So far in this series of storytelling exercises, we’ve focused on ways to develop compelling plots. Now it’s time to think about the characters themselves. After all, even the most fascinating plot will fall flat if its characters are dull and one-dimensional.
To begin, let’s consider what character development means. We’ll keep it simple and say that it’s the craft through which a writer makes a character come to life. The better the character development, the easier it is for a reader to know a character inside and out. That means being able to picture what a character looks like and being able to imagine what he’s thinking at any given moment in a story. In other words, the character is more than his looks or his role in the story. He is the total sum of his words and actions, hopes and fears, and virtues and vices.
Many writers let those things develop organically in the course of writing a story, meaning they “discover” who their characters are as the story unfolds. The problem for a child, though, is that process requires a fair amount of revision, not to mention a serious time commitment.
To help my students really know their characters from the start, I like having them “interview” their main characters before writing a story. For example, when we finish reading Beowulf, students often write their own spin-offs. But first, I have them interview their main character. Many of them choose to interview Beowulf or one of the other minor heroes like Hrothgar or Wiglaf, but others choose Grendel or Grendel’s Mother or the Fire Dragon. Some even choose lesser characters like Unferth or Brecca or Aeschere.
I usually give my students a few standard questions and have them write the interview out in a formal fashion in their journals. They may answer the questions based on what the character seems like in the original story, or they may imagine the character in a new light. Here is a list of sample questions I like to use.
State your full name and age.
Tell me about your family.
What are your hobbies?
What is your biggest hope?
What is your biggest secret?
What is your biggest fear?
What is your best virtue?
What is your worst vice?
The list of questions could go on and on, but a short sample is plenty to get a child started. Then, I ask my students to come up with a few original questions, which allows them to expand on a side of the character they really want to develop.
The results of this are highly entertaining, and we spend ample time sharing our interviews with each other. I once had a student interview Grendel’s Mother and find out that she had a soft spot for “Baby Mine” from Dumbo. (The Grendel family descends from Cain and hates music, which made this twist very intriguing.) Another time, a student “discovered” that Hrothgar slept with a nightlight. (He is the king whom Beowulf saves from Grendel and Grendel’s Mother.) And who knew that Wiglaf’s greatest treasure was a fingernail clipping from the arm Beowulf tore off Grendel in their death match? (That was a comical, yet fitting treasure for a warrior who revered Beowulf as the greatest of all warriors.)
In true journalistic form, my students imagine they are getting the scoop on characters, and they are in a sense. All the while, they are learning to develop strong, believable characters for their stories. Whether they are working from an existing story or writing a completely original one, interviewing main characters is a great way to get started. As the character takes shape, the storyline itself will come alive more fully.
Image Credit: Illustration in Stories of Beowulf by H. E. Marshall. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1908.
Alas! Some stories do not end quite how we would like them to. One of the starkest examples of this in my classroom is Hans Christian Andersen’s The Mermaid. Unlike in the Disney version, his little mermaid does not live happily ever after with the prince. She dies. Or rather, she gets turned into seafoam.
Is being seafoam any better than death? my students inevitably wonder.
Well, that really depends on what being seafoam means in the world of the story. If it’s just another form of death, then it really makes no difference in the end. If, as is the case in the story, it opens the door to some kind of new life for the little mermaid, then being seafoam is clearly much better than death.
The catch, though, is that Hans Christian Andersen never tells us exactly what the little mermaid’s new, foamy life will consist of. He leaves that for us to imagine.
That’s where the fun part comes in for the aspiring storyteller!
With a little prompting, my students come up with beautiful sequels, usually having the little mermaid gain an immortal soul and thereby live the kind of happily ever after that Hans Christian Andersen wanted his readers to aspire toward.
A sequel need not pick up from the end of a story either. If there’s something unanswered in the middle of the story, a child could run with that. Just think about all the potential storylines from The Snow Queen, another of my favorites by Hans Christian Andersen. Each of little Gerda’s adventures in her quest to save Kay includes fantastic characters and subplots that could be used to create whole new stories. The most popular of those characters with my students is always the robber girl, and I’ve gotten to enjoy many wild stories about her over the years.
Finally, just as some stories make us wonder what happens next, others make us wonder what happened before. Stories that begin in a fallen state are perfect for this. Some of my favorites for a prequel are Jack and the Beanstalk by Joseph Jacobs, Hansel and Gretel by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. In each of these stories, tragedy is a premise. Jack’s dad is gone. What happened to him? Hansel and Gretel’s mother is dead. What happened to her? The giant is mean and selfish. What made him be like that?
The child who tries to answer one of those questions will have the makings of a whole new story without having to come up with everything from scratch. In the process, she will gain more insight into the original story as well. It’s a win-win for a teacher and a beautiful writing exercise for a child.
In order to write a sequel or a prequel, I recommend a child start with fairy tales, preferably an early version by one of the greats like Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, or Oscar Wilde. (See some of my favorites here). Once she has read it, have her narrate the story orally to ensure she has the details down and to help her establish her storyteller voice. The next step is to think through or talk through what might have preceded the story or followed after it. As soon as she has an exciting thread to work with, she should begin writing her story, following the one scene in one sitting rule.
Sequels and prequels can be written for all genres of stories, and I recommend a child experiment with lots of them. Nonetheless, there is something particularly magical about fairy tales that makes them the perfect starting point for a child. Besides understanding a few basic fairy tale conventions, there is no expectation for a child to be an expert on anything in particular. All she needs is her imagination!
First Image Credit: The Little Mermaid by Ivan Bilbin (1937)
Second Image Credit: The Selfish Giant by Walter Crane (1888)
Fairy Tales are some of the “daintiest bits” in the “cauldron of story” that J.R.R. Tolkien described in his essay, “On Fairy Stories.” They tend to be more digestible in one sitting than many other genres of story, but they are no less meaty. For that reason, children can do all sorts of fun things with them.
My students like making small twists to the storyline, such as reimagining a character or the setting or changing a key decision or the narrative perspective. Imagine what would happen if Little Red Riding Hood was a princess or the bird in Hansel and Gretel was actually the children’s mother. What if Jack’s beanstalk grew into the earth instead of out of it? What kind of story might unfold if the Miller confessed that he was lying about his daughter being able to spin straw into gold or if the Huntsman had actually tried to kill Snow White instead of taking mercy on her? How different would the story of the three little pigs be from the perspective of the wolf?
The answer to each of these questions fundamentally alters the premise of each story. Ask a child one of them and presto! He has a brand-new storyline to work with. That’s so much easier (and usually a lot more fun) than coming up with everything from scratch.
I recommend a child read an early version of any fairy tale he’s interested in, such as one by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, or Oscar Wilde. (Take a look at some of my favorites here.) Then, have him retell the story in its original form out-loud, preferably to an audience, to warm-up his storyteller voice and ensure he has a basic understanding of the storyline. Once he does, the child should start thinking of twists. Finally, he should begin writing when he finds a twist that’s exciting.
Just as I said in the introduction to this series, rewriting the story in its entirety is not at all necessary either. The rule of thumb I use with my students is one scene in one sitting. At first, many of them race through their scene. Some, intent on their story, fly through scene after scene. Others, jot down a few sentences and call it finis long before the bell rings. No matter the extreme, both scenes end up undeveloped in many ways. The child who goes slowly through his scene, carefully setting the tone, describing the setting, developing the characters’ feelings, thoughts, words, and actions ends up with the most gripping scene, the scene that everybody celebrates when it’s time to share.
So remember, a child should go slow and have fun with the scene. That will make him all the more likely to pick up the story on another day.
Image Credit: A Child’s Book of Stories by Penrhyn W. Coussens, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. New York: Duffield and Company, 1911.
When a child retires the toys of his imaginary world, as C.S. Lewis and his brother Warren did with their imaginary world of Boxen, and when he has finished drawing pictures that go along with it, as J.R.R. Tolkien did with the world of Middle Earth, it is time to take out a piece of paper and a pencil. Now, instead of playing with toys and crayons, the child will play with words.
The most straightforward approach a child could take is to write one of the stories he’s come up with from beginning to end. While that may be straightforward, it’s not at all simple—even for a developed writer. After having imagined so much, getting all of it down on paper is really hard. It’s not that the child forgets what he wants to say; it’s that it takes so very long to write it all out. Put differently, what took minutes to tell might take hours to write. And so the child may skimp on imagery, shorten scenes, cut characters, or simply give up altogether.
Writing a story is a weighty undertaking!
With that in mind, I am going to share some of my favorite storytelling exercises that are more limited in scope and possible to finish in one sitting. These are not shortcuts to writing a whole story. Rather, they are ways in which a child might learn the art of writing stories in small chunks over a prolonged period of time. Here is the list of exercises.
The rule of thumb I use with my students is one scene per sitting, meaning a child should write one scene, and one scene only, but with as much development as possible. That being the case, a full story could unfold over many days. But even if the exercise only ever produces a single scene, it is still well worthwhile for the aspiring storyteller because it affords ample space to develop his writing style and voice.
I’ll post each exercise over the coming days, and this introduction will serve as the table of contents. Whether you are a child aspiring to become a storyteller or a parent or teacher guiding a child along the way, this series is for you. And remember, it’s not how much you write but how beautifully.
Image Credit: The Little Student by Julian Alden Weir (1890)
Over and over again in his writings about The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis stated that the ideas for his series started with pictures in his head. Here is one example from Of Other Worlds: “At first they were not a story, just pictures. The Lion [, the Witch, and the Wardrobe] all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself: ‘Let’s try to make a story about it.’ At first I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it.”
Just as an artist holds an image in his mind when his pencil glides across his paper the first time, a storyteller must hold an image in his mind in order for his words to pour out.
In Lewis’s case, his picture had to sit and marinate a long while before it turned into something more, something with additional characters and a landscape and a storyline. No doubt, all that time he was filling up more and more on the “cauldron of story” J.R.R. Tolkien identified and adding to his picture on some deeper level. From this, we learn that the third habit of the storyteller is drawing. Without a picture, a storyteller can hardly have anything to tell.
Most children have at least a vague picture in mind when they begin telling a story, and that usually begins with a character. For example, children usually know to share character details like age, height, hair color, and eye color. That’s a good start, but it’s more of a rough outline than an actual sketch. Start talking about the shape of his frame, the look in his eyes, and the flow of his hair, and the picture will begin to come to life.
One way to help this process along is for a child to draw an actual picture of his character. Sure, the picture might not be museum worthy, but that’s okay. It’s the imagining that goes along with the drawing that matters.
“That’s not right,” the child might say over and over again as he draws his character on paper. And that’s a good thing. With each misplaced stroke of the pencil, he is forming a more perfect picture of his character in his mind. Ultimately, the actual picture is merely a creative vehicle for the imaginary one, the one that will be put into words.
The same should be done with the setting of the story. Here it’s helpful to think of J.R.R. Tolkien and the way he painted the landscape of Middle Earth throughout The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. With the help of his son, Tolkien drew countless maps of Middle Earth. This not only helped him visualize the world of his story, but it helped himdevelop the story itself. By his own account, his maps were an integral part of his storytelling process. In a letter to his publisher, he stated, “one cannot make a map for the narrative, but must first make a map and make the narrative agree.”
The child storyteller would do well to follow this example and draw his own maps. Again, it doesn’t have to be pretty; it just needs to be well-ordered, logically spaced, and labeled so that the child can visualize the spatial dimensions and terrain of the world he has imagined. From there, he will be able to picture its inhabitants and their comings and goings (aka the story itself) more perfectly.
Much like Boxening the story, starting with a picture has very little to do with writing at first, but it makes all the difference when a child eventually feels moved to put his story into words. The more developed the picture, the better the story.
We’ll take up the writing of stories in the next series. But rest assured, these three habits: filling up on the cauldron, Boxening the story, and starting with a picture will make the writing part of storytelling more beautiful and more fun.
Image Credit: Enfant Dessinant (Child Drawing) by Félix-Hilaire Buhot (1972)
When C.S. Lewis was a child, he and his brother, Warren, created imaginary worlds. His was called Animal Land, and Warrren’s was called India. Eventually, they combined their worlds into one big one called Boxen. They used toys to play out the life there and must have spent countless hours “building” its elaborate geography, history, personalities, and dramas. Not surprisingly, Boxen also became the setting of countless stories that Lewis wrote from approximately the ages of six to fifteen.
At some point, the Lewis brothers stopped playing their game and stored their Boxen toys in a trunk in their father’s attic. Then when their father died and C.S. Lewis had the task of selling the family estate, he had to decide what to do with the trunk. He wrote Warren on January 20, 1930, and said, “The toys in the trunk are quite plainly corpses. We will resolve them into their elements, as nature will do to us.” A short time later on the afternoon of February 23, the brothers buried the trunk in the garden unopened, feeling that a final look at the toys would hardly measure up to their memories.
Clearly, the world of Boxen was meaningful. (After all, it’s not every day you hear about two grown men getting together to bury old toys.) We will never know all that Boxen symbolized to the Lewis brothers, but we do know that it was a world unto itself, deserving (in their eyes) a fate in keeping with the rest of humanity.
The building of such worlds is at the heart of storytelling and reveals the second habit of a storyteller. Namely, a storyteller plays with stories to get inside them.
Okay, not every child is C.S. Lewis. Then again, C.S. Lewis wasn’t exactly C.S. Lewis as a child. He was simply “Jack” to his friends and family. Still, is it reasonable for a typical six-year-old or a fifteen-year-old, for that matter, to create his own Boxen? Given the right inspiration, why not?
But easier (and perhaps better yet), children can pull whole worlds from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “cauldron of story” and play with those stories. Find a doll and play Cinderella or a tower of blocks and play Jack and the Beanstalk. For older children, reenact Beowulfor the quest for the Holy Grail with puppets or peg dolls. Through the act of playing, the world will come to life. Better still, it will be a new version of the other world, unique to the child creating it.
The real magic happens in the telling that goes along with the playing. After all, Lewis himself said in a letter to a Mrs. Ashton dated February 2, 1955, “a story is only imagining out loud.” Anyone who has ever observed a child playing with toys has seen him talking aloud, sometimes whispering quietly to himself, as he acts out whatever is going on. That is the natural course of play. We want our imaginary worlds to be seen and heard in order to make them real.
If we want to harness this with the goal of cultivating storytelling, then we could encourage the child to go a step further and perform his world for an audience. In this way, the child would put on his play, dramatizing it through his toys, or even without them at the dinner table or before bedtime.
In classical speak, this is called the art of narration. In its most developed form, narration is a full-blown storytelling with all the dramatic flair a child can muster.
This is especially helpful for learning certain story phrases like “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” and story elements like “the turn” (aka the great reveal) and “the unraveling” (aka the dramatic fall after the climax). There are many other phrases and elements and so on, and a child does not need to know the technical terms for any of them. The main thing is that the child comes to embody the ideas reflected in the terms through imitation.
For example, the more a child repeats familiar story phrases, the more he will be able to coin his own. “Once upon a time” will soon turn into “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy” (Lewis’s opening line for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) or “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” (Tolkien’s opening line for The Hobbit).
No matter what the line turns into, it starts from the same model—once upon a time. The variation comes through the course of play as the child develops his own voice. Speaking his voice aloud attunes his ear to what is appealing and what is not. It compels him to compare what he is saying with what he has heard from familiar stories. He will naturally ask himself, “Does that sound right?”
Once he can answer with an enthusiastic yes, then he has become a true storyteller. The more he tells his stories aloud, the better he will eventually be able to write them. As C.S. Lewis said in a letter to a burgeoning storyteller named Miss Jane Gaskell, “always write by ear not by eye. Every sentence sh[oul]d be tested on the tongue, to make sure that the sound of it has the hardness or softness, the swiftness or languor, which the meaning of it calls for.”
And that’s precisely what a child will learn to do through play acting (aka ‘Boxening’ his stories) his stories.
First Image Credit: Baby at Play by Thomas Eakins (1876)
Second Image Credit: Child with Toys, Gabrielle and the Artist’s Son by Jean by Auguste Renoir (1985)
Third Image Credit: The Puppet Show by Théophile Emmanuel Duverger (1901)
Fourth Image Credit: Children Acting the ‘Play Scene’ from Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii by Charles Hunt (1863)
In his essay, “On Fairy Stories,” J.R.R. Tolkien likens the collection of stories told throughout history to a soup, all simmering together in a huge pot. He says that “the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling, and to it have continually been added new bits, dainty and undainty.” This metaphor explains in part why there are so many versions of different fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella. Each of the different storytellers, as Tolkien’s line of thinking goes, sampled the soup and added to it. That’s why Red’s granny sometimes dies, and Cindy’s step-sisters sometimes live.
I would like to use this metaphor for the first habit needed to become a good storyteller. Simply put, one needs to fill-up on the cauldron and taste as many stories as possible.Let’s see how this lines up with our two premier storytellers: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
When I read Lewis’s Letters to Children, I eagerly underlined every book recommendation he made and soon realized I would never be able to get through them all—and those were just the ones he put down for kids! I had the same daunting realization when I read his fuller collection of letters, most of which were addressed to his brother, father, and scholarly peers, never mind culling through all the citations in his essays. Perhaps the most telling source of information on Lewis’s reading is Surprised by Joy. There he references countless stories that shaped his early life. Taken as a whole and much simplified, I think of his reading as fitting into the following categories: epics, narrative poetry, myths (especially Norse ones), romances (think Jane Austen), fairy tales, legends, fables, and Bible stories (though approached later in life).
Clearly, Lewis consumed the “cauldron of story” so fully that he was able to draw from it (however intentionally or unintentionally we will never know) in his own storytelling. Consider, for a moment, The Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan, a talking lion, is a direct representation of Christ (the Lion of Judah), yet he would fit just as easily into any one of Aesop’s fables. His great villain, Jadis (aka the White Witch), could stand up to the wickedest witch any fairy tale could dish up. What’s more, her physical characteristics line up very closely with Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen. Then there are the children in his stories, all of whom have been disenfranchised in some way, much like many a famous child in the world of faerie (Hansel and Gretel, to name just two). Of course, there are overlaps with mythology as well, as seen through his many fauns and centaurs and talking animals. It’s no wonder that Lewis was a master storyteller. He hadn’t just filled up on the soup; he stuffed himself full of it over and over again.
Likewise, Tolkien had a voracious appetite for the “cauldron of story.” In the aforementioned essay, he indicates a preference for the taste of “faerie” above all else. But by his own account, that was not a dominant taste in his early life and only awakened as he got older. Nevertheless, the number of fairy tales he mentions in his essay is great. He gives the impression of having read all twelve of Andrew Lang’s fairy book collections, in addition to a good many more by the Brothers Grimm and innumerable others. He also makes casual references to countless myths and fables before closing out his essay with nuanced connections between the world of “faerie” and the Bible. He had eaten so much of the “soup” that it was oozing out of him not only in his essay, but in all his stories as well.
For example, Tolkien uses countless elements commonly found in these core materials in The Lord of the Rings, though with such a distinct flavor of his own that his recipe is wholly original. His elves are certainly not of the shoemaker type, and his dwarfs would hardly encase a dead maiden in a glass coffin (unless she had a precious stone inside of her). Tolkien’s hobbits and orcs feel altogether unique, even if one senses that some flavor, long forgotten, was conjured from the pot in their creation. Then there are human characters like Aragorn whose heroism has vague echoes of the likes of Beowulf and King Arthur but with a style all his own. There is no doubt that Tolkien filled up on the “cauldron of story” over and over again, and ultimately added many of his own “dainty bits” to it.
From Lewis and Tolkien we learn that filling up on the “cauldron of story” is an irreplaceable habit for becoming a good storyteller. Make plenty of room for epics, narrative poetry, the Bible, legends, myths, fairy tales, and fables as they provide the stock of most stories. If you eat enough of it, your own pot will soon begin to simmer.
First Image Credit: Boy Eating Soup (Enfant mangeant sa soupe), by Francois Bonvin (1861)
Second Image Credit: Soup, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1865)
Classical educators commonly hold up “the story” as its principal teaching tool. If you want to lead a student to learn Wisdom and Virtue, then read a great story together. The lessons in them are manifold, and their ability to catch even the most dispassionate student is well known. Similarly, if you want a student to demonstrate Wisdom and Virtue, then have him write a story.
Monsters or dragons? Hunstmen or knights? Damsels or shieldmaidens? The shape of a student’s story reveals far more than his likes or dislikes within a particular genre. It reveals the very drama of his imagination, which is the playground of the soul.
Yet, teachers often find it easier to help a student receive a story than to write one. Even the most gifted need a lot of help thinking about the sound and structure of a story, let alone developing an interesting plot. Classical educators have a few strategies that greatly aid in this area.
The first and, perhaps, most important strategy comes from the tradition of imitatio, which means “imitation” in Latin. Classical educators hold that imitation is the chief mode of learning. If you want to become good at something, then find a model of that something to replicate. It follows, then, that a student who wants to write a good story should find a good story to imitate. Better still, find a good storyteller, and imitate his or her habits.
Two of the best and most commonly read among my students are C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, so I recently dove into their writings to see what they had to say about telling stories. With any luck, they would have some kind of “recipe” or “formula” all laid out for aspiring storytellers. Although that did not turn out to be the case, they had many tidbits of advice and lots of habits in common in their approach to storytelling, namely: reading, playing, and drawing.
In the next three posts, I will explain the importance of these habits for aspiring storytellers, be they in the classroom or at home, and show how Lewis and Tolkien both made use of them. Here are the names of the posts and brief summaries.
Fill-up on the Cauldron (aka Read): In this post, I rely on Tolkien’s image of the “cauldron of story” to show the importance of reading and listening to great stories in the formation of a storyteller.
Boxen the Story (aka Play): In this post, I focus on Lewis’s imaginary play world of Boxen as a metaphor for the role of play in forming the imagination of a storyteller.
Start with a Picture (aka Draw): In this post, I bring together examples of how Lewis and Tolkien both used pictures to inform their writing.
Once this series is through, the next one will apply these habits to the classroom, and I will share some of the exercises that have been the most fruitful and enjoyable for my students.
I do want to offer two disclaimers. First, I am an amateur on Lewis and much more so on Tolkien. Though an immense fan of both, I have hardly tapped the well of their writings. Second, while Lewis and Tolkien possessed the habits I am highlighting, I am in no way saying they followed them as a rule or regimen. It is the teacher in me that likes to synthesize and organize and has therefore extrapolated something concrete for children and their families. But the writer in me also knows that habits, like good stories, form little by little and rarely in the order we intend. Creation, which is at the heart of telling stories, is an open door that one can walk through however one pleases.
Image Credit:The Story Bookby William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1877)
Before reading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis with my five- and six-year-old sons, I spent some time reviewing the storyline. Though I had read it more than once as an adult, I was still searching for something new about Susan. As you’ll see from the story summary below, her path does not follow that of her siblings or any of the other friends of Narnia. She is “left out,” so to speak, of their glorious ending, and I was worried about how to handle that with my sons.
In my hunt to learn more, I was somewhat dismayed to find so much criticism of C.S. Lewis for his treatment of Susan. Perhaps the most pointed (and dramatic) was a short story called The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman, in which the author imagines her as a grown-up with all sorts of psychological problems.
“They’re all missing the point!” I thought.
So what is the point? Well, far be it from me to know exactly what C.S. Lewis had in mind, but I do think his faithful readers know he was a careful teacher, profoundly concerned with the interior life of his readers. As I’ll explain in the reflection, I think Susan was Lewis’s last and, perhaps, most important lesson.
THE STORY
The Last Battle is the only book in the series that starts off in Narnia. It begins with two talking animals: a donkey named Puzzle and an ape named Shift. They find a lion’s skin floating in a river, and Shift convinces Puzzle to put it on and pretend to be Aslan. Puzzle, who is very simple-minded and eager to please his bully of a friend, goes along with the ruse, and word gets around Narnia that Aslan is back.
King Tirian hears this news as well and hopes it to be true. But when a tree spirit stumbles into his presence and reports that her kind is being chopped down in Aslan’s Name by Calormene soldiers and then falls down dead herself, King Tirian is beside himself with anger. He sends Roonwitm a loyal centaur, to gather his army and sets off himself with the unicorn Jewel to confront the tree murderers.
When the King and Jewel arrive, they fall into a fit of passion at the sight of a Calormene soldier beating a talking horse and end up killing him. A troop of more Calormenes arrive on the scene immediately thereafter and arrest King Tirian in Aslan’s Name. Full of remorse, King Tirian and Jewel willingly accept Aslan’s punishment.
Only it’s not Aslan who punishes them; it’s Shift. King Tirian is bound to a tree, and Jewel is tied to the back of a stable in which the fake Aslan spends his time awaiting a nightly appearance before the gullible Narnians.
The appointed hour arrives, and Puzzle comes out in the lion’s skin and pretends to be Aslan. A great bonfire is ablaze, and King Tirian sees the donkey for what he is—an imposter. He implores Aslan, the True Aslan, to come to his aid and calls upon the children who helped Narnia throughout its history. Next, he has a vision of a gathering of people dressed very differently than himself, and one of them, a teenage boy who calls himself Peter the High King, demands to know what has happened to Narnia. But the vision vanishes, and King Tirian is left alone, sad and forlorn.
In addition to Peter, the gathering includes Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Jill, a grown-up Digory (aka Professor Kirke), and a grown-up Polly (aka Aunt Polly). Susan’s conspicuous absence is eventually explained as being because she is “no longer a friend of Narnia.” The group had gotten together at the initiative of Aunt Polly so they could talk about their adventures in Narnia.
When they see King Tirian, they want to help him, but they don’t know how to get back to Narnia to do so. After all, only Eustace and Jill are presumably young enough to go. So they come up with an idea to retrieve the magic rings Professor Kirke and Aunt Polly had used as children. Peter and Edmund carry out the plan, which involves sneaking into Professor Kirke’s old backyard, and travel by train to bring back the rings. The remainder of the group, meanwhile, waits for them at the train station, but something happens that sends Eustace and Jill flying into Narnia. Though many days have passed in their time, they arrive in Narnia only moments after King Tirian had his vision.
After untying the King and feeding him a small meal, the trio sets off to arm themselves at a nearby garrison and disguise themselves as Calormenes. Newly fortified, they sneak back to the stable on a reconnaissance mission. Jill goes rogue, enters the stable, and takes Puzzle prisoner. Although King Tirian is angry with her disobedience, he is glad to have Puzzle. Now they can show Narnia that he is a fake. They go back to the garrison to await a more advantageous hour to expose the enemy.
Along the way, they rescue a group of Dwarfs forcibly bound for Calormen. The Dwarfs turn down the friendship of the King and say the Dwarfs are “for the Dwarfs.” They don’t want anybody’s allegiance, not even Aslan’s, and they walk away caring only for themselves. King Tirian had not anticipated such a response, and he begins to lose hope. Thankfully, one Dwarf comes back and joins their cause.
They soon learn from a hawk named Farsight that Roonwit and his entire army have been killed by the Calormenes. No one is left to help them. They must choose to give up or fight on, and King Tirian says he will take the adventure Aslan has in store. He offers for Eustace and Jill to leave, saying they don’t need to die for Narnia, but the children refuse to leave. Besides, they don’t even know if they can get back since they had not used the rings in the first place.
A deep stillness sweeps across the land, and they suddenly see a terrible creature with the upper body of an ugly bird and the legs of a man. It’s Tash, the god of the Calormenes. His presence in Narnia is unprecedented and portends evil. Nevertheless, King Tirian’s small band ventures forth at the appointed hour in order to expose Puzzle as a fake and thereby convince the Narnians to stop listening to Shift and the Calormenes. Perhaps with their awakening, Narnia stands a chance.
Once again, they hope in vain. Two evil co-conspirators, a talking cat named Ginger and a Calormene soldier named Rishda, have effectively removed Shift from power, making him their puppet. Ginger and Rishda are much cleverer than Shift and, indeed, more nefarious in their intentions. They correctly understand the danger of Puzzle’s absence and decide to out him as a fraud themselves. So, they have Shift “warn” the crowd that a donkey is dressed in a lion’s skin pretending to be Aslan.
Though the Narnians are still fearful of Shift, they muster the courage to challenge him and ask for an audience with Aslan, who, allegedly is just inside the stable. Shift then makes a shocking revelation. He says there is no such thing as Aslan; there is only a god named Tashlan, a god who is both Aslan and Tash at the same time. This is the lie of all lies, but the Narnians don’t know what to think. Shift revels in their confusion and dares the Narnians to go into the stable one at a time and see Tashlan themselves. Really, a Calormene soldier is waiting inside to kill the Narnians as they enter.
Knowing the Narnians are scared to go in, Ginger goes in first as an example. He, however, has nothing to fear because the Calormene soldier knows not to kill him. But a strange thing happens. Ginger screeches loudly and runs out of the stable unable to talk. He’s been turned into a “dumb” cat. Next, a Calormene named Emeth goes in. A moment later he comes out, stumbles, and falls down dead.
From his hiding place, King Tirian sees that the man is not Emeth after all; some great mystery is at play inside the stable, but there is no time to wait and uncover it. The king reveals himself and calls upon the Narnians to fight with him against the Calormenes. Talking dogs and talking horses and a great many other talking animals join his side in what will be Narnia’s last battle. The tide seems to turn in their favor, but the Dwarfs stubbornly fight against everybody, still insisting that they’re only for themselves. They don’t want either side to win, so they pick off Narnians and Calormenes alike with their bows. Victory slips from their grasp.
Jewel fights bravely but is killed. Eustace holds on a little longer, but he gets backed into the dreaded stable, and Jill and King Tirian are forced inside last of all.
But the stable is unlike a stable on the inside. It’s another world entirely with lush green grass, a beautiful blue sky, and a crowd of humans crowned in royalty. It’s the friends of Narnia dressed in regal attire: the High King Peter, King Edmund, Queen Lucy, Lord Digory, and Lady Polly. Even Eustace and Jill appear as king and queen. Magically, they have all passed into Aslan’s Country. Jill and Eustace passed through the battle, but the others passed through a train crash. It turns out, that was the terrible jerk they felt at the train station.
A crowd of Dwarfs is also among them, but they cannot see the royals or any of the splendor that surrounds them. They see only the blackness of a dank stable.
Aslan appears, opens the stable door, and ends the world just outside of it with a tremendous roar just as He had once started it with a tremendous song. Spirits come flooding through the door as darkness washes over Narnia. When nothing is left, Aslan shuts the door and beckons everyone to follow Him further in and higher up. A great race follows in which the children alternately run and stop to talk to friends they had thought lost. They see Roonwit and Jewel and a repentant Puzzle. They see Emeth, who explains that another Calormene had tried to kill him when he walked into the stable but that he had bested him. It was the “bad” Calormene who came out and died. The reason Emeth had gone inside the stable in the first place was that he had begun to doubt his leader. He had served Tash faithfully all his life, and it didn’t make sense to him that Tash could be the same as Aslan. Given the chance to confront his god face to face, he wanted to know the Truth. Aslan rewards Emeth for his honor and service and says that every good thing he had done, though it was in Tash’s name, was really done for Aslan because Tash is unable to accept good works.
As the friends of Narnia climb further in and higher up, they realize the land looks like Narnia, only more like Narnia. It turns out, the Narnia they had known before was merely a shadow of the more beautiful Narnia in Aslan’s Country. They eventually come to the garden in which Digory had picked the apple for Aslan in The Magician’s Nephew. They eat of the tree and have more happy reunions with the likes of Mr. Tumnus and other old friends. They even find their own parents there! As it turns out, they had been on the train, too, and now they are all together in Aslan’s Country, a world without end.
REFLECTION
So ends The Chronicles of Narnia, but we are left to wonder what becomes of Susan. In a letter to a boy named Martin dated January 22, 1957, C.S. Lewis explained, “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s Country in the end—in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense.’”
This quote, which is included in Letters to Children, sheds light on C.S. Lewis’s thinking about Susan. Let’s look at three of his points and see what lessons unfold.
“Silly and Conceited”
It’s sad to hear Susan described this way, especially when we think about her having once been a Queen of Narnia. Nonetheless, we remember how in The Horse and His Boy she allowed herself to be courted by the Prince of Calormen, a deceptive man who coveted her beauty above anything else. We remember, also, how she did not want to see Aslan when he first appeared to guide the children to Aslan’s How in Prince Caspian, suggesting she was trying to shut Him out of her life. So, too, do we remember how she was sent to America at the beginning of The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” because she was considered “the pretty one.” Presumably, being seen and admired in a foreign country was within her limited “skill-set,” making her (and her parents) seem rather shallow.
Poor Susan! Through a mixture of nurturing and her own willful decisions, she grows “silly and conceited.” In other words, she is too consumed with her own ego to have any room left for Aslan.
“She Grew Up”
In another of C.S. Lewis’s letters to children, he expressed that he did not think age mattered all that much. He felt people could be old and young at the same time in their being. His view is much like the idea of an old person being young at heart or a young person having an old soul, but we need to take these popular images a little further.
To be young at heart in the Lewis sense of the phrase doesn’t mean that one loves toys beyond the normal age. We would call that childish. Instead, being young at heart means being child-like in spirit, or having a simplicity of mind that allows one to see the obvious. (Think of The Emperor’s New Suit.) Susan “grows up” in spirit because she pretends that Narnia was just a game of make-believe. She was there. She saw it for herself. Yet, she closes her heart to it in the end because Narnia does not fit into the “reality” she prefers, a reality, we might add, that feeds rather than checks her ego. In short, Susan decides Narnia is all nonsense and thereby rejects the Truth Aslan had directed her toward.
“Time for Her to Mend”
C.S. Lewis probably brought much consolation to Martin with these words. Thankfully, all is not lost for Susan. While Narnia is closed to her because Aslan ended that world, she can still get to Aslan’s Country in “her own way.”
And the ways are many—if she chooses to look for them! Aslan mostly appeared to the children in the form of the Lion, but he also appeared at times in other forms. At the end of The Voyage of “The Dawn Treader,” He appeared as a Lamb because He wanted the children to be able to recognize Him better in their own world as the Lamb of God, who is Christ. Susan was not present in that scene, of course, but the point remains that Aslan, as the Logos Incarnate, is bigger than Narnia. He transcends all of creation. As such, He can be found wherever one looks. The problem, then, for Susan is whether or not she wants to find Him.
The Lesson
Now we arrive at the lesson. Much like an anti-fairy tale in which the ending is somewhat of a warning, I think C.S. Lewis used Susan’s character to tell his readers that “happily ever after” is found through Christ alone. The choice is ours whether to follow the path of Susan or the path of the friends of Narnia. Aslan, though a King Himself, does not treat His people as slaves, nor does He force His Will upon them. His way is to invite. Although Susan has not accepted Aslan’s invitation at the end of the series, His invitation remains for the extent of her mortal life.
In a letter to a young girl named Pauline Bannister dated February 19, 1960, C.S. Lewis indicated that since Susan was still alive in this world, her story was not yet over. Nevertheless, he said, “I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s ever getting to Aslan’s Country; but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?”
I hope Pauline took his suggestion and wrote something beautiful. My sons and I have. In our version, Susan gets married and has children, and they teach her to be child-like again. Together, they find their way to Aslan’s Country in an all new adventure complete with an ivory horn and plenty of archery. It’s a simple storyline but a True one. We find the Logos Incarnate most readily when we become like children, full of wonder and longing for Truth.
FINAL THOUGHTS
C.S. Lewis wrote so well to people of all ages, not simply because he was full of wisdom but because he could make it so plain. Now many weeks after having finished The Chronicles of Narnia, my sons and I are still making references to the characters and their adventures, not merely to relive the fun but to explain other things that come up.
“It’s just like when Digory looked at Aslan face to face for the first time,” one of us will say. Or, “Doesn’t that remind you of when no one believed Lucy?” The connections to the everyday adventure of raising children in the Faith are endless.
What’s more, I read this blog series to my sons in draft form, and they provided unexpected fact checking. They remembered with pristine accuracy what happened in individual scenes, while I sometimes lumped details together. I was amazed. They saw themselves as guardians, so to speak, of the storyline. Happily, they are simultaneously becoming guardians of the Truth it represents.
I think C.S. Lewis would have liked that.
(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.)
Before I had turned the first page in The Silver Chair and begun reading it to my five- and six-year-old sons, they were asking me all sorts of questions about the story. They wanted to know if Lucy and Edmund would be in it after all. (No.) They wanted to know how much time would have passed between this story and The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader.” (Only a little.) And, curiously, they wanted to know what it meant that the “chair” was “silver.” (Wait and see!)
Having read all the books in the series with them up to that point, they already knew to look for C.S. Lewis’s hidden messages, and they were onto something with their line of questioning. Read on to find out what we decided was at the heart of The Silver Chair.
THE STORY
This story begins in the place children dread most—school. Of course as a teacher, I say this with a bit of irony, which is what I think C.S. Lewis was after. Our heroine, Jill Pole, has had so much difficulty at school that even recess is a tragic experience. She finds herself bullied by the other kids, and a classmate who turns out to be none other than Eustace Scrubb comes to her rescue. In a way that is part fanciful and part desperate, he tells Jill they can escape all their hardships at school by going to Narnia. Hand-in-hand, the two classmates beg Aslan to save them.
Soon thereafter they discover one of the school entrances mysteriously unlocked. They walk through it and find themselves on top of a mountain. Jill, in utter disbelief, makes a silly show of standing too close to the edge. Eustace, whom she refers to in a jocular way as simply “Scrubb,” tries to pull her away from the edge because it’s so dangerously steep. Disgruntled, Jill pushes him, and he falls over! But rather than fall down to his doom, Eustace gets blown into the distance by Aslan, who has seen everything.
Jill is terrified of Aslan, partly because He’s a Lion, and partly because she senses He is unhappy with her. She eventually musters up the courage to talk to Aslan, and He sends her (and Eustace, though not present for his commissioning) on a quest to save Caspian’s son. Aslan explains to Jill that Narnia’s Prince Rilian has been missing for a number of years, ever since he sought vengeance on a serpent that killed his mother. Without the prince, King Caspian will die heirless, and Narnia will be in a very bad way.
In order to find the prince, Jill must memorize four signs and be prepared to follow them with Eustace when they are reunited: First, Eustace will meet an old friend as soon as he sets foot in Narnia. He should greet that friend, and good fortune will accompany them on their quest. Second, they should journey out of Narnia to the North into the ruined city of the ancient giants. Third, they must look for writing on an old stone in that city, and do what it says. Finally, they will know they have found Prince Rilian because he will ask them something in Aslan’s Name.
Aslan warns Jill that she must recite the signs over and over again and make sure that she is vigilant in always looking for them. And hurry! Thanks to Jill’s antics on the hill, they have already lost critical time. Then, Aslan blows Jill off the cliff and after Eustace.
She meets him at a port in Narnia. Together, they see an old king depart on a voyage, not realizing the king is none other than Caspian. He was the old friend they were supposed to greet! Not having done so, their quest is now bound to be more difficult. Luckily, they gain the acquaintance of an owl named Glimfeather. He links them up with a strange Narnian creature known as a Marshwiggle named Puddleglum. He’s tall and skinny and bears an uncanny resemblance to a toad when he sits down and spreads his webbed feet. He also tends to see the bad side of things, which the children find irritating. Nevertheless, Puddleglum readily agrees to accompany them on their dangerous mission and makes a noble guide.
The three companions travel across difficult country and through wintry weather into the North of Narnia, believing the second sign will become clear when they arrive in the ruined city of the ancient giants. Along the way, they meet a beautiful maiden and mysterious knight clad in black armor whose face is covered by his visor. The maiden beckons Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum to seek the gentle giants in the city of Harfang and tell them the Lady of the Green Kirtle bids them welcome during the Autumn Feast.
The idea of the Autumn Feast entices the children, and they eagerly set forth. But a strange thing happens to the children; they begin to bicker with each other and complain to Puddleglum. Puddleglum keeps making a point of this change in their attitude and blames it on the Green Maiden, but the children chalk up his remarks as more of his pessimism. Despite his reservations, Puddleglum escorts the children to the giants’ home.
When they get there, the giants are a little too happy to see them. They lick their lips and make many references to having them at the feast, but Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum don’t understand that means the giants want to eat them until they stumble across recipes for Human and Marshwiggle. By that time, they also realize that they flubbed the second sign. In their haste to get to the city of Harfang, they had walked right past a sign from the ruined city that said: “Under Me.”
They make a hurried escape out a kitchen side door, and the giants chase after them. The Narnian crew’s only chance is to climb down into a dark cave, which at least leads them in the right direction of the sign they had missed. They make their way through a long tunnel, eventually running into a scary group of creatures who apprehend them in the name of the Queen of the Deep Realm.
The prisoners are brought to the Queen’s chamber. She is not there, but a friendly knight meets them in her stead. He calls the Queen “his lady” and gaily explains that she is away making final preparations for an invasion of Narnia, which they refer to as the Overworld because they are buried so deep below it. The knight will be made king. As he talks about his plot, he is utterly unaware of how dastardly it is, and Jill thinks him terrible. Nevertheless, the knight enjoys the company of the trio and asks them to stay with him a little longer.
Then a strange thing happens: he tells them to tie him up in his silver chair because a fit of madness is about to come over him, just as it does every night. Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum do as the knight asks and soon hear him raving about Narnia. But his raving is different than what they had expected. He makes an appeal in Aslan’s Name, asking over and over again for them to untie him so he can get vengeance on the wicked woman who killed his mother.
The last sign is revealed! Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum now realize that the knight is Prince Rilian. He has been enchanted by the queen into believing lies during the daytime.
They untie him, but their chance of escape closes suddenly because the Queen of the Deep Realm returns. She sees what has happened and begins enchanting Prince Rilian once more. Her magic works her way through the entire party, and each of them begins to forget Narnia. As they sink deeper into the queen’s false reality, Puddleglum manages to wake himself up by stepping in a fire. His webbed foot hurts so much, he snaps back to his senses and makes a climactic speech about believing in Narnia.
He says, “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it is strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
Feeling her hold on the Narnians weaken, the Queen flares up into a green serpent and strikes, but Prince Rilian kills her, avenging his mother at last. The Underworld begins to crumble, and the group hurries away. As they leave, they learn the strange creatures who had taken them prisoners were also under a spell. They are escaping, too, but not to the Overworld. They belong in a deeper part of the earth and go back there.
Rilian and his crew manage to climb out of the earth and happen upon a friendly party of Narnians. When Rilian’s identity is revealed, they celebrate with a splendid meal in a little cave. Meanwhile, word is sent to King Caspian with all haste. He comes home just in time to see his son before he dies in peace.
Then a magical thing happens. Eustace and Jill find themselves once more on Aslan’s Mountain. But this time, they are there with Aslan and Caspian. They watch as Aslan breathes on Caspian and see him grow youthful and awaken back to life. Eustace and Caspian are overjoyed to see one another. Caspian, who had always been curious about Eustace’s world, asks permission to see it just once. Aslan grants permission and sends them all back to the school yard at the same moment when the bullies had been chasing Eustace and Jill. Now armed and accompanied by Caspian and Aslan, they mount a terrifying counterassault and send the bullies running.
Better still, the principal who had allowed the bullying and all the other terrible things at Experiment House to happen gets removed from her job because no one believes she really saw a Lion on campus trying to eat her. And so the story ends with order restored in Narnia as well as at Experiment House.
REFLECTION
Now, let’s take a look at some of the hidden messages C.S. Lewis had in mind in writing The Silver Chair, much of which revolves around the motif of Truth versus Falsehood. This came out most clearly in his opposing images of the Underworld and the Overworld.
The Underworld
Buried deep below the earth, the Underworld is shrouded in darkness. All those who dwell there are strangers to the Sun. They know neither its golden light nor its steadfast Truth. They see things only dimly, if it can be called “seeing,” and what they see is a kingdom based on lies—only they don’t know it. The Underlings are not merely “under” the earth; they are “under” an enchantment much like Prince Caspian. As such, the Underworld represents Falsehood.
Although the Queen of the Deep Realm desires to move her kingdom above ground, it is not to embrace the light of the Sun, which symbolizes Truth. Rather, it is to falsely place herself on the throne of Narnia and thereby cast a figurative shadow upon the land.
That is why Prince Rilian sits in a silver chair, as opposed to a gold one. In this case, silver does not simply mean “second” as in a medal one might win for running a race. It more aptly means “not first” or “not the true one.” Nevertheless, the silver is very beautiful, and that is what makes it attractive. C.S. Lewis seems to be saying that Falsehood lures us in because it is dressed up in finery. If you look closely, however, you will be able to see through its lies.
Puddleglum does, and it’s not because he’s the smartest character in the book, which he isn’t. Nor is it because he’s got some special quality as a Marshwiggle, which he doesn’t. It’s because he’s so genuinely devoted to the Truth. All his cynicism throughout the book is his way of being honest. Maybe he is honest to a fault sometimes, but he is nothing if not sincere.
Interestingly, Experiment House is another kind of Underworld. It, too, tries to hide the Truth from its students. Perhaps the headmistress is not as evil as the Queen of the Deep Realm, but the effects of her leadership are equally disastrous. The students in her care have been taught lies, making them no better than the Underlings in their blind obedience to nonsense, which is not really obedience at all. It’s a tyranny of misrule, a state of utter chaos.
The Overworld
The Overworld, which is really Narnia, is opposite the Underworld in every way. It basks in the light of the Sun and the Truth it symbolizes as a kingdom dedicated to Aslan. Like all earthly places, however, it is still vulnerable to lies. That is how Prince Rilian was stolen away in the first place, and that is how the evil Queen of the Deep Realm is able to tunnel so near to the earth’s surface.
Therein lies a warning: the Truth is never fully safe; those who wish to abuse it and distort it are always lurking in the shadows.
Bright and beautiful though it is, Narnia is not the place of Absolute Truth that Aslan intends for His people. In fact, Narnia rests in the shadow of another “Overworld”—Aslan’s Mountain (referred to in other books as Aslan’s Country). There alone does the Truth reign supreme. To get there, one has to die like King Caspian. Through his death in Narnia and his resurrection on Aslan’s Mountain, we are reminded that Truth begets Eternal Life.
FINAL THOUGHTS
My sons were bouncing in their beds when Caspian came back to life. Second to Puddleglum’s speech, it was the highlight of the book for us. That was not only because it was an exciting moment in the story, but because it spoke to the nature of the immortal soul and the gifts that await us in Heaven.
We spent some time imagining what Caspian’s new life would be like on Aslan’s Mountain. My sons were quick to say that he would have a golden throne. There alone would his kingship be complete. There alone would he be able to take his Trueplace, working fully in accordance with Aslan’s will.
With only one book to go in The Chronicles of Narnia, we were eager for our other beloved characters to find their true places as well.
