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C.S.
Lewis's Narnia Chronicles
George
S. Yandell
It was just after boys' choir rehearsal
at Church of the Ascension, Knoxville, when I
was 7 or 8 years old. My friend Mark Potts and I were waiting for our mothers
to
pick us up. We were going through the kids' section of the church library looking
for
something to read when Mark grabbed a book from the shelf, held it up and said,
"This is the best book I ever read! You have to check it out." (Mark
was a grade
ahead of me, so his wisdom seemed much more vast than mine- I believed anything
he said.) I replied, "Mark, it doesn't have many pictures- I'm not sure
I can read it."
He urged me on, and thus opened the world of Narnia to me through The Lion,
the
Witch and the Wardrobe.
What
is it about C. S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles that captures
readers of all ages?
Simply, they are intriguing stories, told with Lewis's boyish enthusiasm, and
rich with
the deep background of ancient myth and legend from many cultures. But more
than that, the stories so invite the reader into the characters, the dramas,
that it's as if we have passed through the wardrobe with Lucy, then Edmund,
Peter and Susan.
In
his group biography of C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles
Williams and their
friends, The Inklings, Humphrey Carpenter writes: "One day in the
early spring of
1949, Lewis began to read aloud to Tolkien the beginning of a new book he was
writing: 'Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund
and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were
sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids…' Lewis
said that the immediate cause of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was
a series of
nightmares that he had been having about lions. On a deeper level the story
was, he explained, an answer to the question, 'What might Christ be 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?"
Carpenter
continues, "The fact that the Narnia stories are
'about' Christianity does
not mean they are allegorical. The characters exist in their own right and
are not
merely allegorical types. The events of the Christian story are reimagined
rather
than allegorized, and the reader is left free, as he never is with allegory,
to interpret in whatever fashion he pleases. The stories are therefore entirely
in keeping with Lewis's and Tolkein's shared belief that Story (especially
of the mythical type) can in itself give nourishment
without imparting abstract
meaning."
Surprisingly,
however, Tolkein discounted the Narnia series, saying
he 'disliked it intensely.' Tolkein said The Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe was written too hastily, and that Lewis didn't go into creating
the background of Narnia with proper seriousness. "Tolkein thought the
story borrowed so indiscriminately from other mythologies and narratives (fauns,
nymphs, Father Christmas, talking animals) that for Tolkein, the suspension
of disbelief, the entering into a secondary world, was simply impossible. It
just wouldn't do, and he turned his back on it." Thankfully,
Lewis finished spinning his tales, even in the face of
his good friend's
criticism. Since the publication of The Last Battle in the mid-60's,
generations of
young people and adults have entered Narnia and been nourished by the timeless
story Lewis told. I suspect he has predisposed many seekers to find Christ
in this world.
Calvary
Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
THE CHRONICLE
November 10, 2002
Volume 47, No. 38
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