The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Book Reviews
THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
1950
Review © 2005 T. M. Wagner.
Book cover art past Cliff Nielsen (top); Pauline Baynes (bottom).
Series SITE
C. S. LEWIS
The heroes are Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, four children sent from London to live with a kindly quondam relative — Professor Kirke, the grown-upwards Digory from The Magician's Nephew — in his sprawling country estate, to escape the Blitz. Equally they all explore the labyrinthine business firm, Lucy discovers a nondescript wardrobe total of musty erstwhile coats and mothballs, which she shortly discovers is really a portal into the mythical land of Narnia. Lewis's storytelling here is that of a master; he handles the journey from house to wardrobe to magical world in such a natural and off-the-gage fashion (Lucy makes her way past row afterwards improbable row of onetime coats, until she realizes they've turned into tree branches and she's in the forest of Narnia) that it'due south ten times more effective dramatically than had he fabricated a groovy fanfare of it.
In Narnia, Lucy befriends a faun named Tumnus, who warns her of the White Witch, Queen Jadis. The Witch has enshrouded the entire country in a cloak of water ice and snow so that it's "always wintertime, never Christmas," and she turns anyone who defies her into statues. He guiltily confesses he's been sent by the Witch to housebreak any human beings who enter Narnia, but he lets Lucy get back domicile. Where, not surprisingly, none of her siblings believes her story, nearly snarkily Edmund. Merely then Edmund himself manages to find his way into Narnia, where he meets and is hands seduced (mentally, that is) by the White Witch herself. Jadis fears the prophecy of four human beings, two "sons of Adam" and ii "daughters of Eve," who, once they sit upon the iv empty thrones of nearby castle Cair Paravel, will spell her downfall.
Soon enough, all four children are in Narnia, and discover Tumnus has been arrested by the Witch. Merely they presently meet up with the adorable, bickering Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (who are beavers), who tell them of the return of Aslan, the swell lion, who will bring summer to Narnia once more and vanquish the White Witch. But Edmund, still duped past the Witch's amuse (and her yummy Turkish please), slips away to warn her. The rest of the children are guided by the Beavers to Aslan'south camp, where he is preparing an regular army to face the Witch.
A recently discovered letter to a child fan confirmed that, despite claims to the reverse, Lewis always openly intended the Narnia stories to exist an allegory virtually Christ. And the story here reflects many of the themes you'll notice in Lewis's apologetics. Early on in the book, I smiled to notice something that escaped me entirely when I first read it equally a child: Lewis trots out his "lord, liar or lunatic" statement as an exercise in logic. The children confide in Professor Kirke nigh Lucy's accounts of going to Narnia, and he reasons that if a person isn't a habitual liar, or insane, then the only logical conclusion is that they must be telling the truth no affair what kind of whopper they're asking you to swallow. Lewis uses the aforementioned approach in his theological writings to prove the divinity of Jesus. Of form, "lord, liar or lunatic" as an argument is crippled past a fatal flaw, in that those aren't the but options to consider when someone presents you with an extraordinary merits (a person can innocently make a simulated claim because they're honestly ignorant or misinformed, not because they're liars or lunatics). So as an practise in logic, it's really as bad as the erstwhile "all cats dice, Socrates was a true cat" routine. Simply even if the story fails to teach immature readers sound logic, it presents them and their parents with an excellent springboard for discussion on how to evaluate ideas critically. (It's likewise interesting to note that a lot of Christians take criticized Lewis'southward use of a lion — when they think a lamb would take been more apropos — to symbolize Christ. Merely I don't run into a lamb boot ass in a major battle scene.)
Then there's the sequence involving Aslan's crucifixion (on a sacrifical altar here, not a cantankerous) and resurrection. When Jadis demands Edmund'southward life, Aslan offers himself instead, symbolically taking on the sins of human being, as information technology were. If ane were a horrible heathen similar me, ane might indicate out that a "sacrifice" that lasts only three days — let alone the affair of hours that Aslan spends dead here — isn't much of a cede at all; one might also make a strenuous moral objection to the idea of an innocent party suffering by proxy for the crimes of the guilty. Only I doubtable Christian readers don't meet it that way.
T he funny thing is, when you lot take a scene like this, remove it from the realm of theological soapbox where it is meant to exist taken seriously by adults, and plunk it downwardly into the midst of a magical children'southward fable, information technology does duty just fine as archetypal myth. Aslan'due south cede scene itself is quite moving, though, to be certain, we're meant to be more afflicted by the happy twist that immediately follows. (Just every bit nosotros're meant to ignore the implication that Aslan/Jesus knew all forth it would plough out this mode, thus muting the significance of his sacrifice even more than and making his via dolorosa earlier the upshot incongruous. But this wouldn't be the offset myth in human history to lack for consistency.) There'southward a reason that scene was what Pauline Baynes chose for her cover illustration, and not the powerful just scary scene that precedes it. It would take half a century and a guy named Mel Gibson to convince Christians everywhere that disturbing, graphic death imagery constitutes good family entertainment.
The Panthera leo, the Witch and the Wardrobe remains an exciting and even thought-provoking classic no matter what side of the theological fence you sit on. Though believers and skeptics alike can nitpick its themes and allusions to death (and the fact that y'all tin exercise this at all gives the story a literary weight simply absent from most children's literature), on the whole this is an uplifting story almost how information technology'due south adept to be a good person, and bad to be a bad person, and when bad people rise to power and threaten the world, information technology's up to the skilful folks to rally and fight for what's correct. Which is a bulletin that certainly resonated in postwar England, no uncertainty. There are some other themes hiding in the bushes — the importance of honesty, keeping promises and treating others with respect, that sort of matter — but more often than not, this is just a marvelous, timeless adventure for immature and young-at-eye alike.
Followed past The Horse and His Boy.
Source: http://www.sfreviews.net/narnia02.html
0 Response to "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Book Reviews"
Post a Comment