Examining Mythology in "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis

The wonder of opening a book feels very similar to the experience of opening a wardrobe door and finding oneself in another world.  Stories told to children as they prepare for bed act also as vehicles for transportation of imagination, and when the book opens, a journey begins.  When C.S. Lewis wrote his seven-part series for children, The Chronicles of Narnia, he realized that not only the children in on Earth going to read the stories, but children in future generations of Narnia will also enjoy the stories as they pass down.  Therefore, for both group’s enjoyment, Lewis created in his novels a solid mythology all its own for the Narnian world, and in the books also created an anthological story of how his myth filtered down throughout Narnian history.  In the seven books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis creates a viable mythology that stands alone according to his standards, passed down through oral, prophetic, and natural means.

C.S. Lewis delighted in all forms of Earth’s mythology.  Many studies of Lewis’s life comments upon the different references to Greek, Norse, Arthurian, Christian, and many other mythologies in the Narnia books.  David Downing asserts in his book Into the Wardrobe that “for Lewis, a well-constructed story draws upon…universal images and meanings.  Much of the thematic richness of the chronicles derives from Lewis’s skill in drawing on mythic patterns” (34).  C.S. Lewis did many scholarly studies on mythology and had definitive ideas of what made a myth and what did not.  In judging the idea of myth and truth, Lewis in his sermon “Myth Became Fact,” deemed that “myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to” (141) and later, speaking specifically in reference to Christianity, “The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be a myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.  It happens” (141).  Understanding this aspect pinpoints exactly what Lewis believed determined a “myth.”  Lewis, according to his own work, believed that even true events fit into the category of “myth,” though generally society equates “myth” with “false.” He, in An Experiment in Criticism, creates a checklist of sorts for deciding if stories fit the elusive “myth” category.   Therefore, in determining that Lewis wrote a complete and viable mythology that lives inside Narnia and affects its people, those specific characteristics all must pertain to the Narnian stories and determined fit within the stories and their world.  While Lewis published these characteristics in An Experiment in Criticism, Leland Ryken and Marjorie Mead, in their book A Reader’s Guide Through the Wardrobe, simplify the wording and summarize the explanations when Lewis’s wording could confuse the reader. Application of these shorter explanations sometimes better describes Lewis’s meaning.

The first characteristic of a myth states that “mythical stories are so striking in themselves that their power over the human psyche is inherent in the stories, quite apart from the literary skill, or lack of it, with which a given storyteller has told the story” (Ryken and Mead 107).  One instance of the Narnian myth severely impacting the human psyche shines in the second book, Prince Caspian (PC), where Aslan heals the crying schoolgirl’s sick auntie.  Healed from near death, the aunt opens her eyes to see Aslan, and she exclaims, “Oh, Aslan!  I knew it was true.  I’ve been waiting my entire life.  Have you come to take me away?” (217). This quote bears significance because when the aunt opens her eyes and sees a lion’ face before her, he does not identify himself as Aslan, the aunt simply knows.  Lewis never tells readers if the aunt has ever seen any sort of lion, only that her niece has never (216).  The aunt then says, “I’ve been waiting for this my entire life,” suggesting Aslan never before visited her, and she therefore relies on faith to believe the myths.  This woman takes to heart the myths that she heard long ago, and she fervently believes, even to the point of wishing for it her whole life and asking immediately, without fear, if Aslan takes her away.  She wants to go with him.  The personification of Aslan who represents the central belief in the Narnian myth, means that, when characters react to Aslan’s presence or lack thereof, they react to the myth itself and that character’s belief in them comes to the surface. 

The second aspect of myth, which C.S. Lewis does not consider among his checklist in Criticism, but noted by Ryken and Mead, states that “mythical stories ‘have a very simple narrative shape—a satisfactory and inevitable shape, like a good vase or a tulip’” (107).  Most of the time, humans or animals hear the story of Aslan or Peter the High King or King Caspian the Seafarer as children, therefore the storytellers must speak simply, but a good mythology always possess innumerable depths in which one may explore in adulthood.  This fact perhaps determines why Lewis chose to have the Pevensie children young when they first come to Narnia, and in fact nearly all heroes of the stories, excepting King Frank and Queen Helen, the first Narnian royalty, help Narnia while still children or young adults.  The stories about heroic children mean to inspire the children listening to the stories into faith in Aslan and his work.  Peter Schakel, in his book Reading With the Heart: The Way Into Narnia, discuss this child-like simplicity when dealing with the theme of Deep Magic:  “Through Deep Magic,” he says, “Lewis is depicting in a form which appeals to imagination and emotion, in a form children can relate to, what he described conceptually in the opening chapters of Mere Christianity” (23).  Therefore, the myth and the aspects of the myth, must present in a simple, clear manner in which children can understand.  If the complexity of the myth befuddled the children, less people would believe in Aslan because of hindrances one usually achieves as adults, like skepticism, ideology, and negative attributes of  the Narnian adults and would halt the acceptance of Aslan and other stories.

The third characteristic of a myth states that the myth must, “even at first hearing…is felt to be inevitable” (Ryken and Mead 107) and “the pleasure of myth depends hardly at all on such usual narrative attractions as suspense or surprise” (An Experiment in Criticism 43).  In PC, the very young Caspian, speaking to his Uncle Miraz about Old Narnia, in other words, Narnia before the Telmarine invasion in 1998 Narnian time (NT) (Duriez 136), says that he wishes he lived in Old Narnia primarily because, “the animals could talk and there were nice people who lived in the streams and the trees.…And there were Dwarfs.  And there were lovely little Fauns in all the woods.  They had feet like goats” (43).  Caspian only brings up elements of surprise and suspense when his Uncle Miraz says, “At your age, you ought to be thinking of battles and adventures” (43).  Caspian then highlights those elements of Old Narnia, and retells the exciting events of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (LWW) to Miraz.  While Lewis’s myth contains many elements of suspense and surprise, the story forgets them quickly and the hearers instead relish in a peaceful Narnia.  For Lewis and Narnia, the battles provide a means to a new ending that lacks surprise or suspense, for Aslan brings only peace and whenever men rule on the throne of Narnia in his name or according to his will, peace abounds. Schakel notes that “victory for the Narnians comes only through Aslan: that is, perhaps, the central theme of the series” (15).  Therefore, however the Narnians must get to this state, they will, for they relish in peace, not battles. 

The fourth characteristic of a myth states that “the characters in a mythical story do not primarily appeal to us as fellow human beings; rather, ‘they are like shapes moving in another world” (Ryken and Mead 107).  Two places within the Chronicles highlight this element well.    The first place, in The Last Battle (LB), King Tirian, the last king of Narnia, thinks about the old Narnian stories in a time of sorrow.  He ponders his great-grandfather’s great-grandfather King Rilian’s adventures with the “two mysterious children” and determines that “it’s not like that with me” (51) because the stories appear so magical that Tirian cannot relate himself to the characters in that story.  He then thinks about the events told in PC and again decides, “that sort of thing doesn’t happen now” (51).  King Tirian holds the stories to such a high regard, and the stories contain so many magical elements to persuade him to think they operate higher than everyday life, proving the fourth characteristic of myth.  Trumpkin the Dwarf in PC, still struggling for solid belief in the myth of Aslan and Cair Paravel, does not accept the children as participants in the stories because of their young age, which Trumpkin views as a weakness. He imagines older, larger-than-life superstars and not the bunch of children in weird clothes who stand before him.  In the short time he considers the myth possible, he already elevates Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy to a status which the actual children do not qualify; the conjured picture in his head contradicts reality, and Trumpkin therefore will not accept the truth of the children at fiThe fifth characteristic states that “myth is a type of fantasy story that ‘deals with impossible and preternaturals’—in other words, it transcends our natural world and moves into the realm of the ‘supernatural’” (Ryken and Mead 07).  In LWW, Aslan embodies a figure living above the laws of physics and time, subject only to the laws of the Deep Magic.  Aslan possesses abilities to disappear, reappear, possess invisibility, and selective invisibility, and many things humans and animals cannot accomplish.  Aslan does not have to follow the ways of humans, nor the will of the humans, for, after all, “he’s not a tame lion” (LB 19).  Paul Ford, in his encyclopedic Companion to Narnia, identifies that  the Emperor-Beyond-The Sea produces the Deep Magic, and “the Deeper Magic against which Aslan cannot work” (193).  In fact, Aslan would not dare to work against the Deep Magic if he could, for when Susan asks, “Can’t we do something about the Deep Magic?  Isn’t there something you can work against it?” (LWW 156), he says, “Work against the Emperor’s Magic?” (156) and the narrator mentions that “nobody ever made that suggestion to him again” (156).  As stated in earlier paragraphs, the concept of Deep Magic supposes a Narnian equal for what Lewis describes in Mere Christianity as “The Law of Human Nature.” Lewis asserts in the text God’s creation of the Law of Human Nature.  He states that “I should expect to find that there was, so to speak,…a Power, behind the facts [of the Law of Human Nature], a Director, a Guide” (25). For Narnia, Aslan acts specifically as a guide, and his father, the Emperor-Over-The-Sea, portrays the creator of the Law.  Therefore, Aslan portrays both Guide of the Deep Magic and subject.  The presence of Magicians, such as the Magician of the Dufflepuds’ island, develops another aspect of supernaturalism in Voyage of the Dawn Treader (VDT). The Magician calls any sort of magic with books and wands “rough magic” (499), a phrase Aslan also calls “dark Magic” on page 206 of Magician’s Nephew (MN).  The Green and White Witches from The Silver Chair (SC) and LWW, respectively, generally work in this Rough Magic. From Earth, the amateur Magician of Uncle Andrew works with Rough Magic in an extremely rudimentary fashion.  To the children who hear the stories and have never met a talking animal, this element also develops a vapor of transcendence from the natural world. 

The sixth characteristic that makes a myth states that “the experience may be sad or joyful but it is always grave.  Comic myth…is impossible” (An Experiment in Criticism 44).    To find this characteristic in Narnian myth, one must focus on endings.  In LWW, MN, PC, VDT, and SC, the children always leave when their work finishes, excepting in LWW, where they grow into the roles of Kings and Queens of Narnia and then accidently leave, ending a very prosperous and abundant life to come back to living as school-age British children during World War II.  At the end of LB, all die in a horrific train accident, Narnia ends, and any New Narnian Myth ceases possibility.  With looking specifically at MN, the audience hears an enjoyable, even funny tale, such as when the animals ruthlessly abuse Uncle Andrew (154-158) but the end of the story feels bittersweet, for King Frank and Queen Helen get to rule Narnia while the children must go back living as children in England, although their lives improve significantly.  Only Horse and His Boy (HHB) has a truly “happy ever after” ending in which “Aravis also had many quarrels…with Cor, but they always made up again, so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making up again that they got married so as to go on doing it more conveniently” (241). In the realm of the entire Narnian myth, however, this instance portrays one happy ending in a sea of hardships.  Deep subjects such as death, battles, and struggles with a lack of a multiple number of comical characters flood Narnia myth.  The reader must endure as Reepicheep, one of the select few funny characters, sails off in search of Aslan’s country, not again seen until the end of the series.  Reepicheep’s leaving shows one of many, many sad partings.  In SC, Puddleglum, the other truly comic character, must ride into the sunset, so to speak, also never seen until the end.  In LB, C.S. Lewis does not allow Narnia to continue to grow and prosper, he must destroy the world.

The seventh and final myth characteristic states that all myth “’is not only grave but awe-inspiring.  We feel it to be numinous.’  In myth there is a sense of awe and if the wholly transcendent ‘other’” (Ryken and Mead 107).  The hearers of the stories such as LWW most likely amaze in the sudden appearance of the four children from another world.  No one born in the Narnian world has ever traveled to earth (Jadis comes from an entirely different world, Charn.)  In fact, Mr. Tumnus, unfamiliar with her home planet, calls Lucy’s home “the far land of Spare Oom where the eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe” (LWW 13).  Significant magic weaves throughout the story, manifested mostly in this transcendence between worlds, and brings the wonder of other places into the tales at which Narnian children would marvel.  Not contextual evidence gives the impression the Earth children discuss their home planet at length, except in HHB when Lucy, “told again (they had all, except Aravis and Cor, heard it many times but they all wanted it again) the tale of the Wardrobe and how she and King Edmund and Queen Susan and Peter the High King had first come into Narnia” (238). This quote suggests Lucy has told the stories before, but any references to England in the Narnian myth disappear into obscurity.  Aslan certainly never mentions England to the Narnians.  Until the final events in LB, the world of Earth presents a significant, unanswered mystery.  From this mysterious world, people important to their history have come.  C.S. Lewis created a myth so powerfully developed with magic that the Narnians could not possess other stories quite of this caliber without the Deep Magic and transcendence, nor as fantastical as the ones presented.

Now that the stories in The Chronicles of Narnia prove a viable myth according to the basis of C.S. Lewis’s own characteristic checklist for myths, the question remains of what happened to these stories after they happened.  The story as it happens tells only half the history…the second half of the story tells how the stories pass down: either orally, naturally, or prophetically.

The story seems, by context, handed down most often by much the same method as Lewis employs by authoring children’s books—adults telling the stories to children at their bedtimes.  No contextual evidence records that the myths appear in book form in Narnia, although this does occur in the “Prince Caspian” movie.  This method of storytelling to the very young occurs widely—while many people in the books do not believe the stories; nearly every character in the book has at least heard the tales.  Noticeably, many in Calormen have not heard the stories of Aslan, for Shasta and Aravis do not realize that the lions they encounter can protect them instead of eating them.