Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #7: The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”

The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” gave new depth to the world of Narnia. When I read it to my five- and six-year-old sons, we felt like part of the crew, searching for the end of the world right along with them. As we sailed further and further into the deep unknown, I kept asking my sons, “Should we keep going?”

Their answer was always a definitive, “Yes!”

With C.S. Lewis as our captain, I knew we were heading somewhere special. While my sons were dying to know what the end of the world would be like, I was happily absorbed in the “sights” along the way and kept questioning them about the nature of the journey itself. I’ll share some of our discussion highlights in the reflection that follows my summary of the story.  

THE STORY

The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” begins about a year in our time after the adventure in Prince Caspian, and we find Edmund and Lucy staying with their cousin, Eustace Scrubb, son of Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold. Lucy and Edmund are not particularly happy about this. Susan got to travel to America with their parents because “she was the pretty one,” and Peter was studying for a big exam with help from Professor Kirke. Edmund and Lucy don’t feel merely left out; they feel stuck. Eustace is painfully irritating and constantly trying to get them into trouble. The reasons for his sour temperament are many, but they mostly have to do with a progressive upbringing that has indoctrinated him in “all the wrong books.”

Just as Edmund and Lucy are enjoying a little time alone talking about Narnia, Eustace breaks in on them and starts making fun of them in a superior sort of way that he hardly deserves. Though he knows all sorts of information, it is readily obvious he doesn’t know much of anything actually worth knowing. In the midst of their quarrel, the three children get sucked into a painting of a ship that is hanging on the wall. Lucy and Edmund are thrilled because they immediately realize Narnia magic has hold of them, but Eustace is terrified.

They find themselves struggling to swim in a great ocean beside the very ship they had seen in the picture. With a little help from the crew, they climb on board and recognize Prince Caspian. He has embarked on an expedition to the end of the world where he hopes to find Aslan’s Country. Along the way, he hopes to recover seven lords, once loyal to his father, who had set off on a similar adventure during the false reign of Caspian’s evil Uncle Miraz.

Eustace, in utter disbelief, acts extremely ungrateful to crew for saving him and begins an incessant rant about wanting to go to the English consulate. That, of course, is impossible, so he settles into a cabin below deck and sulks for days and days.

And so begins a story that is more like a series of quests than the other Chronicles. We’ll take them each in order, though it makes for a longer summary than some of the others in this blog series.  

The Dawn Treader’s first stop in on the Lone Islands, an archipelago Edmund and Lucy had traveled to during their reign in Narnia and that had been under Narnia’s domain since the days of the White Witch. Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and a danger-loving, talking mouse named Reepicheep decide to paddle a boat to shore ahead of the Dawn Treader and disembark on the far side of the main port. They end up being taken prisoners by a slave trader named Pug. Luckily, a kind man named Lord Bern, who turns out to be one of the seven lords whom Caspian had set out in search of, facilitates their release. From there, Caspian storms the palace and sets things right, leaving Lord Bern to remain as his vassal in charge of the Lone Islands.

They continue Eastward into the unknown for the next several days, and the story begins to focus on Eustace. More bitter than ever about his predicament, he refuses to leave his cabin and journals about his miseries, albeit from a very shallow perspective. When they finally sight land, he wants to get away from everyone in order to avoid helping—the ship needs to be repaired and the supplies replenished. Eustace ends up taking a nap far from the crew and wakes up in the presence of a dragon. Luckily, the dragon dies before his very eyes. But a storm hits, and he seeks shelter in the dragon’s cave. He is amazed to find it full of treasure and puts on a golden bracelet, which had belonged to another of the seven lords—Lord Octesian. He drifts back to sleep only to awaken as a dragon himself.

His miserable existence has gotten that much worse, but he manages to find the crew and convey in his dragon way that he is Eustace. In his new form, Eustace begins to see the world differently and even makes friends with Reepicheep, whom he had previously deplored. Aslan eventually peels off all Eustace’s dragon skin to reveal his human form once more. The crew leaves the island, now dubbed Dragon Island, and presumes the dead dragon was in fact Lord Octesian.

After narrowly escaping a sea serpent, their next stop is on another unchartered island. Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Reepicheep set off by themselves to explore it and discover Narnian armor by a water bank. They rightly guess it was one of the seven lords, but they have no idea at first what could have happened to him. Next, they discover a life-size statue of a human made of gold at the bottom of a pool. When they try to fish it out, they realize that the water itself can turn things into gold. The statue must have been a person.

No sooner do they realize how dangerous the water is, than they also realize how valuable it is. Caspian and Edmund fight over who has the right to the pool, but then Aslan appears and they come to their senses. Reepicheep aptly names the island Deathwater, and the crew leaves with all haste.

On the next island, they encounter invisible creatures. According to their Chief Voice, a terrible magician has made them ugly, and, since they couldn’t stand the sight of themselves, they found another of his spells and make themselves invisible. The creatures no longer want to be invisible but are now too scared to seek out the magic book because they have not seen the magician in all that time. They worry he is also invisible and could sneak up on them at any minute.

The Chief Voice threatens to kill Caspian’s crew if Lucy doesn’t find the spell for them. She accepts the task and, after a strange dinner with the invisible creatures, makes her way through the magician’s house and into his study. She finds the magic book and becomes absorbed with several spells. She nearly recites one that would make her the most beautiful woman in the world—even more beautiful than Susan—but a small picture of Aslan suddenly appears in the book. His image helps her overcome that temptation and most of the others, and she eventually finds the one to make things visible again. When she does, she sees Aslan in the room with her. He was there all along, but He, too, had been invisible.

Next, she meets the magician, who turns out to be a kind man in the service of Aslan. They look upon the once invisible creatures and see that they are funny looking monopods. Lucy does not think they are ugly at all! Happy at last, the creatures, which are called Dufflepuds, bid Caspian’s crew a fond farewell.

Their voyage takes them next to the Dark Island, which haunts the crew with their worst nightmares. They stay only long enough to rescue a man who had been stranded on the island and terrorized by its darkness for years upon years. His name is Lord Rhoop, and he is another of the seven lords. Sadly, he is but a shell of his former self.

The next stop is an island on which they find an exquisite banquet set before three sleeping men, whom Caspian determines to be the last of the seven lords. Their names are Lords Revilian, Argoz, and Mavramorn. A beautiful maiden appears and explains that the three men had arrived there seven years prior and gotten into a fight about whether to continue their voyage or return home. One of them grabbed a knife, which was the very Knife of Stone the White Witch had once used to kill Aslan, and thus the three men fell asleep.

After the maiden tells this story, her father, a retired star named Ramandu who bears the shape of a human, tells Caspian’s crew that the only way to wake the sleepers is for someone to offer his life in their stead by going to the End of the World and never coming back. Reepicheek is quick to accept this adventure, and Caspian arranges to have Lord Rhoop rest in a peaceful slumber beside his former comrades and so find healing from his nightmares.

The ship travels further East, and the world around them changes. The Sun grows bigger and brighter, and they are able to see far into the distance. The water also becomes clearer, and Reepicheek discovers that it tastes delicious. The crew begins drinking it to sustain them. It has a magical property that fills them so completely they neither thirst nor hunger for anything else. Eventually, the ship is unable to go farther because the ocean is covered with flowers like lilies.

Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Reepicheek form a smaller party and continue first by boat and eventually on foot. They finally come to the “end” which is marked by a wall of water. There, they must bid farewell to Reepicheek, and they watch him paddle up the wall of water and out of sight. The brave mouse has a smile on his face and knows that he has arrived in Aslan’s Country at last.

Moments later, they see a Lamb and join Him in a simple meal. Then, the Lamb turns into a Lion, and they recognize Him as Aslan. Aslan explains that He has many forms, and He appeared to them as a Lamb just then so they might better recognize Him in their own world, to which they must now return. Aslan tells Lucy and Edmund that they will not be able to return to Narnia again. Like Peter and Susan, they have grown too old. But He comforts them with the knowledge that He will still be with them and lead them into His country. He opens a door in the sky, and Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace walk through and find themselves back in the bedroom from which they had originally departed.

Caspian returns to his crew, marries Ramandu’s daughter, and lives out his days as King. As we’ll see in the next story in The Chronicles of Narnia, his adventures are not quite done.

REFLECTION

C.S. Lewis used lots of spatial imagery in The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” to reveal the infinite nature of Aslan, which is to say God. After I pointed out the imagery to my sons the first few times, they started recognizing it on their own and trying to explain it to me. Though they are little, Lewis’s beautiful images made it relatively simple for them to understand that Aslan’s ways are further and deeper and higher than ours.

Distance

The first motif, distance, was fairly easy to visualize as the “Dawn Treader” traveled farther and farther away from Narnia into the unknown. (The map at the beginning of our edition of the book was especially helpful.) As an adult who had read the story before, I still found myself feeling a little nervous every time the ship would shove off from an island. Like the crew, my sons and I continually wondered how much farther it would take to reach the end of the world. After some particularly difficult adventures along their voyage, we questioned if they had not already gone far enough. Prince Caspian was particularly sensitive to this feeling among his crew and offered them points of return. But thanks to his leadership and the inspiring valor of Reepicheep, they refused to stop short of their destination.

Behind this motif of distance is both the reality of God’s infinite nature and our calling to pursue it without end. This brings us to another question: Did Prince Caspian and his crew reach the end of the world?

The answer, though simple in literal terms is more complex figuratively. Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, Prince Caspian, and Reepicheep did reach the end of Narnia, but as we know from reading The Magician’s Nephew, Narnia is one world among many. Moreover, as we’ll learn from reading The Last Battle, Narnia is only a reflection of Aslan’s Country, which is a world without limits, like Heaven. So in that sense, none of them—not even Reepicheep—reach the end of the True World. Instead, they are merely continuing their journey further and further toward (or into, in the case of Reepeicheep) Aslan’s Country.

Depth

The second motif is depth. It captured our imagination most in relation to Eustace’s dragon-days. As we know, he was brought up so poorly that he knew nothing of dragons, let alone their very existence. That is a little ridiculous on face value, but it is meant to be symbolic.

Since dragons symbolize evil, what Eustace really knows nothing about is evil. Literally, his ignorance of dragons is what lets him get “caught” by one. But figuratively, his ignorance of evil is what makes him so rotten all the time. He had always been like a dragon on the inside, so his physical transformation was merely the final expression of his true character. Luckily, it was also his chance to discover just how real evil is and how it had crept into his very being.

That’s where Aslan comes in. He alone was capable of peeling away all the layers of badness that had built up on Eustace because He alone could see into the depth of Eustace’s heart. Aslan purified Eustace by restoring him to his innermost self, the boy he was made to be at his birth.

Height

Our final motif of height centers on Reepicheep, who reportedly was one of C.S. Lewis’s favorite characters. Small in stature, he is nonetheless larger than life. He was the bravest and most adventurous of the crew. While everyone else was scared to be left behind at the end of the world, he readily volunteered, knowing it to be his destiny.

In his final moments, we saw him paddling up a wall of water that marked the outermost limit of the Narnian world. Not only was that an awesome image for my sons and me to visualize, but it also lifted our thoughts toward the resurrection of the body. Reepicheep literally went up to Aslan’s Country, showing that his steadfast loyalty to the Lion, most especially in the face of danger, was worth it. Better still, he went up with a smile, making himself a model for the small crew who stood by as witnesses. All of them—even Eustace—want to follow after Reepicheep because his destiny is so spectacular.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Reading The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” was an incredible adventure in itself. It allowed my sons and me to contemplate the Eternal in a way that inspired wonder and awe without the worry and fear that might otherwise accompany it.

Likewise, C.S. Lewis affirmed yet again that God will always be there to help us through the trials of the world and lead us to Heaven if we accept Him as our Captain. With this beautiful understanding in mind, we eagerly looked forward to starting his next book, The Silver Chair.

(Here is another of my six-year-old son’s sentence diagrams, which I instructed him through during our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)
Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #6: Prince Caspian

Prince Caspian was an exciting story to read with my five- and six-year-old sons. It brought back the Pevensie children, featured Aslan prominently, and introduced lots of wonderful new characters. We read this one over only a few bedtimes and talked about all sorts of motifs like Time, Change, and Mortality. It was great fun, but it also got a little heavy at times—even more so than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I’ll explain why after I summarize the story.

THE STORY

Prince Caspian begins with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie standing on a platform waiting for a train that will take them back to school for the Fall semester. Suddenly, a strange magic takes hold of them and whisks them back into Narnia. Only they don’t know it’s Narnia at first.

The land is so changed with time, they don’t recognize it. Even their fair castle of Cair Paravel has fallen to ruins. All that is left of it are a few crumbling walls and a treasure room that somehow remained intact. When they discover Peter’s sword and Lucy’s vial of healing potion, among other items from their once glorious reign, they realize they are back in Narnia but that some hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years have passed.

They set out to solve the great mystery of Narnia’s transformation and happen upon soldiers in the act of drowning a dwarf. Susan shoots at the soldiers with her bow, causing them to flee, and the children rescue the dwarf. His name is Trumpkin. The children introduce themselves as the High King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy, but Trumpkin does not believe them, not least because the Golden Age of their reign is so long past. Nevertheless, Trumpkin explains that Narnia has never been the same since their royal family left because it was soon invaded by the Telmarines. They have controlled Narnia all these years, making life bitter for the “Old Narnians” like himself and sending them into hiding.

Now, however, they have risen up under the leadership of Caspian, an orphaned Telmarine prince whose right to the throne was subverted by his evil uncle, the false King Miraz. Happily, Caspian wants to bring back the Golden Age of Narnia complete with the liberties it entailed. A decisive battle is now underway. In a final act of desperation, they had blown Susan’s magic horn: legend held that it would bring help.

The Pevensie children are, of course, that help, but Trumpkin finds that too incredible to be true. They’re just children, after all, and they should be dead all these years later! Susan attempts to prove her royal credentials by challenging Trumpkin to an archery shootout. Dwarfs are well-known for being excellent archers, so Trumpkin is caught much off guard (and feels quite embarrassed) when Susan beats him. Though he accepts their help and begins to believe they really are the royal family of old, he refuses to believe in Aslan. At best, the Lion was a hero from the past, but it is just as likely that He only ever existed in the imagination of the people.    

They set off for Prince Caspian’s camp, which is located at the Stone Table now called Aslan’s How. Edmund and Peter steer them along a course they believe to be a short-cut, but the terrain is so changed that they find themselves twisting and turning in unexpected ways. Luckily, Lucy spots Aslan and realizes He wants to lead them along a different route. The others look but see nothing and dismiss Lucy’s sighting as a wishful vision. With Peter and Edmund still in command, the party continues along its original course and eventually has to double-back because they run right into Telmarine forces.   

Soon after Lucy again sees Aslan. Though she is still the only one, Edmund takes her side and convinces the others to go along with her. The way seems impossible, but it actually offers them just the entry point they need to reach Prince Caspian’s camp. Edmund eventually sees Aslan with his own eyes, followed by Peter, and Susan last of all. Susan later admits that she hadn’t really wanted to see Aslan at first, and we know that something has changed in her. Nevertheless, Aslan speaks kindly to her and all the children. Trumpkin alone is still unable to see Aslan, but he follows Peter’s orders because he now fully believes in him as the High King.

Next, the girls set off with Aslan to gather reinforcements. Meanwhile, the boys follow Trumpkin into camp headquarters to present themselves to Prince Caspian, but they stop short when they realize the prince is in the midst of a contentious war council. They listen from a distance and learn that another dwarf named Nikibrik has enlisted the help of a witch and a werewolf. Nikibrik’s plan is to call on the White Witch to defeat King Miraz. Caspian is not persuaded. For him, there can be no true victory if it is gained with evil. A fight thus ensues, and Peter, Edmund, and Trumpkin quickly join forces with the prince. When it’s all over, Nikibrik, the hag, and the werewolf are dead.

After some friendly introductions, Peter suggests challenging King Miraz to a sword fight in order to settle the war. Two of King Miraz’s men, who secretly desire power themselves, goad King Miraz into accepting the challenge despite the fact that victory is otherwise nearly assured for their side. He and Peter face off in a close sword fight with Narnians and Telmarines gathered around. One of the treasonous advisors kills his own king in a moment of confusion, and a full-fledged battle ensues from there. Thankfully, Aslan, Susan, and Lucy return just in time with reinforcements and win the day for Prince Caspian.

In the aftermath of the war, Aslan places a door frame on the field and offers the Telmarine people a chance to leave Narnia by walking through it. He explains that their people were not originally from Narnia or even Telmar but had accidentally found their way in from Earth through a magical passageway, one that no longer exists. The door frame will take them back to start a new life, if they so desire. Most of the Temarines do not trust Aslan, but one brave soldier steps forward and accepts Aslan’s offer. For doing so, Aslan proclaims him king in the new land to which they travel. The Telmarine king walks through the door frame and vanishes, setting an example that most others follow.

Prince Caspian is made King of Narnia, and the Pevensie children must say farewell and go back to the train station. Peter and Susan, as it turns out, must say goodbye forever. Aslan has told them they are too old to come back to Narnia. We are left to assume that Edmund and Lucy still have more adventures to follow, which do indeed play out in the next story.

REFLECTION

In Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis forced my sons and me to think about the nature of Time. That’s not something a little child often thinks about beyond marking holidays and birthdays. Of course, they get excited about “being bigger,” but it takes a special sort of sensitivity to realize that it is also related to getting older and changing and ultimately moving toward death. I don’t shy away from talking about death with my sons, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a tough topic.

One of them beams when we talk about Heaven. The other gets teary-eyed.

They had the same sort of reaction when we read about the near death and renewal of Narnia. The changes that it had undergone were sad and mysterious and exciting all at the same time. Then we had the change in the children themselves to think about. Peter, Susan, and Edmund couldn’t even see Aslan at first! What a mess everything seemed. But what a beautiful teaching moment it was for me as a parent.

I used the story to explain to them that while the physical things of the world will die away, the spiritual things will not. We saw this most readily in the structure of Cair Paravel, which I used as a metaphor for the Pevensie children themselves.  

Cair Paravel

Cair Paravel stands as the symbol of Narnia, both with regard to its worldly power and its spirituality as an Aslan-centered state. Since it is in ruins when Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy return to Narnia, we see just how low the kingdom had fallen. “Narnia” as the place and ideal it had been during its Golden Age is bankrupt; belief in Aslan is nearly extinguished.

Yet, despite having been completely abandoned, the treasure room of Cair Paravel remains intact. “How?” my sons and I wondered. “Why didn’t someone steal it?”

Of course there could be any number of hypothetical answers to this question, but it seems to me that the treasure room remains because it represents the very heart of Narnia, almost like a soul. Just as God marks His children with the waters of Baptism and claims them for Himself, the treasure in Cair Paravel is a sign of Aslan’s indelible mark on Narnia. Even if someone had wanted to steal it, it would have been impossible.

The Pevensies

Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy could claim the treasure, however, because it was theirs all along. With their prized swords and such in hand, they set out next to reclaim Narnia. The only problem is: all but Lucy have forgotten what the treasure means. It’s more than a testimony of their kingship and queenship. It’s even more than a sign of their duty to save Narnia. It’s first and foremost a sign of their duty to serve Aslan.

Lucy alone remembers this, and that’s why she is the only one to see Aslan when He first arrives. He wants to help them, but He can only do so if they cooperate with His will. Peter and Edmund have their own ideas about how to get to Aslan’s How, and Susan doesn’t seem all that committed to any particular direction.

When they do finally see Aslan one by one, they realize they hadn’t exactly wanted to see Him. We don’t know the specific reasons for this, but we can infer that something has changed in their lives over the last year in London. Maybe they feel too old to believe in Aslan. Maybe they’ve acted in ways that Aslan would not approve of. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. In any event, they had let the “Cair Paravel” of their lives begin to crumble.

Thankfully, Aslan had preserved His mark on the children just as he had preserved the treasure room of the castle. With help from Lucy, the older Pevensie children’s souls rekindle, and they remember their duty to serve Aslan. Only by putting that duty first are they able to save Narnia in the end.

What’s more, they realize Aslan is their only defense against the destructible hand of Time. Their own mortality, though not fully challenged until the final book in The Chronicles of Narnia, is very much at stake in this one. If they are ever going to gain eternal life, they must follow the Lion.

FINAL THOUGHTS

When I finished reading Prince Caspian to my sons, I paused to reflect on why it felt a little heavier than the other books, even than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I realized it was because my sons saw themselves as the Pevensies. Young though they are, they had somewhat taken it for granted that Aslan could defeat the White Witch just like Christ could defeat Sin and Death. Yes, Aslan’s sacrifice on the Stone Table was scary and powerful to read about, but they knew Aslan would be okay, not least because I could tell them that with certainty.

We couldn’t, however, take anything for granted when it came to the children. We knew every decision they made was of consequence to the success of their spiritual mission, and that kept the pages turning faster than ever.

It was also a little sad for my sons to learn that Peter and Susan would not go back to Narnia. Since I had read all of The Chronicles, I was able to assure them that Peter’s adventures would continue, but in a different way—a way consistent with the treasure that is Heaven. But for Susan, I had to start bracing them for a tough storyline, one I’ll talk about more in the final post of this series. I’ll save most of those thoughts for now, but suffice it to say, the implications of choosing to follow Aslan (or not) were very much on our minds as we prepared for the next book in the series.

(Here is another of my six-year-old son’s sentence diagrams, which I instructed him through during our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)
Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #5: The Horse and His Boy

After reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with my five- and six-year-old sons, I wasn’t sure how The Horse and His Boy would measure up in their eyes. I seemed to recall it not being quite as good as the others, but I kept my thoughts to myself and enthusiastically announced the next title before bed.  

“His boy?” laughed my six-year-old.

“Yeah,” asked my five-year-old curiously, “does the horse own the boy?”

To be honest, I hadn’t given the title much thought, and I didn’t remember the story well enough to answer their question. So I simply said, “Let’s find out,” and started reading. As we flipped from page to page, we realized the answer was much more complicated than a straight “yes” or “no” and found ourselves talking about things like freedom and the dignity of the human person (not to mention the dignity of the Narnian talking animal). It was great fun for all of us!

I’ll share some of our discussion highlights in the reflection that follows the story summary. 

THE STORY

The Horse and His Boy is set during the reign of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie, otherwise known as the Golden Ages of Narnia. As such, it actually goes back in time to just before the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and tells us some of what it was like for the Pevensies as grown-ups ruling there. But the story really belongs to a little boy named Shasta who eventually chances upon the acquaintance of the royal family.

Long before that happens, we meet him in the distant Kingdom of Calormen, living with a poor fisherman named Arsheesh. Shasta lives a happy enough life, but he senses that Arsheesh is not really his father. The two look nothing alike, and there is hardly any tenderness between them.

One night, a powerful Carolmene Lord known as a Tarkaan stays at Arsheesh’s hut. Shasta eavesdrops and hears the two men negotiating the sale of himself. Although Shasta is sad that Arsheesh is willing to sell him, he is somewhat unaffected. He is already too displaced in life to have much concern about his future, so he walks to the stable to take care of his chores.

To his astonishment, the Tarkaan’s horse starts talking to him and implores him to join forces and escape to the free lands of the North. The horse, whose name is Bree, explains that he is a Narnian talking horse, kidnapped by Calormene traders when he was but a colt. Ever since, he has pretended to be a non-talking or “dumb” horse. Long has he desired to find a way back home but has never had the chance of acquiring a rider, without which he would surely be caught by another Calormene. By the fair-skinned looks of Shasta, Bree suspects that he was also brought to Calormen by some unfortunate chance. With Bree really in command, Shasta takes the reigns, and they make a great escape through the night.

Along the way, they encounter another horse and rider. They try to evade the pair, but a lion drives them together. The lion eventually leaves them, and Shasta and Bree discover that the other rider is a girl named Aravis. She is the daughter of a Tarkaan and is fleeing from an arranged marriage. Her horse, Hwin, also happens to be a talking horse. They, too, are seeking freedom beyond the borders of Calormen. Though Bree and Hwin are happy to join up, Shasta and Aravis only begrudgingly accept one another’s companionship.

Their journey continues smoothly enough until they come to the great Calormene city of Tashbaan, through which they must pass. They pretend to be servants escorting their masters’ horses, but things go wrong when they run into a royal entourage from Narnia who mistakes Shasta for their ward, Prince Corin of Archenland. Unable to resist their authority, Shasta pretends to be Prince Corin and leaves his companions.

The Narnians end up being none other than Queen Susan, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy (Peter the High King is not with them because he is fighting giants in the North of his own kingdom.) They have journeyed to Calormen to give Queen Susan a chance to consider a marriage proposal from Prince Rabadash. She has decided to decline his hand, but doing so is not as simple as they had thought. It turns out the prince so desires her hand that he is ready to use it as a pretext for war. Correctly suspecting Prince Rabadash’s intentions, the Narnian royals devise a plan to sneak away.

After Shasta learns all of this, he meets the real Prince of Archenland and quickly explains himself. The two boys, who indeed look like twins, become instant friends but quickly bid farewell as Shasta must get back to Bree, Aravis, and Hwin. He goes to a previously determined meet-up point just outside the northern gate of the city, the Tombs, and waits a long, lonely night. His only companion is a black panther who seems to be protecting him from danger.

Meanwhile, Aravis gets caught up with a friend named Lasaraleen who thinks she is there on a holiday. Aravis ultimately confides in her friend and gains her help leaving the city with Hwin and Bree. Their plan involves sneaking through the Tiscroc’s palace. In the process, the girls hide in a room and overhear the Tiscroc himself convening a secret meeting with his son, Prince Rabadash, and his Chief Vizier, Ahoshta Tarkaan, who also happens to be the person Aravis was promised to in marriage.

From her hiding place, Aravis learns two important things. The first is that Prince Rabadash is planning an attack on Archenland and Narnia by way of the desert. The second is that she could never have loved the groveling fool of an advisor. Still intent on her escape, she sneaks out after the meeting is over, joins Hwin and Bree, and finds Shasta at the Tombs. Reunited, they are still not at ease because now they must warn Archenland and Narnia of the impending attack.

They ride fast, but not fast enough. Prince Rabadash’s forces are close behind, but then things get even worse. A lion suddenly breaks upon them in hot pursuit and claws at Aravis. Shasta turns to help her and has to jump off Bree because the horse is too scared to slow down in any way. With Shasta’s help, Aravis and Hwin fend off the lion and make it safely into a hermitage where Bree is already waiting.

Shasta is the only one with the energy left to warn the Northern kingdoms, and the hermit, who seems to know everything happening in the world around him, tells Shasta to continue on foot as fast as he can. He runs his heart out and happily comes upon King Lune of Archenland, who is gathered in the woods with a hunting party. When the king hears the warning, he sets off at once to defend his country. Shasta is given a horse to ride, but he is unable to do so since he had never really “ridden” Bree. He gets left behind in the mad rush and ends up clumsily riding along in a fog.

From seemingly nowhere, a voice speaks to him and asks Shasta his troubles. The boy pours out his heart, lamenting the bad luck of his life. When the fog lifts, Shasta sees the voice belongs to a lion, and it’s not just any lion. It’s the Lion. Aslan explains that He has been with Shasta all his life, providing for him beyond what nature had in mind.

Aslan had saved his life as an infant, ensuring he was found by Arsheesh and was taken care of. Aslan had chased him and Bree, steering them on the right path to join forces with Aravis and Hwin. Aslan had protected him at the Tombs, though in the form of a panther. Aslan had chased him across the final stretch of the desert, drawing out the strength and speed they didn’t know they had. And now Aslan was leading him through the woods to Narnia where he would be able to get reinforcements to defend Archenland. Although Aslan leaves Shasta when the Sun comes up, Shasta knows that Aslan will always be looking out for him.

Shasta, ill-equipped to get word of the attack to Queen Susan, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy on his own, gets the help of several talking animals who turn up seemingly out of nowhere. The royal family assembles their army and swiftly marches out to meet the enemy. Shasta sees Prince Corin, and they secretly join in the fighting. Narnia and Archenland defeat Calormen and take Prince Rabadash prisoner. King Lune wants to show him mercy, but Prince Rabadash is too proud to accept it. Then Aslan appears again and turns the haughty prince into a donkey. The only way for Prince Rabadash to be turned back into a human is for him to make a public display of humility before the Calormene god, Tash, which he will end up doing at some distant time in the future. Never again will he try to attack the Northern kingdoms of Archenland and Narnia

Amidst this great victory, Shasta learns that he is Prince Corin’s twin, older by twenty minutes. As the firstborn, he is the next in line to be king, which is good news to Prince Corin who didn’t want the job. Shasta, who now goes by his birth name Cor, eventually marries Aravis. As for Bree and Hwin, they live happily ever after as the free, talking horses they were born to be.

REFLECTION

The Horse and His Boy reveals that freedom is a birthright. As I explained to my sons, however, that birthright is often stripped from us for any number of reasons.

In Shasta’s case, his freedom was “stolen” because of an unfortunate boating accident. He should have grown up as the true-born heir to the throne of Archenland; instead, he was raised more like a slave in a foreign land. Aravis had a better start in that she was given all the social privileges denied Shasta, but her actual freedom was little better than his. The dictates of her parents, particularly with regard to her arranged marriage, kept Aravis from enjoying the kind of freedom she wanted. Our two talking horses, Bree and Hwin, were cruelly kid-napped as colts, sold to Calormene masters, and forced to hide their true identity.

The horses were fortunate in one important respect, however. They knew who they really were and who they really belonged to. No matter how much their Tarkaan masters treated them like dumb horses, they knew they were talking horses. Better still, they knew Aslan was their true Master. He would never saddle them and whip them into submission. He’s not that kind of a master. Rather, Aslan gives His creatures free will and invites them to follow Him. Whether saddled by a rider or not, Bree and Hwin were following Aslan all along. That’s why they were so happy even when in captivity. Reaching Narnia in the end gives them the physical freedom to go along with the spiritual freedom they had already possessed.

Now let’s return to the title and think of it no longer in terms of ownership, as my sons had first wondered, but in terms of having a charge. Instead of saying The Horse and His Boy we might say The Horse and His Charge or His Pupil or His Mission. With a little prodding, my sons realized that what Bree (and Hwin) “own” is not an actual possession; it’s a duty. Since they know about Aslan, they must teach Shasta and Aravis about Him as well. 

Just like a teacher teaching a pupil or a parent parenting a child, however, Bree and Hwin can only take their charges so far. In the end, Shasta arrives in Narnia accompanied not by Bree but by Aslan Himself. During their misty meeting on the mountain when Shasta pours out his heart to Aslan, Shasta finally realizes that what he seeks is not the freedom to do whatever he wants but the freedom to accept the twists and turns in his life with hope instead of despair, trust instead of doubt, and love instead of anger. In other words, he realizes that his life is not simply a random mess of events subject to the whimsical will of stronger people. It is a great adventure led by Aslan. All Shasta has to do is follow Him.

In the end, Shasta and Aravis gain the spiritual freedom that Bree and Hwin had all along. Paradoxically, that kind of freedom rests not in doing whatever one wants but in doing what is right. Aravis, who had originally sought freedom from an arranged marriage, goes on to marry Shasta—a boy whom she had first detested and thought beneath herself. I don’t think C.S. Lewis added this postscript as a happily ever after. (If so, why didn’t he have Polly and Digory get married?) No, I think he was making one final point about freedom.

In the act of aligning oneself with Aslan, one is also casting off the shackles of sin. And the most prominent sin in The Horse and His Boy is slavery. Slavery is imposed according to differences in creature (animal versus human) and differences in color (Calormene versus Northern Countries). Through their marriage, Shasta and Aravis whole-heartedly reject the social conventions they were raised with and embrace a Narnian worldview. As such, they are more able to recognize, respect, and love the true beauty of one another. In this way, their freedom reaches fruition.  

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Horse and His Boy proved every bit as worthy as the rest of The Chronicles of Narnia, and my sons and I were very sad to say goodbye to Shasta and his friends. Full of the bittersweet feeling of having finished a good book, we stayed up a little longer that night imagining what it would be like to “have” a horse like Bree. By the time I turned out the lights, we decided we actually did have one in C.S. Lewis.

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #4: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

When I read The Chronicles of Narnia as a child, I started with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe instead of The Magician’s Nephew. That was partly because I had seen the 1979 animated movie of it directed by Bill Melendez and already loved the story. It was also partly because there was another set of The Chronicles in my house that listed The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as the first book.

So why the discrepancy? Which book is really first?

As I came to learn, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was published first, followed by Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader,” The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle.

In a letter to a boy named Laurence dated April 23, 1965, C.S. Lewis explained, “The series was not planned beforehand…When I wrote The Lion, [the Witch, and the Wardrobe] I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P.[rince] Caspian as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage [of the “Dawn Treader”] I felt quite sure it would be the last. But I found I was wrong.” Lewis went on to explain that it didn’t really matter what order the series was read in. Nevertheless, he eventually told his publisher to re-order the books so they would be chronological according to Narnian time.

Reading them now to my five- and six-year-old sons, I like how Lewis changed it. It makes it a little easier to follow the storyline, which is helpful for young ones. It also elevates characters like Digory in a series that had originally seemed to me mostly about Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie. For my sons, Digory took the lead, but the Pevensies suffered none for it in their adoration.

Wherever you start, there is something central about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Like in the story of Salvation History, Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection define everything that comes before and after it. That’s also the case with Aslan’s sacrifice on the Stone Table. Read on to learn the full story. In the reflection, I’ll talk about the role Faith and Reason play therein.

THE STORY

The story begins in a large house set in the English countryside during World War II. The house belongs to none other than Digory, who is now grownup and goes by the name of Professor Kirke. He has agreed to let four children from London stay with him to avoid the air raids there. Beginning with the oldest, their names are Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie.

They are a playful, good-natured group of children who accept their lot in stride—all but Edmund, that is. Though he goes exploring and plays games with the others, he is very sour and never seems to miss an opportunity to complain or tease.

Against this backdrop, Lucy hides in an obscure wooden wardrobe one rainy day during a game of hide-and-go-seek. She pushes her way deeper and deeper into the wardrobe, brushing past winter coats and expecting to reach its backside. But instead, she feels her way into a wintry forest and emerges on a snowy plain, desolate save for a lamppost.

Here Lucy does a brave thing. Rather than go back and search for the wardrobe, she walks toward the light. She soon sees a strange looking creature, one with the body of a man on top and the legs of a goat on the bottom. He turns out to be a faun and introduces himself as Mr. Tumnus, invites Lucy to join him for tea at his house, and explains they are in the Kingdom of Narnia. Lucy gratefully accepts only to later find out that he had been luring her there with evil purposes. Mr. Tumnus was in the pay of a wicked queen, known as the White Witch, who is the very same Jadis that Digory and Polly let into Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew. Living in fear of a prophecy about two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve overthrowing her power, she had put Mr. Tumnus (and presumably others) on the lookout should any humans enter her kingdom. As such, Mr. Tumnus had been planning on capturing Lucy. Upon getting to know her, though, he has a change of heart and confesses his evil plan. Lucy, whose goodness seems infinite, forgives him and hastily sets back for the wardrobe.

When she joins Peter, Susan, and Edmund in Professor Kirke’s house, she tells them about her adventure, but they think she is making it all up. It must have been a game! They check the wardrobe just to be sure and find the back of it intact. Lucy is terribly upset by their lack of faith in her and has no way to explain why the wardrobe no longer leads to Narnia.

A few days later, they play hide-and-go-seek again. Lucy hides in the wardrobe and excitedly follows it all the way to Mr. Tumnus’s house. When she is done visiting, she discovers her brother Edmund by the lamppost.  

What Lucy does not know is that while she was having tea with Mr. Tumnus, Edmund was having Turkish delight with the White Witch. Worse still, he was giving into a terrible temptation. Intoxicated with the prospect of gaining power in her court and being better than his siblings, he had agreed to bring them to her. He does not know that she plans to do them harm, but he does have a vague idea that they will not be in her favor—certainly not like himself. And so he makes his secret pact.

What’s more, when he gets back to Professor Kirke’s house, Edmund lies about being in Narnia and says that it was all pretend. Lucy is utterly distressed at this point, and Peter and Susan wonder if the time away from their parents is making her delusional. Not knowing what else to do, they seek the counsel of Professor Kirke.

After hearing their concerns, he concludes that Lucy is probably telling the truth. His logic goes a little something like this: Lucy does not lie. She says Narnia is real. Hence, you should believe her about Narnia.

All four of the Pevensies end up in the wardrobe one day soon thereafter when they are hiding from the professor’s maid. This time, the wardrobe leads all of them into Narnia, and Susan and Peter doubt Lucy no longer. For his part, Edmund admits that he really had been there, but he still keeps quiet about meeting the White Witch.

Lucy escorts them to Mr. Tumnus’s house, but he is not there. A mysterious talking beaver known simply as Mr. Beaver leads them to his home. Along with Mrs. Beaver, they explains that Mr. Tumnus’s meeting with Lucy was found out by the White Witch, and he was arrested for treason. Lucy feels responsible, and the children agree that they should do their best to help Mr. Tumnus. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver explain that Aslan, the Great Lion, is on the move. He alone can stand against the White Witch, and they decide to seek Him out. Meanwhile, Edmund slips away to find the White Witch. His betrayal soon becomes known, but it is too late to go after him.

Instead, the party continues on in search of Aslan. Along the way, they meet Father Christmas. His presence is the first of many signs that the White Witch’s power is declining. Father Christmas gives the children gifts for their fight against the White Witch. To Peter, he gives a sword; to Susan, a bow with arrows and a horn; to Lucy, a dagger and a diamond vial filled with a healing potion. Soon the snow begins to melt, and Spring sets in just as they meet Aslan Himself.

Meanwhile, Edmund meets the White Witch. Her castle is nothing like what he had expected. It is dreary and scary and full of very life-like stone statues of various creatures, including a lion that he rudely draws on. The White Witch is mad at him for not bringing his siblings and treats him much differently than during their first encounter. Edmund realizes that she has no intention of making him important in her court. She won’t even give him more Turkish delight. Instead, she takes him prisoner and plans to use him in the battle with Aslan. They set forth in the Witch’s sleigh but must disembark when there is no snow left to slide upon.

By the time they join the battle, the Witch’s side has already suffered their first loss. Peter, armed with the sword given him by Father Christmas, killed the Witch’s top wolf. Many others on her side fell at the hands of the Narnians. Knowing defeat in a straight battle is inevitable, the White Witch uses Edmund as a hostage. She will release him in exchange for Aslan. The bargain is struck, though none of the children know it. All they know is that Aslan has saved Edmund.

Later that night, Susan and Lucy see Aslan walking away from their camp, and they decide to follow Him. He discovers their presence right away and invites them to join Him. He is filled with a deep sadness, and the company of the girls brings Him comfort. When He nears the Witch’s camp, He makes them leave, but the girls look on from a distance. What they see horrifies them. Aslan is mocked and shaved and tied down to a stone table. A snap of His jaw could have ended it all, but Aslan restrains Himself, ultimately letting the White Witch stab Him dead. The jeering crowd eventually breaks up, but Lucy and Susan can’t bear to leave their Beloved Lion. They approach Him with tears in their eyes and do what they can to restore His dignity. Mice come along and chew away the ropes that tied Him.

Then, a wonder happens! Aslan rises with the Sun in a single mighty bound. As it turns out, He is stronger than the Witch, stronger than Death itself. He explains to the jubilant Lucy and Susan that His new life comes from having sacrificed Himself. The Witch had not known the true extent of His powers.

After playing with Aslan and celebrating His resurrection, the girls ride on the Lion’s back in a glorious race across the countryside to the White Witch’s castle. He breathes on all the stone statues there, including the lion Edmund had defaced and Mr. Tumnus and all sorts of other wonderful creatures, and they awaken back to life in their natural form. Now with their numbers increased, Aslan races to join Peter and Edmund and the rest of the Narnian army. Almost instantly upon their arrival, Aslan swallows up the Witch, and her side is defeated at last.

According to Peter, Edmund was the great hero of the battle. He disarmed the White Witch of her wand, thereby preventing her from turning the entire army to stone before Aslan’s reinforcements. In the process, however, Edmund was greatly wounded. Aslan instructs Lucy to give her brother some of the healing potion, which sets him right again. She then gives it out to the other wounded Narnians.

The children are made Kings and Queens of Narnia, with Peter having the special title of High King. They grow up in a matter of pages, leaving us to wonder about all the great things they did, until one day they begin a royal hunt. They chase a white stag far into their kingdom and stop all of sudden when they see a lamppost. Their memories are fuzzy. Somehow, they know they have seen it before, but they can’t quite place how or when. The stag looks at them and darts into the woods, beckoning them on. King Peter, King Edmund, Queen Susan, and Queen Lucy sense they are at a crossroads and feel uncertain what they should do.

King Edmund encourages them to take the adventure that presents itself, meaning they should follow the stag. They do, and find themselves suddenly back in the wardrobe, young children again, barely minutes after they had left Professor Kirke’s house in the first place. They tell him about their adventure, and the wise old man believes every word of it.   

REFLECTION

There are so many directions a parent or teacher could take The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but much of the discussion I had with my sons revolved around the intersection of Faith and Reason. Both are important for a Christian: Faith moves the heart toward God, while Reason moves the mind toward Him.

Ideally, we would all have an equal share of both, but that is simply not the case for most of us. C.S. Lewis seemed to know this. He presents this disparity through his characters. My sons and I looked at Lucy as the embodiment of Faith and Professor Kirke as the embodiment of Reason.

Lucy Pevensie

Believing in Narnia comes easily for our young heroine. Lucy goes there, after all. She sees it for herself. How could she not believe in it?

But then again, it’s her Faithful disposition that makes her able to go to Narnia in the first place. This is not immediately clear in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but reading the full series (especially Prince Caspian) shows that believing sometimes precedes seeing. Lucy has the gift of Faith, and that opens a new world to her even when it is closed to others. 

At times, however, Lucy’s disposition borders on gullibility. This is most obvious when she accepts Mr. Tumnus’s invitation for tea. No matter how many times I’ve read the story, this part still makes me uneasy. He’s a stranger! Why does she trust him? Worse yet, she shouldn’t have trusted him because he was going to turn her over to the White Witch. Mr. Tumnus was a bad guy…that is until he saw Lucy’s goodness and had his own change of heart.  

Therein lies another point about Faith. It sees things hidden; it even sees the invisible. Lucy’s belief in Mr. Tumnus’s goodness brought out the goodness in him. He really was a good sort of faun, but he had lost his way. Through Lucy, he found it again.

One caveat—I am not saying that believing in something makes it true. A lie is a lie no matter how much someone believes it. What I am saying is that a person of Faith can see the Truth of something more clearly and draw it out into the open.

That’s precisely what Lucy does for her siblings, too. She insists Narnia is a real place, even though she suffers greatly for it. She could have easily abandoned her idea, but she doesn’t. She sticks to it and patiently waits for the Truth to prevail. And it does, of course. Her siblings eventually get into Narnia themselves and apologize for not believing Lucy.

Better still, believing their sister was the first step toward believing in Aslan, the Logos Incarnate as a Lion. It’s no wonder Lucy holds a special place in Aslan’s heart. She was His first evangelist.

Professor Kirke

Just as Lucy is the embodiment of Faith, Professor Kirke—named for C.S. Lewis’s childhood tutor Professor W. T. Kirkpatrick—is the embodiment Reason. We see this in his scholarly disposition and even more pointedly in his conversations with the children.  

When Peter and Susan are worried that Lucy is either lying about Narnia or has perhaps gone crazy, he surprisingly dismisses their concerns. Here you might be thinking that Professor Kirke readily believes Lucy because he had been to Narnia as a child. His belief, then, is not really about Reason, you might say. True, he has that advantage, but he still very much uses Reason to prove to Peter and Susan that Narnia is real. The basis of his argument goes something like this:

Is Lucy known to be truthful? Yes.

Is Edmund known to be truthful? No.

Therefore, you should believe Lucy, not Edmund.  

Okay, what if she is telling the truth in her own way, but she doesn’t really know what is true or not because she has gone mad. In other words, is Lucy crazy? No, nothing about her being suggests that.

Okay, still, there are some oddities about her story. Lucy says she was gone for hours in Narnia, but it was really just seconds that she was in the wardrobe. That doesn’t make sense. Of course it doesn’t, which is precisely why she wouldn’t have made it up! The time difference between Narnia and London is too complicated a thing for a little girl to imagine. And if she had, she would have been more likely to have hidden for a while before announcing her return from Narnia.

And there you have it. Lucy must be telling the truth, and Narnia must be real.

When Peter and Susan leave Professor Kirke, they feel terribly out of sorts. The conclusion they are left with defies common sense—or at least what Peter and Susan believe to be common sense. Other worlds don’t exist. Everybody knows that.

But the Professor has done his job. By challenging the children with Reason, they are no longer able to simply dismiss Lucy and her Narnia. They have to face the conclusion that it might be real because they can’t prove otherwise. And—it’s my view—this intrusion of Reason into their minds is what allows them to walk through the wardrobe and experience Narnia for themselves.

After the children return from Narnia at the end of the book, the good professor kindly listens to their adventure, which now has much more at stake than questioning whether or not another world called Narnia exists. Also in question is whether talking animals and fauns and witches really exist. Even if they can prove that, they must also prove that one of the talking animals—Aslan—died and came back to life.  That’s a lot for someone to believe without seeing!

Nevertheless, Professor Kirke accepts the children’s story with sincere belief and meets their surprise with his oft-repeated refrain, “What do schools teach children these days?” The implication, of course, is that schools are not teaching children how to use Reason properly. If they did, they would not be at all surprised by the conclusions that follow from it.

And what is the central conclusion of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? It is this: God Incarnate has conquered sin and death. Though we may go astray and fall under the spell of White Witches from time to time, He will give His life to bring us back.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Let’s close with some final thoughts about Edmund. He did not seem to have a disposition toward Faith, nor did he have Professor Kirke instructing him in the art of Reason. So how did he get into Narnia (before Susan and Peter we might add), and why did Aslan save him of all people?

The answer my sons and I came up with is that Aslan, the Master of both Faith and Reason, simply brought him there out of Love. We likened Edmund to that of a Saul turned St. Paul. Unable to come to Aslan on his own, Aslan brought Edmund to Himself.

I tried to help my children see that he is not really a Judas-figure, which is what I had thought of him as a child. He’s a little boy who needs direction. Though he was lacking in Faith and Reason, he got the greatest gift of all—Aslan’s life in exchange for his own.

(Here is another of my six-year-old son’s sentence diagrams, which I instructed him through during our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)

Source: Dorest, Lyle W. and Marjorie Lamp, eds. C.S. Lewis’ Letters to Children, Mead. Scribner: New York, 1996.

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #3: The Magician’s Nephew

Reading The Magician’s Nephew with my five- and six-year-old sons was a magical experience in itself. They fell in love with the story and its characters, and I found myself falling in love with them all over again, too. In this post, I am going to share an overview of the story and then go into some of the things we talked about as we read it.

THE STORY

The Magician’s Nephew is the first novel in The Chronicles of Narnia, though it was actually published fifth. It tells the story of how Narnia was created and reveals the special role of two children in its making. Though Polly is the leading lady, the story really belongs to Digory. It is he who seeks healing for his sick mother. With his father away in India, he is forced to live with his Uncle Andrew and Aunt Letty, unmarried siblings. Digory mopes about in a fog of misery until he meets Polly.

They become friends and accidentally sneak into Uncle Andrew’s private study. This is a happy chance for Uncle Andrew. A crazed magician, he tricks Polly into putting on a magical yellow ring that sends her into an unknown world with no way home. Then he offers Digory a chance to save her by giving him another yellow ring to go after her with plus two green rings for each of them to get home. Feeling he has very little choice, Digory accepts the rings and follows Polly.

He finds her sleeping in a quiet woods spotted with pools, called the Wood Between the Worlds. They discover that each of the pools leads to a different world. After carefully marking the pool that leads back home to London, they jump into another and land in the World of Charn. The buildings are in ruins and the Sun is red. They would have done well to leave, but their curiosity gets the better of them. They walk into a large room and find a row of people like wax statues the size of giants sitting in a long line. None of them appear to be alive. As they examine their faces, they see that they get increasingly uglier and scarier as they go down the line.

They also find a bell that strangely beckons them to ring it. Polly doesn’t want to, but Digory does. He fights with her, strikes the bell, and awakens the last in the line of the wax people—a giant woman styled as a queen. She is Empress Jadis, and she immediately sets in motion a plan to leave with the children and take over their world. Charn, as it turns out, is dying. Unable to get away from Jadis, she follows them back to London and meets Uncle Andrew.

He is captivated by Jadis and enters into her service. Jadis abuses him horribly, but Uncle Andrew seems not to mind all that much. He calls her a “dem fine woman,” dresses up in his best suit, sips a few adult beverages, and takes her out gallivanting around town. She ends up stealing jewelry from a shop, believing herself entitled to all of it. The police pursue her and Uncle Andrew as they flee in a horse-drawn cab. Uncle Andrew tries to make a break for it, but Jadis stays and fights off her apprehenders with shocking strength.

Meanwhile, Digory and Polly make a plan to transport Jadis out of London, back to the Woods Between the Worlds, and force her into another pool. They put on their rings and grab her. Because of all the chaos, they end up bringing a chain of connected people and things, including not only Jadis but also Uncle Andrew, the Cabbie (Frank), his horse (Strawberry), and a lamppost. The world they enter is completely black. Jadis gleefully explains it’s a new world and relishes the prospect of ruling it.

No sooner do they realize this, then they hear a beautiful song and the darkness begins to give way to a soft light, and the landscape begins to take shape, complete with mountains and rivers and trees and all manner of plants and flowers. Even the lamppost that Jadis had ripped from the ground in London takes roots in the rich earth. Then a golden Lion appears, and they realize He is the one singing the world into life. Jadis runs away in fear of the Lion. Uncle Andrew hides from the Lion. But the others—Digory, Polly, the Cabbie, and Strawberry—stay and listen. They watch as creatures appear. The Lion makes some of them talking animals, and they gather around Him with great love and reverence. After watching all of this unfold, Digory decides he wants to talk to the Lion and see if He might help his dying mother.

The Lion, whose name is Aslan, tells Digory that he must make amends for bringing Jadis to Narnia. He is to get an apple from a special tree in a far-off Garden and bring it back to plant as protection from her evil. Polly joins Digory on this mission, and they ride on Strawberry, now transformed into a talking, flying horse. When they arrive at the Garden, Digory sets off alone to retrieve the apple. He must pass through a gate in doing so, and he reads a placard which says:

Come in by the gold gates or not at all,
Take of my fruit for others or forbear,
For those who steal or those who climb my wall
Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair.

Just as Digory picks an apple, he sees Jadis perched in the special tree with apple juice dripping down from her mouth. He can tell she has gotten her heart’s desire, and that has made her even more evil. Jadis then tempts him to steal one of the apples for his mother, claiming it would make her better. Digory thinks about it but overcomes his desire and joins the others.

They return to Aslan, plant the apple, and a beautiful apple tree grows instantaneously. Aslan then offers one of the apples to Digory for his mother. He also instructs Digory to bury the rings so no one will ever find them again.

Digory does as Aslan commands, buries the rings, and gives the apple to his mother. She is healed, and his life is restored to happiness.

As for the other characters, the Cabbie gets to bring his wife to Narnia and become their first king and queen. And Uncle Andrew gets back to London with the children. He doesn’t really remember Narnia when he returns, but he is much improved. He’s a lot nicer than he used to be and has only a clouded memory of Jadis, whom he still thinks of as a “dem fine woman.”

REFLECTION

One of my favorite motifs in The Magician’s Nephew is appearance versus reality. Some of the characters, like Uncle Andrew and Empress Jadis, do not see the world at all properly. Even Digory and Polly see it properly in only a limited way at first. Here is how I discussed this motif with my sons.

Uncle Andrew and Jadis

Uncle Andrew’s view of things was hard to peg in the first few chapters of the book. My sons and I were right there with Digory and Polly, wondering if Uncle Andrew was really a madman. He certainly seemed strange, but it wasn’t clear that he wasn’t just misunderstood until Digory and Polly accidentally found themselves in his private study and got sent away by the rings. To Uncle Andrew, Polly and Digory were no more than guinea pigs in a crazy experiment.

Okay, we decided at that point; he’s definitely a madman. As it turns out, he’s also a bad guy.

What’s more, we decided his madness had to do with the state of his heart. He can’t see people as they are because he only sees them for what they can give him. For example, he believes Jadis is a “dem fine woman,” but she’s really an evil giant of a witch. He also thinks she might fall in love with him and make him an equal in her royal court. The only problem is that she keeps calling him “slave” and “dog” and threatening to hurt him. His delusions about Jadis defy logic.

Uncle Andrew is also unable to understand the Talking Animals in Narnia. To him, they sound like beasts, and he is utterly terrified of being eaten by them. His entire time in Narnia is spent worried that he is going to be eaten. His greatest fear, not surprisingly, is of “the Lion.” Although Uncle Andrew’s time there is really quite sad, it is also full of humor. We had our fair share of laughs about the ridiculous things Uncle Andrew does in Narnia, especially when he is planted like a tree, but we also found ourselves cheering for him to be reformed.  

We never cheered for Jadis, though. Like Uncle Andrew, she is utterly disconnected from the world around her. We saw this most obviously when she is in London, and it’s not just because she is an outsider, dressed in funny clothes, who happens to be the size of a giant. She also treats everyone there like her lowly subjects and can’t appreciate why they don’t respond to her power.

The characters of Uncle Andrew and Jadis are great examples of how selfishness distorts our true nature. It takes us into a false reality, almost like another world itself, in which we cannot see things for what they are. Though Uncle Andrew is not as evil as Jadis and ends up becoming a better person by the end of the book, he nonetheless never manages to let go entirely of his false ideas of grandeur in the service of Jadis.

At least, as my sons pointed out, he turned out better than he started.

Digory and Polly

When we first met Digory, he was feeling very bad for himself, and we were all wondering how he would manage his difficulties. As we know from the summary above, he had a lot to deal with, especially being so young.  

But behind Digory’s miserable exterior is a hope against hope. Just maybe, his mom will get better. Just maybe, there is more to life than what he sees around him. My sons and I certainly felt Digory’s great yearning right along with him.

Digory gets his first glimpse of a bigger world over his garden wall. There he finds Polly, a little girl about his own age. Interestingly, they both notice the dirt on the other’s face but not on their own. (My sons thought that was hysterical.) Despite any grievances about the other’s hygiene, they become good friends. Their games offer Digory a measure of relief from his miseries, and he begins to look forward to their imaginative adventures. But reality hits imagination in the face when they wind up in Uncle Andrew’s study.  

Two things happen simultaneously for Digory when he accepts Uncle Andrew’s magic rings. First, he realizes there are countless other worlds waiting to be explored. Second, he learns that some hardships are worth pursuing for the sake of others. Thus begins the transformation of his worldview.

Upon finding Polly in the Wood Between the Worlds, the two children become even better friends. More than just playmates, they become one another’s companions in a life-threatening adventure. They look out for each other and steer each other accordingly. For example, when they first meet Jadis, Digory doesn’t realize at first that she is bad. Polly, on the other hand, picks up on it right away because Jadis keeps looking past her and treating her like she’s not even there. Polly is not simply offended by this, but it puts her on alert. She rightly senses that Jadis is only paying attention to Digory because he can get them out of Charn and into another world worth ruling. Funny enough, Jadis eventually looks past Digory, too, and he realizes just how correct Polly was.

When it comes to Aslan, Digory and Polly know He is good. Despite the fact that He is a Lion, and in their world lions would be very scary, they approach Him without fear of being eaten. That’s not to say they’re not scared. They are, but for a different reason. They are scared because they know Aslan will not look past them. Rather, He will look at them so deeply as to see them as they really are, dirty faces and all. In turn, they will be forced to see themselves through His eyes. Happily, what they see are not merely two good little children but a Son of Adam and a Daughter of Eve.

As such, they receive their birthright in the form of an apple from Narnia’s version of the Garden of Eden. But the apple is not just any apple; it’s a magical apple. And it’s not just magical in the cheap way Uncle Andrew uses magic. Nor is it magical in the selfish way of Jadis. It’s magical according to the nature of Aslan: it is life-giving. Digory feeds it to his mother, and she is miraculously healed. Better still, Digory knows now that an earthly death cannot kill his mother. She, too, is a Daughter of Eve and shall have eternal life.

With this realization, Digory’s worldview is fully transformed into that of a Narnian, which is to say that of a Christian. The hope that he held in his heart of hearts is realized. There is more to the world than what he first knew at the beginning of the book, and there is most certainly more to it than what he knows at the end of the book. He has learned that reality is more than what he can see.

FINAL THOUGHTS

My sons begged me to start The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the same night we finished The Magician’s Nephew. It was late, so I made them wait. They carried the book down the next morning and got the first chapter out of me before breakfast. They were hungry for more just like Digory.

That’s one of my favorite aspects of The Chronicles of Narnia. They are every bit the page turner that makes a good book, and yet they offer so much more than an exciting plot. They are also full of deep mystery that stirs the soul and makes it yearn for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

(Here is another of my six-year-old son’s sentence diagrams, which I instructed him through during our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #2: An Exercise in Supposition and Imagination

Anyone who knows anything about The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis knows that it’s full of Christian symbolism. With only a little prodding, my five- and six-year old sons picked up on the connection between Aslan and Christ right away, and all sorts of other connections took off from there.

Some of our comparisons worked beautifully.

In The Magician’s Nephew, the first chronological book in the series, C.S. Lewis has Aslan create Narnia by singing everything into existence. As His song emanates from His lion mouth, a beautiful landscape unfolds out of the darkness, and it soon teems with all sorts of creatures—even mythical ones like talking unicorns and fauns and satyrs. I found this a stunning visual to go along with John 1:1 which says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I spend a lot of time breaking down the meaning of that verse with my middle school students. We talk about how the “Word” refers to Jesus as well as the Logic that God imprinted in Creation. Then we slice and dice it a myriad of other ways and drive it home with some reminders about how the Breath used in speaking the Word represents the Holy Spirit. It’s a very analytical and (I hope) engaging lesson.

But it pales in comparison to “listening” to Aslan’s song. It’s not that the fictional images are better than the real ones, per se. It’s that they do the work of imagining for us, and they do so in such a way that makes them very appealing and accessible for young minds. By putting the (Lion) skin on the Word, Lewis made it very easy for his readers to see how the Word was made Flesh. In the context of reading the story with my sons, I was able to express some of the same ideas I cover with my much older students, and they were able to dialogue right back with me, young though they are. It was a very simple conversation, but it felt like they understood and internalized the ideas because they could picture it all.

By the time we got to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the connection between Aslan and Christ was even more obvious. Like Christ, Aslan gives His life to save His people. He lets the White Witch kill Him in order to save Edmund’s life, who, by the way, doesn’t seem to really deserve it. (The implications for humanity are pretty humbling, to say the least.) Also like Christ, Aslan comes back to life and defeats the White Witch.

But not all the comparisons we tried to make between characters in Narnia and figures in the Bible worked as well:

For example, if you try to make the White Witch out as the Devil, you’re going to have some trouble. Yes, she’s evil. Yes, she’s a temptress. But, she is not so in a penultimate way. Reading the whole series makes it clear that she is one of a long cast of villains. In short, she is only like the Devil in as much as all things evil are.

It turns out, my kids and I weren’t the only ones trying to match things up and failing at times. After I finished reading The Chronicles of Narnia, I read Letters to Children by C.S. Lewis. As the title suggests, it consists of letters he wrote in response to fan mail from children, some of whom maintained many years of correspondence and even gained the privilege of book dedications.

Lewis explained to a fifth grade class in Maryland, “You are mistaken when you think that everything in the books ‘represents’ something in the world…I did not say to myself ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia’: I said ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.’ If you think about it, you will see that is quite a different thing.”

In another collected work called On Stories and Essays, C.S. Lewis goes on to criticize the idea of allegory, saying, “No story can be devised by the wit of man which cannot be interpreted allegorically by the wit of some other man…the mere fact that you can allegorise the work before you is of itself no proof that it is an allegory. Of course you can allegorise it. You can allegorise anything, whether in art or real life.”

I think we owe it to C.S. Lewis to take him at his word. The Chronicles of Narnia are not an allegory. They may tell a story of salvation; it’s just not The Story of Salvation. The one certainly reflects the other but is not beholden to it—except in the character of Aslan. He alone is a true match. He is Christ, the Lion of Judah. (Incidentally, I also learned from one of his letters that the name for Aslan was taken from the Turkish word for lion.)

So you may be wondering if C.S. Lewis’s suppositional approach confounds things too much for a little child.

As a one-time child reading The Chronicles of Narnia and now as a mother reading them to my own children, I think they appeal to the imagination in a way that colors and accents The Story of Salvation. After all, the central Truth, or Logos, of that story is less about the details of each event and more about the salvation it offers, of which C.S. Lewis bears witness beautifully.

(Here is another of my six-year-old son’s sentence diagrams, which I instructed him through during our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #1: Beloved Reading for a New Generation

There is something extra special about reading the classics with my children. When I found my old collection of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis during a much-needed basement purge, I couldn’t resist bringing them up to bedtime. I read a lot of “bigger books” like these with my five- and six-year-old sons, so I knew they would be able to pay attention long enough to understand the story.

But I didn’t know they would become obsessed with it. 

A few pages into The Magician’s Nephew and they were hooked. Bedtime or not, they constantly asked me to read it. And when I wasn’t reading it, they were talking about it nonstop. At one point when they were sharing some Narnia knowledge with their father, he very seriously told them they needed to play more sports and promptly started up a wiffle ball game of baseball. Point taken.

I guess I’d gotten a little obsessed myself. The Chronicles of Narnia are just so magical and teachable. Now that we’ve finished the series and gotten back a more balanced approach to family time, I want to share some of the lessons I took away as a parent reading these books with my children.

Unlike my other book-related blog posts that break down storylines and characters and motifs with the classroom in mind, I have designed this one more like a family journal. I only have one entry for each of the seven novels in the series, plus an additional entry that offers an approach to reading the stories. There is much more to say about each of the books, but I tried to limit myself to the ideas that resonated most with my own children.

This post will serve as the table of contents for the series. Just click on the titles below, and it will lead you to the entries as I post them.

An Exercise in Supposition and Imagination

The Magician’s Nephew

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Horse and His Boy

Prince Caspian

The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”

The Silver Chair

The Last Battle

With all the other information out there about The Chronicles of Narnia, I hope what I have to share will be of some added value. If nothing else, I hope it encourages you to dig them out of your basement.

(We also used the stories to practice classifying and diagramming sentences. In the first picture, SN stands for “subject noun,” and V stands for “verb.” For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)
Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Beowulf #6: Motifs

There are a number of motifs in Beowulf that I cover with my students. In this post, we will look at three of the most prominent. These serve as major discussion topics during and after our reading. They also make for fascinating essays.

TREASURE

The treasure motif is one of my favorites. Full of imagery, symbolism, and historic significance, it is very rich with meaning.

Let’s start with Hrothgar’s treasure. As a great king, he has won considerable treasure to match his status. He does not keep it all to himself, however. Instead, he readily shares it with his men according to their acts of valor. The greatest warrior, aka Beowulf, gets the greatest share. But even the least of the warriors gets a generous share. Gift-giving, then, is as much an act of recompense as a show of favor and loyalty. It is also a sign of Hrothgar’s righteousness as king. If he were not to share it, he would not be worthy of kingship.

The Fire Dragon also has a great treasure. Rather than sharing it, however, he hoards it as an evil temptation. We might be inclined to think, “Why should he share it?” Indeed, sharing sometimes gets overplayed in today’s world, but we need to look at the Fire Dragon in the context of the story and, specifically, in contrast to Hrothgar. The former is as selfish and evil as the latter is generous and good. Thus, the Fire Dragon is utterly unworthy of followers. The only ones who seek his treasure are thieves like himself.

In addition to the literal treasures, there are also many figurative treasures. The most obvious one is Beowulf’s life. As explained in the analysis of Beowulf’s fight with the Fire Dragon, Beowulf’s life is the “price” paid for the Fire Dragon’s treasure. He “shares” it over and over again, from saving the Danes from Grendel and Grendel’s Mother to saving the Greats from the Fire Dragon. All the gold rings and jeweled goblets in the world could not equal the wealth of his life.

GLORY

When we first meet Beowulf, we are struck by his tough talk. He seems to brag about himself nonstop. Sure, he can back up his words with his actions, but does he really need to be so boastful all the time? He is so different from, say, King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table who perform all their virtuous acts with Christian humility.

Beowulf might not have fit in during the High Middle Ages, but he was a man of his time and place. Such “tough talk” was to be expected from a barbarian. In fact, his boasting was no less a tool for garnering respect than his physical fighting. Put differently, a great warrior needed to have a reputation as such and was expected to advance it with words. The further it spread, the stronger he was deemed.

Beowulf backs up his boasts in two ways. First, he is able to defeat the worst monsters one could imagine. If he “brags” about this, he is really just being honest about what he has done. Second, Beowulf is a glorious warrior because his fighting is done out of sacrificial love for neighbors. He is like Christ, glorifying the Father through his works. His works just so happen to be cutting off monsters’ heads.

REST

This is another major motif, especially in the fights with Grendel and Grendel’s Mother. The Danes find themselves sleep-deprived for twelve years because of Grendel’s nightly attacks. If they ever had a chance of defeating Grendel, it would have been long before they accumulated such a large sleep debt. It’s not hard to imagine them walking around in a constant fog, complaining about how tired they are. When Beowulf defeats Grendel and Grendel’s Mother, he changes all that. The Danes are once again able to recharge at night and have the energy needed for the regular trials of the day.

So what does it symbolize?

“The Mound of Beowulf” by Rockwell Kent embodies all three of our motifs.

As my students readily point out, sleep can be a symbol for peace. When Grendel and Grendel’s Mother keep everyone up at night in terror, Heorot’s peace is stolen. When Beowulf gets rid of them and everyone can sleep soundly again, Heorot’s peace is restored. Simple.

I may be inserting something into the epic, but I think there is still more going on. From a Christian standpoint, sleep, or more specifically rest, is also a metaphor for prayer. Spending time with God is the true source of energy for the difficult tasks of the day. For example in Mark 6:31, Jesus says to His disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” He was not just telling them to get a little shut-eye, but to pray, which is the ultimate rest. Likewise, St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You, O Lord.” The only way we can rest in God during our lifetime is by praying to Him, whether that be on our knees at bedtime or when receiving the sacraments.

If we apply that logic to the story, we see that Beowulf is not merely restoring the peace in Heorot but also the prayer-life, which is the path to true peace. He is reuniting the Danes with God the Father.  

Despite all his great deeds, Beowulf remains restless himself until he finds eternal rest in God through the sacrifice of his life. His death, after defeating the Fire Dragon, is the ultimate example of sleep. His tasks are complete. He has served his people. Now he will be at peace with God in a never-ending prayer.

CONCLUSION

Long after my students forget the details and even the storyline of Beowulf, they will still remember these motifs. They may not be able to place them exactly. Their ideas about them may have changed somewhat. But the seeds will have been planted for further analysis of similar motifs in other stories…and for personal reflection.

What treasures do I have to share? How should I talk about my worth and accomplishments? What monsters do I have to battle? When do I need prayer the most?

These questions will recur throughout their lives, just as they do for everyone. Hopefully, our Catholic classical study of Beowulf will help guide them to the answers.

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Beowulf #5: Fighting the Fire Dragon

The story of Beowulf’s fights with Grendel and Grendel’s Mother would make a complete epic on their own. Having saved the Danes from Grendel and Grendel’s Mother, our hero’s work seems complete. Nevertheless, his life’s purpose is not accomplished until he fights the Fire Dragon.

Let’s take a look at that fight and then consider some of the bigger lessons at play.

PLOT SUMMARY
Exposition – The Background

Many years have passed since Beowulf defeated Grendel and Grendel’s Mother. After the death of his father, he becomes King of Sweden and rules for fifty peaceful years. 

Inciting Incident – The Problem

All of that changes when one of his people breaks into the chamber of a sleeping dragon, aka the Fire Dragon, and steals a goblet from his vast treasures. The Fire Dragon awakens, prowls over the land, scorching the earth with his fiery breath, and seeks revenge.

Rising Action – The Buildup

Beowulf cannot let the Fire Dragon decimate his kingdom. Though he is an old man, he suits himself for battle all the while recalling the glory of his youth. His memory is like a mirror into the past and the future. He knows he is not as strong as he once was, but he also knows he must fight, come what may. He has a duty to protect his people. 

And so he sets forth with his army. As he nears the Fire Dragon, Beowulf tells them all to stand back. This fight is his alone. Soon, however, he is nearly consumed by the flames. Too scared to step in and help, all but a warrior named Wiglaf, a kinsman of the king, abandon Beowulf in his hour of need.

Wiglaf cries out for them to return, yet his cries are met with silence. The Fire Dragon smolders on, and Wiglaf turns his attention to Beowulf, encouraging him to get back up and fight.

Climax – The Breaking Point

He does, just in time, too. The dragon breathes hot fire at Wiglaf, but Beowulf houses him under his iron shield. Rousing his strength, Beowulf strikes the Fire Dragon. His sword shivers to pieces from the force of his efforts. It turns out Beowulf is still the warrior of his youth.

But reeling in rage, the Fire Dragon rushes upon a defenseless Beowulf and sinks his teeth into his neck. Wiglaf, full of love for his king, drives his sword into the Fire Dragon. Beowulf does the same with a knife he had tucked away, and the Fire Dragon falls down dead.

Falling Action – The Unraveling

Sadly, Beowulf has been mortally wounded. He makes Wiglaf his heir and commands him to bring the Fire Dragon’s treasure—one last trophy—so he can look at it before he dies. Upon seeing it Beowulf thanks God for granting it to his people.

And so saying, Beowulf dies a hero.

Resolution – Long Live Beowulf!

Wiglaf laments Beowulf’s death and cries out in anguish, again rebuking the Geats for abandoning their king. He buries Beowulf with great ceremony in a mound on top of the Fire Dragon’s treasure, denying it to the other warriors because of their disloyalty. It turns out Beowulf’s life is the real treasure, so that is what they get. Or rather, that is what they squandered.

Though Beowulf has died, as all men must, his fame will live on through the minstrel’s song. Mightiest of warriors and most virtuous of Christians, his glory has at last become eternal.    

PLOT ANALYSIS

This final fight in Beowulf feels worlds away from the earlier two, not least because the storylines are separated by more than fifty years and take place in different kingdoms across the sea from one another. That alone is enough to make Beowulf’s fight against the Fire Dragon feel oddly disjointed from the rest of the epic. What’s more, its tone feels as foreboding and bitter as the others’ feel exciting and uplifting.

In a sentence, Beowulf dies.

After I read his death scene with my students, I always pause to scan their faces. Whether they are wide-eyed with disbelief, downcast in disappointment, or busy re-reading to make sure they understood what really happened, they all seem to ask, “Why? Why did he have to die?”

I find myself asking the same question. It seems unfair that the mighty Beowulf dies for his people, especially after they abandon him. Their selfishness and disloyalty are so obviously wrong. They have not just broken some ancient Germanic code of loyalty, they have betrayed the code of righteousness imprinted on the human heart. In doing so, they have betrayed their human nature.

Remind you of anyone, or should I say any monster?

Therein lies the choice for Beowulf’s warriors. They can follow the path of Beowulf and glorify not only humanity but its Creator, or they can follow the path of Grendel, a descendent of Cain, who so distorted human nature that he became one of the world’s most infamous monsters.

Now I’m not saying the warriors are going to suddenly grow hairy arms and start eating people, but they have taken a dangerous first step in that direction. Luckily, they have Wiglaf to call them back and help them repent just as the apostles repented after abandoning Jesus during His passion and death.

But wait! Isn’t this part of the story about the Fire Dragon, not Grendel?

Let’s go back and review the Fire Dragon’s character description. We said he represents an even older evil dating back to the fall of the angels. He is a trickster, not merely taking pardonable vengeance on a thief but actually tempting the man to become a thief in the first place. The Fire Dragon wants an excuse to scorch the earth. He wants an excuse to kill Beowulf. And he wants an excuse to scatter Beowulf’s men and make more Grendels out of them. All the while, he also wants to trick people into thinking he was just fighting back.

No, he started the fight, but Beowulf finishes it. The rest is up to his men—and us.

Image from Siegfried, the Hero of the North, and Beowulf, the Hero of the Anglo-Saxons (1900)

Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Beowulf #4: Fighting Grendel’s Mother

Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s Mother picks up right where his fight with Grendel left off. Read on to see how Beowulf continues to prove himself a hero among barbarians and Christians.

PLOT SUMMARY
Exposition – The Background

Having celebrated Beowulf’s defeat of Grendel, Hrothgar ushers him off to a splendid bedroom for a much deserved night’s sleep.

Inciting Incident – The Problem

Little do they know, however, their troubles are not really over. Another monster, Grendel’s Mother, breaks into Heorot, snatches up one of the men named Aeschere, and carries him off.

Rising Action – The Build-up

When Beowulf learns of this the next morning, he immediately organizes an expedition to seek out Grendel’s Mother. No longer the fearful men they were during Grendel’s feasting days, the Danes join the Geats. Together they track Grendel’s Mother all the way to an eerie lake where they find Aeschere’s head staked on a post.

Though the surrounding terrain is frosted with ice, the lake itself is ablaze with fire and full of evil monsters. Hrothgar marks one with his bow and shoots it dead, proving that he has regained his battle prowess and still worthy to be king in his own right.

Climax – The Breaking Point

But this fight, like the last one, is really for Beowulf. He alone is brave enough to dive into the strange waters and continue the hunt for Grendel’s Mother. As he plunges deeper and deeper, he suddenly feels himself held fast by a tremendous creature with a hairy chest. It is none other than Grendel’s Mother.

She pulls him into her lair, which consists of a dry area at the greatest depth of the lake. She seems to have the advantage, being on her home turf and so full of an evil desire for revenge. But then Beowulf spots an ancient sword forged by giants with magic from the Sun and manages to kill her with it.

Falling Action – The Unraveling

As he looks around the lair, his eyes chance upon Grendel’s body. (The monster had gone home to the lair to die after his arm was ripped off). Desiring another trophy, Beowulf chops off Grendel’s head, which gushes blood all the way up to the surface.

Hrothgar sees it, assumes Beowulf was killed, and departs for Heorot. Still hopeful, the Geats remain longer and see Beowulf emerge victorious with Grendel’s grisly head.

Resolution – Problem Solved

The Danes host another feast for the Geats, showering upon them even more treasures. The monsters are dead; peace and honor have been restored once and for all. Hrothgar and Beowulf bid one another a sad farewell, now sharing a bond of loyalty and love akin to a father and a son. 

PLOT ANALYSIS

Structurally, Beowulf’s fight with Grendel’s Mother mirrors his fight with Grendel. Just swap out one monster for another, one battleground for another, and you have pretty much the same story. So why have Beowulf do everything all over again? Is it just a cheap way to stretch out the storyline and have more thrills?

Not exactly. As my students realize during our class discussions, the second fight is all about character growth. Let’s start with Hrothgar. After Grendel’s defeat, he had regained his legitimate status as king and was once again able to provide for his people in the great hall of Heorot. But it is not until the fight with Grendel’s Mother that Hrothgar proves himself strong in battle, worthy of respect and even fear. His transformation is now complete. We know that he will live out his days as a fit king of the Danes.

Let’s turn to Beowulf now. As always, he’s really the character to focus on.

Fighting Grendel is nothing to sneeze at, but it pales in comparison to fighting Grendel’s Mother at the bottom of her eerie lake. That’s because the lake symbolizes Hell, the source of all the problems in Denmark. Beowulf dives into its very depth, kills Grendel’s Mother at great peril to his own life, and thereby cleanses the lake of all its monsters. There is nothing left to terrorize Heorot, so the Danes can sleep easy once and for all.

Figuratively, Beowulf’s role as a messianic character comes full circle when he faces Grendel’s Mother. Having previously left his father in Sweden to serve a foreign people, we now see him offer his life to save them from not one monster but all of them. When the story closes, Beowulf gets to return to his father, knowing his mission is fully accomplished. Better still, he did it all out of kindness, taking only the glory of his great deeds as a prize. Beowulf truly is a Christian-barbarian hero.  

Illustration from Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race (1910)