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.

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