There is a wardrobe in an old room. Picture yourself opening the wardrobe door. You climb inside it, careful to leave the door cracked open slightly aThere is a wardrobe in an old room. Picture yourself opening the wardrobe door. You climb inside it, careful to leave the door cracked open slightly as you push your way back in amongst the antique coats, which smell of dampness and age and silent history. But wait! It is cold underneath you and, as you reach down, you grasp a wet, slushy substance that could only be snow!
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is an enduring children's classic that is magic, just pure magic! Peter, Susan, Edmond & Lucy discover an old wardrobe and find that it can transport them to another world called Narnia, where the White Witch has cast a spell on the land and "everything is winter and never Christmas." However, all is not bleak and hopeless because Aslan the Lion is on the move. He begins to bring spring to Narnia, but Edmund betrays his siblings with the result that Aslan willingly pays for Edmund's transgression with his life. With his resurrection, and after an enormous battle led by Peter and Edmund, Aslan is acknowledged King of Narnia.
Lewis rejected the assertion that this story was intended as an allegory and, being an expert in that area, Lewis was certainly qualified to judge:
"By an allegory I mean a composition (whether pictorial or literary) in which immaterial realities are represented by feigned physical objects, eg., a pictured Cupid allegorically represents erotic love (which in reality is an experience, not an object occupying a given area of space) or, in Bunyan, a giant represents Despair.
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents Despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, "What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?" This is not allegory at all ……. This …… works out a supposition."
While this book contains references to Christianity, Lewis did not initially set out to write a Christian story:
"Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided to what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way. It all began with images: a faun with an umbrella, parcels, a lamppost, a snow-covered kingdom. At first there wasn't even anything Christian about them. That element pushed itself in of its own accord."
Within the story, Lewis communicates aspects of Christian faith in way that is easy to understand and, through the death of Aslan, Lewis allows us to experience the agony and horror of Christ's death and to experience the conflicting emotions of his friends and disciples, as well as their joy upon his resurrection. His style is a simple straight-forward narrative that easily communicates emotions of joy, perseverance, loyalty, pride, envy, betrayal, and sadness. A timeless story with timeless themes that can be read again and again....more
What a magnificent creation of a whole town, which Eliot managed with a believability that wasFirst read 2013: 4 stars
Second read: May 2, 2025 5 stars
What a magnificent creation of a whole town, which Eliot managed with a believability that was truly special. Once again, it was difficult for me to put the book down and I found myself always wanting to pick it up again, a true testament to a story well-conceived and well-written. I found myself living in Middlemarch and being part of Dorothea's struggles and triumphs, feeling as if I wanted to help Dr. Lydgate and wanting to be part of the Garth family.
One can see in the marriages in the novel, there was a distinct pattern. While in the marriage between Rosamond and Lydgate, a selfish, unsacrificial woman made a good man much worse, the marriages of Dorothea (to Ladislaw) and Mary Garth (to Fred) were examples of where good women could make immature and unreliable men much improved.
Commenting on the book as a whole, Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren have noted that there are issues with the work. They say that Eliot's creation of a whole town is a stunning achievement but that her plot bumps and creaks along. While I don't necessarily agree with them wholeheartedly, there are certainly places where the pacing is off and, where we have been given lots of information on some characters initially, their finale is tied up rather quickly. I do like the way Eliot gives historical information on many of the characters at the end; it's interesting to learn what she envisions as their life stories.
The last two paragraphs are perhaps the best ending in literature, at least for me:
"Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother’s burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
I, myself, was once a Dorothea, and I can only hope that I can keep her spirit of love for her fellow creatures which turned a possibly common life, into a faithful and great one....more
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