It’s been quite some time since I’ve visited Narnia. I tend to give Disney’s 2005 adaptation of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” a watch every Christmas season—it is a Christmas movie after all. I’ve loved the film since seeing it in theaters. It is a faithful representation of the book, though not quite the same.
My wife and I have been to Narnia several times over the past few months while on long road trips. While the Pevensie children first entered Narnia from the “land of Spare Oom” and the “city of War Drobe,” we returned through “Blue’s Tooth” by way of “Ford’s Edge.”
As we looked for a way to pass the time in the car, we came across free audiobooks of “The Chronicles of Narnia” on Spotify. Pressing play on “The Magician’s Nephew,” the first book chronologically in the Narnia series, we were taken back to C.S. Lewis’ realm of magical creatures and talking beasts we loved as children.
In our return to Narnia, we retrode familiar ground in completely different shoes.
What struck me when listening to the audio version of the book, and what I imagine is a strength of the film as well, was how intentional Lewis was in crafting “The Magician’s Nephew” and the other Narnia books to be stories that are meant to be read aloud. They’re not just books to be read by children; they’re bedtime stories, meant to be read by adults and children together.
Lewis makes the philosophical and theological themes simple and clear enough for the child reader. The parallels in “The Magician’s Nephew” to the Christian story of creation and The Fall are just as obvious as those drawn to the crucifixion in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
For adult readers, however, Lewis’ distillation of these theological and philosophical themes in childspeak takes on deeper meaning.
One of my favorite examples of Lewis’ ability to reduce complex themes in “The Magician’s Nephew” comes as the young protagonist Digory is discovering his Uncle Andrew is an evil magician. Lewis attacks the Thrasymachuses and Machiavellis of the world and all those thinkers who reject a higher moral order by suggesting might makes right.
“You must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys—and servants and women and even people in general—can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages,” Uncle Andrew said. “No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures.”
“[Digory] saw through Uncle Andrew’s grand words. ‘All it means,’ he said to himself, ‘Is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.’”
For this rebuke to come from the lips of a child, highlighting the natural simplicity of the claim that right is more than desire, is all the more devastating for Lewis’ philosophical opponents.
Another, probably my favorite line from the book, comes from the great lion Aslan after giving the Narnian creatures the capacity of speech:
“Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”
What a beautiful mixing of Aristotelian virtue and teleological nature with Christian joy.
As the aphorism goes, “The best way to learn something is to teach it.” And perhaps mastery of a subject is being able to teach it to a young child. Therein lies the genius of Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew.” For young and old, it’s an invitation to learn and teach the permanent things on which our civilization is built.
Whether by yourself or with your children, I’d encourage you to take a trip to Narnia this Christmas season.
