Musings of a Loquacious Mind

The Magician's Nephew

Yesterday I reread The Magician's Nephew, by CS Lewis, the penultimate book in The Chronicles of Narnia.

For starters, let me reiterate that this is really the penultimate book in the series. It's not the first book. Yes, the action takes place decades (or millennia, depending on whether you're talking Earth time or Narnia time) before even The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, but it's not meant to be first. Why do I think this? For starters, it was written seventh. TLTWATW was written first, then Prince Caspian, then The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, then The Silver Chair, then The Horse and His Boy, then The Magician's Nephew, then The Last Battle.

Also, it references TLTWATW. Things are written specifically to recall bits of that book.

Up until less than 10 years ago, when you bought the books they were ordered in the manner I have written. Then, at some point, someone decided to put them in order of when the action occurred. Of course, THAHB takes place entirely within a period that occupies about one paragraph in TLTWATW, but that's neither here nor there.

Think of it like this. You remember how in The Godfather (the movie, not the book, although the book does give the ancillary information interspersed after it gets started) they show current activities of Vito Corleone and his family. Sure, there are some historical segues, but by in large it is "present". They don't get into the history of Vito Corleone until the second or third (I've never actually seen them, I've just read the book, so bear with me) movie. Why? Because how can you care about the history of Vito Corleone if you haven't heard of him, if you haven't seen what he does?

It's the same with the Bible. I realize Genesis comes first in the Bible. That's not my point. If you had never read the Bible, would you start with the Old Testament? Maybe you would. But I wouldn't recommend it. Start with John! Start with the Gospels! Before you can care about the prophecies of Jesus in Isaiah, you have to know who Jesus was and why you should care about him at all. Not only does the other way around seem kind of boring, when you don't know what you are reading for, but you miss so much; reading after the Gospels is so much more satisfying, more rich, more nuanced, more interesting, more inspiring.

So is The Magician's Nephew.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system....

CS Lewis is well known for his more "adult" works. Mere Christianity. The Screwtape Letters. A Grief Observed. The Problem of Pain. The Great Divorce. The Chronicles of Narnia isn't a direct analogy to Biblical stories and principles. But some parts are. And the parts that aren't, are rooted in these themes that Lewis wrote about so often. So it is not a huge stretch to get insight while reading. I wouldn't say it is a substitute for reading the Bible by any means. Without the Bible to give it context, though, you're not getting the whole story. Every time I read the books - especially TLTWATW, TMN, and TLB - I start really thinking about my faith.

The thing that stuck with me the most while reading The Magician's Nephew this time was in the dawning of Narnia. How amazing must that have been? I tried to imagine being there at the dawn of time. CS Lewis describes pre-existence like a void of blackness, and in the blackness came a song, for lack of better description, and then a chorus of voices joined the song, suddenly and in harmony, as the sky filled with stars and the depths of the universe. Wow. Let there be light.

When Aslan created the trees they grew up at astounding rates, in very nearly the blink of an eye. It made me think of a teacher that was unable to share anything non-curriculum, unless specifically and privately asked. Rather than leaving the high school kids with nothing other than evolution, the teacher took a shoebox, and some plastic dinosaurs, and put the dinosaurs in the bottom. "How did they get in the box?" she asked the class. "You put them there" they responded. "Exactly. Any questions must be after class; let's open our books..." The trees that sprung up in Narnia were in an instant an old, ancient forest. If you cut anyone of them and counted the rings, clearly it would appear to be much older than seconds old. Who knew the true age? Only the creator.

The books themes spoke of the first evil, introduced to the world by man, and how the evil would win some battles, but the war was already won.

I'm so glad I'm on the winning side, no matter how many battles we may seem to lose in the world. The war is so much bigger, and our victory is assured.

As an aside, I used the word ancillary in this entry. In my mind, I thought this word was anticillary (like "Anti-Celery", those against bloody marys, perhaps). I am chagrined to find out I was so far off the mark, although the word means precisely what I meant and I couldn't make do with another. So we have yet another case where my vocabulary has atrophied. Yikes.

Labels: books

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