C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien belonged to many different storytelling groups throughout their lives, most famously overlapping in their membership of the Inklings. Considering they are two of the best-selling and most beloved authors of modern times, it stands to reason that the aspiring storyteller might want to replicate their group in some way.
Let’s consider the benefits of having a storytelling group and then see how it could be adapted for children.
Perhaps most obviously from the sheer standpoint of writing, the Inklings provided its members with instant feedback on their stories, and not just from anybody either. They got it from the brightest literary minds of their day, people whose opinions they greatly valued. Better still, they got to read their stories aloud.
(If you’ve ever written a story, then you know that reading it aloud to another is a lot more enjoyable and satisfying than waiting for someone to read it on his own and report back to you.)
It’s easy to imagine Tolkien reading his newest chapter of The Lord of the Rings and looking up periodically to note the expression and posture of Lewis, and Lewis doing the same when it was his turn to read. That kind of unspoken feedback is invaluable. After all, a good story is meant to move the reader, and there are many visible signs that a reader can observe in the moment.
According to Tolkien’s letters, Lewis and other members of the Inklings were moved to tears at certain points in his readings. Now, seeing that kind of reaction is a lot more compelling than hearing about it later on, no matter how sincere the report.
Of course, their meetings brought criticism as well. Tolkien disliked Lewis’s style of writing, often finding it wanting in beauty, and sometimes thought his stories needed more threading together. And Lewis had a number of suggestions for Tolkien, which seem to have been mostly rejected. Nevertheless, both men reflected on the thoughts of the other, taking from it what they would.
Although feedback was a highly beneficial outcome of their meetings, it was hardly the heart of why they got together. Rather, they met as friends with a common desire to know and love Truth, albeit through the lens of story.
Their meetings often lasted far past the final pages of whatever manuscript was being read. Lewis, Tolkien, and the other members would eat and drink and talk about all manner of other things, especially religion. In fact, Lewis credits these exchanges as leading him back to Christianity. Without that conversion, there would have been no Chronicles of Narnia, no Mere Christianity, no Great Divorce. He would have probably been a great writer still, as he had already established himself as such, but a Christian apologist? Certainly not in the same way, if at all.
So what does all this mean for the aspiring storyteller?
Although I think it goes without saying that getting feedback on your stories is always beneficial, the experience of the Inklings suggests that it should be the secondary goal of a writing club, the first goal being fostering friendship.
In my years of teaching, I have always made writing stories a priority in my classroom. But it wasn’t until last year that I started a writing club for students. We proudly called ourselves the Inklings in the spirit of Lewis and Tolkien. (I wanted to call it the Jinklings for “Junior Inklings,” but my students thought that sounded cheesey and preferred the original name.)
Partly, it took me so long to set up a storytelling club because of all the other things that needed to be done as a teacher. But in truth, the group would have formed without me. I had a unique body of students, eager to become true storytellers. The moment I let the idea slip in class, the kids jumped on it.
I tried to get away with one meeting a week, and they begged for two. I tried to limit the readings to recess, and they brought their lunches. So I brought mine, too.
We enjoyed countless wonderful stories together. But more importantly, we had a great time. My students were generally all friends in the first place, but their bonds grew stronger. It was incredible to watch them share their stories and grow as writers, but it was the growth in their ability to engage one another in a literary way that most impressed me.
Therein lies the most important lesson for an aspiring storyteller. No matter how polished your grammar and syntax, how gripping your plot, or how believable your characters, it’s the heart of the writer and how it connects to the heart of the reader that is the mark of a true storyteller.
Having a storyteller club can bring that relationship to life. I had about a dozen students in my club, but you only need one other person. It can be a mom, a dad, a brother, a sister, a friend, a classmate, or a teacher. (Of course, parental discretion is helpful here.) Chances are someone will be happy to listen if you only ask.
As a final note, I want to thank my students who joined me last year. They also listened to my stories from time to time, and that was incredibly special!
First Image Credit: The Red School House by Winslow Homer, 1873, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art., Washington, D.C.
Second Image Credit: School Time by Winslow Homer, c. 1874, courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Understanding the role of archetypes in stories is essential for an aspiring storyteller. Not to be confused with stereotypes, an archetype is a literary term that refers to a “first type” or “fundamental type” of character or other story element. “Damsels in distress” and “knights in shining armor” are typical examples of archetypes found in the legend of King Arthur, which subsequent stories have come to replicate in various forms.
For example, C.S. Lewis has many knights in shining armor in his Chronicles of Narnia, albeit with his own distinct twists. Peter is a perfect example of this. Though a young boy and living in the mid-twentieth century, he is very much a knight, ready and willing to make personal sacrifices to save others. As for damsels in distress, Susan is the only one of his Narnia characters who fits this type, albeit in a spiritual rather than a literal way.
Tolkien also uses many archetypes from King Arthur in his telling of The Lord of the Rings. His truest knight in shining armor is Aragorn, although his entire fellowship—from Frodo to Gimli—could rightly fall into this type. Like Lewis, Tolkien’s a little short on damsels in distress, but he makes ample use of another of my favorite archetypes from King Arthur: the “hero’s dilemma.”
This one refers to when a hero must choose between two opposed, but seemingly equally worthy tasks. For example, should one of Arthur’s knights save a damsel in distress from certain death or catch a villain bound to kill untold numbers? Of course, he would love to do both, but he can’t—that’s the dilemma.
In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn faces a hero’s dilemma when he must decide whether to follow after Frodo and Sam and help them destroy the Ring, or try to rescue Merry and Pippin from their Orc captors. The heaviness of this decision weighs on the reader as much as it does on the characters.
(Luckily, for Middle Earth, helping Merry and Pippin in the short term ultimately helps everyone in the long term!)
While there are considerably more than these three archetypes, I find them to be the most useful starting places for my students. No matter what we’re reading, I can ask them a question like, “Is there a knight in shining armor in this story?”
Chances are, if the story is medieval, the answer will be yes. But if the story is more ancient, say a Greek myth or an Aesop fable, then the answer is a lot more nuanced. The same is true with a more modern story.
Take Huck Finn, for example. Is he a knight in shining armor? Though his ragged clothes would suggest otherwise, he does have a lot of the necessary characteristics. After all, he is trying to “rescue” Jim from slavery. Then again, maybe he’s a type of damsel in distress since Jim is rescuing him, too.
The point of asking whether Huck, or any character, is a knight in shining armor is not so much to force him into a box. Rather, it’s to show a child how archetypes define all characters in some way. Once a child understands that archetypes are part of a longstanding pattern in stories, then he can begin to adapt the pattern to his liking.
Here is an example of how I use these archetypes for storytelling in my classroom.
First, I have my students choose one of our two main character archetypes—a knight in shining armor or a damsel in distress—and create a new character based on it. Perhaps the new character will fit the original type closely (think Batman or Lad, a Dog). Or perhaps the new character will completely defy it (think Shrek or Princess Fiona). Either way is fine. As part of that process, I also have them interview their character as described in this previous post.
Once the new character is more or less imagined, I have my students create an archetypical “hero’s dilemma” that suits the character. The magnitude of that dilemma could be as serious as saving a life or as trivial as picking out shoes for prom. Again, it’s totally up to them.
Last of all, I have my students write the scene of their dilemma through the point when their character makes his or her choice. We always share as many stories aloud as possible, and this kind of story is a particularly fun one to listen to as a class. Because it contains a hero’s dilemma, we like voting on whether the hero made the right choice or not. Inevitably, there is a lot of disagreement among us, and that’s a sign that the dilemma was appropriately compelling.
Although it’s unlikely that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien ever sat down with a teacher and completed an exercise like this, it seems fairly obvious that they were thinking in these terms when they wrote their great stories. No matter the precise method, the aspiring storyteller will benefit tremendously from writing with archetypes.
And it’s fun and easy, too. After all, there’s no need to re-invent the archetype—just play around with it.
First Image Credit: The Fight in the Queen’s Ante-chamber by Walter Crane, 1911
Second Image Credit: Huckleberry Finn and Jim on Their Raft by E.W. Kemble, 1884
There are many reasons history is recorded beyond simply keeping the record. Though we can’t go into all of them here, one touches directly upon a storyteller: certain people and events make their way into the historical record because they captured the hearts and minds of their contemporaries. Perhaps their story was particularly heroic or tragic. Perhaps it inspired something great or portended something catastrophic. Whatever the answer, there is a lot of material there for a storyteller to play around with.
As a teacher of medieval history, I have frequently been struck by the ways in which C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien wove some of that period’s key characters and events into their stories.
In TheChronicles of Narnia, Caspian the Conqueror is strangely reminiscent of the real-life William the Conqueror of England. Boromir’s death in The Lord of the Rings feels every bit as beautiful and tragic as the death of Roland, the legendary nephew of Charlemagne who also famously carried a horn with him into his battles. Of course, I have no idea if Lewis or Tolkien intentionally used these giants of medieval history in their stories, but the similarities are there nonetheless.
I frequently have my students write stories in connection to our history lessons. Those lessons combine storytelling lectures and primary source readings. Although I like to think that my lectures are extremely interesting, it’s the primary source documents that really get everyone’s attention.
Now, you may be thinking primary source documents sound far too difficult for a child. After all, most of us didn’t encounter them in a serious fashion until we got to college. But actually, with a little guidance from a teacher, kids of all ages can purposefully and effectively make use of such resources. Of course, the teacher needs to be the ultimate judge of how much to share with a child based on his maturity and stage of development. For example, it may make sense to focus on a single, significant sentence with a kindergartner, but an eighth grader can easily handle an entire document.
As opposed to traditional textbooks, primary source documents put us directly in contact with the people we are studying because they were written by the people of the time. Better still, they tend to be a little “raw” and full of colorful details and authentic language. It’s this second quality that makes them so rich for a child storyteller.
Here is an example from my classroom of how we write stories from history:
When we learn about the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, I don’t just tell the story of how King Henry II Plantagenet indirectly called for his death in a fit of rage and how four of his knights complied with his wish. We also read the record of it by Gervase of Canterbury, a monk who knew St. Thomas.
Gervase gives a gripping account of how the king’s men, whom he calls “butchers,” arrived at Canterbury and came upon St. Thomas as he was preparing for Mass. He describes their “hatchets,” “axes,” “two-edged glaives,” and “swords.” He tells how St. Thomas commanded them to “Depart, hence!” but that the knights replied with “Strike! Strike!” St. Thomas bravely stood his ground as the knights “added wound to wound” and eventually “dashed out his brains.”
Reading Gervase’s account is more like reading a crime fiction novel than what most students usually think of as history. By the end of it, the murder of St. Thomas Becket is more than an abstraction from the past; it’s a real-life event that they can bear witness to. The students are then ready to reinvent the scene of his death through their own storytelling. Some of my students imagine they are St. Thomas. Others become an altar boy or some other hidden onlooker. Some even assume the persona of one of the henchmen. No matter the perspective, writing from the primary source document makes for a riveting story.
Over the years, some of the themes from St. Thomas Becket’s murder have popped up in other stories by my students. That’s because his story has become part of their “cauldron of story,” as Tolkien would call it. I think this very same thing must have happened with Tolkien and Lewis. They may not have been intentionally writing from history, but they had a lot of material in their cauldron to sample in their stories.
And just imagine all the new stories a child will be able to dish up when his own cauldron begins to simmer with tidbits from history!
Image Credit: Thomas Becket by John Carter, 1 July 1786, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
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 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.
Prince Caspian was an exciting story to read with my five- and six-year-old sons. It brought back the Pevensie children, featured Aslan prominently, and introduced lots of wonderful new characters. We read this one over only a few bedtimes and talked about all sorts of motifs like Time, Change, and Mortality. It was great fun, but it also got a little heavy at times—even more so than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I’ll explain why after I summarize the story.
THE STORY
Prince Caspian begins with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie standing on a platform waiting for a train that will take them back to school for the Fall semester. Suddenly, a strange magic takes hold of them and whisks them back into Narnia. Only they don’t know it’s Narnia at first.
The land is so changed with time, they don’t recognize it. Even their fair castle of Cair Paravel has fallen to ruins. All that is left of it are a few crumbling walls and a treasure room that somehow remained intact. When they discover Peter’s sword and Lucy’s vial of healing potion, among other items from their once glorious reign, they realize they are back in Narnia but that some hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years have passed.
They set out to solve the great mystery of Narnia’s transformation and happen upon soldiers in the act of drowning a dwarf. Susan shoots at the soldiers with her bow, causing them to flee, and the children rescue the dwarf. His name is Trumpkin. The children introduce themselves as the High King Peter, Queen Susan, King Edmund, and Queen Lucy, but Trumpkin does not believe them, not least because the Golden Age of their reign is so long past. Nevertheless, Trumpkin explains that Narnia has never been the same since their royal family left because it was soon invaded by the Telmarines. They have controlled Narnia all these years, making life bitter for the “Old Narnians” like himself and sending them into hiding.
Now, however, they have risen up under the leadership of Caspian, an orphaned Telmarine prince whose right to the throne was subverted by his evil uncle, the false King Miraz. Happily, Caspian wants to bring back the Golden Age of Narnia complete with the liberties it entailed. A decisive battle is now underway. In a final act of desperation, they had blown Susan’s magic horn: legend held that it would bring help.
The Pevensie children are, of course, that help, but Trumpkin finds that too incredible to be true. They’re just children, after all, and they should be dead all these years later! Susan attempts to prove her royal credentials by challenging Trumpkin to an archery shootout. Dwarfs are well-known for being excellent archers, so Trumpkin is caught much off guard (and feels quite embarrassed) when Susan beats him. Though he accepts their help and begins to believe they really are the royal family of old, he refuses to believe in Aslan. At best, the Lion was a hero from the past, but it is just as likely that He only ever existed in the imagination of the people.
They set off for Prince Caspian’s camp, which is located at the Stone Table now called Aslan’s How. Edmund and Peter steer them along a course they believe to be a short-cut, but the terrain is so changed that they find themselves twisting and turning in unexpected ways. Luckily, Lucy spots Aslan and realizes He wants to lead them along a different route. The others look but see nothing and dismiss Lucy’s sighting as a wishful vision. With Peter and Edmund still in command, the party continues along its original course and eventually has to double-back because they run right into Telmarine forces.
Soon after Lucy again sees Aslan. Though she is still the only one, Edmund takes her side and convinces the others to go along with her. The way seems impossible, but it actually offers them just the entry point they need to reach Prince Caspian’s camp. Edmund eventually sees Aslan with his own eyes, followed by Peter, and Susan last of all. Susan later admits that she hadn’t really wanted to see Aslan at first, and we know that something has changed in her. Nevertheless, Aslan speaks kindly to her and all the children. Trumpkin alone is still unable to see Aslan, but he follows Peter’s orders because he now fully believes in him as the High King.
Next, the girls set off with Aslan to gather reinforcements. Meanwhile, the boys follow Trumpkin into camp headquarters to present themselves to Prince Caspian, but they stop short when they realize the prince is in the midst of a contentious war council. They listen from a distance and learn that another dwarf named Nikibrik has enlisted the help of a witch and a werewolf. Nikibrik’s plan is to call on the White Witch to defeat King Miraz. Caspian is not persuaded. For him, there can be no true victory if it is gained with evil. A fight thus ensues, and Peter, Edmund, and Trumpkin quickly join forces with the prince. When it’s all over, Nikibrik, the hag, and the werewolf are dead.
After some friendly introductions, Peter suggests challenging King Miraz to a sword fight in order to settle the war. Two of King Miraz’s men, who secretly desire power themselves, goad King Miraz into accepting the challenge despite the fact that victory is otherwise nearly assured for their side. He and Peter face off in a close sword fight with Narnians and Telmarines gathered around. One of the treasonous advisors kills his own king in a moment of confusion, and a full-fledged battle ensues from there. Thankfully, Aslan, Susan, and Lucy return just in time with reinforcements and win the day for Prince Caspian.
In the aftermath of the war, Aslan places a door frame on the field and offers the Telmarine people a chance to leave Narnia by walking through it. He explains that their people were not originally from Narnia or even Telmar but had accidentally found their way in from Earth through a magical passageway, one that no longer exists. The door frame will take them back to start a new life, if they so desire. Most of the Temarines do not trust Aslan, but one brave soldier steps forward and accepts Aslan’s offer. For doing so, Aslan proclaims him king in the new land to which they travel. The Telmarine king walks through the door frame and vanishes, setting an example that most others follow.
Prince Caspian is made King of Narnia, and the Pevensie children must say farewell and go back to the train station. Peter and Susan, as it turns out, must say goodbye forever. Aslan has told them they are too old to come back to Narnia. We are left to assume that Edmund and Lucy still have more adventures to follow, which do indeed play out in the next story.
REFLECTION
In Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis forced my sons and me to think about the nature of Time. That’s not something a little child often thinks about beyond marking holidays and birthdays. Of course, they get excited about “being bigger,” but it takes a special sort of sensitivity to realize that it is also related to getting older and changing and ultimately moving toward death. I don’t shy away from talking about death with my sons, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still a tough topic.
One of them beams when we talk about Heaven. The other gets teary-eyed.
They had the same sort of reaction when we read about the near death and renewal of Narnia. The changes that it had undergone were sad and mysterious and exciting all at the same time. Then we had the change in the children themselves to think about. Peter, Susan, and Edmund couldn’t even see Aslan at first! What a mess everything seemed. But what a beautiful teaching moment it was for me as a parent.
I used the story to explain to them that while the physical things of the world will die away, the spiritual things will not. We saw this most readily in the structure of Cair Paravel, which I used as a metaphor for the Pevensie children themselves.
Cair Paravel
Cair Paravel stands as the symbol of Narnia, both with regard to its worldly power and its spirituality as an Aslan-centered state. Since it is in ruins when Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy return to Narnia, we see just how low the kingdom had fallen. “Narnia” as the place and ideal it had been during its Golden Age is bankrupt; belief in Aslan is nearly extinguished.
Yet, despite having been completely abandoned, the treasure room of Cair Paravel remains intact. “How?” my sons and I wondered. “Why didn’t someone steal it?”
Of course there could be any number of hypothetical answers to this question, but it seems to me that the treasure room remains because it represents the very heart of Narnia, almost like a soul. Just as God marks His children with the waters of Baptism and claims them for Himself, the treasure in Cair Paravel is a sign of Aslan’s indelible mark on Narnia. Even if someone had wanted to steal it, it would have been impossible.
The Pevensies
Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy could claim the treasure, however, because it was theirs all along. With their prized swords and such in hand, they set out next to reclaim Narnia. The only problem is: all but Lucy have forgotten what the treasure means. It’s more than a testimony of their kingship and queenship. It’s even more than a sign of their duty to save Narnia. It’s first and foremost a sign of their duty to serve Aslan.
Lucy alone remembers this, and that’s why she is the only one to see Aslan when He first arrives. He wants to help them, but He can only do so if they cooperate with His will. Peter and Edmund have their own ideas about how to get to Aslan’s How, and Susan doesn’t seem all that committed to any particular direction.
When they do finally see Aslan one by one, they realize they hadn’t exactly wanted to see Him. We don’t know the specific reasons for this, but we can infer that something has changed in their lives over the last year in London. Maybe they feel too old to believe in Aslan. Maybe they’ve acted in ways that Aslan would not approve of. Or maybe it’s something else entirely. In any event, they had let the “Cair Paravel” of their lives begin to crumble.
Thankfully, Aslan had preserved His mark on the children just as he had preserved the treasure room of the castle. With help from Lucy, the older Pevensie children’s souls rekindle, and they remember their duty to serve Aslan. Only by putting that duty first are they able to save Narnia in the end.
What’s more, they realize Aslan is their only defense against the destructible hand of Time. Their own mortality, though not fully challenged until the final book in The Chronicles of Narnia, is very much at stake in this one. If they are ever going to gain eternal life, they must follow the Lion.
FINAL THOUGHTS
When I finished reading Prince Caspian to my sons, I paused to reflect on why it felt a little heavier than the other books, even than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I realized it was because my sons saw themselves as the Pevensies. Young though they are, they had somewhat taken it for granted that Aslan could defeat the White Witch just like Christ could defeat Sin and Death. Yes, Aslan’s sacrifice on the Stone Table was scary and powerful to read about, but they knew Aslan would be okay, not least because I could tell them that with certainty.
We couldn’t, however, take anything for granted when it came to the children. We knew every decision they made was of consequence to the success of their spiritual mission, and that kept the pages turning faster than ever.
It was also a little sad for my sons to learn that Peter and Susan would not go back to Narnia. Since I had read all of The Chronicles, I was able to assure them that Peter’s adventures would continue, but in a different way—a way consistent with the treasure that is Heaven. But for Susan, I had to start bracing them for a tough storyline, one I’ll talk about more in the final post of this series. I’ll save most of those thoughts for now, but suffice it to say, the implications of choosing to follow Aslan (or not) were very much on our minds as we prepared for the next book in the series.
(Here is another of my six-year-old son’s sentence diagrams, which I instructed him through during our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)
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.
