Symbolism in Narnia

PrinceOfTheWest

PrinceOfTheWest

Knight of the Stone Table
Royal Guard
Emeritus
I'm re-reading a wonderful set of books right now by Leanne Payne (The Healing Presence and Restoring the Christian Soul - I highly recommend them), and in one of them Leanne observes that we humans understand reality through symbols. She points out that the Scriptures provide us a true and proper symbolic system, and that Jesus came in part to properly symbolize God to us (i.e. as loving Father) and to heal our minds of false symbols.

This got me thinking of how I've lived with Narnia for nearly 50 years now, and its symbolic framework has helped form who I am. So I thought I'd start a thread to discuss how various members understand the various symbols in Narnia and what reality they bind up for us. Feel free to pitch in, remembering that a symbol can be anything: a character, a thing, a place, an event. Furthermore, the fact that a character can be a symbol does not exhaust that character's meaning: they can be a character and a symbol - and might even symbolize several things!
 
Aslan's growl

I'll kick off the discussion with an interesting one: Aslan's growl. Of course, Aslan himself is the symbol par excellence, who is both symbol and reality, the literary presence of Jesus Himself in the stories.

So rich is the character of Aslan that one can even speak of various attributes of Him as symbolic, such as His mane, His breath, and His roar. One that's always interested me is His growl. It doesn't show up much, but when it does, it's instructive. One place you see it is when Lucy wakes up in the night in Prince Caspian and goes through the woods to find Aslan. They start talking about the travelers' failure of the prior day, and when Lucy starts to bad-mouth the others, Aslan growls, and she immediately ceases.

To me, Aslan's growl seems like love speaking in discipline, warning us that we're straying from the path. In a sense, it's like conscience, but I'd say more accurately that our conscience would be like Lucy's ears, which heard the growl and promptly understood and responded to it.

It seems that Aslan never growls just to correct an action. There is that, but more importantly it addresses an underlying aspect of character. It isn't just that He wants us do do something different, but that He wants us to change in some way - He's addressing a character flaw that He wants changed.

In a way, Aslan's growl reminds me of that passage from Isaiah, where the prophet speaks of a voice behind us telling us which way to walk in. A growl might sound frightening, but in Aslan's case it's an expression of His love for us, warning us away from danger.
 
To me, the most fascinating book in regards to Aslan is The Horse and His Boy. Aslan shows so many sides in his relationship with Cor. His appearance as a cat is probably more "symbolic" (if that word fits in this context) of how Christ tailors the way He reveals Himself to us, giving us new understanding as we grow able to handle it.
 
I agree - in that story, Aslan appears in a couple of forms, which symbolize His accommodating our weaknesses. The cat was a friendly, familiar form which was comforting for Shasta at the time.

Another symbol I've been pondering is The Journey. This occurs often in the Chronicles, to a greater or lesser extent - in fact, it seems to be a running theme. Consider these:
  • In Lion, the journey of the children from the Beaver's home to the Hill of the Stone Table (and, in lesser form, Edmund's journey to the Witch's House and Aslan's journey to the Stone Table). Each have significance.
  • In Caspian, Caspian's flight from Miraz' castle. This is a journey that begins physically but ends a different way: as Caspian's personal journey from palace boy to King of Narnia. He doesn't physically travel, but he "journeys" in character development and maturity. Another journey in Caspian is the journey from the ruins of Cair Paravel to Aslan's How, which has lessons of its own.
  • Dawn Treader, of course, is all about the journey, but even that has mini-journey's within it, such as Lucy's journey to the Magician's Book, or the final journey across the Silver Sea to meet Aslan
  • Likewise Silver Chair is a journey from start to finish: the journey on Aslan's breath to Narnia, the quest to find Rilian, and even the journey from Underworld to Narnia (not to mention the temptation to visit Bism)
  • The Horse and His Boy, again, is a journey from slavery to freedom for all the parties, though in different ways.
  • Magician's Nephew is a journey through various worlds until everyone ends up in Narnia. For Frank and Helen it is the journey from the world of working Londoners to being King and Queen of Narnia
Only Last Battle doesn't have a heavy journey theme as part of the main plot, though one does show up at the end ("Higher up and further in!")

To me, it seems the recurrent theme of the journey reflects something of the pilgrimage of our lives. Obstacles are encountered, struggles confronted, weaknesses exposed, and growth happens. I think part of the charm and appeal of the Chronicles is that the journeys therein resonate with our hearts and experience.
 
Interesting thoughts. I'd noticed how important journeys seemed to be in Tolkien's works--both LotR and The Hobbit chronicle journeys with a few battles thrown in. Oddly, I hadn't considered how large a role journeys play in CoN, possibly because the journeys in CoN don't cover any of the same territory. Bilbo and Frodo, on the other hand, both end up in Rivendell, at least. Both of George MacDonald's adult fantasy works, Phantastes and Lilith, also describe journeys. And then there are all the medieval questing stories, and The Odyssey before that. Fantasy thrives on an atmosphere of strangeness (not oddity), and a journey into the unknown will certainly create that.

Journeys and Christianity...it reminds me of how the Didache begins by talking about how there are two ways, one leading to death, the other to life.... It seems the journey metaphor has been popular for a long time.
 
Perhaps CSL felt the "journey" theme very personally. Remember in his discussion of how fantasy literature (and George MacDonald's work specifically) pushed him toward belief in Christ? If I recall rightly, he said the works seemed to breathe to him scents from another world, a breeze from something outside this universe. And apprehending through imagination that such places could exist, he wanted them, wanted them to be real, and wanted to get to them.

Also consider his example in Mere Christianity that there are no desires but what there are ways to fulfill that desire: you are hungry, there is such a thing as food, etc. So if you desire something (or somewhere?) not in this world, then it follows there must be such a place where that something is available.

So his relationship with Christ seems to begin at the point of longing for another place, a better place, and knowing that this place must exist precisely because he longs for it. When your foundational idea of Christ is that He presides from another place, then of course the journey would be a foundational metaphor for achieving peace in Him.

If that makes any sense?
 
I think it would be hard to write a story that in any way reflected on our spiritual life without including a journey motif somewhere. Our lives our a journey, a journey back to Eden (ideally). We are aliens on this earth seeking to get home. That's why I think that both Tolkien's major works (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings) were centered around journeys. Interestingly, large hunks of The Silmarillion weren't, but then the major players there were mostly elves - a different race than men.

In a sense, Last Battle may be the only one of the Chronicles without a journey theme as part of the main plot, but it seems to me that's in part because the story reflects the end of a journey, in the sense that the "journey" that was life in Narnia is coming to a close.
 
Come to think of it, though, a major theme of the Silmarillion is a thwarted journey. The Elves were supposed to leave Middle Earth for Valinor. Some never attempted the journey, some got stuck in the middle of it, and some who did make the journey rebelled and returned to Middle Earth. All of the Elves' sorrows in Middle Earth come because they failed in their journeyings, and the Silmarillion ends with the Keepers of the Three Rings traveling back to Valinor.

In regards to The Last Battle, it is interesting that the Friends of Narnia die during a journey.
 
Come to think of it, though, a major theme of the Silmarillion is a thwarted journey. The Elves were supposed to leave Middle Earth for Valinor. Some never attempted the journey, some got stuck in the middle of it, and some who did make the journey rebelled and returned to Middle Earth. All of the Elves' sorrows in Middle Earth come because they failed in their journeyings, and the Silmarillion ends with the Keepers of the Three Rings traveling back to Valinor.

In regards to The Last Battle, it is interesting that the Friends of Narnia die during a journey.
 
PoTW said:
I think it would be hard to write a story that in any way reflected on our spiritual life without including a journey motif somewhere. Our lives our a journey, a journey back to Eden (ideally). We are aliens on this earth seeking to get home.
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As I was formulating my previous, I threw my thoughts about HP into the mix, as I consider the HP books to be on a par with LOTR and CON in the arena of Christian symbolism. And there is no geographic journey in them. Harry is either at school or with the Dursley's, he never goes anywhere that is seen as the place he has to get to at the end of it all, if you see what I mean?

So: there is a complete arc of storytelling, of a boy discovering his destiny -- realizing that it may literally be the death of him -- and choosing to pursue it for the sake of the people he loves ... without a "journey" per se. So I don't think there needs to be a geographical journey somewhere to portray our spiritual development.

The theme of the outsider looking for the place he belongs (aliens searching for home) certainly lends itself to a journey motif, but clearly the story can be told without a geographic journey, is what I am saying.
 
The point about HP is true, in the sense of a physical journey, but I think the metaphor of a personal journey is very clear. Harry journeys from complete ignorance of who he is, where he's come from, and what factors have influenced his life to not simply knowledge but mastery and completion. Admittedly, this is a metaphorical journey (though it's interesting to note that in the last book, where all the threads were tied together, there was a physical journey involved, including a visit to his parent's graves.) I think in that sense Rowling was more subtle than Lewis.

It's interesting to note that in the Space Trilogy, the first two books entail journeys (multiple journeys, in the case of Silent Planet), but the third is also a metaphoric journey. Both protagonists, Mark and Jane, journey from their existence and understanding at the start of the story to a much deeper place by the end. In that work, the travel is incidental, and has little to do with the much more intense journey they both undertake.
 
Yes, very good -- I was watching Deathly Hallows film #1 and there is some "wandering" there, but also the journey to Godric's Hollow, and in the book, the final journey of Harry through the Forbidden Forest to meet Voldemort is a very spiritual journey, especially with the use of the Resurrection Stone and those friends who walk with him, showing him that whether they are on this side of eternity or the other, they are still and always will be part of his life.

In fact a book is only "good reading" in my mind if the characters do journey from one state of being to another, if not from one physical state to another, in general. There must be some transformation as a result of the events in the book, or else the book is boring.

Sorry for the digression into HP -- we were talking symbolism in Narnia. As you mentioned the Lion's growl, PoTW, I am likewise stricken by the Lion's breath, which seems to be a symbol of Holy Spirit. Aslan breathes on Lucy and tells her she is now a lioness; as if He has imparted Himself into her -- just as we receive the Holy Spirit as an imparting of Christ's nature in us.
 
That's another one I'd noticed - it's so explicit as to almost not be a symbol, but a reality. Aslan's Breath is clearly the Holy Spirit, and the parallel to John 20:22 in unmistakable. It not only empowers, it "clings" to the one breathed upon. Also, notice that it's Aslan's Breath that carries Eustace and Jill to Narnia in Silver Chair.
 
I had forgotten about that. Isn't there a biblical example of the same thing -- wasn't Stephen whisked up by the Spirit and deposited somewhere else? I will have to try to look that up ...
 
inkspot said:
Perhaps CSL felt the "journey" theme very personally.
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I wonder if Lewis' journey to the Whipsnade Zoo on 28 September 1931 in the sidecar of Warnie's motorbike was in his mind a "Journey" on the level that he later wrote about symolically... in the last chapter of Surprised by Joy, he says:

I felt a resistance almost as strong as my previous resistance to Theism. As strong, but short-lived, for I understood it better. Every step I had taken, from the Absolute to 'Spirit' to 'God,' had been a step towards the more concrete, the more imminent, the more compulsive... I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. 'Emotional' is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.
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Interesting that Lewis himself used the word "journey." In a letter to Arthur Greeves dated 1 October 1931, he wrote:

How deep I am just now beginning to see: for I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ- in Christianity...
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GSM, how lovely to see you here! And thank you for this very relevant bit about CSL's journey to faith. You are right; this could well be the genesis of the various journeys of Narnia, you know?

I know we're talking about symbolism in Narnia here, but I just finished reading "Til We Have Faces" again, and it is definitely a journey story as well ... It is Orual's journey, in one way, from ugly, to faceless, to fully formed and beautiful in love. I wonder if, I hope that, CSL felt that way by the end -- that he had found the place where he was who God intended him to be.
 
The question we have been bringing up in an indirect way on other threads (Lewis vs. Anscombe and Till we have faces) is how would you describe Lewis' conversion experience. Was he like Albert Henry Ross (aka Frank Morison) and Simon Greenleaf, who were given a challenge by a colleague to prove the historicity of the resurrection of Christ and came to Christ in that quest. Or did Lewis come to Christ because of an inner struggle that tortured him until one day he had an experience that forced him to make a decision for Christ. This would be called an existential conversion. This is kind of like a St. Paul conversion.

Some would say that because Lewis wrote so many apologetic books that the must have had the first type of experience. But I would say it was this inner struggle that lead him away from atheism toward theism and only then way he able to use the logic of his profession to become a Christian.

As I said in other threads, early in his career in academics he focused on apologetic to show his colleagues that his conversion was logical. But later on in his life he moved away from apologetics (for what ever the reason) to things like children's books to show the inner struggle of his conversion. We see this inner struggle in Eustace, Shasta, and Digory. Lewis does talk about logic in the CON, but he uses it on Peter, a person with an open mind already.
 
Hmm. To me, the issue seems not so much his conversion experience but his walk of discipleship, his growing in his imitation of Christ. You made some very insightful comments on this in the Faces thread, Timmy, and I've been pondering them. Of course, like all people seeking to truly follow Christ, Lewis grew and matured. Unlike most people following Christ, Lewis published books along the way, so we have something like snapshots of his thought and spiritual insights as he progressed along this path.

I think where we have to be very careful in considering this is (as I said there) presuming to know more than we do. We can track certain things about what Lewis said and how he said it, given that his writings are publicly available. We can't know intimate details about his life as a disciple, because his writings only reveal a small fraction of his interior life. Given how much I'm still learning about the person I'm most intimate with (i.e. myself), I'm very cautious about how much I presume to know about anyone else - particularly one whom I've never met and I only know through his writings.

That being said, I think you've got some good points, though I might add some things. It may be that Lewis' deeply intellectual approach to explaining his faith sprang as much from his own personal history and proclivities as it did from his desire to demonstrate something to his associates. He was trained as a thinker; it stands to reason that his expression of his faith would be thoughtful. Also, there was a demand for this kind of expression, given that Christianity, particularly in England, had devolved into sentimentality, theological skepticism, and social activism. There was a hunger to hear a vigorous, intellectually sound defense of the faith, and he was the man God raised up for the time.

But this didn't happen in a spiritual vacuum. Lewis was growing as a man and disciple of Christ. Just from what we know of his history and his own testimony, he had a rough childhood and youth, and that made him a certain way. As Christ worked in his life, I'm sure he matured spiritually. If that meant for him what it's meant for me and many I know, then he became a more rounded and balanced person - no less intellectual, perhaps, but open to other ways of looking at the world and understanding the Lord and himself. I think this is what we see with his later years, and what (I think) people have misinterpreted as some kind of "retreat" on his part after the Anscombe debate.
 
PoTW's take on this also makes sense when you consider TWHF as a later product of Lewis' writing life -- it embraces both the logical and the spiritual and unites them in a wonderful way ... The Fox in the afterlife knows that his logic/materialism (if it can be called that) only ever took him partway where he needed to go, and that it left huge, important spaces blank and unexplained. To get the complete picture, Orual had to grow into the kind of person who could understand logic and at the same time accept mysticism, which seems to be the kind of person CSL himself was.
 
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