A Introduction To NARNIA:

by Martha C Sammons  

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The purpose of this book is to tell you something about the creator of the seven Narnia books, how he came to write them, to summarize the history of Narnia, and then to talk about what the Pevensie children learn during their adventures, and their meaning to readers of these Chronicles.

Published during a relatively brief time-only about 6 years-the Narnia tales achieved quick success, especially as children read them and their parents eagerly grabbed them up to see what their offspring were so excited about. Lewis's friend, Walter Hooper, tells of a boy in Oxford, for instance, whose parents found him chopping away at the back of their wardrobe and into the bricks of their house, trying to get into Narnia. The Last Battle received the Carnegie Medal for the best children's book of 1955. Yet these "fairy tales" are not just for children, as we shall see. In fact, in recent years these stories have become Lewis's most widely read and best selling books, especially around college campuses. Readers range from four-and-a-half year olds to monks, who read them for their theology, to college students analyzing them in depth for college courses and masters' theses. Of all Lewis's works, ranging from literary criticism to Christian apologetics to fiction, many believe the seven Narnia Chronicles to be his best and most lasting work.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that the test of a good book is the "number of times you can read it and find more in it than you did to start with-or find that your delight doesn't diminish with re-reading." Although this "test" seems to hold true for all of Lewis's novels, the Narnia tales seem overwhelmingly packed with adventure, suspense, humor and sorrow, philosophy and theology. Of course, Lewis would be the first to urge a reader not to "try" to find things he didn't see himself in these books or have inherently within him to begin with. You may think of them simply as good children's stories or may sense the many virtues the young heroes and heroines learn during their visits. In response to the announcement that the Narnia books would be televised beginning in early 1979, Walter Cronkite said, "The Chronicles of Narnia have genuine family appeal. In a dramatic and compelling way these classics present human values often lacking in today's television: loyalty, courage, caring, responsibility, truthfulness and compassion. Produced with care for these values, The Chronicles of Narnia can, and I believe will, become the classics in television that they are in literature.

A unique view of man, especially in our modern world, can be seen in four ordinary English children becoming Kings and Queens, for Lewis believed in the potential of each individual to some day be a King or Queen of heaven. Eustace, turned into a dragon and literally peeled out of his sins by Aslan, plus others like him, are turned insideout, their prideful personalities remade by Aslan. Furthermore, each individual learns to obey and to perform his particular task when summoned into Aslan's world. This harmonious plan of things is jarred out of tune by evil, which is not only confronted and defeated in a personal, internal warfare, but externally-in perpetual battles with wolves, bad dwarfs, White and Green Witches, and their like. By experiencing the affects of evil on Narnia, by learning to recognize the various shapes and disguises of evil, and by perceiving the nature of temptation, we can certainly better understand it in our own world and learn to overcome it.

After reading these stories, you may return to the "real world" changed, with a new way of looking at things, your mind opened to the possibilities of an unseen spiritual world and the limits of merely human intellect and undeveloped imagination. On an even deeper level, though, perhaps you may be touched in a special and personal way by the Great Lion, Aslan himself-and the infinite, bounding joy he brings and bestows on his country, or the terror he evokes in those who fear and hate him. Or you may hear echoes of some Christian concept presented in a startling new way, without its "stained-glass-and-Sunday-school associations." No matter what you have enjoyed about these stories, we hope this book helps you understand a little more about the author of the Narnia Chronicles and, more important, about the Creator Author depicted within its pages, whose story "no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

Martha C. Sammons