Through the Wardrobe Page 19
So the next time someone tells you to put down that book, remind him that, as Lewis points out, it’s our own humanity we rediscover, our tendency toward “good and evil, our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys.” Stories are mirrors that show us our soul.
If the Chronicles of Narnia convince us of nothing else, they should convince us that we do not have to give up what we love. “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten,” Lewis reminds his readers in On Stories, “which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty.” Books worth savoring at any age are those that open doorways into other worlds, each of which is more real and more beautiful than the last, and such books open doorways within us as well.
“When I became a man,” Lewis writes, also in On Stories, “I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” If we stay true to ourselves, then we’ll be rewarded. In Prince Caspian Lucy wakes her siblings and insists they walk upstream. Even when Susan threatens to stay behind, Lucy doesn’t cave in. She does what her heart tells her and trusts her vision of Aslan and her love of Narnia to lead her in the right direction.
Once the others follow her, their trust in Lucy allows them to see Aslan too. When Susan finally sees him, she tells Lucy, “I really believed it was him. . . . I mean deep down inside. Or I could have if I’d let myself.”
This gives us hope that the woman Susan has “grown into” by The Last Battle will eventually pull herself out of the gap. She’ll set aside the mask of herself she’s made to fit in the mirror of others’ expectations and remember that true maturity comes from pursuing what we love best. In going always further up and further in.
In truth, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Susan or a Lucy, as long as, when you look in the mirror, you remember Ramandu’s admonishment. What we are made of does not limit what we are. We’re the ones who can do anything, save the world or break it.
The choice is ours.
Zu Vincent’s novel The Lucky Place is published by Front Street Press and was an Honor Book for the 2009 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the author of the 2008 Scholastic biography Catherine the Great: Empress of Russia. Her work has also appeared in The ALAN Review, Yoga Journal, and Harper’s, among others.
Kiara Koenig currently serves as adjunct English faculty and teaches creative writing and literature. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing as well as an MA in Literature from CSU, Chico. Her essays and poems have appeared in several journals and magazines, including Watershed, The News & Review, and Peralta Press.
1 Narniaquiz.com, a division of Narniaweb.com.
2 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I reject the new ordering system, whether or not it was the one Lewis supposedly favored. I think he was wrong, because The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is an excellent intro to the world of Narnia, whereas The Magician’s Nephew is a dark and dour book that gives away much of the plotline for all the books that come before it. I’m pleased to see that the movie makers have thus far agreed with me.
3 A designation that then and now makes me shiver. This, of course, is the knighthood that Aslan bestowed upon Edmund on the field of battle in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Order of the Table? Talk about the potential for an endless guilt trip!
4 But far from the last. Curse you, The Last Battle!
5 Another argument (and honestly, I could make dozens) for why the books work better in the original order. If read in this order, the last time we see Susan before learning she is “no longer a friend of Narnia” since she’s gotten too into fashions and dating and etc. (cf. The Last Battle) is here, where she is swooning and talking about courtiers and being timid and cowardly and in general not at all acting like the great archer she was in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Prince Caspian. If read in the so-called “preferred” order, Susan whines here, gets it together in Prince Caspian , then disappears for two books before being shuffled right out of the series and denied entry into Narnian heaven. Reading The Horse and His Boy closer to The Last Battle does more to prepare us for this (as well as to prepare us for the heavy Calormene influence in the final installment).
6 He did come close, however, for Shasta had a moment or two back in the palace in Calormen where he half-hoped that Corin would never reappear and that he would be able to take the prince’s place permanently.
7 I have always found it curious that my favorite Chronicles of Narnia—The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Horse and His Boy—are the ones with the fewest scenes set in Narnia proper. I believe only The Silver Chair has any Narnia-set scenes at all. But it’s not placement that makes something Narnian, as Edmund points out in the first chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It’s a certain quality of spirit, which is why those in our world can be drawn to Narnia in the first place. They simply are Narnian, through and through.
8 Needless to say, this is another reason the books should be read in the original order.
9 Over the next decade, re-reading the series became a yearly event.
10 By contrast, every time I re-read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I am confronted anew with how awful Edmund was in that novel.
11 I admit that this last one is a bit of a cheat. After all, Tolkien and Lewis were friends, colleagues, and writing companions. Little wonder that their work would contain echoes of the other’s.
12 Boromir, like another of Edmund’s siblings, is in possession of a magical horn that can call for help when needed.
13 I feel the need to point out that, in The Last Battle, the Dwarfs call their Calormene captors “Darkies,” which is a term that has historically been used to refer—negatively—to people with dark skin. But as Gregg Easterbrook has pointed out, the group of Dwarfs who use the epithets in that book are the vilest creatures in the history of Narnia. Even a very young reader would understand not to respect anything they say, so when they call the Calormenes racist names, it says more about the Dwarfs than it does about the Calormenes.
THIS PUBLICATION HAS NOT BEEN PREPARED, APPROVED, OR LICENSED BY ANY ENTITY THAT CREATED OR PRODUCED THE WELL-KNOWN BOOK SERIES THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, OR THE WELL-KNOWN CHRONICLES OF NARNIA FILMS.
First BenBella Books edition 2010
“Just Another Crazed Narnia Fan” Copyright © 2008 by Deb Caletti
“Forgotten Castles and Magical Creatures in Hiding” Copyright © 2008 by Brent Hartinger
“King Edmund the Cute” Copyright © 2008 by Diana Peterfreund
“Reading the Right Books” Copyright © 2008 by Ned Vizzini
“Missing the Point” Copyright © 2008 by Sarah Beth Durst
“Eating in Narnia” Copyright © 2008 by Diane Duane
“Serious Action Figures” Copyright © 2008 by Kelly McClymer
“In the Kingdom of Calormen” Copyright © 2008 by Lisa Papademetriou
“Going to Narnia” Copyright © 2008 by Sophie Masson
“Prince to King” Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Gatland
“Waking Up the Trees” Copyright © 2008 by Susan Juby
“It’s the Little Things” Copyright © 2008 by Susan Vaught
“Being Good for Narnia and the Lion” Copyright © 2008 by O.R. Melling
“Mind the Gap” Copyright © 2008 by Zu Vincent and Kiara Koenig
“The War of Light and Darkness” and Additional Materials Copyright © 2008 by Herbie Brennan
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