C. S. Lewis in Context by Doris T. Myers

Author:Doris T. Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Kent State University Press

Abolishing the Controllers: The First Three Chronicles

It cannot be overemphasized that the didacticism of the Chronicles consists in the education of moral and aesthetic feelings rather than the cognitive presentation of doctrine.18 The goal is not to fictionalize a catechism, but to prevent children from growing up without Chests. For example, the desired response to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is not to believe in the vicarious suffering of Christ but to taste it, as Jane tasted kingship in That Hideous Strength. In each one of the stories a particular virtue or configuration of virtues is presented, and the reader is brought to love it through participating in the artistry of the tale. By concentrating on Christian doctrine as formulated confessionally, previous commentators have often treated the books as mere religious rhetoric and brought back the “watchful dragons” of inhibited feelings that Lewis was trying to avoid. To correct this tendency, it is necessary to place artistry above Christian doctrine, to look for patterns of imagery and tone as well as concepts.

The first three Chronicles comprise a unit in that all deal specifically with the nature of Joy and the search for it. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe enacts the early emotional response toward mythological beings that Lewis describes in Surprised by Joy. Prince Caspian enacts the recovery of Joy after it has been lost in the course of growing older. Wordsworth, whose phrase “surprised by joy” furnished the title to the autobiography Lewis was working on, also provides an insight into the first two Narnian books in his “Intimations of Immortality.” In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the children are “glorious in the might / Of heaven-born freedom” (Wordsworth, “Intimations” II.123–24), while in Prince Caspian the “clouds of glory” have “fade[d] into the light of common day” (11. 65, 78) and must be restored by Aslan. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader concludes this subgrouping by presenting the paradigmatic journey of the Christian life, in which the original search for Joy is balanced within a larger pattern. It works out Lewis’s remark in Surprised by Joy that he was no longer much interested in Joy. It is also the Narnian equivalent of Jane’s “You mean I shall have to become a Christian?” (Strength 316), though perhaps more artistically successful than the analogous passage in the adult novel.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

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