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Posted by Dain, Monday, January 28, 2008 1:10 PM (Eastern)
I know what you might be thinking. Eh, a children's fantasy novel? Actually, I find that the most poignant, beautifully written books are in fact children's novels, and the more potent, because children read, while adults do not. The Chronicles of Narnia coincided with the publication of many fantasy classics coming out of post-WWII England: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Richard Adam's Watership Down, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Saga, among others. Most of these men were very well educated, academics, in some cases. Why they turned to a dream world, in favor of the horrors of the real world, is perhaps easy to guess. In the case of C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia were allegories for the Christian mythos. The first to be published, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a clear parallel to the passion of Christ (Aslan is always Christ, the son of the Emperor over the Sea). The first in chronology, The Magician's Nephew concerns itself on the Fall from Paradise, and there are distinct correspondences to Paradise Lost throughout. The last, The Last Battle, perhaps the most poorly written of the series, is a surreal take on the Last Judgment. And lest anyone be confused, Aslan himself states that he is in all worlds, and we have only into Narnia so that we might know him better in our own.
Actually, I read and enjoyed these books without any idea that they had Christian messages when I was a child. My favorite was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which only touches lightly on Christianity (Lewis was a professor of medieval studies, so he was well versed in high romance, so many of the books are more adventure tales), followed by the aforementioned The Magician's Nephew. Of course, I grew up in a Buddhist household, and only read Milton and the Bible when I came to college, so I would not have sensed the Christian mythos as easily as others might have. When I read them again, after so long, I marveled at how I could have missed it. I was also reading The Myth of Sisyphus concurrently, roughly contemporaneous, and the two could not be more different from each other if I had planned it (I had not). Camus, as an existentialist, takes atheism as a given. Froma philsophical standpoint, I am inclined to agree with Camus, but it is such a bleak world he lives in. At least, in Narnia, they have adventures and meet strange creatures and eat many good things when the adventure's over. With or without the Christian mythos, they are still enjoyable stories to read at any age.
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