Through the Wardrobe

by Herbie Brennan

  Like many people these days, I’m concerned about the impact humans are having on the planet. Every day brings some new warning about global warming or other effects of pollution caused by over-development. But my concern isn’t new. When I was nine, I was already on the lookout for litter-bugs and was an avid consumer of Owl Magazine and National Geographic. My favorite TV shows were Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness and David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things. I was fascinated with the magnificent variety of life on earth, but was also aware of how many creatures were becoming extinct because of human activity. As a result of my reading and learning about Nature and wildlife, I started to feel sort of bad about being human.

  The books we read in school didn’t help. Most of the better ones were quite depressing, pointing out all sorts of terrible dangers due to uncontrolled technology, environmental abuse, and corrupt government. Nineteen Eighty Four made me nervous of overhead cameras, The Chrysalids paralyzed me with fear of nuclear mutants, and Animal Farm created in me a phobia of repressive governments as well as Doberman pinschers. There was little in any of these books that offered much consolation, let alone hope. Perhaps that’s why I treasure C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia even more today than I did when I first read them. Lewis, like Al Gore, points out the dangers of ignorance and exploitation, but he also holds out the possibility that we humans might yet change our ways and live and work in harmony with the rest of the natural world. It’s a message we need now, more than ever.

  In Prince Caspian, the fourth Narnian Chronicle, the Pevensie children—Susan, Peter, Lucy, and Edmund—find themselves pulled back into Narnia, where in the few months they’ve been back in Britain, several hundred years have passed. During this time, the real Narnia has been driven into hiding. The current king is a short-sighted, power-hungry man named Miraz, who has taken over the throne of Narnia by treachery. The one bit of hope is that the legitimate heir to the throne, the young Prince Caspian, longs for the old days, when “animals could talk, and there were nice people who lived in the streams and the trees.” In fact, the first words we hear Caspian utter confirm his kinship with this earlier world: “I wish—I wish—I wish I could have lived in the Old Days.”

  What was old Narnia like? It was an environmentalist’s version of heaven—an unspoiled natural place filled with abundant foliage and animals and birds. It was an uncorrupted land, in which the free will of its citizens hummed along in tune with the laws of Nature. It was like the Garden of Eden. (In fact, the Pevensie children are frequently referred to as the children of Adam and Eve.) Most important, Narnia was a land in which human beings lived happily and peacefully with the natural world. Like I said, heaven.

  The Pevensie children find this former paradise in ruin. The wood is “so thick and tangled that they could hardly see into it at all; and nothing in it moved—not a bird, not even an insect.” Only after considerable investigation do the children realize that they’ve landed at Cair Paravel, the seat of their former kingdom. In the years that they’ve been gone, Cair Paravel has become overgrown and intentionally isolated from the mainland by Miraz’s people. Many of the animals are gone or in hiding. The trees, too, have slipped into a stupor: “Since the Humans came into the land, felling forests and defiling streams, the Dryads and Naiads have sunk into a deep sleep. Who knows if they will ever wake again?”

  Not surprisingly, the people in this new Narnia have grown fearful of the Nature they’ve helped to destroy and from which they’ve cut themselves off in every way. In fact, the ruling Telmarines are “horribly afraid of the woods” and “in deadly fear of the sea because they can never quite forget that in all the stories Aslan,” who represents the ultimate power in Nature, “comes from over the sea.” Divided from the land, Narnia is “an unhappy country” because, as his tutor, Doctor Cornelius, tells Prince Caspian, the people have forgotten that Narnia isnot the land of Men. It is the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible Naiads, of Fauns and Satyrs, of Dwarfs and Giants, of the gods and the Centaurs, of Talking Beasts. . . . It is you Telmarines who silenced the beasts and the trees and the fountains, and who killed and drove away the Dwarfs and Fauns, and are now trying to cover up even the memory of them.

  This destruction and the attempts to eradicate the memory of what was has left animals, humans, and the landscape impoverished and incomplete.

  Today it feels like we’ve done the same thing in our world. Most of us, particularly those of us in developed countries, are divorced from the earth that sustains us. We live in our houses, shop in our malls, and drive in our cars. From fear and greed, we continue to exploit the wild places and wild things. Few of us have slept under the stars or even have any direct connection with the food we eat. In the twenty-first century, we are more separated from Nature than any Telmarine. And like the Telmarines, the less we know about Nature, the more we fear her. This is especially true now that our activities have begun to change the planet’s climate and Nature seems to be wreaking revenge with powerful storms and harsh, unpredictable weather.

  Yet, even a degraded Narnia pulls deeply, literally pulling the children out of the train station in England. Haven’t we all experienced a similar pull? Don’t we all desire, sometimes, to walk among the trees or watch the birds? Aren’t we all called to witness the beauty and courage in even a spindly tree trying to survive on a busy street? The pull of Nature explains why parks are so crowded on beautiful days. It’s not as though people flock to parking garages or newly cleared building lots! And this power of Nature’s pull is felt everywhere throughout the Chronicles. Prince Caspian finds himself unaccountably drawn to those, such as his nurse and tutor, who are connected in some way to unspoiled Narnia (it turns out that both his nurse and his tutor are part Dwarf). The magnetic attraction of the natural universe is most emphatically symbolized by the conjunction of Tarva, the Lord of Victory, and Alambil, the Lady of Peace, which Caspian and his tutor witness from the rooftop. The two noble planets pass within one hundred degrees of each other. “Such a conjunction has not occurred for two hundred years,” says Doctor Cornelius, and the event clearly signals “some great good for the sad realm of Narnia.” Indeed, Prince Caspian’s chief task in the book will be to discover how to bring the dormant creatures of Old Narnia back to life.

  C. S. Lewis, like Al Gore, is a believer in the importance of “truth” as it pertains to man’s relationship to the natural world. Thus, Caspian must confront his own divided attitude toward Nature. After his escape from the castle, night falls and Caspian finds himself in a vast forest, where he remembers that he is, “after all, a Telmarine, one of the race who cut down trees wherever they could and were at war with all wild things.” This inconvenient truth holds him in thrall, until Nature herself intervenes to save him. A storm whips up and his horse throws him, and he knows no more until he awakens to find himself in the care of a Dwarf and a Talking Badger. Caspian’s education in the ways of Old Narnia has begun, and so begin the “happiest times that Caspian had ever known.” In order to regain his connection to Nature, Caspian has to learn to understand her ways and to live in closer harmony with her creatures.

  Before humankind can heal its relationship with the natural world, it must learn to trust in Nature, represented in the story by Aslan. Aslan shows himself first to Lucy, the youngest of the Pevensie children and the closest to Nature, who because of her innocence is able to see him. She trusts him completely. When he asks her to follow him, she tries to convince her older brothers and sisters to comply, but they refuse. They can’t see Aslan, and they don’t believe that Lucy can, either. When, as a consequence of their disbelief, the children hit a hopeless dead-end and have to backtrack, Lucy is again summoned by Aslan, who explains that she must gather her courage and this time convince her brothers and sisters to follow her, even if they must do so blindly. She is naturally frightened, for it “is a terrible thing to have to wake four people, all older than yourself and all very tired, for the purpose of telling them
something they probably won’t believe and making them do something they certainly won’t like.”

  Such is the position in which many young environmental activists find themselves—trying to convince older family members that we must all change course if we are to avoid environmental disasters like global warming—but in one way, we are all like Lucy: we must all summon our courage and stand by our convictions until others come to understand their errors and are willing to change their ways. Eventually, through Lucy’s commitment, the older children all eventually see Aslan as well. As Susan admits, she knew all along that Aslan was near: “I really believed it was him . . . I mean deep down inside. Or I could have, if I’d let myself. But I just wanted to get out of the woods. . . .” We can all sympathize with Susan. We know that we should pay more attention to Nature and face the inconvenient truth about the consequences of our actions, but it can be tempting to ignore our collective conscience because we are afraid.

  We must reconnect with Nature in order to save it, but this involves overcoming fear and hardship. When Caspian first leaves the castle he is excited, but when the sun comes up “he looked about him and saw on every side unknown woods, wild heaths, and blue mountains, he thought how large and strange the world was and felt frightened and small.” In working their way through the ecological disaster that has replaced their former paradise, the Pevensie children too experience fear, mostly fear that they no longer understand the land and the creatures they once knew. In one incident, the children shoot a grim gray bear that has been stalking them, and Susan worries that she might have killed “one of our kind of bears, a talking bear.” Later, Lucy expresses her fear that someday men in her world might start going “wild inside, like the animals here” and it wouldn’t be possible to know “which was which.”

  As frightening as the wilderness can be, frightening too is the prospect of losing the comforts of civilization; as Al Gore and other environmentalists suggest, to heal the earth we must learn to live with less. Caspian seems to thrive on the challenge:To sleep under the stars, to drink nothing but well water and to live chiefly on nuts and wild fruit, was a strange experience for Caspian after his bed with silken sheets in a tapestried chamber at the castle, with meals laid out on gold and silver dishes in the anteroom, and attendants ready at his call. But he had never enjoyed himself more. Never had sleep been more refreshing nor food tasted more savory, and he began already to harden and his face wore a kinglier look.

  Likewise do the Pevensies thrive when faced with hardship. Their long walk through the woods heals the pain and stiffness in their bones, and the simple food—apples and wild bear meat—revives them. Indeed, after a period of hunger, the meal of bear meat and apples is described as “glorious.” Even better, there is “no washing up—only lying back and watching the smoke from Trumpkin’s pipe and stretching one’s tired legs and chatting.” I’m sure, of course, that not even Al Gore wants us to eat just nuts, berries, apples, and bear, but it’s important to recognize that we could do just fine—perhaps even better—with a bit less of everything!

  One of the lessons I take from Narnia is that the closer we get to Nature the more alive the world around us becomes. Lucy is especially attuned to this fact. She is the first one who hears the stirring of the trees as her siblings sleep: “A great longing for the old days when the trees could talk in Narnia came over her.” She calls to the trees to awaken, but cannot bring them to life by herself; the others must also awaken to Aslan’s presence before “all Narnia will be renewed.” When Lucy summons her courage and convinces her brothers and sisters to follow Aslan, the entire land comes alive:Down below in the Great River, now at its coldest hour, the heads and shoulders of the nymphs, and the great weedy-bearded head of the river god, rose from the water. Beyond it, in every field and wood, the alert ears of rabbits rose from their holes, the sleepy heads of birds came out from under wings, owls hooted, vixens barked, hedgehogs grunted, the trees stirred.

  A black mist appears to be moving toward them, and it turns out to be the reawakened trees “rushing towards Aslan.” When we are ready to embrace Nature, Nature is always ready to receive us.

  The most wonderful lesson in Prince Caspian, however, is that it is not too late to listen. As soon as the children begin to believe, Aslan forgives them and makes it clear what they must do. And when Caspian and the Pevensie children face down their fears and accept the truth, Nature triumphs and balance is restored. The reawakening of Old Narnia begins in earnest.

  Some people see the planet and its non-human inhabitants as simply resources for us to plunder for our own benefit. Others (sometimes I’m one of these) see humans as sort of pests, seeking to devour the very Nature that supports them. C. S. Lewis, however, remained hopeful that, in understanding our weaknesses, we could learn to be responsible stewards of Nature. As Aslan, Nature’s most powerful representative, tells Caspian, “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve. And that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.” Like C. S. Lewis, I would like to believe that humans have yet to play a vital role in the salvation of this heaven called Earth.

  Susan Juby is the author of Alice, I Think; Miss Smithers; and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last. All three books were bestsellers that were made into a television show called Alice, I Think. Her latest book is called Another Kind of Cowboy. She lives on Vancouver Island, B.C., with her husband James, their dog Frank, and Tango the horse.

  You know how it is when you’re a kid. No matter how sensible your opinions are, nobody listens. It seems to be a law of nature that the smaller you are, the less attention you’re paid. But fortunately you have an important ally. When adults really get you down, tell them to go read C. S. Lewis. Susan Vaught explains. . . .

  It’s the Little Things

  SUSAN VAUGHT

  Permit me to remind you that a very small size has been bestowed on us Mice, and if we did not guard our dignity, some (who weigh worth by inches) would allow themselves very unsuitable pleasantries at our expense.

  Reepicheep the High Mouse offers these words to Aslan in Prince Caspian.

  His meaning?

  Stop picking on him and his fellow soldier-mice just because they’re little guys. If you judge their worth by inches alone, you’ll pay a wicked price.

  As one of the fiercest and most influential warriors of Old Narnia—and okay, okay, one of the tiniest—Reepicheep knows that mice and children must always guard their dignity because older, bigger creatures use age and size as an excuse to dismiss the intelligence, skill, and usefulness of smaller creatures. Villains and heroes alike make that error all through the Chronicles of Narnia, especially in Prince Caspian, and it’s—excuse the pun—a big mistake.

  Too bad King Miraz didn’t learn that lesson sooner. If the usurper king hadn’t dismissed creatures smaller than him, he might have remained in power. Even worse, stars like Prince Caspian, High King Peter, and Lucy almost cost themselves their goals and their lives—and almost ruin Narnia’s future—by doing the same thing.

  All of these characters fail to grasp that smaller beings like children aren’t weak simply because of their size. They aren’t less worthy or less clever just because they’re little or young, and they’re definitely not less important in the battle for the soul of Narnia itself. In fact, in Prince Caspian, it’s the children and the other smaller creatures of Narnia who decide the fate of the world.

  As an old folk saying common to Narnia and the World of Men goes, it’s the little things that matter most.

  Dissing the Little Creatures

  King Miraz proves himself a big fool when he makes his first and maybe his worst major blunder. He dismisses the little things of Old Narnia, namely the Dwarfs and intelligent Talking Animals. He tries to wipe them out, send them to sleep with the dinosaurs. He doesn’t think Dwarfs and Talking Animals are important to the new Narnia, and he treats them like a mess he must tidy
up before he can steal the throne from his nephew Prince Caspian. He’s so focused on keeping these little things out of his way that he starts pretending Dwarfs and Talking Animals never existed, and he tries to convince everyone these creatures are just foolish myths and legends.

  King Miraz even fires Prince Caspian’s sweet old nurse for mentioning the older, more magical world of Narnia. This breaks Prince Caspian’s heart and drives him away from his uncle. It makes the prince’s mind and soul even more fertile for the fruits of King Miraz’s next big mistake—failing to notice the significance of the strength and brilliance of Prince Caspian’s new little tutor, Doctor Cornelius.

  King Miraz hires Doctor Cornelius to teach the prince, but King Miraz never really looks at the doctor, never really attends to the truth of him or his hidden knowledge and power. King Miraz thinks Doctor Cornelius is no big deal, no big threat, just because he’s little. King Miraz even sees Doctor Cornelius as “less than” because the small teacher doesn’t look like he can hold his own in a physical battle.

  Big mistake.

  Even though Prince Caspian is “only a child,” a lot younger than his uncle, it’s Prince Caspian who first gets a clue about King Miraz’s blunder in the case of the little tutor. Late one night on the great central tower of the castle, the truth comes to the prince in a rush:All at once Caspian realized the truth and felt that he ought to have realized it long before. Doctor Cornelius was so small and so fat, and had such a very long beard . . . He’s not a real man, not a man at all, he’s a Dwarf.