October 16th. Today marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the first book C.S. Lewis published in The Chronicles of Narnia.
It is somewhat hard to wrap my mind around, although Narnia has been with me my whole life. My parents hung this map of Narnia in my nursery, and it now hangs outside my office door. Some of my fondest memories are of my dad reading the books aloud to me. Those books were my introduction to fantasy, and for most of my childhood the only speculative fiction I was allowed to read. I know many people who shun the Narnia books these days because of their Christian allegory, understandably wanting nothing to do with a group that has hurt and oppressed so many people.
But I can’t let go of them, they are too rooted in what shaped me as a person. And in all honesty a good part of what radicalized me.
Some fifteen years ago, I wrote this in a post on this blog –
So many of the movies and books targeted to children are about boys and their adventures (with the occasional girl sidekick). If there is a widely popular story of a girl going on an adventure it almost always takes place in a fantasy world. Lucy steps through the wardrobe into Narnia, Alice falls down the rabbit-hole into Wonderland, Dorothy is whisked away in a twister to Oz, Meg travels along the tesseract. Apparently little girls doing strong things like adventures can’t happen in real life, so they must be told in the realm of fantasy. (all those character’s mental stability is questioned when they return to the real world as well). Women having a voice and strength and power is a safe topic if it is contained by fantasy.
At the time I was writing about accepting the voices of the other, but what struck me when I reread that recently was that each of those stories I mentioned of girls going on adventures in fantasy realms involved that girl standing up to an authoritarian tyrant. Lucy fights the White Witch and ends the endless winter, Alice uses wit and reason to defeat the rage and fury of the Queen of Hearts, Dorothy reveals the Wizard to be a fraud, and Meg rescues her brother and father from It and the encroaching darkness. None of them saw themselves as warriors and they all were frightened in the moment, but it was only because of the unlikeliest of heroes standing against cruelty and oppression that good was able to win in the end.
Those were the tales that shaped my childhood. That showed that even when it seems like one is up against impossible odds and that evil and tyranny will win, even a frightened little girl who happened to stumble into the middle of the fight has the ability return good to the world. If that doesn’t radicalize someone, I don’t know what can.
In the dedication to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Lewis wrote to his goddaughter Lucy that by the time the book was published she might be past the age of enjoying children’s books, but that “some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” In this age of encroaching tyranny and authoritarianism, I think we could all heed that reminder. These stories of unlikely heroes can give us hope, but they can also remind us that bullies, dictators, and oppressors are to be stood up to. The role of the hero is not to join the side of evil no matter how much Turkish Delight is promised; the role of the hero is to stand of the side of love and compassion and ensure that such goodness is preserved in the world. We need to read these fantasy and fairy tale stories because all too often in the real world those that stand against tyranny are dismissed as crazy like Lucy, Alice, Dorothy, and Meg were. It is often only in fantasy realms that the stories of good prevailing against evil are allowed to be told. They may be told as fantasy, but they are still truth. For as Chesterton wrote(ish) – “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
I am forever grateful to C.S. Lewis and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for shaping me with this core belief as a child – radicalizing me for the side of good. Reflecting of the book on this 75th anniversary is helping me to remember that dragons can be beaten, Aslan is on the move, and winter’s reign can end.