the lamp-post

C

claywings

Guest
Hey!
I just finished reading LWW, and i noticed that the light is on at the begining, and off at the end... any ideas as to why this is? :confused:
Thanks
 
Not a clue why the lamp is out at the end of the book. Maybe it comes on by itself when it is dark. It is a living lamp post that grew from the ground and was not mad by man. Anyhow I love that lamp post the most in this book. :)
 
I would think it would be symbolic.
The light has been turned off, it is over, Narnia has ended. Good-bye. Cheers. See ya.

It started with the lamp-post and ended with it. Narnia began with the lamp-post and ended with it.
 
It would be, if that were what Lewis intended with the series. And though he may have started the story thinking this was going to be a one-time toss-off for his goddaughter, by the end of it he was clearly thinking otherwise. (Remember the Professor's words - "Once a king in Narnia, always a king in Narnia"?) It seems even at that point he was envisioning follow-up stories.

I can't say that I understand why the lamp was dark at the end of the story, and I don't know if Lewis thought it through that clearly. It may be that the lamp had "done it's job" in guiding the children to Narnia, but that wouldn't seem to square with the "accidental" creation of the lamppost in Magician's Nephew. It wouldn't seem that it was "created" to do anything - it just happened.

For my sake, I'd have a hard time reading any significance into the dark lamp at the end of the story, other than Lewis not dotting all his 'i's.
 
I fancy that the lamp-post is Reason, the light whose existence shows that the supernatural must exist, as Lewis argues in "Miracles". Once Reason's light is dimmed, you are compelled to return to the mundane, to the foggy stupor of believing "this is all there is".
 
Not that I know are anything but a theory I had while reading this thread is that while the light was on, the portal between worlds was still open… the professor said that you could only use a portal to narnia once, but Lucy goes through the wardrobe three times Edmund twice and the other two kids once… after they finished their task in narnia the light may have went off representing that the portal will close once the kids go back through it…its just a thought, I haven’t even finished reading the whole series yet so what do I know
 
Umm...I don't believe it was "off." It says that the lamp was exceedingly high up and it was the middle of the day. Not to mention it was located in the middle of the forest, so it might have been all dirty and a good rain would have cleaned the glass off some. Maybe they just couldn't see the flame inside of it. Maybe if they'd been there at night, it would have been all lit up. I think that because in the Magician's Nephew, it's lit even as it's growing. *shrug* Besides, it if wasn't lit up, how would it guide them back to the wardrobe?

Just my thoughts.
 
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It is possible that the lamp post is off because the Golden Age is coming to a close as the four kings and queens stumble back out of Narnia and out of the Wardrobe. Although, the lamp post is always refered to in the name of the region Lantern Waste so is it possible that it never went out and that 'Deeper_wonderment' is right in saying that they may not have spotted the flame inside during the daylight.
 
I believe that the post was there to sybolize hope and it was lit to give hope of spring and Aslan but now that Aslan is back(sometimes) The post needs not be lit. but it is still there to remind narnia of the past and how thankful they should be for the present...just my opinion
 
That's true, and that Lewis simply could have changed his mind later in the series when he was writing Magician's Nephew. Because if you read that one first in the order they're arranging the books in today, then the lamp would have been lit for a thousand years until the Pevensies got there.
 
Perhaps it indicated the way through the wardrobe was now closed? The lampost itself was a creation of the Witch, but the light tiself might have been Aslan's doing, and it symbolically went dark when that way into Narnia was closed?
 
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