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C.S. Lewis Teaches Children About Today’s Democrats
“We must now go back a bit and explain what the whole scene had looked like from Uncle Andrew’s point of view. It had not made at all the same impression on him as on the Cabby and the children. For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.
Ever since the animals had first appeared, Uncle Andrew had been shrinking further and further back into the thicket. He watched them very hard of course; but he wasn’t really interested in seeing what they were doing, only in seeing whether they were going to make a rush at him. Like the Witch, he was dreadfully practical. He simply didn’t notice that Aslan was choosing one pair out of every kind of beasts. All he saw, or thought he saw, was a lot of dangerous wild animals walking vaguely about. And he kept on wondering why the other animals didn’t run away from the big Lion.
When the great moment came and the Beasts spoke, he missed the whole point; for a rather interesting reason. When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel. Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing — only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world. “Of course it can’t really have been singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
— C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, Book 1 of the Chronicles of Narnia
Chauvinist the Elder and I have been taking a class on the Chronicles of Narnia since the start of Lent through our church. It ends next week with The Last Battle (which has some terrific insights on non-Christians, especially Muslims, being judged worthy of heaven by serving the will of God, even if they don’t know it). I first read the Chronicles to Elder and Little Miss Anthrope when they were young — they’re 20 and 17 now. Lewis advocated stimulating the Christian imagination in children through fiction and it’s my opinion that his success at it was divinely inspired. But, his observations about the human condition are really for adults, and the above passage is just one example in a book chock full of them.
What is it about Uncle Andrew (and the Witch) that makes him incapable of seeing and hearing the truth? It’s his will to power. He grasps at the power of magic and he desperately wants to control those around him. This is the modern Left. It’s an ideology in opposition to the truth of the destructiveness of socialism (central planning = power) and incapable of admitting the ruthlessness of its true believers. In short, leftists can’t handle the truth and no matter how intelligent they are, this deficiency makes them stupid.
If you haven’t read the Chronicles, I recommend reading them in the order in which they were published:
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle
There is much to learn and inspire.
Published in General
Indeed. One cannot wish Truth away.
The edition we have has them in the order in which they occur with The Magician’s Nephew first. Thanks for the post, WChauv!
Yes, most do. But if you read them chronologically, it spoils the surprises in The Magician’s Nephew about the origins of the Witch, the lamppost, and the wardrobe you first read about it in TLTWandTW. Lewis actually completed writing TMN last for this reason — to pull everything together from subsequent books in the creation story of Narnia.
We have long enjoyed the Chronicles. I think that the BBC Television portrayal of them, while technically primitive compared to the modern digital graphics of the Disney movies, does a much better job of capturing the flavor of the books. It seems that no one has yet done the whole series live-action . I think the sticking point is The Horse and His Boy. Making a feature-length screenplay with so much conversation between horses and humans might be hard to pull off in a convincing manner.
I was hoping Walden Media would at least make it through Silver Chair. Doesn’t seem likely now. I think they could pull off The Horse and His Boy with the CGI available today. If Lucas can animate Jar Jar Binks… oh, wait. Bad example!
That was the Wonderworks Production, was it not?
The Silver Chair was my childhood favorite. I think my least favorite was The Horse and His Boy, to be honest I can’t remember one word of it, must not’ve made an impression on me. I need to re-read the whole series, it’s been ages.
It’s a pretty quick read as an adult, so you can supplement with Father (until recently Professor) Michael Ward’s works, The Narnia Code: C.S. Lewis and the Secrets of the Seven Heavens and Planet Narnia, and Professor Joseph Pearce’s Further Up and Further In: Understanding Narnia. There’s also a lecture series produced by Notre Dame.
The Horse and His Boy needs to be read in the context of Lewis’s conversion story. It is an outlier among the Chronicles, but these supplemental readings may have you enjoying it more. My favorite is still The Magician’s Nephew, but they’re all great.
You’re in good company, Steven Greydanus agrees.
Looking forward to reading more of his works in the near future. Buried under French Revolution works at the moment . . . Which also illustrate some of the things we are seeing now.
Most days The Last Battle is my favorite. On other days, The Magician’s Nephew and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe take precedence. The Horse and His Boy has always been my least favorite but hearing the audio version with Kenneth Branagh as narrator changed my perspective. The line from Aslan that you only know your story, not anyone else’s comes to me when I least expect it.
When I first read them (as an adult), I read them in the published order. Since then, I read them Narnia chronology. I don’t know how many times I’ve read them—I lost count.
@percival Mr. Ed is the reason I think The Horse and His Boy would be difficult to pull off convincingly. I think the conversations might come off rather clownish, but maybe with some creative thinking and technology, it would work. I would go to see it if it were ever attempted.
Posts like this are why I love Ricochet.
I must read them again. I read the books as I received them, in a random sequence as they were given as Christmas and birthday presents and my parents hadn’t read them. It doesn’t really matter.
I found The Last Battle quite disturbing. The breakdown of order in Narnia, the horrible lie of ‘Tashlan’, the refusal of the dwarves to accept that Aslan had saved them (my memory is a bit hazy here) was all so dark. And also Susan’s rejection of Narnia was sad to me. I should read it again as an adult. That and A Horse and His Boy are the only ones I never re-read.
Neglect not the science fiction trilogy…
While parts are indeed dark, when they are shouting, “Farther in and farther up!” your heart will fly with them. Grace in terms of who is welcome in Aslan’s land is a gift I cannot deny changes how I see the world.
I’m thinking the script and plot were jar jar’s problems more than the cgi…
I learned the word for it rather recently. C.S. Lewis is an inclusivist. So am I (came by it rather independently despite my love for Lewis).
Its built on the first chapters of Romans, where Paul says that God has revealed himself to all men, through creation and conscience. Some will turn and worship the creation, but others hear the call, even if they don’t know his name.
Its an interesting and controversial concept in Christian theology and rejected by most (all?) mainstream theologies, especially Catholic.
It does give hope to those we fail to reach.
Why do you say that, Stina?
Oh I take that back. I just looked it up and it appears catholicism is inclusive. I’m surprised, given the emphasis on sacramental theology.
I do want to clarify that inclusivism is not an “all roads lead to heaven” universalism.
I think too many people (including many Catholics) see the Sacraments as hoop-jumping instead of the means Jesus offers us sanctifying grace through his Church.
C.S. Lewis may have been prejudiced against Catholicism, but his stuff read very Catholic to me.
For those interested e-versions of the Narnia series can be downloaded here.
I am sure that there are many wonderful comments here, though I am late to the party. The Magician’s Nephew has always been my favorite in this series, and I actually reread it just a few months ago before buying the whole series for my niece. C. S. Lewis was planting seeds, no doubt. I’d like to think some of those that were put in me grew, as I really did not read the stories as a Christian but as a child. Lewis’s insight into other humans is pretty profound.
Was he prejudiced?
He was very Anglican. As far as protestant goes, that may be the closest to catholic we prots get.
His images of evil, particularly in the last of the trilogy, made my skin crawl.
If you read Surprised by Joy he talks about how he was warned about the evils of Papists, but J. R. R. Tolkien played a very important part in his conversion. While he did not then embrace Rome, he was not prejudiced as far as I know against Catholics after conversion, even if he had some doctrinal quibbles. Some have argued his sense of nationalism stopped him from making that leap more than anything else.
I’m sure Lewis got along fine with Catholics, but I think his Anglicanism created a hurdle he couldn’t bring himself to clear to become Catholic, even though, as I say, he seems to have had very Catholic sensibilities.
Two of Prof Lewis’ books gave me nightmares — as an adult, late to the party! That Hideous Strength (the aforementioned last of the sci-fi trilogy) and The Silver Chair. (That underground stuff… sometimes I wonder how I made it all those years as a boiler inspector…)
Something I can relate to…