C. S. Lewis Writes to Children – Part 2

Most of the letters that C. S. Lewis received from children were about the Narnian books. And his responses to those letters give a lot of insight into what was behind these fantasy stories.

I was a bit frustrated when the first Narnia movie came out – okay, I was immensely frustrated when the first movie came out – partly because there was confusion surrounding the issue of whether the stories were “allegorical”.

The producers of the movies were quoting Lewis’ own denials that the books were allegories. I suspect that their motive was to not have the movies pigeonholed as “Christian” movies.

In some ways, this effort was admirable and in tune with Lewis’ own methods. After writing his first science fiction thriller in 1938, Lewis himself wrote to a friend that he had discovered that any amount of good theology can be smuggled into peoples’ minds under the cover of romance (romance here meaning any sort of fantasy, science fiction or other type of high adventure story).

In an essay entitled Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said, Lewis observes:

“I thought I saw how stories of this kind (the Narnian stories) could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. As obligation to feel can freeze feelings … The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, striping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”

While Lewis would have been happy for people to hear and see his stories with no idea that they contained a hidden agenda, it is clear from the above quote that the stories are an intentional attempt to help people understand the Christian faith. They just do not do this in an allegorical way.

Lewis was an expert on literature and was a literary critic. When he asserted that the Narnian books were not allegories, he was working from an informed definition of allegory. An allegory is a literary genre in which material and immaterial realities in our real world are depicted by material realities in a fictional world.

There is a one-to-one correspondence in an allegory. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, there is a giant named Despair (I think) and everything about him is meant to help us understand despair as it actually exists in our world.

Lewis denied that the Chronicles of Narnia were allegories. And, given the above definition, they clearly are not allegories. But the average person hears this and then assumes the stories don’t really have any Christian message and this is clearly untrue.

Lewis never denied that the stories are meant to convey spiritual truths. They just do so in a way that is different than the way an allegory would do so. Lewis called the stories “supposals”. Here he is explaining it in a letter written May 29, 1954 to a group of 5^th graders:

“You are mistaken when you think that everything in the books “represents” something in this world. Things do that in The Pilgrim’s Progress but I’m not writing in that way. I did not say to myself ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia’: I said ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.’ If you think about it, you will see that it is quite a different thing. So the answer to your first two questions is that Reepicheep and Nick-i-brick don’t, in that sense, represent anyone. But of course anyone in our world who devotes his whole life to seeking Heaven will be like R, and anyone who wants some worldly thing so badly that he is ready to use wicked means to get it will be likely to behave like N. …

I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.”

In a letter from June 8, 1960 to Patricia, Lewis admits that this technical distinction probably does not mean a whole lot and he gives several examples of how certain characters and events in the Narnian stories, while not having a one-to-one correspondence with people and events in our own world, nevertheless shed light on our reality:

“All your points are in a sense right. But I’m not exactly ‘representing’ the real (Christian) story in symbols. I’m more saying, ‘Suppose there were a world like Narnia and it needed rescuing and the Son of God (or the ‘Great Emperor oversea’) went to redeem it, as He came to redeem ours, what might it, in that world, all have been like?’ Perhaps it comes to much the same thing as you thought, but not quite.

1. The creation of Narnia is the Son of God creating a world (not specially our world).
2. Jadis plucking the apple is, like Adam’s sin, an act of disobedience, but it doesn’t fill the same place in her life as his plucking did in his. She was already fallen (very much so) before she ate it.
3. The stone table is meant to remind one of Moses’ table.
4. The Passion and Resurrection of Aslan are the Passion and Resurrection Christ might be supposed to have had in that world – like those in our world but not exactly like.
5. Edmund is like Judas a sneak and traitor. But unlike Judas he repents and is forgiven (as Judas no doubt w[oul]d. have been if he’d repented).
6. Yes. At the v.[ery] edge of the Narnian world Aslan begins to appear more like Christ as He is known in this world. Hence, the Lamb. Hence, the breakfast – like at the end of St. John’s Gospel. Does not He say ‘You have been allowed to know me in this world (Narnia) so that you may know me better when you get back to your own’?
7. And of course the Ape and Puzzle, just before the last Judgement (in the Last Battle) are like the coming of Anitchrist before the end of our world.

All clear?

Without being allegorical, these supposals clearly contain intentional parallels with Christianity. Here is a letter Lewis wrote to Hila on June 3, 1953. She had apparently written to Lewis to ask him about an incident at the very end of  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Aslan tells the children that he is present not only in Narnia but also in their world and that he has another name in their world. Here is what Lewis said to Hila:

“As to Aslan’s other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in this world who (1.) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas. (2.) Said he was the son of the Great Emperor. (3.) Gave himself up for someone else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people. (4.) Came to life again. (5.) Is sometime spoken of as a Lamb (see the end of the Dawn Treader). Don’t you really know His name in this world. Think it over and let me know your answer.

Reepicheep in your coloured picture has just the right perky, cheeky expression. I love real mice. There are lots in my rooms in College but I have never set a trap. When I sit up late working they poke their heads out from behind the curtains just as if they were saying, ‘Hi! Time for you to go to bed. We want to come out and play.’”

If you want to know more about the whole process of how the Narnian stories came to be written, you can read a good summary in Lewis’ own words in his essay Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said. (Note: There are a few typos in the linked essay. Someone apparently retyped it from a printed source and didn’t get all the proof –reading done; I have this problem myself from time to time).