Through the Wardrobe

by Herbie Brennan

  And, too, you wonder why. Why have these books with these characters hit us with such force? When a book generally stays on a shelf for no more than three or four months, why have these particular books continued to weave themselves so permanently and powerfully into our lives and hearts?

  I understand that for many the answer to that question involves the elements of the books that are their controversial backbone—the Christian parallels. Or, as the headline in an article in the Sunday Times succinctly put it, “The Narnia Lion Really Is Jesus.” Reading the books as a child, though, I was clueless to this aspect of them, and it was only when I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as an adult that I went, “Hmm. This reminds me of . . . Oh.” Critics of the book’s message will say that this cluelessness doesn’t impair Lewis from achieving his goal—unwitting readers will still suck up that message same as hidden phrases in record album lyrics or buried images in advertising. Proponents of the books’ message will also say that this cluelessness doesn’t impair Lewis from achieving his goal. Religious educators use the books outright to nudge children toward their own objectives.

  For me, though, and I think for many, the real, lasting appeal of the books is far simpler and more pure than the tangled motivations of religious or secular belief. The reasons for their timelessness are more straightforward and rare than religious fervor, though some would say worthy, too, of adulation—great storytelling, beautiful language. Like all good books, the magic is in the word choice, the rhythms; in the story, in the setting, in the characters. Less “The Lion Is Really Jesus” and more “The Lion Is So Magnificent, You Too Would Give Anything to Ride on His Back.” The characters speak to our painful and victorious experiences of childhood in safe ways: the White Witch is that cruel teacher at the blackboard, who gives homework over winter break; maybe even a parent whose slap of a hand can sound like that whip. Edmund Pevensie and Eustace Scrubb—they’re the bad boys who teased you about your braces or who stepped on the back of your shoe to make you trip. Tumnus, who didn’t get it right at first, but tried again and did it better—he’s you, and so are Peter and Susan, the brave and kind and solid boy or girl you try to be when you raise your hand politely and stand in line without causing trouble. It’s that moment in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy returns home and sees the characters in her dream world in her real life—the scarecrow is the farm hand, the witch is Dorothy’s wicked neighbor. We understand the characters of Narnia—as children, especially, we understand them—their struggles over bad things, the struggle to be heard. The need to believe in one all-powerful being, who will finally arrive and set things right.

  And story. Good versus evil, what larger story than that? A saga that’s close to our hearts at any age. We know that need, we live that need, to triumph over things bigger than ourselves, whether it be a raging father or a bad windstorm, a friend who you told your secrets to and who betrayed you, or the time you, too, felt like you’d been turned to stone. When we read the Chronicles of Narnia, we are masters over all those things and bigger things still. We are masters over Dwarfs and Dryads and spells and even death. We carry swords and are brave.

  And we do it in a magical setting. There are no mini-marts here, or traffic jams. No loud mall music or parking lots littered with cigarette stubs. No toxic waste dumps or hulking Costco buildings with soy sauce bottles bigger than your head. No sounds of clanging shopping carts or sirens, or the thumping bass from a jacked-up truck. Here, in Narnia, the land is lush and fanciful. There are patches of warm sunlight and cool green thickets and wide mossy glades. There is an Arthurian stone table, and a castle with a beautiful name, Cair Paravel. There are the Wild Lands of the North and the Great Forest. It is “always winter and never Christmas” and then snow turns to slush and the green tips of flowers poke through the once-solid mass of white.

  But finally, there is language. To me, the true origins of the power of Narnia can be found here—in the tender word choice and lulling rhythms of these works.

  This, from when Lucy enters the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.

  And this, in the same book, when Lucy and Susan are riding Aslan:Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the bits and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or grey or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind.

  Simple words. Snow under feet. Noiseless padding of great paws. Words with imagery both gentle and sturdy, fanciful and yet everyday. Here, I believe, is where the enduring essence and the real magic lie. In these simple, simple words, these potent pictures of sensory detail, these delicate and sparse but impossibly rich sentences. Evocative words, dreamy even. And yet solid and tangible. The word choice is Hemingway-esque: physical, solid, present, yet somehow wistful and suggestive. Add magic and childhood, and suddenly you’re a step beyond the enduring devotion of Hemingway fans into the crazy, boundless territory of Sir Peter desktop statues and Cair Paravel welcome mats. The enchantment is easy to understand, I think. The words we all know, laced with what we can only imagine.

  My Narnia love will be one of those lasting pieces of me, I realize. The characters in my books often love Narnia as I do, and the idea of walking through a wardrobe and feeling your presence there so strongly that you see your own breath is an image I often share with other writers about the writing process itself. My love for the books stays as pure and simple as the language that created them.

  And although I will pass on the Narnia fleece throw, the Aslan pocket watch, and the Lucy’s Vial pewter necklace, and will forego the annual C. S. Lewis Conference and forum discussions on Narnia and faith—Lisa Miller, from Mr. Deebach’s class at Ben Franklin Elementary? If you’re out there somewhere? I’d still like that book back.

  Deb Caletti is a National Book Award Finalist whose books are published and translated worldwide. In addition to other distinguished recognition, Deb has also been a PEN USA Literary Award finalist, and has received the Washington State Book Award. Her novels include The Queen of Everything; Honey, Baby, Sweetheart; The Nature of Jade; and The Secret Life of Prince Charming, among others. Her seventh book with Simon & Schuster, Stay, will be released in 2011. Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Productions (Hard Candy, Far From Heaven) and Foundation Features (Capote, Stone of Destiny) have also partnered to develop Deb’s novels into a film series titled Nine Mile Falls. She lives with her family in Seattle.

  Sometimes the most important things are hidden in plain sight—under your nose, or under your feet. Brent Hartinger thinks that’s the most important message C. S. Lewis hid in Narnia. Hartinger explains how he found magic—real magic—in his own life by listening to that message . . . and how you can do the same.

  Forgotten Castles and Magical Creatures in Hiding

  On Seeing Hidden Things in Prince Caspian

  BRENT HARTINGER

  A wild forest grew across the street from the house in the suburbs where I grew up. Technically, it was merely a “holding basin”—a patch of land that city engineers had set aside from development to hold back the floodwaters that occasionally swelled up from the little creek that ran through the neighborhood. But it was dense and untamed; much of it was swampland, which made it inaccessible to all but those with a strong sense of adventure, not to mention hip-boots.

  As a boy, my friends and I spent almost every waking hour in that forest, and slowly but surely it surrendered its secrets: a broken well, a decaying shack left by homesteaders, part of an abandoned railroad track said to have been laid over an old Indian trail. Once, while walking through de
nse thicket in the fall, my friends and I noticed that many of the trees were suddenly sporting big red apples, crisp and delicious. Oh! we realized. Orchard Street got its name because it ran along an actual orchard!

  All this in an area not even a square mile in size.

  I can’t help think about that little wood whenever I re-read Prince Caspian. Upon first inspection, the forest in which Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy find themselves after being drawn to Narnia from the English train station is dense and impenetrable, too. Even after fighting their way out of a thicket of thorns and nettles, they’re somewhere completely unfamiliar.

  At first they wonder, is it even Narnia? “It might be anywhere,” says Peter.

  But then they begin exploring the area, and slowly but surely, this new place—an island, it seems—gives up its secrets. First they too find an orchard, overgrown amid the brambles.

  “Then this was once an inhabited island,” Peter concludes.

  Next they find an old stone wall, and a stone arch—ruins that were once a castle.

  “Ages ago, by the looks of it,” says Edmund.

  In other words, they’ve found a forgotten castle, and a surprisingly familiar one at that. “How it all comes back!” Lucy says, remembering their own castle from their previous visit to Narnia, when they ruled as kings and queens. “We could pretend we were in Cair Paravel now.”

  But then they find a chess piece they recognize, and Peter comes to a sudden realization: the ruins of this forgotten castle are, in fact, the ruins of Cair Paravel. They’ve returned to Narnia after all, but in a different time period, hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of years in the future.

  The secret of this forest is revealed at last. It starts out, upon their arrival, being “so thick and tangled that they could hardly see into it at all.” But then that which is hidden is revealed, and they learn they are in the most familiar place there is: home.

  Prince Caspian is a novel of hidden things. Unlike in the other books in the Narnia series, castles and magic are not immediately evident. For the first five (of fifteen) chapters, there are no Fauns with parasols or beautiful Witches with enchanted Turkish Delight. Not only do the Narnian animals not talk, they don’t even seem to exist: in the island forest where Peter and the others find themselves, “nothing in it moved—not a bird, not even an insect.” Even the ghosts of these Black Woods turn out to have been fabricated by the Telmarines to keep people away.

  Indeed, for both the Pevensies and for Prince Caspian himself, the Narnia of the early Prince Caspian chapters appears, at least at first blush, to be a lot like the “real” world: nondescript and ordinary—perhaps even more so than the real “real” world of England at the beginning of The Magician’s Nephew, which at least includes humming magic teleportation rings in its first chapter.

  But eventually hidden things are revealed in Prince Caspian, just as they were in that little forest of my suburban childhood: brambles become ruins that become castles, even familiar ones. There are extraordinary things in the Narnia of Prince Caspian—they’re just not so obvious. They’re only available to those who take the time to go exploring, and those who are willing to set preconceptions aside and really look.

  And then there’s the magic.

  In The Magician’s Nephew, we learn of Narnia’s beginning, and the fact that it is literally founded by magic; Aslan’s magic permeates the land down to its very soil, which even has the power, at least at first, to grow lampposts and toffee trees. While Narnian magic fades somewhat in the “real” world of England, a bite of a Narnian apple is still enough to cure the deadliest of diseases.

  In Prince Caspian we learn that, for the first (and only) time in Narnian history, the forces of non-magic—the forces of the ordinary—have invaded and conquered Narnia. Miraz has become “Lord Protector,” protecting the occupiers of the land not from further invasions, but from the truth about the country’s mystical past. In all the years of Narnia’s existence, Miraz is the only one to succeed in subverting the land’s essentially magical nature. In The Horse and His Boy, we learn that Calormen fear Narnian magic, but even they fail in their one disastrous invasion attempt. And while the White Witch might be Narnia’s most persistent foe, even she never destroys or suppresses its magical underpinnings; she merely wants to replace its good magic with her own evil stuff—hers is a magical eternal winter, after all.

  But by the time Caspian is born, Narnia seems to be a land devoid of magic. That said, Prince Caspian hears tales of “Old Narnia” from Nurse and desperately wants to believe:He dreamed of Dwarfs and Dryads every night and tried very hard to make the dogs and cats in the castle talk to him. But the dogs only wagged their tails and the cats only purred.

  Miraz, of course, forbids all discussion of magic—even any “thinking” of it. And for breaching the protocol with Caspian, Nurse is summarily dismissed. But the essential nature of anything cannot be suppressed forever, and it’s not long before Caspian’s new tutor, Doctor Cornelius, hints at the truth to Nurse’s stories. Eventually, Doctor Cornelius tells Caspian all—but only at the top of a tall, locked tower in the dead of night.

  “All you have heard about Old Narnia is true,” Doctor Cornelius says.

  But the question on Caspian’s lips is: might the magical creatures of Old Narnia still be out there somewhere in hiding?

  “I don’t know—I don’t know,” said the Doctor with a deep sigh.

  “Sometimes I am afraid there can’t be. I have been looking for traces of them all my life. Sometimes I have thought I heard a Dwarf-drum in the mountains. Sometimes at night in the woods, I thought I had a glimpse of Fauns and Satyrs dancing a long way off; but when I came to the place, there was never anything there.”

  For me, these images are the most indelible in the whole book, and possibly in the entire Narnia series; they’re definitely the most relevant to my own life. Fading Dwarf-drums and dancing Fauns and Satyrs glimpsed from a distance but gone without a trace when an attempt is made to confirm their existence? In a few sentences, C. S. Lewis perfectly captured what is so tantalizing about hidden and forgotten things, especially magical ones: the fact that what we can’t see might be so much more spectacular than what we can, that what we’ve forgotten might be far better than what still is.

  Let’s face it: the ordinary world can be pretty crappy, both in the aftermath of World War II, when Lewis was writing the Chronicles of Narnia, and now, in our era of corporate and religious terrorism, not to mention global warming. In Prince Caspian , Lewis got right to the heart of our human desire for more than this, for a hope in something better. It’s not for nothing that we humans—some of us, anyway—are always heading off across unexplored oceans and empty expanses of space, or at least gathering around televisions and hurrying to bookstores and movie theaters in order to experience the latest transformative story like that of the Chronicles of Narnia.

  And yet, these images of Doctor Cornelius’s fruitless searches also include the deep wariness with which most of us approach the search for that which is hidden: the very real fear of disappointment. I at least remember all too well my disillusionment when I learned that Santa wasn’t “real,” that I’d been lied to all along, seemingly for the amusement of adults. I can still recall the sting of my reluctant adolescent realization that I couldn’t play Jedi mind tricks or lift objects with the power of the Force. And I’ll never forget my weary acceptance of the fact that the Patterson Bigfoot film was faked and that there simply aren’t enough fish in Loch Ness to sustain a breeding population of anything resembling a monster.

  I for one have definitely experienced Doctor Cornelius’s deep sigh of disappointment.

  I guess it was all just in my imagination.

  In short, the danger in searching for hidden things is that we risk not finding them.

  Of course, magical creatures do exist in Prince Caspian’s Narnia, in hiding. In chapter six, entitled “The People Who Lived in Hiding,” Caspian finally meets them firsthand:
the Dwarfs, the Three Bulgy Bears, Glenstorm the Centaur, Reepicheep the Mouse, and all the rest.

  Better still, he has proof he isn’t imaging things:When Caspian woke the next morning, he could hardly believe it that it had all been a dream; but the grass was covered with little cloven hoof marks.

  Suddenly it’s Doctor Cornelius’s endless searching but with a different ending: the Dwarfs have beat their drums, and the Fauns have danced, but this time they’ve left behind footprints—telltale signs of their existence! The People Who Lived in Hiding have come into the open at last. At this point, the war between Mirez and Old Narnia is inevitable; after all, the world of the ordinary and the world of magic cannot coexist.

  Like Doctor Cornelius, I’ve spent a lot of my life looking for hidden things. But even as a kid, I wasn’t content merely with forgotten castles—the old train tracks and abandoned orchards of that forest near my house. After reading books like the Chronicles of Narnia, I wanted magic.

  I did find plenty of creatures in hiding. That forest was literally teeming with wildlife. There were foxes and deer and bats and raccoons in the trees, snakes and frogs and turtles and ducks in the swamp, eels and crawdads and trout and salmon in the stream.

  The adults in my neighborhood ignored all this or, like Miraz, seemed actively hostile to the idea of wildlife hiding in their midst. In the 1970s there was barely a concept of organic gardening or polluted run-off, at least in my hometown. I remember walking once at night along a row of houses that lined an area of swamp. Almost every one of them had a “bug-zapper” out back—a humming machine that attracted insects with its light, then zapped them with electricity when they got too close. The night was filled with little snaps and pops as these machines electrocuted insects by the thousands. Did they honestly think they could build a house on a swamp, then somehow drain it of its insects?