Review: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis

[Russ Allbery]

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
by C.S. Lewis

Illustrator: Pauline Baynes
Series:      Chronicles of Narnia #1
Publisher:   Collier Books
Copyright:   1950
Printing:    1978
ISBN:        0-02-044220-3
Format:      Mass market
Pages:       186

Although it's been more than 20 years since I last read it, I believe I
have read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe more times than any
other book. The count is certainly in double digits. As you might
guess, I also have strong opinions about it, some of which are
unorthodox, and I've been threatening to write this review for years.
It seemed a fitting choice for my 1000th review.

There is quite a lot that can and has been said about this book and
this series, and this review is already going to be much too long, so
I'm only going to say a fraction of it. I'm going to focus on my
personal reactions as someone raised a white evangelical Christian but
no longer part of that faith, and the role this book played in my
religion. I'm not going to talk much about some of its flaws,
particularly Lewis's treatment of race and gender. This is not because
I don't agree they're there, but only that I don't have much to say
that isn't covered far better in other places.

Unlike my other reviews, this one will contain major spoilers. If you
have managed to remain unspoiled for a 70-year-old novel that spawned
multiple movies and became part of the shared culture of evangelical
Christianity, and want to stay that way, I'll warn you in ALL CAPS when
it's time to go. But first, a few non-spoiler notes.

First, reading order. Most modern publications of The Chronicles of
Narnia will list The Magician's Nephew as the first book. This follows
internal chronological order and is at C.S. Lewis's request. However, I
think Lewis was wrong. You should read this series in original
publication order, starting with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
(which I'm going to abbreviate as TLtWatW like everyone else who writes
about it).

I will caveat this by saying that I have a bias towards reading books
in the order an author wrote them because I like seeing the development
of the author's view of their work, and I love books that jump back in
time and fill in background, so your experience may vary. But the
problem I see with the revised publication order is that The Magician's
Nephew explains the origins of Narnia and, thus, many of the odd
mysteries of TLtWatW that Lewis intended to be mysterious. Reading it
first damages both books, like watching a slow-motion how-to video for
a magic trick before ever seeing it performed. The reader is not primed
to care about the things The Magician's Nephew is explaining, which
makes it less interesting. And the bits of unexpected magic and mystery
in TLtWatW that give it so much charm (and which it needs, given the
thinness of the plot) are already explained away and lose appeal
because of it.

I have read this series repeatedly in both internal chronological order
and in original publication order. I have even read it in strict
chronological order, wherein one pauses halfway through the last
chapter of TLtWatW to read The Horse and His Boy before returning. I
think original publication order is the best. (The Horse and His Boy is
a side story and it doesn't matter that much where you read it as long
as you read it after TLtWatW. For this re-read, I will follow original
publication order and read it fifth.)

Second, allegory.

The common understanding of TLtWatW is that it's a Christian allegory
for children, often provoking irritated reactions from readers who
enjoyed the story on its own terms and later discovered all of the
religion beneath it. I think this view partly misunderstands how Lewis
thought about the world, and that there is another way of looking at it
is more interesting. I'm not as dogmatic about this as I used to be; if
you want to read it as an allegory, there are plenty of carefully
crafted parallels to the gospels to support that reading. But here's my
pitch for a different reading.

To C.S. Lewis, the redemption of the world through the death of Jesus
Christ is as foundational a part of reality as gravity. He spent much
of his life writing about religion and Christianity in both fiction and
non-fiction, and this was the sort of thing he constantly thought
about. If somewhere there is another group of sentient creatures,
Lewis's theology says that they must fit into that narrative in some
way. Either they would have to be unfallen and thus not need redemption
(roughly the position taken by The Space Trilogy), or they would need
their own version of redemption. So yes, there are close parallels in
Narnia to events of the Christian Bible, but I think they can be read
as speculating how Christian salvation would play out in a separate
creation with talking animals, rather than an attempt to disguise
Christianity in an allegory for children. It's a subtle difference, but
I think Narnia more an answer to "how would Christ appear in this
fantasy world?" than to "how do I get children interested in the themes
of Christianity?", although certainly both are in play.

Put more bluntly, where other people see allegory, I see the further
adventures of Jesus Christ as an anthropomorphic lion, which in my
opinion is an altogether more delightful way to read the books.

So much for the preamble; on to the book.

The Pevensie kids, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, have been evacuated
to a huge old house in the country due to the air raids (setting this
book during World War II, something that is passed over with barely a
mention and not a hint of trauma in a way that a modern book would
never do). While exploring this house, which despite the scant
description is still stuck in my mind as the canonical huge country
home, Lucy steps into a wardrobe because she wants to feel the fur of
the coats. Much to her surprise, the wardrobe appears not to have a
back, and she finds herself eventually stepping into a snow-covered
pine forest where she meets a Fawn named Mr. Tumnus by an unlikely
lamp-post.

MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW, so if you don't want to see those, here's your
cue to stop reading.

Two things surprised me when re-reading TLtWatW. The first, which I
remember surprising me every time I read it, is how far into this (very
short) book one has to go before the plot kicks into gear. It's not
until "What Happened After Dinner" more than a third in that we learn
much of substance about Narnia, and not until "The Spell Begins to
Break" halfway through the book that things start to happen. The early
chapters are concerned primarily with the unreliability of the wardrobe
portal, with a couple of early and brief excursions by Edmund and Lucy,
and with Edmund being absolutely awful to Lucy.

The second thing that surprised me is how little of what happens is
driven by the kids. The second half of TLtWatW is about the fight
between Aslan and the White Witch, but this fight was not set off by
the children and their decisions don't shape it in any significant way.
They're primarily bystanders; the few times they take action, it's
either off-camera or they're told explicitly what to do. The arguable
exception is Edmund, who provides the justification for the final
conflict, but he functions more as plot device than as a character with
much agency. When that is combined with how much of the story is also
on rails via its need to recapitulate part of the gospels (more on that
in a moment), it makes the plot feel astonishingly thin and simple.

Edmund is the one protagonist who gets to make some decisions, all of
them bad. As a kid, I hated reading these parts because Edmund is an
ass, the White Witch is obviously evil, and everyone knows not to eat
the food. Re-reading now, I have more appreciation for how Lewis shows
Edmund's slide into treachery. He starts teasing Lucy because he thinks
it's funny (even though it's not), has a moment when he realizes he was
wrong and almost apologizes, but then decides to blame his discomfort
on the victim. From that point, he is caught, with some help from the
White Witch's magic, in a spiral of doubling down on his previous
cruelty and then feeling unfairly attacked. Breaking the cycle is
beyond him because it would require admitting just how badly he behaved
and, worse, that he was wrong and his little sister was right. He
instead tries to justify himself by spreading poisonous bits of doubt,
and looks for reasons to believe the friends of the other children are
untrustworthy. It's simplistic, to be sure, but it's such a good model
of how people slide into believing conspiracy theories and joining hate
groups. The Republican Party is currently drowning in Edmunds.

That said, Lewis does one disturbing thing with Edmund that leaped out
on re-reading. Everyone in this book has a reaction when Aslan's name
is mentioned. For the other three kids, that reaction is awe or
delight. For Edmund, it's mysterious horror.

I know where Lewis is getting this from, but this is a nasty
theological trap. One of the problems that religion should confront
directly is criticism that questions the moral foundations of that
religion. If one postulates that those who have thrown in with some
version of the Devil have an instinctual revulsion for God, it's a free
intellectual dodge. Valid moral criticism can be hand-waved away as
Edmund's horrified reaction to Aslan: a sign of Edmund's guilt, rather
than a possible flaw to consider seriously. It's also, needless to say,
not the effect you would expect from a god who wants universal
salvation! But this is only an odd side note, and once Edmund is
rescued it's never mentioned again.

This brings us to Aslan himself, the Great Lion, and to the heart of
why I think this book and series are so popular. In reinterpreting
Christianity for the world of Narnia, Lewis created a far more
satisfying and relatable god than Jesus Christ, particularly for kids.

I'm not sure I can describe, for someone who didn't grow up in that
faith, how central the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus is to
evangelical Christianity. It's more than a theological principle; it's
the standard by which one's faith is judged. And it is very difficult
for a kid to mentally bootstrap themselves into a feeling of a personal
relationship with a radical preacher from 2000 years ago who spoke in
gnomic parables about subtle points of adult theology. It's hard enough
for adults with theological training to understand what that phrase is
intended to mean. For kids, you may as well tell them they have a
personal relationship with Aristotle.

But a giant, awe-inspiring lion with understanding eyes, a roar like
thunder, and a warm mane that you can bury your fingers into? A lion
who sacrifices himself for your brother, who can be comforted and who
comforts you in turn, and who makes a glorious surprise return? That's
the kind of god with which one can imagine having a personal
relationship. Aslan felt physical and embodied and present in the
imagination in a way that Jesus never did.

I am certain I was not the only Christian kid for whom Aslan was much
more viscerally real than Jesus, and who had a tendency to mentally
substitute Aslan for Jesus in most thoughts about religion.

I am getting ahead of myself a bit because this is a review of TLtWatW
and not of the whole series, and Aslan in this book is still a partly
unformed idea. He's much more mundanely present here than he is later,
more of a field general than a god, and there are some bits that are
just wrong (like him clapping his paws together). But the scenes with
Susan and Lucy, the night at the Stone Table and the rescue of the
statues afterwards, remain my absolute favorite parts of this book and
some of the best bits of the whole series. They strike just the right
balance of sadness, awe, despair, and delight.

The image of a lion also lets Lewis show joy in a relatable way. Aslan
plays, he runs, he wrestles with the kids, he thrills in the victory
over evil just as much as Susan and Lucy do, and he is clearly having
the time of his life turning people back to flesh from stone. The
combination of translation, different conventions, and historical
distance means the Bible has none of this for the modern reader, and
while people have tried to layer it on with Bible stories for kids,
none of them (and I read a lot of them) capture anything close to the
sheer joy of this story.

The trade-off Lewis makes for that immediacy is that Aslan is a
wonderful god, but TLtWatW has very little religion. Lewis can have his
characters interact with Aslan directly, which reduces the need for
abstract theology and difficult questions of how to know God's will.
But even when theology is unavoidable, this book doesn't ask for the
type of belief that Christianity demands.

For example, there is a crucifixion parallel, because in Lewis's world
view there would have to be. That means Lewis has to deal with
substitutionary atonement (the belief that Christ died for the sins of
the world), which is one of the hardest parts of Christianity to
justify. How he does this is fascinating.

The Narnian equivalent is the Deep Magic, which says that the lives of
all traitors belong to the White Witch. If she is ever denied a life,
Narnia will be destroyed by fire and water. The Witch demands Edmund's
life, which sets up Aslan to volunteer to be sacrificed in Edmund's
place. This triggers the Deeper Magic that she did not know about,
freeing Narnia from the her power.

You may have noticed the card that Lewis is palming, and to give him
credit, so do the kids, leading to this exchange when the White Witch
is still demanding Edmund:

  "Oh, Aslan!" whispered Susan in the Lion's ear, "can't we — I mean,
  you won't, will you? Can't we do something about the Deep Magic?
  Isn't there something you can work against it?"

  "Work against the Emperor's magic?" said Aslan, turning to her with
  something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that
  suggestion to him again.

The problem with substitutionary atonement is why would a supposedly
benevolent god create such a morally abhorrent rule in the first place?
And Lewis totally punts. Susan is simply not allowed to ask the
question. Lewis does try to tackle this problem elsewhere in his
apologetics for adults (without, in my opinion, much success). But here
it's just a part of the laws of this universe, which all of the
characters, including Aslan, have to work within.

That leads to another interesting point of theology, which is that if
you didn't already know about the Christian doctrine of the trinity,
you would never guess it from this book. The Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea and
Aslan are clearly separate characters, with Aslan below the Emperor in
the pantheon. This makes rules like the above work out more smoothly
than they do in Christianity because Aslan is bound by the Emperor's
rules and the Emperor is inscrutable and not present in the story. (The
Holy Spirit is Deity Not-appearing-in-this-book, but to be fair to
Lewis, that's largely true of the Bible as well.)

What all this means is that Aslan's death is presented
straightforwardly as a magic spell. It works because Aslan has the
deepest understanding of the fixed laws of the Emperor's magic, and it
looks nothing like what we normally think of as religion. Faith is not
that important in this book because Aslan is physically present, so it
doesn't require any faith for the children to believe he exists. (The
Beavers, who believed in him from prophecy without having seen him, are
another matter, but this book never talks about that.) The structure of
religion is therefore remarkably absent despite the story's Christian
parallels. All that's expected of the kids is the normal moral virtues
of loyalty and courage and opposition to cruelty.

I have read this book so many times that I've scrutinized every word,
so I have to resist the temptation to dig into every nook and cranny:
the beautiful description of spring, the weird insertion of Lilith as
Adam's first wife, how the controversial appearance of Santa Claus in
this book reveals Lewis's love of Platonic ideals... the list is
endless, and the review is already much longer than normal. But I never
get to talk about book endings in reviews, so one more indulgence.

The best thing that can be said about the ending of TLtWatW is that it
is partly redeemed by the start of Prince Caspian. Other than that, the
last chapter of this book has always been one of my least favorite
parts of The Chronicles of Narnia.

For those who haven't read it (and who by this point clearly don't mind
spoilers), the four kids are immediately and improbably crowned Kings
and Queens of Narnia. Apparently, to answer the Professor from earlier
in the book, ruling magical kingdoms is what they were teaching in
those schools? They then spend years in Narnia, never apparently giving
a second thought to their parents (you know, the ones who are caught up
in World War II, which prompted the evacuation of the kids to the
country in the first place). This, for some reason, leaves them talking
like medieval literature, which may be moderately funny if you read
their dialogue in silly voices to a five-year-old and is otherwise kind
of tedious. Finally, in a hunt for the white stag, they stumble across
the wardrobe and tumble back into their own world, where they are
children again and not a moment has passed.

I will give Lewis credit for not doing a full reset and having the kids
not remember anything, which is possibly my least favorite trope in
fiction. But this is almost as bad. If the kids returned immediately,
that would make sense. If they stayed in Narnia until they died, that
arguably would also make sense (their poor parents!). But growing up in
Narnia and then returning as if nothing happened doesn't work. Do they
remember all of their skills? How do you readjust to going to school
after you've lived a life as a medieval Queen? Do they remember any of
their friends after fifteen years in Narnia? Argh. It's a very
"adventures are over, now time for bed" sort of ending, although the
next book does try to patch some of this up.

As a single book taken on its own terms, TLtWatW is weirdly slight,
disjointed, and hits almost none of the beats that one would expect
from a children's novel. What saves it is a sense of delight and joy
that suffuses the descriptions of Narnia, even when locked in endless
winter, and Aslan. The plot is full of holes, the role of the children
in that plot makes no sense, and Santa Claus literally shows up in the
middle of the story to hand out plot devices and make an incredibly
sexist statement about war. And yet, I memorized every gift the
children received as a kid, I can still feel the coziness of the
Beaver's home while Mr. Beaver is explaining prophecy, and the night at
the Stone Table remains ten times more emotionally effective for me
than the description of the analogous event in the Bible.

And, of course, there's Aslan.

  "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?
  Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.
  He's the king, I tell you."

Aslan is not a tame lion, to use the phrase that echos through this
series. That, I think, is the key to the god that I find the most
memorable in all of fantasy literature, even in this awkward, flawed,
and decidedly strange introduction.

Followed by Prince Caspian, in which the children return to a
much-changed Narnia. Lewis has gotten most of the obligatory
cosmological beats out of the way in this book, so subsequent books can
tell more conventional stories.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Reviewed: 2021-03-01

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-02-044220-3.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)             <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>