The thing that inspired me to read these stories in the first place was seeing the preview for the moving coming out this December. I remembered seeing an older, sort of boring t.v. version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but this new one, with all the special effects, looks really exciting.
Before the story begins, C.S. Lewis writes a letter to Lucy Barfield:
“Dear Lucy,
I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. 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”
It is Lucy, in this story, who first enters Narnia through a wardrobe in Professor Kirks house. Her siblings eventually get there too, to find an adventure waiting for them. Jadis the White Witch had cast a spell on the land to where it was always winter and never Christmas. But with the coming of Aslan, the winter begins to thaw, and the children find themselves taking part in the battles to free Narnia. All of the children become warriors of a sort, but Peter, the oldest becomes the High King. I enjoy how Lewis describes him as still a boy, but doing brave feats, as in this account of his first battle:
“Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do. He rushed straight up to the monster and aimed a slash of his sword at its side. That stroke never reached the Wolf. Quick as lightning it turned round, its eyes flaming, and its mouth wide open in a howl of anger. If it had not been so angry that it simply had to howl it would have got him by the throat at once. As it was – though all this happened too quickly for Peter to think at all – he had just time to duck down and plunge his sword, as hard as he could, between the brute’s forelegs into its heart. Then came a horrible confused moment like something in a nightmare. He was tugging and pulling and the Wolf seemed neither alive nor dead, and its bared teeth knocked against his forehead, and everything was blood and heat and hair. A moment later he found that the monster lay dead and he had drawn his sword out of it and was straightening is back and rubbing the sweat off his face and out of his eyes. He felt tired all over.”
Aslan’s actions in this story resonates with the life of Jesus, the Messiah. It’s really neat how Lewis shows this through the character of a Lion.