grasped, allows us to see our situation in a new and more meaningful way. A veil is lifted, a door is opened, a curtain is drawn aside—and we are enabled to enter a new realm. Our own story is now seen to be part of a much bigger story, which helps us both understand how we fit into a greater scheme of things and discover and value the difference we can make.
Like Tolkien, Lewis was deeply aware of the imaginative power of “myths”—stories that tried to make sense of who we are, where we find ourselves, what has gone wrong with things, and what can be done about it. Tolkien was able to use myth to saturate The Lord of the Rings with a mysterious “otherness,” a sense of mystery and magic which hints at a reality beyond that which human reason can fathom. Lewis realized that good and evil, danger, anguish, and joy can all be seen more
clearly when “dipped in a story.” Through their “presentational realism,” these narratives provide a way of grasping the deeper structures of our world at both the imaginative and rational levels.588
Lewis may also have come to realize the power of myth through reading G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, with its classic distinction between “imaginary” and “imaginative,” and deft analysis of how the imagination reaches beyond the limits of reason. “Every true artist,” Chesterton argues, feels “that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil.”589
Steeped in the riches of medieval and Renaissance literature, and with a deep understanding of how myths work, Lewis managed to find the right voice and the right words to get past the suspicions of a “fully waking imagination of a logical mind.”590 Somehow, Narnia seems to provide a deeper, brighter, more wonderful, and more meaningful world than anything we know from our own experience. Though its readers all know that the Chronicles of Narnia are fictional, the books nevertheless seem far more true to life than many supposedly factual works.591
Lewis always recognised that the same story might be a “myth” to one reader, and not to another.592 The stories of Narnia seem childish nonsense to some. But to others, they are utterly transformative. For the latter group, these evocative stories affirm that it is possible for the weak and foolish to have a noble calling in a dark world; that our deepest intuitions point us to the true meaning of things; that there is indeed something beautiful and wonderful at the heart of the universe, and that this may be found, embraced, and adored.
C. S. Lewis – A Life Page 29
