The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
In the last couple of days, I reread what had been one of my favorite books from childhood. Sparked by the upcoming movie and the resulting excitement of those Christians who don’t feel that C.S. Lewis was an agent of Satan, I opened The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time since I was seven years old. I had read a great deal about the Christian symbolism in the Narnia series, and I wanted to find out what all the hype was about, because none of it had been apparent to me as a child.
What I found was a book chock full of heavy-handed theology and blatant misogyny. I was also horrified by some of the imagery and would no sooner allow a small child to read this book than the Old Testament. Oh, did I mention that it’s also a terribly unsatisfying story? I’d like to point out a few of the passages that caught my attention. There are spoilers, but anyone who’s read the gospels knows what’s going to happen, anyway.
Chapter one sets the stage and introduces the characters. Lucy, Susan, Peter and Edmund are four children who have been sent to live with an old professor, far from the danger of World War II air raids. While playing in the big, mysterious house, Lucy hides in a wardrobe, and finds a snow-covered forest on the other side of the coats. When she reports this to the other children, and they are unable to reproduce her experience, they tease her. Some time later, Edmund follows Lucy into Narnia and sees it for himself. However, when Lucy tells Peter and Susan that Edmund has been there, Edmund denies it. Susan and Peter fear that Lucy has lost her mind, so they go to the Professor to ask his advice.
“Logic!” said the Professor half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies, and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.”
It is obvious that she is not mad? She claims to have been to tea with a faun in a magical land behind the wardrobe. What more evidence do you need?
“But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds – all over the place, just round the corner – like that?”
“Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor
Now, I can’t know Lewis’ intentions in writing, but the Professor seems to me like a stand-in for Lewis himself. If that is the case, the utter absurdity of the arguments he makes in this section invalidates anything else he has to say.
We learn that Narnia is in the grip of the White Witch. She is a symbol of evil or Satan and is, interestingly, a descendant of Lilith, Adam’s first wife according to medieval Christian tradition. For those of you who are unaware, Lilith was replaced by Eve after insisting on being on top during sex. Since it is clearly evil for a woman not to “know her place,” she is edged out. She ends up spawning a line of demons after she hooks up with Asmodeus.
Because of the White Witch’s magic, it is always winter and never Christmas in Narnia. As Aslan (the lion symbolizing Jesus) comes nearer, things start to change. This leads to a fascinating scene in which Father Christmas (Santa) arrives in his reindeer-drawn sleigh and gives the children weapons instead of toys. Even in a fairy tale, Christians are expected to slaughter unbelievers in the name of Christ. As Christ himself said in Matthew 10:34 (NIV), “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Peter gets a sword and shield. The girls, though, receive defensive weapons only.
“Susan, Eve’s Daughter,” said Father Christmas. “These are for you,” and he handed her a bow and a quiver full of arrows and a little ivory horn. “You must use the bow only in great need,” he said, “for I do not mean you to fight in the battle.”[...]
He gave [Lucy] [...] a small dagger. [...][T]he dagger is to defend yourself at great need. For you also are not to be in the battle.”
“Why, sir?” said Lucy. “I think – I don’t know – but I think I could be brave enough.”
“That is not the point,” he said. “But battles are ugly when women fight”
Once Aslan arrives, there is nothing but war and turmoil. Edmund, who is under the spell of the White Witch, betrays his friends, but repents when he is rescued from the witch. She demands the right to punish Edmund as dictated by the laws set down by the Emperor from across the sea (god), who is Aslan’s father. Aslan makes a deal with her, agreeing to sacrifice himself on the giant stone sacrificial table, covered in arcane scripts. He is bound, teased, tortured, shaven and killed in a positively gruesome chapter for a children’s book.
At last she drew near. She stood by Aslan’s head. her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad. Then, just before she gave the blow, she stooped down and said in a quivering voice,
“And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased. But when you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hand then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair and die.”
By morning (because waiting three days would have been too transparent), Aslan comes back to life, and the two girls (the Marys?) are there to greet him. The stone table is broken (the laws of Moses?) and Aslan’s army slaughters the forces of the Witch. Peter (who was faithful) and Edmund (who was a traitor) both become kings, and the girls become queens.
I plan to read the other six books in the series, but not now. It will take some time to get the taste of this one out of my mouth. I will report on them when the time comes.
~I AM~
P.S. The winners of the Godless Lyrics Contest have been posted in the Contest Winners section. Thank you all for so many great submissions.
November 12th, 2005 at at 4:19 pm
Odd. I wasn’t aware of that. I remember really enjoying that book when I was a little kid. Most kids probably aren’t going to notice the Biblical allusions, unless they’re REALLY churchy. I think the other books in the series are a bit better though.
November 12th, 2005 at at 4:51 pm
I always liked the middle books of the series much better than the first and last… especially the one with Puddleglum the Marsh Wiggle
Even as an eight year old, I felt that the first and the last books in the series were way too full of religious imagery, and tended to say “feh” a lot of the time when reading them 
November 12th, 2005 at at 4:58 pm
I never gathered the books were all about xianity. I got the part about Aslan/Jesus/God, but I considered it more “truthful” because he talks and has gnarly powers. I never went to church and never had bible stuff recited to me, so that may be why.
The trick with reading fictional books is to NOT mistake their content for reality or truth. I read lots of fantasy books that involved supernatural beings, and they would meddle in the affairs of mortals all the time. I was still very atheist. In my mind, the characters living in the fantasy world had more proof of the existence of their gods, so to them, the belief in these gods made sense. I also found it ironic that the only place gods could ever be believed with evidence was in fictional books. Sometimes fictional books depicting deities do more to discredit existence of deities than they do to reinforce them.
November 12th, 2005 at at 5:03 pm
The White Witch was always just misunderstood. She really wasn’t a bad person. She knew what she wanted and tried really hard to get it. So much for rewarding hard work.
November 12th, 2005 at at 7:08 pm
I figure you know this but that “three possiblities” bit is a barely disguised version of the Liar, Lunatic, Lord trilemna (see Mere Christianity… or, rather, don’t.)
In response to the tendency of some people to damn Jesus with faint praise (call him a good teacher and leave it at that) Lewis came up with the following bit.
Jesus claimed to be God so he either was lying (he knew he wasn’t god but made these false claims anyway), a lunatic (he wasn’t god but thought he was) or actually the Lord. Here’s the worst part: the bit claims that if you consider Jesus a liar or a lunatic then you can’t consider him a good teacher; thus if you consider him a good teacher you have to consider him Lord!
I am sure that’s not the proper way to tell it and I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea was around before Lewis… but that’s basically it.
The huge flaw here, of course, is that people are a mix of good and bad, profound truth and lying, deep understanding and lunacy. Plus even crazy folks can steal old teachings.
November 13th, 2005 at at 1:12 am
I’ve always felt that Jesus, while not completely insane,was at least a little meshuggener. But then again, most of the great ones are.
November 13th, 2005 at at 1:57 pm
I loved The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as a kid, and still like it today. Although, I’d never noticed anything religious about it until it was pointed out to me.
Books are great in that you get out of them what you put in to them — if you want to see the Christian allegory in the book, it’s there, I suppose. Otherwise, it’s just a decent little story about some kids who find a make-believe land that’s real, and have adventures in it. I will admit to being a bit pissy with the whole “women can’t fight” bits, but as a youngster, I decided to take the “battles become ugly when women fight” as a compliment. (“Damn right they do! Don’t mess with us!” Heh.)
You said that you thought it was a “terribly unsatisfying” story — is that because of the religious bits, or some other reason? You didn’t really say.
November 13th, 2005 at at 3:25 pm
Well, I really enjoyed the book. Though the middle ones, especially The Horse And His Boy, always seemed a little better written.
It is obvious that she is not mad? She claims to have been to tea with a faun in a magical land behind the wardrobe. What more evidence do you need?
If you had read the rest of the books before posting you would know that the professor is actually the boy from The Magicians Nephew, and that the cabinet is made out of the wood of the tree grown from the golden apple plucked from a very special tree in Narnia. So the professor already knows all about Narnia, and that’s why he encourages the children to believe Lucy.
I agree their are blatant spiritual implications in the books, but I don’t think that their existence is any reason not to read the book. I certainly didn’t care about it when I was reading them at ages 6 – 10. Good Post.
November 14th, 2005 at at 8:08 pm
I loved the Narnia series as a child, and I really wish I hadn’t come back and re-read them one summer when I was much older.
For the most part I’d be inclined to agree that they’re harmless adventure, no better or worse for a child than, say, the scene in Harry Potter where the one kid barfs up slugs.
But…
Starting with The Horse and His Boy, there’s also a whole lot of anti-Arab/Muslim allusion going on, which I found disturbing.
Specifically, Lewis starts setting up the Calormenes as the enemies. The Calormenes come from the lands to the south, have dark skin, and, at least in the version I read, the artwork depicts them as Arab in their dress and architecture. And they are portrayed as a really awful culture, although I can’t remember the specifics.
Oh, and then in The Last Battle, iirc, it’s largely the Calormenes’ fault that the world ends.
Again, iirc, and it’s been quite a long time.
But if I do recall correctly, then it’s one thing for Lewis to not very subtly conceal Christian apologetics in fun fantasy stories for kids, and quite another to be putting in not-so-subtle messages about other ethnicities/religions.
November 15th, 2005 at at 3:11 pm
On NPR this morning they did a segment on the upcoming film and mentioned that some of the blatant sexism had been edited out of the film. The example they gave was the line you quoted, but instead of saying “battles are ugly when women fight”, Aslan says “battles are ugly things.”
November 16th, 2005 at at 4:27 pm
Well, as to the anti-Arab bias and sexist bias in the book, it is actually not uncommon in European literature to have them both. Toliken, for instance, is very pro-European, anti-anybody else. The whole genre tends to be a little bit too in love with the myth of chivalary. But, overall, they’re still good books, and I can let my inner feminist and civil rights activist ping up and then settle down by forgetting about it. They’re good stories.
Besides, if you can’t read anything that’s racist or sexist, you’re limiting yourself to about the last 100 years or so to books. Heck, even as an atheist, I can appreciate “Paradise Lost”.
November 17th, 2005 at at 5:22 am
Javaelemental:
“Books are great in that you get out of them what you put in to them — if you want to see the Christian allegory in the book, it’s there, I suppose.”
Aside from being far too simple a cop-out, this view just doesn’t apply to this situation. C.S. Lewis was more than just an author of children’s fantasy tales, he was a xian apologist, and still remains one of the most quoted in that field (especially since he was an “ex-agnostic”). A search through the comments to Chad’s Guest Post on this very site will result in five hits on Lewis. Josh McDowell, of Campus Crusade for Christ and extremely popular modern apologist, absolutely loves to bring up Lewis’ (in)famous “Trilemma” (aka Lord, Liar, or Lunatic).
As for misogyny and anti-Muslim sentiments, aside from being the product of its times, well, it’s a xian writing! Check the Bible and history of the xian church for even more blatant examples of such.
I remember taking a school trip to the local “Palace Theater” to see a one man play version of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which turned out to be a sermon (I remmeber being quite disturbed by this, even at about 8 years old).
November 22nd, 2005 at at 12:17 pm
Re-Reading the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis’ book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been enjoyed by millions of children all around the world, but how many people go back and re-read the books as adults? How many approach the books with a…
November 30th, 2005 at at 1:04 am
God help you all….
December 4th, 2005 at at 5:58 pm
I’m with Brandi on this one, just relax and enjoy the movie, God bless you all.