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.