Narnia – the lion, the author and the last battle
Author: Anita Marshall
The Lion (‘not a tame lion’) To date, The Chronicles of Narnia have sold over 100 million copies. There was an excellent serialisation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on BBC television a few years ago, but now that the film-makers have made a brilliant start with Narnia, no doubt we can expect the other six books which make up the Chronicles to follow with much the same rapidity and success as the Harry Potter stories. Unlike Harry Potter, however, Aslan, the ‘saviour’ of Narnia, has his paws firmly planted in the Christian story. You can watch Narnia and see it as a simple tale of derring-do on the part of four children, some charming talking animals and a lion who is ‘not a tame lion’, but you get a lot more from the tale if you look deeper.
When writing about his seven children’s books, C. S. Lewis said: ‘Some people think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children, then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group to write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out "allegories" to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all. . . . At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord. It was’, he added, ‘part of the bubbling.’
In the Radio Times Lewis wrote: ‘I had little idea where the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. . . . I don’t know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there he pulled the whole story together. And soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.
’The stories had been in his mind since childhood, but were only written down when he needed something to entertain four children who had been placed with him and his brother Warnie during the evacuation of children during the bombing of London in WWII.
The author C. S. (Jack) Lewis enjoyed a settled and happy childhood in a Christian home, until the untimely death of his mother when he was 9. After that devastating blow he no longer knew what he believed. By the time he went to university he was a ‘devout’ atheist. Sure in his own ‘faith’, it came as a bit of a surprise when he discovered that most of his closest friends at Oxford were, in fact, ‘card-carrying Christians’, especially Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkein, one of the fascinating group of writers who met to read aloud and discuss one another’s articles and, in particular, stories.
Jack (as Lewis was always known) fought his corner for atheism, of course, but over time he decided it was a losing battle. His friend George Sayer dated Jack’s conversion from 1926-31! And his brother Warnie conceded, ‘There was no sudden plunge into new life but rather a slow, steady convalescence from a deep-seated spiritual illness of long standing.’
At first, however, Jack was little more than a theist (someone who believes in God alone), not realising that the vital connection between God and the joy he had sought most of his life was, in fact, Jesus Christ. Even so, it was only at the age of 33 that, in his own words, he ‘became the most reluctant convert to Christianity in the entire kingdom’. Lewis’s biographers, George Sayer and William Griffin, both agreed that in the final stage of Jack’s conversion, Tolkein played a vital role through conversations that often lasted all night.
Later on, Lewis would become one of the most prolific writers about and defender of the Christian faith. Once he knew what he believed there was no stopping him, and radio broadcasts, talks, articles and books flowed from his pen. He also became a firm favourite among the literary crowd which included Tolkein.
About his children’s stories (which most adults find unputdownable), he said that they came from ‘real though unfocused gleams of divine truth falling on human imagination’, by which he meant that he had come to realise that his best and most joyous imaginings came straight from God. It was the brief periods of sheer joy piercing like shafts of golden sunlight into some of his bleakest times which led him, albeit most reluctantly, to God, ‘the source from which those arrows of joy had been shot at me since childhood’.
C. S. Lewis died on the same day as John F. Kennedy, but I can’t help feeling that he has left a much sweeter legacy.
The Last Battle . . . also, incidentally, the name of the last of the Chronicles of Narnia, and one of the most gripping stories I have ever read! As a Christian I found the imagery immensely exciting in this final episode – the imminent demise of Narnia paralleling Earth’s decay as it is taken over by self-seeking super-powers who are slowly choking the life out of a once-beautiful world.
‘It is Narnia’s darkest hour,’ states the blurb on the back cover of the little paperback. ‘A false Aslan is . . . striking terror into every heart. King Tirian’s only hope is . . . to find the true Aslan and restore peace to the land. But a mighty battle lies ahead.’
And what a battle the last one turns out to be, ending, as it does, in the total destruction of Narnia. Yet even as the children weep for it, they discover that the Narnia they are weeping for is not the real Narnia.
According to the Bible, and in keeping with Lewis’s theme about all things being made new, there’s a very real battle coming on earth, a final battle between good and evil. Only when that last battle is won will the Earth become the New Earth.
The biblical story is a stirring one, too. And it will be good, then, to have an Aslan (or a Jesus Christ) to get us through the door into a place where ‘arrows of joy’ become ‘everlasting joy’ – the sum and total of the ‘real Narnia’.
Who wouldn’t want to be there?
If you didn’t get to see it at the cinema, find your friend with the biggest telly, and a DVD player, and rent the film! The animation is excellent and the story of sacrifice and salvation is a touching one.
Narnia Chronicles; Surprised by Joy (Collins, 1955); Letters to Children; William Griffin, C. S. Lewis, The Authentic Voice (Lion, 1988); George Sayer, Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis (Hodder, 1997).
The Lion (‘not a tame lion’)
