Monday, February 17, 2014

Reading Chronicles of Narnia Series Again

Every now and then I'll pick up a book or series I like and reread it.  Recently I've been delving back into the works of Isaac Asimov, and now I am once again entering the fantasy literature of C.S. Lewis with his Chronicles of Narnia series.  Divided into seven little books, it explores the world of Narnia as the Christ-like Aslan the Lion created it, and how four young English siblings travel back and forth there to help the good guys and fight the bad guys.  My reading has been complicated by the recently started full-tech film series, which has three of the stories out already and which essentially replaced my own mental images with cinematically spoon-fed ones.  Also, the procession of Narnia films conforms to the original order in which Lewis published the books, not the actual chronological order (which I use to go through the series).  So I started off with The Magician's Nephew, which was the next-to-last book published. It is the logical book to begin with, though, since it lays out the foundation for the creation of Narnia, the origin of the evil witch queen, the involvement of the character Diggory, and the creation of the Wardrobe, crucial elements in the following story (and first published) The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe

Diggory, Polly, Uncle Andrew, Strawberry the horse, the cabbie, the evil queen, the wood between the worlds, the yellow and green rings, the dying planet Charn, the bell and the hammer, the origins of the talking Narnian animals, the magical apple tree...these all figure greatly into this appropriately first tale.  But ultimately, by far the main character, as it is with all of the other Chronicles of Narnia stories, is Aslan, the image of God in this strange land.  The characters struggle and struggle for most of each tale...but in the end it is always Aslan on whom they need to depend to make things right.

So, I just read The Magician's Nephew and will soon go through The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe.  My favorite section in The Magician's Nephew? The concept of a "wood between the worlds", an area connecting different universe/worlds but not belonging to any of them, where pools indicate the entry points (and you'd better be careful which one you jump into)...