The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Would you believe that I had never before read any of C.S. Lewis's Narnia books? Somehow they eluded me during childhood. Well, I'm going to be teaching the book soon so I thought it appropriate that I actually read it.

Though this is the book that most people know of the seven-book series, it is not the first. Apparently the first book, The Magician's Nephew, has nothing to do with this one.

The book begins during the blitz in London. The Pensey children, Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy, are sent to the country to stay with an elderly professor in a very large and mysterious house. They are exploring the house when they find a room that is empty except for a wardrobe full of coats. Playing hide and seek, Lucy hides behind the coats and finds herself in another world, where it is snowing. She meets a faun named Tumnus, and learns that she is in Narnia, where it always snows but is never Christmas.

Of course her siblings don't believe her, but the professor does. Eventually they all end up in Narnia, where the White Witch has cast a spell keeping it winter. She can also turn someone into stone. But a lion, called Aslan, arrives (I don't know where he was) and he and the children help defeat the witch in battle.

The book is often cited as a Christian allegory, as Aslan is killed but resurrects. But other than that, I didn't feel beat over the head by Biblical allusions, so I found it safe for atheists. But while it may be beloved by children, I find it spotty. It seems like a summary of a longer book. There is an interesting plot point when Edmund, hooked on the witch's Turkish delight, betrays his siblings (Judas?) Other than that, the plot is pretty weak.

My main trouble with the book is twofold: why did Aslan wait around for the Pensey children to show up before he did anything about the witch? Were they necessary to defeat her? Secondly, I'm not a fan of the way that war is the answer to the problem.

It's neat that the kids stay in Narnia, grow up to be adults, kings and queens, etc. and have forgotten about the wardrobe, until they accidentally come across it. When they go back into it, they return to the exact time they entered it, as children.

The book is so matter of fact that I'm struggling right now to think how to teach it. In a secular school I don't want to emphasize the Christian aspects of it. The writing itself is not florid at all; it's written as if someone were telling the story.