As an adult I could better understand the many layers of meaning within the stories.
LION WITCH WARDROBE SERIES
When I read the series to my sons, I found that I was more excited by rereading the stories myself than the boys were to hear them. I have met people of every age, from five to eightyfive, who have enjoyed the The Chronicles of Narnia.
Lewis said about himself, “Parts of me are still twelve, and I think parts were already fifty when I was twelve.” In any case, the capacity to avoid being hardened by cynicism and suspicion was regarded as essential to human well being. Lewis’s friend Ruth Pitter said that Lewis had a child’s sense of glory and nightmare. Lewis lamented that “his poor imagination has been left without any natural food at all.” Lewis felt that it was important (as Jesus taught) for adults to keep a childlike outlook on the world: “Only those adults who have retained, with whatever additions and enrichments, their first childlike responses to poetry unimpaired can be said to have grown up at all.” In Experiment in Criticism, Lewis writes:īut who in his right mind would not keep if he could that tireless curiosity, that intensity of imagination, that faculty of suspending belief, that unspoiled attitude, that readiness to wonder, to pity, to admire? One five-year-old boy who visited Lewis’s home outside Oxford during the bombing of London in World War II, had never been exposed to fairy tales. Lewis felt that to grow into adulthood without developing your imagination was to be impoverished. But, apart from that, juvenile taste is simply human taste. Of course, their limited vocabulary and general ignorance make some books unintelligible to them. These, when good, do not corrupt it, for children read only to enjoy. Lewis says:įashions in literary taste come and go among adults, and every period has its own shibboleths. “Children’s” stories retain their appeal through the generations. He pointed out that many children do not like fairy stories, while many adults do, and that a good story is a good story no matter what the reader’s age. In response to the charge that fairy stories such as The Chronicles of Narnia were childish, Lewis distinguished between fairy tales and children’s stories. As he wrote, some of his Christian beliefs crept into the story, but it is important not to press every detail of the story as you might do with The Pilgrim’s Progress. For instance, LWW started with the image in Lewis’s mind of a Faun carrying packages, and he had been having dreams about lions.
One of the first questions that arises about the series is: Are the books allegories, where each detail of the books has symbolic spiritual meaning? The answer is “No.” Lewis stressed that each volume started with pictures in his mind, which he turned into a story. Any preparation we do now may prepare us for future opportunities, so it’s good to learn more about the Narnia series and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (LWW). There are already plans for other volumes of the Narnia series to be made into movies, so it is possible that all seven might eventually be filmed. Many people, both believers and nonbelievers, will see the film, and it will be an opportunity to speak to others about the film’s meaning as well as about C.S. The book has already been at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis's best-loved classicįinally, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is coming to the big screen.
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