The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
It has taken me decades - literally - to finally pick up another
C.S. Lewis book and read it. In high school I read Lewis' book,
"That Hideous Strength" and completely missed Lewis' message.
One decade later I read Lewis' "Mere Christianity" and fully
understood what Lewis was saying. With The Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe, part of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series,
the gospel message is clearly made evident in an
allegorical/mystical style. Lewis used the Narnia series to
explain Christ's love for humankind to children, who are the
series' principal readers.
This first novel in a series of seven books is currently a major
motion picture now completing a successful run on theatre
screens across the U.S. I have yet to see the movie, a Disney
production, but I understand that it holds very true to Lewis'
storyline. I expect to see the movie before it leaves theatres
later this month; it will become available on DVD this April.
Back to the story! The theme of "The Lion" centers around four
children, the Pevensie siblings, who get caught up in a land of
magic. Entering "Narnia" through a wardrobe [a tall cabinet that
holds clothes] -- located in a home where they are boarding --
the children enter a land where it is always winter, but never
Christmas. Under the spell of the White Witch, Narnia is forever
in the grip of evil. The land is occupied by talking animals
[beavers, for one], spirits, goblins, sprites, but no humans.
That is until Lucy Pevensie shows up followed by her brother
Edmund and, later, Susan and Peter.
Quite obviously the White Witch a/k/a the Queen of Narnia is
most interested in humans so she resorts to all sorts of magic
and trickery to lure them in. Edmund, the most impressionable of
the siblings, is quickly captivated by the White Witch and then
sets out to betray the others.
Without giving away the storyline, the theme of Narnia clearly
reflects the captivity of this present world under Satan, but
its past and future deliverance through Jesus Christ. In the
form of a lion, Aslan, Lewis brings a savior to Narnia who
eventually releases the land from its winter grip and vanquishes
the White Witch.
For those unfamiliar with the gospel message, The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe may be hard to follow. However, Lewis
wrote the book in 1950 immediately after the horrors of Word War
II and with the Nazi air battle for London fresh in the minds of
British citizenry. Lewis may have been responding to a strong
spiritual hunger of his time when he wrote the series as
"Narnia" successfully points seekers to Aslan, much as the Bible
points readers to Jesus Christ.
I am not sure if I will read the remaining six books in this
series, but I am definitely interested in exploring several
other writings of Lewis.
C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams were
contemporaries who were a part of a group of writers and
intellectuals known as The Inklings who met during the 1930s and
1940s at a public house in Oxford. Tolkien, like Lewis, used
Christian allegory in many of his writings including, The Lord
of the Rings, another series of books that was recently released
as a major motion picture.
Clearly, the renewed interest in C.S. Lewis' works is a positive
step especially for a generation of children not familiar with
the gospel message. Disney, for their part, is interested in
developing the remaining six books of the series into individual
movies. So, expect Narniamania - as some have called it - to
continue unabated for many years to come.