A Fairy Tale for All Ages
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
in 1950 as a gift for his godchild, Lucy Barfield. He explained
the gift to her in his preface to the book: “I wrote
this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized
that girls grow quicker than books.
Many of us will crowd into movie theatres to see the film adaptation of this tale just the way we did for The Lord of the Rings and for Harry Potter. Now is the time to ask one simple question: What is it we meet in C.S. Lewis’ story that is so good?
As a result you are already
too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and
bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old
enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take
it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you
think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too
old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your
affectionate Godfather, C.S. Lewis.”
Lewis later told a friend that he intended to write only
the one story, but we know that something happened to this
Oxford don, because his story asserted itself into his heart
and mind and became seven stories, The Chronicles of Narnia.
We are grateful that he was carried away and into Narnia,
because we are too!
Why is it that people as young as 6 and as old as 90 love
the tales about Narnia? I found part of the answer from Lewis
himself in an essay he wrote about William Shakespeare’s
play Hamlet. Lewis challenges the deconstructionists
who were beginning to dominate university literature classes
with their various psychoanalytical, political, and sociological
interpretive models of Shakespeare’s play. One simple
sentence from Lewis clears the air when he reminds us that,
first and foremost, Hamlet is a darn good story: “This
play is, above all else, interesting.”
The Chronicles of Narnia are darn good stories,
too, and we are drawn into the world of Narnia the moment
a friendly voice reads aloud the opening sentences of The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When the reader says,
“Well, you better go to sleep now,” we inevitably
say, “Just one more chapter, please.” And then,
when the lights finally go out, flashlights mysteriously appear
as little boys, little girls, moms and dads too, read on ahead
just to see what’s going to happen next.
Many of us will crowd into movie theatres to see the film
adaptation of this tale just the way we did for The Lord
of the Rings and for Harry Potter. Now is the
time to ask one simple question: What is it we meet in C.S.
Lewis’ story that is so good?
As The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe begins,
we meet up with four ordinary English children, sent by their
parents to stay in the country with a family friend in order
to escape the air raids of a world at war. The children do
what youth would naturally do in a big house where an old
professor lives. The morning after their arrival, they explore
this house of stairs, corridors, and many rooms, including
some that are completely empty. The heavy rain and fog make
being outside impossible, and anyway they want to see for
themselves such a large country dwelling, so different from
their home in London.
An almost-empty room is where everything begins. An old wardrobe
stands against a wall, and the youngest of the four children,
a girl named Lucy, opens its door and decides to step inside.
Long fur coats are hung in the wardrobe, and they feel good
close to her face. What happens next takes your breath away,
because the story becomes what Lewis described as “a
story of the marvelous.” In his dedication of the book
to Lucy Barfield, he calls the story a “fairy tale.”
He says to her, “you are already too old for fairy tales.”
Well, Lewis was wrong on one count. We are never too old for
Why? As I see it, we love The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe because of a convergence of six elements:
First, because our imagination is encouraged to wonder
beyond what we think we know of the real world.
Second, because we meet up with characters who fascinate
us. We care about them and want to know what happens to
Third, because Lewis is careful about small details as
a storyteller. The details that he keeps meticulous track
of are both fun and important to notice.
Fourth, because we meet up with very deeply felt themes
of our own life, such as love, fear, temptation, and courage.
Fifth, because the grand themes of all great literature
are there, too: the battle between good and evil, and the
victory of good over evil.
Finally, because the story is fun to read and hear.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, indeed all
the Chronicles of Narnia, are stories of the marvelous that
spark our imagination. Lewis once said that he wanted to write
stories he would have liked to read as a boy, and Lewis as
a boy always imagined animals that would talk, especially
mice. The meaning of time also fascinated him, as well as
the changes in reality because of distance. He was intrigued
by distance in the first two books of his space trilogy: Out
of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. In The
Chronicles, he could achieve distance from England and
even earth itself by imagining two kinds of time and two distinct
places alongside of each other. Time spent in Narnia does
not use up time in England. And in a different world, he could
re-imagine what good, evil, courage, and redemption would
The Narnia tales are stories in which we meet up
with talking animals — such as the brave mouse, Reepicheep,
and the grand flying horse, Fledge. There are other creatures
too, like the faun, Mr. Tumnus, and the marshwiggle, Puddleglum.
The stories invite our imagination to delight in this place
so far away yet, because of magic, so close. We find ourselves
welcomed into the stories like the children are welcomed into
Narnia, so that we look forward to each surprise on the next
page — and best of all we, as well as Mr. and Mrs. Beaver
and the English children, meet the golden lion Aslan, son
of the great Emperor-beyond-the-sea. Aslan is not tame, but
he is good.
The details in the stories have a way of falling into place
just the way details should. For this reason, as a reader
of stories myself, I always advise other readers to begin
your journey in Narnia with The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe and read the stories in the order that Lewis
wrote them. In that way, we find the details when we should
and not a moment too soon.
The themes of our lives are in the Narnia tales, too. We
feel the cold presence of fear; we experience bad temper;
we see courage, temptation, treachery, love, wisdom. These
themes appear as they should and are never fastened like moralistic
stickers to the stories; instead they flow out of the story.
Lewis has a light touch, and it makes these life themes accessible
to us, but never forced upon us. The emotional content, therefore,
is realistic even though the story is magic.
Best of all, the grand themes are here, too. We meet up with
the sheer terror of evil that deceives, tempts, and destroys,
but yet is not as powerful as it first appears. Evil does
not know the deeper magic of the power of redeeming love when
one who has not committed treachery takes the place of the
traitor. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
evil works well enough when everything is frozen, but it is
not efficient when the thaw begins as Aslan draws near to
Narnia. In The Silver Chair, the witch does not finally
deceive Puddleglum with her sweet incense and swaying voice;
he puts his foot in the fire and since burnt marshwiggle smells
terrible, it clears his head and the heads of Prince Rilian,
Jill, and Eustace, too.
How should The Chronicles be read? My advice is
to let them happen over and around you in their own way and
without interpretation. Read and enjoy them first of all as
stories, and then discuss what you read and what you feel
and what you wonder about.
The grand Narnia story has a way of preparing its reader
for the discovery of the vast themes of the Bible that Lewis
has made real and new to our imagination and our minds —
so that readers discover for themselves the great golden Lion,
the One who was called both the Lion and the Lamb in the New
Testament. Lewis wrote to one friend, “Children know
who Aslan is.”
— BY EARL F. PALMER
— ILLUSTRATIONS BY JASON
EARL F. PALMER is senior pastor of Seattle’s
University Presbyterian Church. A C.S. Lewis devotee since
his undergraduate days at the University of California-Berkeley,
he often speaks about the writings of Lewis to his congregation
of 4,500 members, and to national and international audiences.
He has described Lewis as a storyteller to whom he owes “a
great debt in helping me to grasp the greatest of all stories
— the one that is both wonderfully fantastic and yet
true.” A frequent presenter for SPU’s C.S. Lewis
Institute, Palmer is pictured here in The George and Dragon,
a Seattle pub not unlike The Eagle and Child, one favorite
Oxford meeting place of Lewis and his literary friends, the
JASON LETHCOE has spent 17 years working
for such studios as Walt Disney Feature Animation and Sony
Pictures as an animator and story developer. He is the author
and illustrator of Amazing Adventures from Zoom’s Academy,
a book that is also a Summer 2006 film starring Tim Allen
and Courtney Cox. Lethcoe, a “tremendous fan of C.S.
Lewis,” drew most of the illustrations on these pages
while staying at Lewis’ home, The Kilns, this past summer.
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