The Creator of Narnia:

Aslan

CHAPTER FIVE

"If you continue to love Jesus, nothing much can go wrong with you, and I hope you may always do so." -C. S. Lewis, Unpublished letter to a little girl

Who is Aslan? The one person who makes Narnia worth visiting is Aslan himself-"It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you." Aslan, of course, is the magnificent Son of the Emperor-Over-Sea, King of the Wood and Beasts, Maker of the Stars. He doesn't actually reside in Narnia, though: "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down-and of course he has other countries to attend to." There are 100 years, for example, when the Witch rules in perpetual Narnian winter and Christmas never comes. Caspian and Tirian have real difficulty believing in Aslan since they have only heard legends about him. Who can forget the image of Aslan singing Narnia into existence-to see that Singer makes the viewer forget everything else: "It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song." The experience of his presence is like "a sea of tossing gold in which they were floating, and such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered into them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or ever alive and awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of that golden goodness, and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just around some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well."

His speed, says Emeth, is like that of an ostrich, his size like an elephant's, his hair like pure gold, his bright eyes like liquid gold. Here, Lewis has succeeded in doing what, in his Preface to Paradise Lost, he admits is difficult for any author: portraying a totally good character. "To draw a character better than yourself, all you can do is to take the best moments you have had and to imagine them prolonged and more consistently embodied in action. But the real, high virtues which we do not possess at all, we cannot depict except in a purely external fashion. We do not really know what it feels like to be a man much better than ourselves."

Many readers sense that Aslan is a "divine" or "Christlike" figure. As we have mentioned before, if you do not see Aslan in this way Lewis would not want you to, because that was not his purpose. But for the moment, we will look at some of the "hints" Lewis himself has given us, in the stories and elsewhere, concerning Aslan's "model."

As will be discussed in chapter 8, the events in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe remind us of several events in Christ's own life. And in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when the children reach the End of the World, they see a Lamb who invites them to breakfast; he is so white they can barely look at him. Suddenly, he is changed and they recognize him: "As he spoke his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane."

Similar "symbolism" is used in Revelation 5:5-6: " . . . the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain." Aslan also calls himself the great "Bridge Builder" who promises to guide them into Narnia from their world-another Biblical image, as we will see later. Finally, in The Last Battle, Aslan looks to them "no longer as a Lion", and we assume he has taken his human form as he begins to tell them the Great Story, forever and ever. Elsewhere, Lewis makes it clear that Aslan is a divine figure and that anything "approaching Disney-like humor" would be blasphemy. He wrote the following explanation to a little girl from Texas:

As to Aslan's other name, well, I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in this world who

(1) Arrived the same time as Father Christmas

(2) Said he was the Son of the Great Emperor

(3) Gave him- self up for someone else's fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people

(4) Came to life again

(5) Is sometimes spoken of as a Lamb (at the end of the "Dawn Treader")? Don't you really know His name in this world?"

4

Most child readers--or at least certain types of people--who corresponded with Lewis had no problem knowing Aslan's real identity. In several of his letters Lewis indicates that he had received many "lovely, moving letters" from children, primarily if brought up in Christian homes, who never failed to grasp the theology of Narnia "more or less unconsciously, and much more clearly than some grownups." Most grown-ups never see who Aslan is, he said. A perfect example is a letter written by an 11 year old girl to Lewis's friend, Owen Barfield:

"I have read Mr. Lewis's books. I got so envoveled [sic] in them all I did was eat, sleep, and read. I wanted to write to you and tell you I understand the books. I mean about the sy [m] bols and all .... I know that to me Aslan is God. And all the son's and daughter's of Adam and Eve are God's children. I have my own philosophies about the books. If it is possible I would like to meet you. None of my friends (well some of them) liked the books. I tried to explain to them but they don't understand about symbols. I never really did until I read the books."

5

In fact, some children understood Aslan so well that they began to love Aslan more than Jesus. Here is Lewis's response to a worried mother of one little boy:

"Laurence can't really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that's what he is doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really did and said. So that when Laur- ence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before. Of course there is one thing Aslan has that Jesus has not-I mean, the body of a lion. (But remember, if there are other worlds and they need to be saved and Christ were to save them-as He would-He may really have taken all sorts of bodies in them which we don't know about). Now if Laurence is bothered because he finds the lion-body seems nicer to him than the man-body, I don't think he need be bothered at all. "

6

Why would Lewis choose, as he suggests, to portray Christ as a Lion? First of all, we must remember that Lewis did not begin writing his stories with Aslan in mind. Instead, he says he had been having dreams of lions at the time, and suddenly Aslan came bounding into the story and "pulled the whole story together and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after Him." In fact, Lewis admitted that writing a story about God would be a "tall order": "to imagine what God might be supposed to have done in other worlds does not seem to be wrong." Yet it must be emphasized that Aslan is not allegorically Christ; in other words, no one-to-one correspondence exists between characters and events and what they "stand for"between the characteristics and acts of Christ and those of Aslan, for example. Rather, Aslan is "an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' "'

After all, we are forced to use symbols for spiritual experience, just as the Bible uses Scriptural imagery to describe God and heaven. But the use of symbols leads us into clearer understanding and knowledge of Christ. Similarly, Aslan says to King Frank, "You know [me] better than you think you know, and you shall live to know me better yet." And at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan, who has nine names in Narnia, says that in England he has yet another name: "You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there." So we must stretch and exercise our imaginations and understanding of spiritual reality in order that we may use them in our everyday world.

Lewis associates Aslan with two symbols he said he borrowed from the Grail legend: brightness and a sweet smell. Eustace, for example, notices that although there was no moon when he encountered Aslan, moonlight shone where the Lion was. Shasta, too, sees a whiteness and golden light actually coming from Aslan himself. In many of his other works, Lewis associates God and heaven with the Biblical metaphor of light (I John 1:5, I Tim. 6:16), especially in his story "The Man Born Blind." Appropriately, as the children approach Aslan's country at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, they notice a "whiteness, shot with faintest colour of gold, spread round them on every side;" a "brightness you or I could not bear even if we had dark glasses on." Aslan's brightness contrasts with the dull red light of Jadis' Charn or the sick greenish light of the Shallow-Lands.

Similarly, Aslan's mane gives off a lovely perfume which contrasts with the foul stench of Tashbaan and its god. Sensing Aslan's warm breath, Shasta knows the "thing" walking beside him is alive. Falling at his feet, he experiences all the glory of his power, his fiery brightness and perfume:

"The High King above all kings stooped towards him. Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, was all round him. It touched his forehead with its tongue. He lifted his face and their eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared."

A Terrible Good Aslan manifests a variety of qualities--he is awesome, solemn and stern, yet compassionate and joyful. This paradox of being at the same time both "terrible" and "good" is a key idea in Charles William's Descent into Hell, where "terrible" means "full of terror": Pauline "had never considered good as a thing of terror, and certainly she had not supposed a certain thing of terror in her own secret life as any possible good .... Salvation . . . is often a terrible thing -a frightening good." Lewis believed God and the numinous overwhelm us with a sense of dread and awe.

He explains this aspect of Aslan in The Lion: "People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly." Digory finds Aslan simultaneously "bigger and more beautiful and more brightly golden and more terrible than he had thought," and Emeth notes that Aslan was "more terrible than the Flaming Mountain of Lagour, and in beauty he surpassed all that is in the world, even as the rose in bloom surpasses the dust of the desert." The light Shasta sees radiating from Aslan is more terrible and more beautiful than anything anyone has ever seen.

Jill senses the same paradoxical combination of terror and moral glory in her first encounter with Aslan at the beginning of The Silver Chair. Desperately thirsty, yet paralyzed with fright at the Lion's presence beside the stream, she pleads with him for a promise that he will not harm her. But he will make no such promise, majestically telling her that he has, in fact, "swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms." When Jill reluctantly decides to search for another stream to drink from, Aslan informs her that there is no other. "It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand .... Before she tasted it she had been intending to make a dash away from the Lion the moment she had finished. Now, she realized that this would be . . . the most dangerous thing of all."

As all the old tales of Narnia indicate, Aslan is wild--"not a tame lion." " 'Ooh!' said Susan, 'I'd thought he was a man. Is he--quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.' " Mrs. Beaver replies, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly." After his resurrection, defying death and evil, Aslan opens his mouth to roar and "his face became so terrible that they did not dare to look at it. And they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as grass bends in the meadow before the wind." Aslan resembles the "devouring" god of the mountain which Lewis portrays in Till We Have Faces. But when he hurts, it is for a purpose. First snapping at Hwin to make the horses hurry, the Lion then scratches Aravis. The scratches, he explains later, are equal to the stripes her stepmother whipped into a slave because of her: "You needed to know what it felt like." Yet Aslan has another side; "I will not always scold," he assures the children. He can feel all the pain and sorrow of every individual. When Digory fearfully asks Aslan to cure his mother and peers up at his face, what he sees surprises him "as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself." Later, although he forgets to say "thank you," Aslan understands without a word from Digory. Likewise, during Caspian's funeral, Aslan cries great Lion-tears, "each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond." He feels great sadness over Edmund's treachery, too.

He can also be joyously playful. Who can forget the lively romp with Aslan that Lucy and Susan experience after his "resurrection"? It is like playing both with a thunderstorm and a kitten. He gives them a wonderful ride on his back. His mane flying, he never tires, never misses his footing. At the end of Prince Caspian's adventures, Aslan leads the children, animals, new followers, and even Bacchus himself in a riotous, festive parade through town. He playfully tosses the disbelieving Trumpkin in the air, then asks to be his friend.

A Guide in Other Forms As a Lion, Aslan can show us the full significance of the incarnation--Christ becoming a man, like us. This is poignantly exemplified in The Lion when Aslan tells the other lions to join with him in battle: "Did you hear what he said? Us lions. That means him and me. Us lions. That's what I like about Aslan. No side, no stand- offishness. Us lions." We cannot read very many pages of a Narnia story without sensing Aslan's presence, though unseen and often in another form, and guidance of events. Like God, he is wise and foreknowing. As Puddleglum reminds the children: There are no accidents; "He was there when the giant king caused the letters to be cut, and he knew already all things that would come of them; including this." Tirian describes whatever may befall them in the future as "the adventure that Aslan would send them."

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he appears as an albatross, deliciously breathing "Courage, dear heart," to Lucy, then guiding them away from the Dark Island. Throughout all of Shasta's adventures-the lions forcing him to protect Aravis and snapping at the horses; the Cat protecting him at the tombs; the unseen giant shadow keeping to his left to protect him from the cliff; even his own coming to Calormen-it is Aslan who guides each step of the way. "You may call me a giant," he tells Shasta; "Tell me your sorrows." Then he reveals to him that he is the One Lion that has been with him all along. Shasta later realizes it isn't "luck" that sent him through the pass in the mountains into Narnia "but Him." Aravis, too, at first thinking it "luck" that the lion only gave her ten scratches, is told by the Hermit that in his 109 years, he "never yet met any such thing as Luck. There is something about all this that I do not understand: but if weever need to know it, you may be sure that we shall." Aslan is ever present to warn the children sternly from time to time not to do wrong. He reproves not out of anger but because he always knows what is best for them. Some day, in Aslan's country, they will never do the wrong things and then "I will not always be scolding," he promises. When they bicker about the gold on Deathwater Island, suddenly Aslan's growling face appears to remind them of their wrongdoing. Just as Lucy begins to say the spell in the Magician's Book to make herself beautiful, Aslan stares gravely at her from the page. In Prince Caspian a stern look from Aslan is all she needs to tell her that it is truly her responsibility to follow him, despite the others: " 'It wasn't my fault anyway, was it?' The Lion looked straight into her eyes. 'Oh, Aslan,' said Lucy. 'You don't mean it was? How could I-I couldn't have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I? Don't look at me like that... oh well, I suppose I could.' "

One cannot help but tell the truth before Aslan's holy stare. Digory is forced to confess fully to Aslan his responsibility for the Witch entering Narnia: " 'She woke up,' said Digory wretchedly. And then, turning very white, 'I mean, I woke her.' " Jill, too, confesses that she shoved Eustace over the cliff simply because she was showing off.

Later, Aslan has to appear to her in a dream to remind her to repeat the signs and give her a clue: UNDER ME. Finally, just as Moses is permitted to see only God's back and not his face because his glory is too great (Exodus 33:21-23), Aslan wreaks his fury upon Experiment House, but permits the hysterical teacher and students to see only his back.

The power of Aslan's wonderfully warm, sweet breath, and the air from his tossing mane, give such power and peace that it often seems reminiscent of the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The whole trinity is perhaps hinted at when Shasta asks the "ghostly" companion walking beside him, "Who are you?" " 'Myself,' said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook, (God the Father) and again 'Myself,' loud and clear and gay, (Christ) and then the third time 'Myself,' whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet is seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it" (The Holy Spirit).

Aslan's breath and kiss always empower the children. When he sends Digory to get the apple seed, Digory doesn't know how he will do it. But Aslan's kiss gives him such new strength and courage that he "felt quite sure now that he would be able to do it." When Lucy buries her face in his mane, it makes her a disciple, for he breathes such lion strength into her that he declares, "now you are a lioness." He breathes on Edmund so that a greatness hangs all about him, too. To wake the statues in The Lion, he breathes on their frozen forms, imparting renewed life to them, just as he breathes on the chosen Talking Animals when Narnia is created to separate them from the others.

Because of this Divine Plan and Presence behind events, we are not only to have faith in Aslan even when we cannot see or know, but we are also to be content with the present situation and not long for things to be different. The Green Lady in Perelandra believes that the wave sent to her from God at each moment is the best wave of all. So too, the children are repeatedly told by Aslan, "did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened. " That is not to say that Aslan dictates every event that happens or will always be present even if not asked. In fact, Lewis clearly illustrates the importance of free will and prayer in our lives. Aslan does not appear as a guide and comfort in the form of an albatross until Lucy whispers, "Aslan, Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now." Even though the darkness seems to remain, she feels better because of her small faith until he comes.

Likewise, in The Last Battle, Tirian cries out "Aslan! Aslan! Aslan! Come and help us Now." For him, too, the darkness, cold, and quiet seem just the same, but there is a kind of change inside him: "Without knowing why, he began to feel a faint hope. And he felt somehow stronger." And help does come. Although no-one can successfully try to get to Narnia, in The Silver Chair Jill and Eustace enter not long after they plead with Aslan to let them in: "Aslan, Aslan, Aslan! . . . Please let us two go into-." We sense that Aslan, like God, wants us to call on him first. Wondering if Aslan knows how hungry they are without telling him, Digory and Polly have to have Fledge the horse explain it to them: "I've no doubt he would," says Fledge. "But I've a sort of idea he likes to be asked."

Obedience Aslan usually calls the children from our world into another to perform certain tasks. In The Magician's Nephew, when Aslan calls the Cabby's wife from England, Polly realizes that anyone who heard that call "would want to obey it and (what's more) would be able to obey it, however many worlds and ages lay between." Thus they learn to obey Aslan and to seek his guidance in all circumstances. In Prince Caspian, for example, Lucy should have forsaken all the others and come after Aslan alone. Since she didn't, Aslan bids her once more: "You must all get up at once and follow me." Christ also told his disciples, "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me," forsaking all else. Later, after learning his lesson, Peter assures Lucy that they cannot know when Aslan will act again, but that nevertheless "he expects us to do what we can on our own." Digory's first task is simply to help Polly once Andrew sends her off into Narnia alone. Later, he must abandon his family and follow Aslan at any cost in order to get Aslan the apple. Still, Aslan provides him with help-Fledge and Polly-and special signs to look for-a blue lake, a hill, and a garden. And in reward for obeying and patiently waiting, he is given a healing apple for his mother.

Lucy is told in The Lion to go save others with her magic cordial and not to stop and wait for Edmund's healing. " 'Wait a minute,' she tells Aslan crossly. 'Daughter of Eve,' said Aslan in a graver voice, 'others also are at the point of death. Must more people die for Edmund?' " When she returns, Ed looks better than she had ever seen him. So her patience and obedience are rewarded, too. In fact, all four children illustrate well the rewards and blessings faithful Christians receive: for whatever they, as Kings and Queens, "took in hand," they achieved.

Shasta's task is to warn King Lune. Though tired and disheartened, he must continue on alone and he thinks this is cruel. Often, we feel God is asking us to do more than our share. But Shasta learns, "if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one." Likewise, Caspian selfishly though understandably, wants to abandon his throne in Narnia, his ship, and his promise to Ramandu's daughter to reach Aslan's country, but he must return at Aslan's bidding.

In The Silver Chair, Jill and Eustace are "called" by Aslan out of their world to do an important task. In their case, Aslan guides them by telling Jill four important signs she is to follow. Although the signs are quite clear to her in Aslan's country, he warns her that they will be difficult to recognize in Narnia. So she is to "remember, remember, remember the Signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night." God similarly commanded the Israelites: "These words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes" (Deuteronomy 6:6-8, RSV).

The children, however, don't obey Aslan's commands or stick to their mission. For one thing, they are tempted by food and shelter at Harfang, and thus walk right into a giant trap! Puddleglum has to remind them constantly to have faith and to keep going: "Aslan's instructions always work: there are no exceptions." Although it seems illogical, they must obey the sign and release the seemingly mad Prince even though they are unsure of what he will do. They may even die in the process. But no matter what the consequences, they must obey: "I was going to say I wished we'd never come. But I don't, I don't, I don't. Even if we are killed. I'd rather be killed fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home and perhaps go about in a bath chair and then die in the end just the same, " Jill proclaims in The Last Battle.

Reactions to Aslan An individual's reaction to Aslan reveals what kind of person he is. A curious thing happens, for example, when all four Pevensies hear the word "Aslan" spoken for the first time. At the sound of his name, each child feels quite different. Lewis likens it to the contrast between a terrifying or wonderful reaction to one dream: "At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror." In fact, he later admits, he hated the name. "Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful stream of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer." There are similar varied reactions to Aslan's song of creation. The Cabby, Digory, and Polly drink in the music, for it reminds them of something. The Witch on the other hand knows what the song is and hates it. Andrew doesn't like it because it makes him think and feel things he doesn't want to. He tells himself it is "only a lion" who hasn't really been singing-only roaring. And soon "he couldn't have heard anything else even if he had wanted to." Aslan explains that Andrew has made himself unable to hear his voice: "If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourself against all that might do you good!" Just the sight of Aslan creates "one single expression of terror" on the mean, cruel faces of the Experiment House children. A person's attitude also affects his view of Narnia itselfAndrew, Eustace and the Telmarines all dread the thought of going there. Thus "what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are." The Dwarfs refuse to believe in Aslan even when presented with the truth from Tirian. Like Andrew, they sit huddled up in the Stable and see only darkness instead of the sky and flowers which the children find in the same place. To the Dwarfs the flowers smell like stable litter. They can't even distinguish Aslan's voice. And his glorious feast-pies, tongues, pidgeons, trifles, ices, and wine-tastes only like old turnips, raw cabbage leaves, and dirty trough water. Andrew and these Dwarfs are much like Orual in Till We Have Faces, who believes the wine and bread Psyche gives her are just water and berries. Aslan explains that a person can close his own eyes to the truth: "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out."

One reason for the tendency to lose faith in Aslan is that he is not always in Narnia, but comes and goes. Caspian, for example, who has never seen Aslan or Talking Beasts begins to wonder if they are only stories after all. Nikabrik actually calls on the power of the Witch rather than Aslan because he has heard so little about him. After Aslan's resurrection, "He just fades out of the story," Nikabrik argues. "How do you explain that, if he really came to life? Isn't it much more likely that he didn't, and that the stories say nothing more about him because there was nothing more to say?" How similar this is to many of the arguments we hear about Christ! Even Peter argues that if Narnia or anything else is real, then they are here all the time. "Are they?" asks Professor Kirke, hinting at the necessity for faith instead of sight.

In Prince Caspian, the children's faith determines when and how they see Aslan during their journey to Aslan's How. Lucy, who loves Aslan perhaps more than anyone, sees him first. The voice she likes best in the world commands, "Follow me." Although the others don't believe and grumble loudly, they follow her nevertheless. Certainly they won't see him at first, Aslan predicts. "Later on, it depends." Edmund, who after all his misfortunes in an earlier adventure has learned his lesson, sees the Shadow next; then Peter, and finally, Susan and Trumpkin. Susan admits that her own attitude kept her from seeing him: "I really believed it was him tonight when you woke us up. I mean, deep down inside. Or I could have, if I'd let myself." How much she is like Edmund, who deep down inside had also known that the White Witch was bad!

One's response to Aslan is actually indicative of both his relationship to the Lion, and his faith. Spiritual growth permits an even clearer vision of him. "Aslan," says Lucy, "you're bigger." "Every year you grow, you will find me bigger," Aslan explains. When she thumbs through the Magician's Book, then gazes up from the picture, she sees Aslan. "I have been here all the time," said he, "but you have just made me visible." One's response to Aslan also reflects his unique relationship to God. Aslan tells Shasta and Aravis on separate occasions that "No one is told any story but their own."

Faith in Aslan must also come from the heart. Emeth is accepted into Aslan's country because his motives are true: "Son, thou art welcome .... All the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me." In contrast, Susan apparently never really believes in her heart, for she is not granted final admission to Aslan's country. Bree, like Thomas in the Bible, refuses to believe Aslan is a real lion and must receive proof before he will believe. Just as Christ urged Thomas to put his fingers in the nail prints in his hands and feet, Aslan bids Bree: "You poor, proud, frightened Horse, draw near. Nearer still, my son. Do not dare not to dare. Touch me. Smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail, these are my whiskers. I am a true Beast." " 'Aslan,' said Bree in a shaken voice, 'I'm afraid I must be rather a fool."Happy the Horse who knows that while still young. Or the Human either."' When disbelieving and stubborn Trumpkin doesn't believe Aslan is a real Lion either, Aslan proves his reality merely by tossing him gently into the air.

Time and time again, the children are called to simply have faith in Aslan. When the leopards are afraid to go near the Witch for fear she will turn them into stone, Peter tells them to simply trust Aslan: "It'll be all right .... He wouldn't send them if it weren't." As Ramandu's daughter tells Caspian's group, "You can't know .... You can only believe-or not." Who best illustrates this but Puddleglum, who tells the Green Witch that even if the world of trees, grass, sun, moon, stars-Aslan himself-is made up, "the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones .... I'm going to stand by the play world." How wonderful that not only is his faith grounded in a solid reality but in a more perfect reality than he has ever dreamed of!

In The Lion, the children fail to believe in Lucy's story about Narnia. The professor uses the following logic: "There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth." Lewis uses the same sort of argument in Mere Christianity concerning belief in the claims Christ made about himself: either he was a lunatic, or a devil of hell-or the Son of God himself.

All these varied reactions to Aslan-hate, belief, belief only with proof- parallel one's reaction to the Witch, so that a person's attitude toward her similarly reflects his spiritual "guard." Polly immediately dislikes her, just as Aunt Letty, totally unimpressed, calls her a "shameless hussy!" In contrast, both Digory and Andrew are awed by her beauty.

No matter which "side" one is on, once one has been in the presence of either Aslan or the Witch, his perspective is never the same. After seeing the Witch, the children find Andrew much less fearsome; after being in the Magic Wood, the tunnel above their house seems drab and homely. The Apple of Life makes everything in London pale in comparison: "All those other things seemed to have scarcely any colour at all. Every one of them, even the sunlight, looked faded and dingy .... Nothing else was worth looking at: indeed you couldn't look at anything else."

Certainly, after meeting Aslan the Lion and being in his secret Country-no matter what your reaction-you are never the same!