The Chronicles of Narnia

Kernowyouth goes behind the scenes of the latest Disney blockbuster "The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe" and asks everything you wanted to know about the Chronicles of Narnia...

Who was CS Lewis?

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898. He took the nickname "Jack" after his pet dog which was run over by one of the first cars in the north of Ireland. His mother died in 1908. He was educated at a prep school, then Malvern College and finally by a private tutor. He saw active service on the Western Front during the First World War and was wounded at Arras. After the war he returned to Oxford and graduated with a Triple First, and became a fellow and tutor of Magdalen College in 1925. He taught there for nearly 30 years before becoming Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. He became famous during the Second World War due to his broadcasts on the BBC about literature and religion. In 1956 he married an American, Joy Gresham, who was to die in 1960 of cancer. CS Lewis was to die, virtually unnoticed by the world, on 22 November 1963 - the day President JF Kennedy was assassinated.

How did he come to write the Chronicles?

In 1950, Lewis published the first of the seven children’s books called the Chronicles of Narnia. The rest were published over the next six years. It happened almost by accident. Lewis was a bachelor and was shy and awkward with children, but during the Second World War, in 1939, four evacuees from London were sent to stay with him. He was astonished at how little they read and how poorly-developed their imaginations were. And then when one of the girls asked him if there was anything behind the old wardrobe in the spare room, he began to scribble on the back of an envelope ... It was actually not until ten years later that the story begun then saw the light of day, but the rest is history.

What is Narnia?

"Narnia? What's that?" said Lucy.
"This is the land of Narnia," said the Faun, "where we are now; all that lies between the lamp-post and the great castle of Cair Paravel on the Eastern Sea. . . ."
Narnia is the fantasy land created by CS Lewis for his series of seven novels called "The Chronicles of Narnia".

Was there a real wardrobe?

Yes, there appear to have been two that influenced CS Lewis. His own, discovered by the evacuees staying with him, and a second in a house called Little Lea into which the Lewis family had moved when Jack was seven. In one of the many rooms stood a large, carved wardrobe that had been built by Jack and Warnie’s grandfather. Warnie remembered how he and Jack used to sit inside it, in the dark, while Jack made up tales of adventure. The wardrobe eventually became the means by which, in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, four children, Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy found their way into the land of Narnia in another world.

Is the film true to the book?

Douglas Gresham, CS Lewis' stepson, thanked the production team with the words "My stepfather would be pleased with this adaptation of his book." The film makes a few changes, such as the escape from the Beaver's house, but nothing that alters the storyline in any significant way. The key lines in the book are kept word for word. For example, Mr Tumnus explains that Aslan is not a tame lion. Lucy adds, "But he is good!"

What locations were used for the film?

The snow-covered Narnia is a mixture of work done in a studio in Auckland, New Zealand, where the production team took over an equestrian centre and dug the floor out to make it big enough, and the Ardspach National Park at Trutnov in the Czech Republic. Here are the unusual rock formations and the virgin forest that provide the large vistas of Narnia in the film.

Flock Hill on South Island in New Zealand is the setting for the climatic battle in the film. Filming was done on private land one and a half hours west of Christchurch.

How did CS Lewis become a Christian?

CS Lewis had been brought up in a God-fearing home, although away at boarding school he rejected the Christianity of his parents taking an atheist viewpoint. Later in adult life, influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and Christian friend J. R. R. Tolkien, and G.K. Chesterton's book, "The Everlasting Man", he slowly rediscovered Christianity. In 1929, he came to believe in the existence of God, later writing, "In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed," describing himself as "the most dejected and reluctant convert of all time."
In 1931, after a lengthy discussion with Tolkien and another close friend, he reconverted to Christianity and joined the Church of England. He noted that "I came into Christianity kicking and screaming."

What else did CS Lewis write?

He was quite prolific as an author, both on the literature he taught at Oxford and Cambridge and also on Christianity. His autobiography is called "Suprised by Joy" (written before he met his wife Joy). His classic defence of the Christian faith is called "Mere Christianity". Also worth a read is "Screwtape Letters" - the advice of a senior devil to a junior devil on how to mess up the life of a Christian.

In what kinds of ways does Narnia convey a Christian message?

All readers of Narnia must realise that Aslan the Lion, who is the Son of the Great Emperor Across the Sea, who breaks the power of the White Witch by his death and resurrection - and who, as C.S. Lewis pointed out to one of his young readers 'arrived at the same time as Father Christmas' - is a picture of Jesus Christ. Does it follow that the books as a whole are allegories?
C.S. Lewis used a very strict definition of the word 'allegory' - after all, one of his most important academic books was a study of this subject. He wrote to some Maryland fifth graders in 1954:
'I did not say to myself 'Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia'; I said 'Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen'.
'The whole series' wrote Lewis in another letter 'works out like this:
The Magician's Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia,
The Lion etc. - the Crucifixion and Resurrection,
Prince Caspian - restoration of the true religion after a corruption,
The Horse and His Boy - the calling and conversion of the heathen,
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - the spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep),
The Silver Chair - the continuing war against the powers of darkness,
The Last Battle - the coming of Antichrist (the ape). The end of the world and the last judgement.'
So, in today's loose terminology the books can probably be said to be 'allegorical'. If you want to use that term, then a number of characters might be said to be allegories:
The White Witch represents the Devil, as does Tash.
Peter represents the valiant and wise Christian.
Reepicheep is the very soul of chivalry with both its virtues and its failings.
'Edmund,' wrote Lewis 'Is, like Judas, a traitor and a sneak. But unlike Judas he repents and is forgiven (as Judas no doubt would have been if he'd repented).'
Father Christmas - who gives gifts to Aslan's followers to help them fight the powers of darkness - may be a picture of the Holy Spirit.

What can I do to explore further?

Read the seven Chronicles of Narnia for yourself. Most school and town libraries will have them.

Watch the film currently on release in the cinema. If you can't make it to the cinema ITV1 are showing an animated version at 10:10am on Boxing Day.

Read George Sayer's "Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times".
This is part memoir and part biography by a friend and pupil of Lewis. Check out your local bookshop for other titles about and by CS Lewis.

Visit one of the sites connected with CS Lewis.
*   Magdalen College, Oxford is often open to public visits in the vacations.
*   Holy Trinity Churchyard Headington Quarry, Oxford (the site of Jack's grave) is open.
*   The Kilns, Lewis's home for many years, is currently under restoration and may eventually be opened to the public.
*   The Eagle and Child (the Bird and Baby) where many of the Inklings meetings were held is open during normal pub opening hours. The Inklings were the literary group of which CS Lewis was a part at Oxford.
*   A bronze statue of Lewis looking into a wardrobe stands in Belfast’s Holywood Arches.

Written by Phil Hadley with the assistance of material supplied by Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media and the CS Lewis Foundation.

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