In Prince Caspian, the Telmarines do not want anyone to talk about Old Narnia.  There is a repeated pattern in what happens when someone speaks about Old Narnia:

1. Narnian history is related
2. Wrath and/or a desire to silence those who talk of Narnia
3. Someone forced to leave
4. Truth of Old Narnia is reinforced in spite of opposition.

Case 1: Caspian and Nurse:

History related: As a small boy, Caspian’s Nurse tells him about the history of Narnia:

His father and mother were dead and the person whom Caspian loved best was his nurse, and though (being a prince) he had wonderful toys which would do almost anything but talk, he liked best the last hour of the day when the toys had all been put back in their cupboards and Nurse would tell him stories.

Wrath/Silence:   When Caspian tells his Uncle Miraz about Old Narnia, Miraz is furious and denies the existence of Old Narnia.

“I wish—I wish—I wish I could have lived in the Old Days,” said Caspian. (He was only a very little boy at the time.)
Up till now King Miraz had been talking in the tiresome way that some grown-ups have, which makes it quite clear that they are not really interested in what you are saying, but now he suddenly gave Caspian a very sharp look.
“Eh? What’s that?” he said. “What old days do you mean?”
“Oh, don’t you know, Uncle?” said Caspian. “When everything was quite different. When all the animals could talk, and there were nice people who lived in the streams and the trees. Naiads and Dryads they were called. And there were Dwarfs. And there were lovely little Fauns in all the woods. They had feet like goats. And—”
“That’s all nonsense, for babies,” said the King sternly. “Only fit for babies, do you hear? You’re getting too old for that sort of stuff. At your age you ought to be thinking of battles and adventures, not fairy tales.”
…
“Who has been telling you all this nonsense?” said the King in a voice of thunder. Caspian was frightened and said nothing.
…
“N—Nurse,” faltered Caspian, and burst into tears.
…
Then he called to one of the gentlemen-in-waiting who were standing at the far end of the terrace and said in a cold voice, “Conduct His Royal Highness to his apartments and send His Royal Highness’s nurse to me AT ONCE.”

Leave:                Miraz fires Caspian’s Nurse and sends her away:

Next day Caspian found what a terrible thing he had done, for Nurse had been sent away without even being allowed to say good-bye to him, and he was told he was to have a Tutor.

Narnia More real: The result of Miraz’s interference is that Caspian becomes more obsessed with Old Narnia:

Caspian missed his nurse very much and shed many tears; and because he was so miserable, he thought about the old stories of Narnia far more than before. He dreamed of Dwarfs and Dryads every night and tried very hard to make the dogs and cats in the castle talk to him. But the dogs only wagged their tails and the cats only purred.

Case 2: Caspian and Dr Cornelius:

History related:         Caspian’s new tutor, Dr Cornelius also secretly tells Caspian about Old Narnia:

“Listen,” said the Doctor. “All you have heard about Old Narnia is true. It is not 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 was against these that the first Caspian fought. 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. The King does not allow them to bespoken of.” …

Wrath/Silence:           Queen Prunaprismia has a baby, making it near certain that King Miraz will want to kill Caspian.  Dr Corneliua warns Caspian before it is too late:

“I wonder you have never asked me before,” said the Doctor, “why, being the son of King Caspian, you are not King Caspian yourself. Everyone except your Majesty knows that Miraz is a usurper. When he first began to rule he did not even pretend to be the King:, he called himself Lord Protector. … And when there was no one left who could speak a word for you, then his flatterers (as he had instructed them) begged him to become King. And of course he did.”
“Do you mean he now wants to kill me too?” said Caspian.
…
“Is he really as bad as that?” said Caspian. ‘Would he really murder me?”

“He murdered your Father,” said Doctor Cornelius.

Leave:             Caspian is forced to flee for his life, heading south toward Archenland:

During the long climb down the winding staircase Cornelius whispered many more words of direction and advice. Caspian’s heart was sinking, but he tried to take it all in. Then came the fresh air in the garden, a fervent handclasp with the Doctor, a run across the lawn, a welcoming whinny from Destrier, and so King Caspian the Tenth left the castle of his fathers.
…
All night he rode southward, choosing by-ways and bridle paths through woods as long as he was in country that he knew; but afterward he kept to the high road. Destrier was as excited as his master at this unusual journey, and Caspian, though tears had come into his eyes at saying good-bye to Doctor Cornelius, felt brave and, in a way, happy, to think that he was King Caspian riding to seek adventures, with his sword on his left hip and Queen Susan’s magic horn on his right.

Narnia more real:      Having fled, Caspian meets the Old Narnians:

It was not a man’s face but a badger’s, though larger and friendlier and more intelligent than the face of any badger he had seen before. And it had certainly been talking. He saw, too, that he was on a bed of heather, in a cave. By the fire sat two little bearded men, so much wilder and shorter and hairier and thicker than Doctor Cornelius that he knew them at once for real Dwarfs, ancient Dwarfs with not a drop of human blood in their veins. And Caspian knew that he had found the Old Narnians at last. Then his head began to swim again.

There is a possible third case of this formula.  When Caspian finally meets the Old Narnians.  There is a significant difference in this case, as the opposition does not come from Miraz, but from an Old Narnian: namely Nikabrik.  Just as Miraz wants the stories of Old Narnia to disappear, Nikabrik also wants these stories to disappear amongst the humans so that the Old Narnians can be left alone.

Case 3? Variant: Nikabrik and Trufflehunter:

History related:         Once Trufflehunter and Trumpkin have gotten Nikabrik to agree to not kill Caspian, they ask Caspian to relate his personal history (as opposed to the history of Old Narnia):

Nikabrik sulkily promised to behave, and the other two asked Caspian to tell his whole story. When he had done so there was a moment’s silence.

Wrath/silence: Nikabrik’s wrath first comes out before Caspian had even told his story.  Upon hearing that Caspian is related to Miraz, Nikabrik wants to rush in and kill him:

“There you are!” he cried. “Not only a Telmarine but close kin and heir to our greatest enemy. Are you still mad enough to let this creature live?” He would have stabbed Caspian then and there, if the Badger and Trumpkin had not got in the way and forced him back to his seat and held him down.

Upon hearing of Caspian’s Nurse and Dr Cornelius, Nikabrik wants them silenced, just as Miraz does:

“I don’t like it,” said Nikabrik. “I didn’t know there were stories about us still told among the Humans. The less they know about us the better. That old nurse, now. She’d better have held her tongue. And it’s all mixed up with that Tutor: a renegade Dwarf. I hate ‘em. I hate ‘em worse than the Humans. You mark my words—no good will come of it.”

Leave?:           Again, there is a difference with the Old Narnians.  Where Miraz forced Caspian’s Nurse - and later Caspian himself - to leave, the Old Narnians come to the opposite conclusion that Caspian should stay:

There was a great deal more talk, but it all ended with the agreement that Caspian should stay …

Narnia more real:      In this final instance, the story develops with Caspian meeting the community of Old Narnians, further reinforcing the reality of Old Narnia:

“That’s right,” said Trufflehunter. “You’re right, King Caspian. And as long as you will be true to Old Narnia you shall be my King, whatever they say. Long life to your Majesty.”
… it all ended with the agreement that Caspian should stay and even the promise that, as soon as he was able to go out, he should be taken to see what Trumpkin called “the Others”; for apparently in these wild parts all sorts of creatures from the Old Days of Narnia still lived on in hiding.

The key thing I see in this repeated pattern is the comparison between Miraz and Nikabrik.  Nikabrik considers Miraz to be his greatest enemy and yet Nikabrik is not so different to Miraz.  Like Miraz, Nikabrik’s wrath is dangerous.  Nikabrik is willing to kill (just as Miraz killed Caspian’s father and might have killed Caspian).  Nikabrik also wants talk of Old Narnia silenced – he wants to maintain the status quo.  Nikabrik will go on to become probably the most bitter and despair-filled character in this story, blaming Caspian for his downfall and for the downfall of the dwarfs.

Again, am I seeing a pattern where there is none?  Is there some significance to Lewis use of this pattern that I’ve missed?

(It takes a long time to write this, I was hoping to write something about:

The theme of ‘Doubt’ in Prince Caspian (Trumpkin vs other Narnians, Susan vs. Edmund),

The repeated temptation formula in The Voyage of the Dawntreader,

The repeated Signs formula in The Silver Chair,

The ‘becoming a slave’ formula in The Horse and His Boy (Shasta vs Aravis vs Queen Susan),

The ‘what might’ve been’ formula in The Horse and His Boy,

The deception/temptation formula in The Magician’s Nephew,

Faithful vs unfaithful in The Last Battle,

Eucatastrophe formula in The Last Battle

But I can only seem to write about one formula per day thus far ☹)

@davidd This is your template above, I see. How might that work for Magician's Nephew?

     1.   Wandering in the Professor's Mansion (LWW) Would that be wandering in terrace attics in MN?

     2. Enter through Wardrobe [always with a comment that it is unwise to shut oneself in a wardrobe]. Would that be in MN, enter through Uncle Andrew's study, with not even a vague warning about Uncle Andrew's creepiness & what we would call stranger danger these days?

    3.  The Lamppost:  Or the Wood between the Worlds? This is where they mess around with pools, with Digory & Polly, having ascertained they can get back, & having marked their home pool, go on to Charn.

    4. Meet a Narnian. But is the person they meet in Charn a Narnian, yet? What about that Stranger danger warning I mentioned?

              1. Spend time with Narnian? Well, we learn just how dangerous Jadis is, & trying to escape her they end up taking her back to Uncle Andrew's study. Would that class as a future Narnian, as we find out in LWW?

               2. Eat & Converse? It seems that Uncle Andrew & Jadis do all the eating & conversing, not that Jadis has much to say apart from throwing her weight about & annoying everyone.

               3. Betrayal? Oh yes, as soon as they can Polly & Digory try to take her back to her own world but end up in Narnia along with a totally innocent cabby and his thirsty horse, Strawberry.

               4. Danger from White Witch. And it is Jadis' behaviour in both London & Narnia that confirms just how dangerous she is. What people do to escape from her?

Yes, I can see what you mean about LWW when the purpose of this entry to Narnia is to get all four of the Pevensies into Narnia. There has to be some similarity there, when Lucy's siblings don't believe her at all, until the third time when both Lucy and Edmund are accompanied by Peter & Susan, when they have all been chased by Mrs McCready. And in all cases retracing steps has to happen before the next stage in the story. Lucy has to return to the Mansion, as both she & Edmund have to do the second time. The third time, they all remain in Narnia, until the end of the story, when after chasing the White Stag, they find themselves back in the wardrobe as if the whole adventure never happened.

That is why reviewers of Noel Gaiman's short story "The Problem of Susan" said in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2004, that if you don't believe the sacrifice Aslan made for Edmund was as real as Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross in place of not only Barabbas & on behalf of His followers, then that Narnia story is about the made-up relationship between two ambiguous mythical characters, the Lion and the Witch, with only the Wardrobe remaining. 

You also mention Prince Caspian, where, again, all four of the Pevensie children are present, having done no more wandering than going to boarding school, involving a train journey. This time, they find themselves dragged by the sound of Queen Susan's horn, off a railway station onto an island. I don't see anything to escape from. But what about other books in the series? 

What about the Horse & his Boy, for instance? How would that work, when Shasta & Aravis are both part of the ongoing Calormene scenery? Yes, both have something to escape from, so they travel North with the aid of two talking horses, but only Shasta reaches Narnia, itself, within the scope of that story, where he meets Rogin, Bricklethumb and their brother Dwarf called Duffle, a hedgehog, plus other talking animals, & yes, Shasta gets something to eat & there is plenty to talk about. 

In VDT, Edmund & Lucy are staying with their cousin, where the problem is that Edmund has to share Eustace's room, whilst Lucy gets her own small room with a picture of a dragon boat on the high seas, a way of escape mentally from her surroundings. But the picture sucks them in, treading water in the high seas & fished out by the crew of the dragon boat, captained by Drinian, sailing with King Caspian. But they are travelling East, this time. 

Then there is the Silver Chair, again there is a garden door, to escape from bullies, where Eustace & Jill find themselves in Narnia with a job to do. Involving a long, arduous & eventful, journey with their friend Puddleglum. Again, like Shasta & Aravis, they have to travel North. But what about that "stranger danger" warning I mentioned in Magician's Nephew? 

I think those three books have more of a pattern with each other, than is presented in LWW, though I agree all books involve some sort of travel, some more arduous than others. Betrayals? In HHB, Rabadash is betrayed when Aravis overhears a top-secret meeting with the Tisroc. But what is common to all of the books including The Last Battle?                  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

But what is common to all of the books including The Last Battle?    

Aslan.  

Seriously, my own thought on the subject is that while it may be interesting to look for patterns and themes within and between the books, there's such a thing as over-analysing them and quite possibly missing the point. A bit like trying to read the stories as "allegories" (which they're not) or imposing some other invented scheme onto them, like the fallacious "Planet Narnia" theory.

I honestly would rather just read the books and appreciate them for what they are and let them have their own effect on me (as they've been doing since I was a child), instead of pulling them apart to try to figure out what makes them tick, so to speak. 

Hi @waggawerewolf27,

Thanks for the dialog 😊.

I hope I am not misunderstanding you (correct me if I am – I do not want to misrepresent you).

As I understand it, you are making two major points:

1. The pattern that I list as playing out repeatedly in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe does not play out in the other Chronicles of Narnia.
2. Given that:
    a. the template that I put forth in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe can be argued to play out in The Magician’s Nephew and
    b. the children have to enter Narnia via some mechanism and they do it multiple times, they have to enter Narnia via the Wardrobe in the Professors house,

it appears that I am reading too much into the story and seeing a pattern where there is none.

Is that a fair statement of what you are saying?  (Sorry, again if I misunderstood you.)

Assuming I have understood you correctly:

1. On the point that the same pattern does not repeat in all the books, I would fully agree. I think I stated my basic idea unclearly when I said “Reading through the Chronicles of Narnia, I have been struck by how often C.S. Lewis uses repeated patterns throughout his stories.” (I will edit the original post to try to be clearer.)  My point was not that C. S. Lewis establishes a pattern and then reuses the pattern in each of the Narnian books, but rather it seems to me that C.S. Lewis will establish a pattern in one of the Narnian books and repeat it in that Narnian book to establish a compare & contrast between characters within that book or to establish a theme within that book.  When I read each of the books, I can see at least one pattern that shows up in each book.  Hence, when I said ‘through out his stories”, I meant that the technique of having a repeated pattern within a story is utilised in each story through out the Chronicles of Narnia.  There are different repeated patterns in each book, but I see (rightly or wrongly) repeated patterns showing up in each book.

In my second post, the pattern I see repeated in Prince Caspian has nothing in common to the pattern I see in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Likewise, I ended by pointing out (in single, one-line statements) the patterns that I see in some of the other books.  Each of these patterns is unrelated to the repeated pattern in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or the patterns in the other chronicles.  Am I making sense?  Sorry if I am still being unclear.

2. To the objection that I am reading too much into the book, you may well be right (I have read to much into books before and I am sure I will be guilty of it again). I still think I am reading out of the book something Lewis intentionally put in the book, rather than something that I read into it. Let me explain by responding to your points one by one 😊.

Objection a. the template that I put forth in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe can be argued to play out in The Magician’s Nephew also:

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

@davidd This is your template above, I see. How might that work for Magician's Nephew?

     1.   Wandering in the Professor's Mansion (LWW) Would that be wandering in terrace attics in MN?

     2. Enter through Wardrobe [always with a comment that it is unwise to shut oneself in a wardrobe]. Would that be in MN, enter through Uncle Andrew's study, with not even a vague warning about Uncle Andrew's creepiness & what we would call stranger danger these days?

I do see a difference here in that the pattern plays out succinctly over a very few pages in each case in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, whereas in your example for The Magician’s Nephew, the sequence needs to play out (in my copy of The Magician’s Nephew) from page 15, in chapter 1 “The Wrong door” to approximately page 100 in chapter 9 “The Founding of Narnia” with a large number of events occurring in between which do not directly map to the template.  Having said that I think you did a brilliant job of making The Magician’s Nephew follow the same template.  I am willing to be convinced that the same pattern plays out in other books, but I do not see it.

In the first instance, in (again, my copy of) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the sequence plays out from page 11, in chapter 1 “Lucy Looks into a Wardrobe” and ends at page 26, in chapter 2 “What Lucy found there”.

1. Wandering the Professor’s Mansion: pages 11-12

2. Enter through Wardrobe: pages 12-13

3. Lamppost: page 14

4. Meet a Narnian: pages 14-17

    a) Spend time with Narnian: pages 17-21
          1. Eat: pages 19-20

          2. Converse: pages 20-21

    b) Betrayal: pages 21-25
    c) Danger from White Witch: pages 23-26 / 25-26

There is very little ‘fat’ in this structure – it covers pretty much all of the contents of the first two chapters.  (Arguably, I could have inserted an “In the snowy wood” section between “Enter through the Wardrobe” and “Lamppost” for the material at the end of page 13 and start of page 14, but this does not really change anything as the snowy forest occurs in all 3 entrances to Narnia in the same sequence.  The other thing that is not really covered is Mr Tumnus’s playing of his flute.  I consider the flute playing a part of the Betrayal event in the sequence – it covers only ½ a paragraph anyway – beyond this, there is nothing from page 11 – page 26 that does not follow this sequence.)

Similarly, when Edmund enters Narnia, the same sequence plays out from page 29, in chapter 3 “Edmund and the Wardrobe” to page 45, in chapter 5 “Back on this Side of the Door”.

1. Wandering the Professor’s Mansion: pages 29

2. Enter through Wardrobe: pages 29-31

4. Meet a Narnian: pages 32-36

    a) Spend time with Narnian: pages 36-40
        1. Eat: pages 36-37

        2. Converse: pages 37-40

    b?) Betrayal 1 (talk family & Tumnus): pages 37-39

3. Lamppost: page 40
    c) Danger from White Witch: pages 41-42

    b?) Betrayal 2 (tell lie): pages 42-45

The sequence order is altered in this case, but the basic elements are all there.  The biggest change is that there is no mention of the lamppost until almost the end of chapter 4.  And depending on whether you consider Edmund’s information about his sibling and Mr Tumnus to be his betrayal, or when the witch suggests he does not tell his brother and siters about her, or when Edmund lies about being in Narnia, his betrayal either comes too early, at the right spot or too late in the sequence.  Again, there is very little in these chapters that do not fit into this template.  I could again insert a section on Edmund walking in the snowy wood after entering the Wardrobe and before meeting a Narnian, but otherwise there is nothing in these chapters that does not follow this basic sequence.

Finally, when all four siblings enter Narnia, the same sequence may play out again.  As I said, in the original post, this is the iffiest of the 3 occurrences in my mind, as it plays out longer and has more events occurring than what is in the template.  The sequence plays out from page 51, in chapter 5 “Back on this Side of the Door” to page 81, in chapter 8 “What happened after dinner”.

1. Wandering the Professor’s Mansion: pages 51-52

2. Enter through Wardrobe: pages 52-53

3. Lamppost: pages 54-55

4. Meet a Narnian: pages 61-65

    a) Spend time with Narnian: pages 65-78
        1. Eat: pages 68-72
        2. Converse: pages 72-78
    b) Betrayal: pages 78-80
    c) Danger from White Witch: pages 80-81

The sequence remains the same as when Lucy first entered Narnia.  However, there is a major gap from pages 56, where the kids first visit Mr. Tumnus’s home, discover it in ruins, read Maugrim’s note and follow the Red Robin, before the Robin leads them to Mr. Beaver.  I.E. There is a lot of ‘fat’ to be trimmed for this section of the book to strictly follow the sequence above.

As such, I do not think this is forced to see this sequence in all three entrances to Narnia (though possibly it is a bit forced in the final case).

Objection b. the children have to enter Narnia via some mechanism and they do it multiple times, they have to enter Narnia via the Wardrobe in the Professors house.

Certainly, the kids need to go through the basic pattern of:

1. Be in the Professor’s Mansion.
2. Enter Narnia through the Wardrobe
3. Come out of the Wardrobe into the snowy wood.

So, the objection that there is nothing remarkable about this sequence is fair.

However, I find it interesting how much detail Lewis puts into the sequence.  The first time, when Lucy enters the Wardrobe, some background needs to be given as to why she would enter the wardrobe in the first place as such, it makes sense that Lewis talks about the kids exploring the house.

However, the second time Lucy (and Edmund) enter the wardrobe, not too much justification is needed.  Lucy wants to be sure she is not going mad and she wants to have another look to convince herself that she has not imagined the whole thing.  Edmund enters the wardrobe because he is following Lucy, hoping to tease her.  Lewis does not need to give us details that they were playing hide and seek, that Susan was ‘it’, etc.  He nevertheless gives us details of the circumstances in the Mansion that led to the second entry into Narnia.

The third entrance into Narnia is similar, given that Edmund desperately wants more Turkish Delight and Lucy would like to see Mr. Tumnus again, perhaps little justification is needed to get the children back into Narnia (I know that Peter and Susan think Lucy is insane and want to avoid the Wardrobe, but C.S. Lewis could have written this differently if he had wanted to.)  Lewis gives us a description of how the kids try to avoid Mrs. Mcready and the tourists to no avail, until they find themselves trapped in the wardrobe room with no choice but to enter the wardrobe.  This is not just Lewis giving us the minimum information about the Mansion.

The wardrobe is itself an event in all three entrances to Narnia.  Lucy keeps the door open because she knows it would be foolish to shut oneself inside a wardrobe.  Lucy first notices the coats, then she notices that the wardrobe is larger than she expected, followed by cold, crunchy stuff on the ground and finally that she was pushing against hard, rough, prickly tree branches.  When Edmund enters, he shuts the door because he forgets what a foolish thing to do this is.  He could not find Lucy, he then gets lost inside the wardrobe, then he noticed that his voice does not echo like it should in a closed space and finally, when he heads toward the light, he finds himself in a snowy forest with the sun rising.  It is the same when all four enter.  Peter keeps the door ajar but does not shut it because he knows this would be a foolish thing to do.  Susan starts to notice that its cold, Peter notices its wet, finally Susan realises that she is sitting against a tree.

The Lamppost is an interesting element.  On the first entry Lucy sees the Lamppost.  There is no need to mention the Lamppost on subsequent visits.  Lewis does not indicate if Edmund passes it or not (but implies he did not) on his entrance to Narnia.  The fact that the Lamppost is unnecessary in the sequence is evidenced by the fact that it is not mentioned in Edmund’s trip until almost at its end (when the White Witch points it out).  When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy enter Narnia there is no indication at this point that they saw the Lamppost.  Edmund mentions the Lamppost at this point in the story – exposing his lie that he had really been here before, but the text does not say that they went past the lamppost at this point in the story.  (It is implied that they must have passed the lamppost, as when they return to earth through the wardrobe, they all remember the lamppost.)

The fact that the lamppost is not explicitly seen by Edmund on his entrance to Narnia is missed by most film adaptions – for instance, see:
Waldon Media - Edmund enters Narnia

BBC Edmund enters Narnia

1979 Cartoon - Edmund enters Narnia

Even if I grant that these elements need to be similar by the nature of the story (and I guess the story could be boring if they did not meet someone in Narnia), there is still the peculiar pattern that after they meet the Narnian, they first eat with that Narnian and then share a conversation.  It is also not necessary for the conversation to always end in an element of betrayal.  And it is not necessary for the subject of the danger of the White Witch to be raised at this point as well.  As such, I think this is a template that Lewis put into the book, rather than one I have invented.

Feel free to push back and disagree. 😊

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

That is why reviewers of Noel Gaiman's short story "The Problem of Susan" said in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2004, that if you don't believe the sacrifice Aslan made for Edmund was as real as Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross in place of not only Barabbas & on behalf of His followers, then that Narnia story is about the made-up relationship between two ambiguous mythical characters, the Lion and the Witch, with only the Wardrobe remaining. 

I am not sure that I am following you at this point.  I think you might be saying that I have abandoned the link between C.S. Lewis original supposal of ‘what if the God who became human in Jesus Christ lived in a parallel world with talking Animals'.  I have no intention of ignoring the biblical elements of the books (nor of replacing them).  I was excited about a simple writing technique that C.S. Lewis seems to me have employed in his books.

Posted by: @courtenay

I honestly would rather just read the books and appreciate them for what they are and let them have their own effect on me (as they've been doing since I was a child), instead of pulling them apart to try to figure out what makes them tick, so to speak. 

Understood!  I am probably a bit different.  I enjoy pulling apart books and discussing them as a way of enjoying them for what they are.  But both approaches are valid - just different. 😊

@davidd It appears that I am reading too much into the story and seeing a pattern where there is none.

Is that a fair statement of what you are saying?

I think that a pattern you have for LWW might also work for Magician's Nephew, to a degree, when both of the books have the lamppost, Jadis, herself, Aslan and much more in common, even the Wardrobe as an entry point, when it was made from the wood of an apple tree Digory planted. But I don't see how other books fit into this pattern particularly well. But by all means, I'm open to debate & discussion, which we have already done with a thread about Caspian's Queen that @thef-maria started, and also a thread about who married or not that @pattertwig started.

@courtenay Seriously, my own thought on the subject is that while it may be interesting to look for patterns and themes within and between the books, there's such a thing as over-analysing them and quite possibly missing the point

Yes, you are right. But then there are others who like to write fan fiction etc., as @the-old-maid pointed out on another thread. Although Aslan is common to all seven books of the Narnia Chronicles, maybe there are similar themes elsewhere. I've noticed that in the majority of the seven books, there is a theme of the chief characters wanting to escape from something, for example.

@davidd I am not sure that I am following you at this point.  I think you might be saying that I have abandoned the link between C.S. Lewis original supposal of ‘what if the God who became human in Jesus Christ lived in a parallel world with talking Animals'.  I have no intention of ignoring the biblical elements of the books (nor of replacing them).  I was excited about a simple writing technique that C.S. Lewis seems to me have employed in his books.

In 2004 when LWW was released on film there was some debate amongst C.S. Lewis's critics who felt that his characters were made too simple and weren't allowed to grow into teenagers. A non-Christian author, Noel Gaiman who writes mostly adult books, some too spooky & gruesome for my taste, went further than fan fiction to actually publish a short story about Susan as an older woman called The Problem of Susan in an anthology of short stories he wrote, called Fragile Things in 2004. Gaiman said he enjoyed reading the Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe as a boy, but that for a non-Christian there came a "gotcha" moment when Jadis kills Aslan but then he is resurrected the next dawn, because of its similarity to the Easter Story, when Jesus was crucified in place of Barabbas the insurgent or murderer. 

@davidd The theme of ‘Doubt’ in Prince Caspian (Trumpkin vs other Narnians, Susan vs. Edmund),

You mentioned in your long introduction when discussing Prince Caspian, that there was a theme of doubt, repeated in the Last Battle. I thought of Gaiman's book in which he depicted Susan as a Professor of Children's Literature, Susan Hastings about to be interviewed over her latest publication by a journalist who thinks she is the Susan Pevensie of The Last Battle, who because she preferred lipstick & nylons was not let into Narnia heaven, which is again really missing the point of Susan's story and the reality of survivor's guilt, especially when Susan only that morning had been reading the obituary of a man with whom she'd had an affair when she was young, decades ago. I happened to have read the review for this book in our Sydney Morning Herald, which commented that if readers don't understand the Biblical Easter Story's significance, they miss the point of LWW, including the goodness of Aslan & the evil of the White Witch. Thus, the reviewer said the reader would only be left with the wardrobe & some children hiding in it. 

Now Gaiman's story is about a woman who was traumatised by a train accident which killed her family along with many other people. Identifying their bodies made her prone to nightmares, such as the one she had before the interview was due, in which she dreamed she was observing a battlefield where there were many dead people, including her brothers & sister, whilst the Lion and the Witch were deep in discussion for some reason. Susan thought they were divvying up the spoils of war. In other words, the elderly Susan might well have some doubt about what happened in those "silly games they used to play as children", if she had forgotten how she felt when Aslan was killed and returned from the dead at sunrise.

This isn't directly about the Narnia stories, but shows how others who overanalyse these books can miss the point, especially the journalist of this story, interviewing a live woman, elderly though she was. 

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

A non-Christian author, Noel Gaiman who writes mostly adult books, some too spooky & gruesome for my taste, went further than fan fiction to actually publish a short story about Susan as an older woman called The Problem of Susan... 

I'm just wondering how appropriate it is (for this forum, at least) to go on and on mentioning and implicitly recommending this particular author. I'm sure I read an excerpt from that short story once and it included scenes and themes that were very much "adults only" (to put it euphemistically) and that many fans of Narnia might not find appropriate, especially considering the deeply Christian nature of the actual Narnia stories. It's also well known that there are aspects of the author's personal life that are, well, highly questionable to say the least. I'm not comfortable seeing his work repeatedly promoted on NarniaWeb as something that Narnia fans ought to consider (especially as there's a prohibition on fan fiction here anyway). 

@waggawerewolf27 It actually has been a long time since we had opened this discussion, glad you mentioned me!

There is surely some pattern in those books not going to lie but at the same time it is not a pattern that equals to boring and that much repetitive. Like when you go through them you don't really say "Oh here we go again!". Like the White Witch always has a different role in each book. 

I can't say my opinions have changed about Ramandu's Daughter since then and I keep developing my story with the way I have explained but after another debate on Reddit I decided to distance from the community for a while. 

I may look into this particular debate though because it is interesting. 

@courtenay I'm sure I read an excerpt from that short story once and it included scenes and themes that were very much "adults only" (to put it euphemistically) and that many fans of Narnia might not find appropriate, especially considering the deeply Christian nature of the actual Narnia stories

You are right that particular author wrote much that was "adults only" and that the two nightmares he relates in this short story are indeed horrible nightmares, particularly the one at the end, visited on the journalist who interviewed his take on an elderly Susan, including the deaths of her three siblings in a train accident.

But just because you may rightly consider this author to be despicable, doesn't mean he couldn't have made relevant, maybe even vital points to this website's discussion and this thread in particular, about both the book LWW, filmed in 2004, and Susan, a major character in that book and film and strangely absent among the Seven Friends of Narnia that Tirian met in The Last Battle. I'm not into banning books when banned books are usually the first books people like to ask for and read, whatever the reason, just out of sheer curiosity. And one of the more unfair gripes that the likes of Philip Pullman and others level at C.S. Lewis was that he didn't deal with the reality of children growing up in his children's stories. 

Now, @thef-maria considered Susan a worthier consort for Caspian than Ramadu's daughter, when in the 2008 Prince Caspian film a fleeting romance was slightly suggested between Susan and Caspian. I didn't agree when I felt that touch of romance was just a bit of a sop to those critics. But yes, like @thef-maria, there are plenty of others who write fanfictions about Susan. In another thread about why Polly & Digory didn't marry which @pattertwig started, in gratefully remembering my own mother's genuine regrets at not furthering her education, & insistence that I finish mine, I saw Susan as likely rushing into marriage out of an adherence to social convention, which you said would never apply to Polly and I agree with you, utterly. 

This particular take on an elderly Professor Susan Hastings, renamed for copyright reasons, has her being interviewed by a journalist who believes she is the one in LWW, and who had been told by a teacher that "Susan would be banned from heaven because she liked lipstick and stockings", not referring to the then recently deceased adulterous lover responsible for Susan's invitations & who would have given something really grownup for High King Peter to disapprove of, in contrast to her marrying out of social convention.  Remember, he commented in The Last Battle that "Susan was no longer a friend of Narnia". The professor defends herself against the journalist, pointing out how vengeful a God would have to be to kill off all her family in that train accident just over lipstick, stockings and invitations as such. And if that is how an elderly Susan might be depicted, no wonder she would reasonably have such a hideous nightmare of despair.

However, if Susan was a real person, neither a fictitious unmarried professor nor an equally fictitious housewife & mother, she would have known from the coverage of that railway accident that neither God nor Aslan had anything to do with its happening, as Aslan mentions, himself, in the closing pages of The Last Battle. Human error has much to answer for. 

And that brings me to the recurring doubt theme that @davidd mentioned in his analysis of Prince Caspian. Eustace in The Last Battle says about Susan that she said "Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we played when we were children". However, C.S. Lewis wrote for children's consideration a supposal of the events surrounding Easter, we should be thinking about in Lent, as it is now. As both the author of this short story, & his Sydney Morning Herald reviewer pointed out, there was nothing childish about Christ's crucifixion & resurrection, nor is there anything childish about the experience Susan & her sister Lucy had when they witnessed Aslan being tortured, humiliated and killed by the White Witch, nor his miraculous resurrection at sunrise the next day. To deny this memory or even the Rabadash memory as "all those funny games" & doubt they were more serious than they were, would be to tear out the heart of LWW, leaving just a story about four children hiding from tourists inside a wardrobe. Where else does doubt play a role in the Narnia thread? Apart from the nightmarish despair of Dark Island in VDT? 

And without the way C.S. Lewis depicted Aslan, we'd be left with thinking like one of JK Rowling's characters that "There is no good & evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it". Which just about sums up the White Witch, the Green Witch, King Miraz, Rishda Tarkaan, not to mention Uncle Andrew. Which, by the way, do you think is the most compelling villain in literature? Voldemort? Sauron? Or the White Witch? Or Tash? 

My apologies for the long answer, to make sure I am arguing justly. 

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

Which, by the way, do you think is the most compelling villain in literature? Voldemort? Sauron? Or the White Witch? Or Tash? 

Well, Tash we don't learn much about, and he clearly has no power in front of Aslan, horrible though he is. We do get told (in Emeth's account) that Tash and Aslan are opposites, but we never really learn how that works in the bigger scheme of things. 

Jadis, in her backstory that Lewis only wrote later, destroyed an entire world with a single word, and yet she's near powerless in our world, and in Narnia she takes most of a millennium to rebuild her power, but even then can't match what she was before. And yet this isn't consistent with her original iteration as the White Witch (meaning this is the form in which Lewis first conceived her), in which she is cast as a cosmic executioner who was in Narnia at the beginning and was given the role of putting traitors to death under the orders of Aslan’s father, the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. That part always comes across to me as a hastily cobbled together explanation for why the White Witch needs to kill Edmund and why Aslan sacrifices himself to save him. It's not one of Lewis's finest moments in his writing, and it's so inconsistent with his later rewrite of the White Witch as Jadis, Empress of Charn, that I find it very difficult to judge her "compellingness" as a villain overall.

Sauron nearly manages to take over the entire world twice, and is much more the traditional kind of Dark Lord figure with huge armies of evil beings at his command. However, he does make the rookie mistake of investing nearly all his power in one single magic ring, which first is forcibly taken from him (by Isildur) and he is greatly weakened, and then when the Ring is at last destroyed, so is he. He should have read more of the traditional legends in which an evil being keeps his soul and/or his power in a separate artefact and it leads to his inevitable downfall.

Voldemort uses the same trope but manages to split his soul between seven artefacts, which promptly turns the story into a classic case of Collect-the-Coupons plotting. (There's a hilarious classic essay on that topic, written pre-Harry Potter, that I may find and link to when I'm not writing on the fly — I'm about to head to the airport for my journey home to the UK.) But regardless of that, when you look at Voldemort's actual track record, it does boil down to what I've seen in a meme (comparing him and other fantasy villains): "Tries to take over a high school and fails."  

EDIT: I've just had a bit of time to look for and find the classic essay I mentioned — The Well-Tempered Plot Device by Nick Lowe.  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

You mentioned in your long introduction when discussing Prince Caspian, that there was a theme of doubt, repeated in the Last Battle. I thought of Gaiman's book in which he depicted Susan as a Professor of Children's Literature, Susan Hastings about to be interviewed over her latest publication by a journalist who thinks she is the Susan Pevensie of The Last Battle...

I did not have “The problem of Susan” in mind when I wrote this.  (Although what I was thinking may bear on the problem of Susan.)  I have very little to add to the various comments people put in the The Problem with Susan thread and the video: Into the Wardrobe: The real problem of Susan - though I very much enjoyed the insights you all had in the posts on the subject – including the ones above in this thread.

I noticed, when reading Prince Caspian, that the theme of doubt / disbelief shows up in several passages.  Whenever the theme does show up, there seems to be a contrast between characters who doubt (usually in Aslan) verses characters who believe.

C.S. Lewis once wrote:

“Since Narnia is a world of Talking Beasts, I thought He would become a Talking Beast there, as He became a man here. I pictured Him becoming a lion there because (a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; (b) Christ is called "The Lion of Judah" in the Bible; (c) I'd been having strange dreams about lions when I began writing the work. The whole series works out like this.
The Magician's Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Prince Caspian restoration of the true religion after corruption.
The Horse and His Boy the calling and conversion of a heathen.
The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" the spiritual life (specially in Reepicheep).
The Silver Chair the continuing war with the powers of darkness.
The Last Battle the coming of the Antichrist (the Ape), the end of the world and the Last Judge-ment.”

[Bold emphasis mine]

I think the theme of doubt / belief directly relates directly to ‘restoration of the true religion after corruption’.

In the first few chapters of Caspian’s back story, we of course see that the Telmarines (Miraz in particular) deter belief in Aslan and the four Kings and Queens of Narnia during its golden age.  (See above where I wrote about the unexpected similarities between Miraz and Nikabrik.)

When Caspian speaks of Old Narnia to Miraz, he does not engage with what Caspian says, but simply rides it off:

“That’s all nonsense, for babies,” said the King sternly. “Only fit for babies, do you hear? You’re getting too old for that sort of stuff. At your age you ought to be thinking of battles and adventures, not fairy tales.”

Miraz later is very condescending when he speaks to the Lords Glozelle and Sopespian:

“King Edmund, pah!” said Miraz. “Does your Lordship believe those old wives’ fables about Peter and Edmund and the rest?”

Miraz is the villain of the story and we should not be surprised by his opposition.  However, once Caspian finds his way amongst the Old Narnians, it is perhaps more surprising that he encounters opposition from the Narnian’s themselves when it comes to belief in Aslan and the four kings and queens:

‘Whistles and whirligigs! Trufflehunter,” said Trumpkin. “You don’t mean you want to give the country to Humans?”

“I said nothing about that,” answered the Badger. “It’s not Men’s country (who should know that better than me?) but it’s a country for a man to be King of. We badgers have long enough memories to know that. Why, bless us all, wasn’t the High King Peter a Man?”

“Do you believe all those old stories?” asked Trumpkin.

Trufflehunter believes faithfully King Peter.  However, Trumpkin does not believe in him or in Aslan:

“I tell you, we don’t change, we beasts,” said Trufflehunter. “We don’t forget. I believe in the High King Peter and the rest that reigned at Cair Paravel, as firmly as I believe in Aslan himself.”

“As firmly as that, I daresay,” said Trumpkin. “But who believes in Aslan nowadays?”

Trumpkin does not offer any evidence or reason for his disbelief.  He simply does not believe because ‘who believes in Aslan nowadays?’  Essentially, Trumpkin has what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery; he simply says “people do not believe that stuff anymore” and assumes that this is itself a good argument for not believing.  This view is all the more surprising, as up to this point in Caspian’s story all the Telmarines who had laughed at Aslan, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy had also equally mocked the existence of Old Narnians.  Trumpkin is one of those Old Narnians that the Telmarines had said do not exist.  Since he does exist, his existence seems to give credit to the old stories and lend credence to the truth about Aslan and the four kings.  Caspian raises this very point with Trumpkin:

“I do,” said Caspian. “And if I hadn’t believed in him before, I would now. Back there among the Humans the people who laughed at Aslan would have laughed at stories about Talking Beasts and Dwarfs. Sometimes I did wonder if there really was such a person as Aslan: but then sometimes I wondered if there were really people like you. Yet there you are.”

Trumpkin has put up armor to protect himself.  It begins by him outright denying the existence of Aslan and Narnia’s golden age.  Almost as often as anything about Aslan and the rest are mentioned, he responds with condescending mockery, but never any logical reasons for why he does not believe:

And the next oldest said, “Shall we go farther up for you, up to the crags? There’s an Ogre or two and a Hag that we could introduce you to, up there.”
“Certainly not,” said Caspian.
“I should think not, indeed,” said Trufflehunter. “We want none of that sort on our side.” Nikabrik disagreed with this, but Trumpkin and the Badger overruled him. It gave Caspian a shock to realize that the horrible creatures out of the old stories, as well as the nice ones, had some descendants in Narnia still.
“We should not have Aslan for friend if we brought in that rabble,” said Trufflehunter as they came away from the cave of the Black Dwarfs.
“Oh, Aslan!” said Trumpkin, cheerily but contemptuously. “What matters much more is that you wouldn’t have me.”

“Now,” said the Badger, “if only we could wake the spirits of these trees and this well, we should have done a good day’s work.”
“Can’t we?” said Caspian.
“No,” said Trufflehunter. “We have no power over them. 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 ever they will stir again? And that is a great loss to our side. The Telmarines are horribly afraid of the woods, and once the Trees moved in anger, our enemies would go mad with fright and be chased out of Narnia as quick as their legs could carry them.”

“What imaginations you Animals have!” said Trumpkin, who didn’t believe in such things. “But why stop at Trees and Waters? Wouldn’t it be even nicer if the stones started throwing themselves at old Miraz?”
The Badger only grunted at this…

“Your Majesty,” said Doctor Cornelius, “and all you variety of creatures, I think we must fly east and down the river to the great woods. The Telmarines hate that region. They have always been afraid of the sea and of something that may come over the sea. That is why they have let the great woods grow up. If traditions speak true, the ancient Cair Paravel was at the river-mouth. All that part is friendly to us and hateful to our enemies. We must go to Aslan’s How.”
“Aslan’s How?” said several voices. “We do not know what it is.”
“It lies within the skirts of the Great Woods and it is a huge mound which Narnians raised in very ancient times over a very magical place, where there stood—and perhaps still stands—a very magical Stone. The Mound is all hollowed out within into galleries and caves, and the Stone is in the central cave of all. There is room in the mound for all our stores, and those of us who have most need of cover and are most accustomed to underground life can be lodged in the caves. The rest of us can lie in the wood. At a pinch all of us (except this worthy Giant) could retreat into the Mound itself, and there we should be beyond the reach of every danger except famine.”
“It is a good thing we have a learned man among us,” said Trufflehunter; but Trumpkin muttered under his breath, “Soup and celery! I wish our leaders would think less about these old wives’ tales and more about victuals and arms.” But all approved of Cornelius’s proposal and that very night, half an hour later, they were on the march. Before sunrise they arrived at Aslan’s How.

“There is one thing, Sire,” said Doctor Cornelius, “that should perhaps be done first. We do not know what form the help will take. It might call Aslan himself from oversea. But I think it is more likely to call Peter the High King and his mighty consorts down from the high past. But in either case, I do not think we can be sure that the help will come to this very spot—”
“You never said a truer word,” put in Trumpkin.

…
“I think,” went on the learned man, “that they—or he—will come back to one or other of the Ancient Places of Narnia. This, where we now sit, is the most ancient and most deeply magical of all, and here, I think, the answer is likeliest to come. But there are two others. One is Lantern Waste, up-river, west of Beaversdam, where the Royal Children first appeared in Narnia, as the records tell. The other is down at the river-mouth, where their castle of Cair Paravel once stood. And if Aslan himself comes, that would be the best place for meeting him too, for every story says that he is the son of the great Emperor-over-the-Sea, and over the sea he will pass. I should like very much to send messengers to both places, to Lantern Waste and the river-mouth, to receive them—or him—or it.”
“Just as I thought,” muttered Trumpkin. “The first result of all this foolery is not to bring us help but to lose us two fighters.”

Again, the only argument Trumpkin brings up is to mock, he never actually engages in the question of whether Aslan is real or not.

The first crack in Trumpkin’s armour comes when he meets the four kings and queens:

“Now, what we want next is some firewood.”
“We’ve got some up at the castle,” said Edmund.
The Dwarf gave a low whistle. “Beards and bedsteads!” he said. “So there really is a castle, after all?”
“It’s only a ruin,” said Lucy.
The Dwarf stared round at all four of them with a very curious expression on his face. “And who on earth—?” he began, but then broke off and said, “No matter. Breakfast first. But one thing be-fore we go on. Can you lay your hand on your hearts and tell me I’m really alive? Are you sure I wasn’t drowned and we’re not all ghosts together?

Trumpkin has to accept that the four children of the old stories are real.  Trumpkin had doubted that Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy even exist.  It is clear that he now accepts this reality, but he refuses to believe that they will be of any use.  His defenses are still up and he is still keeping his armour as strong as he can:

“Meanwhile,” said the Dwarf, “what are we to do? I suppose I’d better go back to King Caspian and tell him no help has come.”

“No help?” said Susan. “But it has worked. And here we are.”

“Um—um—yes, to be sure. I see that,” said the Dwarf, whose pipe seemed to be blocked (at any rate he made himself very busy cleaning it). “But—well—I mean—”

“But don’t you yet see who we are?” shouted Lucy. “You are stupid.”

“I suppose you are the four children out of the old stories,” said Trumpkin. “And I’m very glad to meet you of course. And it’s very interesting, no doubt. But—no offense?”—and he hesitated again.

“Do get on and say whatever you’re going to say,” said Edmund.

Trumpkin openly acknowledges that the Kings and Queens are real, but he is not willing to really accept them as powerful warriors, capable of defeating the White Witch (with Aslan’s help):

“Well, then—no offense,” said Trumpkin. “But, you know, the King and Trufflehunter and Doctor Cornelius were expecting—well, if you see what I mean, help. To put it in another way, I think they’d been imagining you as great warriors. As it is—we’re awfully fond of children and all that, but just at the moment, in the middle of a war—but I’m sure you understand.”

“You mean you think we’re no good,” said Edmund, getting red in the face.

“Now pray don’t be offended,” interrupted the Dwarf. “I assure you, my dear little friends—”

“Little from you is really a bit too much,” said Edmund, jumping up. “I suppose you don’t believe we won the Battle of Beruna? Well, you can say what you like about me because I know—”

Trumpkin then has three tests with the Pevensies.  First, Edmund beats him in a duel; second, Susan defeats him in an archery match and finally Lucy uses the magical cordial to heal Trumpkin’s wounds.

This leads to the second chink in Trumpkin’s armour.  He now has to accept the Kings and Queens not as children but as true leaders.  He needs to believe in the old stories that he had so long doubted:

“Hullo. Eh? What have you done?” said Trumpkin. But however he turned his head and squinted and whisked his beard to and fro, he couldn’t quite see his own shoulder. Then he felt it as well as he could, getting his arms and fingers into very difficult positions as you do when you’re trying to scratch a place that is just out of reach. Then he swung his arm and raised it and tried the muscles, and finally jumped to his feet crying, “Giants and junipers! It’s cured! It’s as good as new.” After that he burst into a great laugh and said, ‘Well, I’ve made as big a fool of myself as ever a Dwarf did. No offense, I hope? My humble duty to your Majesties all—humble duty. And thanks for my life, my cure, my breakfast—and my lesson.”
The children all said it was quite all right and not to mention it.
“And now,” said Peter, “if you’ve really decided to believe in us—”
“I have,” said the Dwarf.

It sounds like Trumpkin has now converted from doubt to belief.  However, in spite of his belief in the four kings and queens, it turns out that he still doubts Aslan.  But before looking at that, I want to look at Susan and Edmund …

When the children arrive back in Narnia, they do not know where they are.  It is Susan who finds the crucial piece of evidence, namely the golden knight chess piece that they used to play with in Cair Paravel:

Shortly after the last apple had been eaten, Susan went out to the well to get another drink. When she came back she was carrying something in her hand.

“Look,” she said in a rather choking kind of voice. “I found it by the well.” She handed it to Peter and sat down. The others thought she looked and sounded as if she might be going to cry. Edmund and Lucy eagerly bent forward to see what was in Peter’s hand—a little, bright thing that gleamed in the firelight.

…

All now saw what it was—a little chess-knight, ordinary in size but extraordinarily heavy because it was made of pure gold; and the eyes in the horse’s head were two tiny little rubies—or rather one was, for the other had been knocked out.

“Why!” said Lucy, “it’s exactly like one of the golden chessmen we used to play with when we were Kings and Queens at Cair Paravel.”

Peter realizes what is going on and presents the evidence for the situation:

“We are in the ruins of Cair Paravel itself,” said Peter.

…

First point: this hall is exactly the same shape and size as the hall at Cair Paravel. Just picture a roof on this, and a colored pavement instead of grass, and tapestries on the walls, and you get our royal banqueting hall.”

…

“Second point,” continued Peter. “The castle well is exactly where our well was, a little to the south of the great hall; and it is exactly the same size and shape.”

…

“Third point: Susan has just found one of our old chessmen—or something as like one of them as two peas.”

…

“Fourth point. Don’t you remember—it was the very day before the ambassadors came from the King of Calormen—don’t you remember planting the orchard outside the north gate of Cair Paravel? The greatest of all the wood-people, Pomona herself, came to put good spells on it. It was those very decent little chaps the moles who did the actual digging. Can you have forgotten that funny old Lilygloves, the chief mole, leaning on his spade and saying, ‘Believe me, your Majesty, you’ll be glad of these fruit trees one day.’ And by Jove he was right.”

Edmund engages with Peter’s evidence.  Edmund offers counter arguments; he is taking Peter seriously and is offering reasonable objections to what Peter has proposed:

“But, I say,” replied Edmund. “I mean, how do you make that out? This place has been ruined for ages. Look at all those big trees growing right up to the gates. Look at the very stones. Anyone can see that nobody has lived here for hundreds of years.”

…

“But look here, Peter,” said Edmund. “This must be all rot. To begin with, we didn’t plant the orchard slap up against the gate. We wouldn’t have been such fools.”

“No, of course not,” said Peter. “But it has grown up to the gate since.”

“And for another thing,” said Edmund, “Cair Paravel wasn’t on an island.”

“Yes, I’ve been wondering about that. But it was a what-do-you-call-it, a peninsula. Jolly nearly an island. Couldn’t it have been made an island since our time? Somebody has dug a channel.”

“But half a moment!” said Edmund. “You keep on saying since our time. But it’s only a year ago since we came back from Narnia. And you want to make out that in one year castles have fallen down, and great forests have grown up, and little trees we saw planted ourselves have turned into a big old orchard, and goodness knows what else. It’s all impossible.”

In spite of offering counter evidence to Peter’s hypothesis, Edmund is willing to support Peter, when Lucy points out that if they are in Cair Paravel, then the door to the treasure chamber should be right near them, Edmund is the first to enthusiastically check out if it is indeed there:

“We can soon find out,” said Edmund, taking up one of the sticks that they had laid ready for putting on the fire. He began beating the ivied wall. Tap-tap went the stick against the stone; and again, tap-tap; and then, all at once, boom-boom, with a quite different sound, a hollow, wooden sound.

This is perhaps surprising, as though Edmund offers the best arguments for why they should not believe themselves in Cair Paravel, he nonetheless is not opposed to the idea.  In spite of being the person who found the knight, it is Susan who gives the most opposition:

“Oh, what is the good?” said Susan. “And as Edmund said—”

“I’m not saying it now,” Edmund interrupted. “I still don’t understand, but we can settle that later.

Susan did not object at the same time as Edmund, but once there is more evidence supporting Peter’s position, it is then that she chimes in and refers back to Edmund’s previous objections.  Susan takes on what - when I was a child - was considered a ‘grown up tone’ in how she handles the situation:

“Oh, do let’s leave it alone,” said Susan. “We can try it in the morning. If we’ve got to spend the night here, I don’t want an open door at my back and a great big black hole that anything might come out of, besides the draft and the damp. And it’ll soon be dark.”

Peter points out what Susan is doing.  She is talking in the manner of adults, but she is actually behaving quite childish in her resistance:

“Cheer up, Susan. It’s no good behaving like kids now that we are back in Narnia. You’re a Queen here. And anyway no one could go to sleep with a mystery like this on their minds.”

They of course enter the treasure chamber and discover that they really are in Cair Paravel.

The next time this theme plays out is when Lucy sees Aslan.  At this point, it is both Susan and Trumpkin who respond in disbelief.  Again, this is surprising as Trumpkin is a Narnian and he has seen that the four Kings and Queens are real, so it should not be a big step for him to also believe in Aslan.  It is also Surprising for Susan to not believe – she was a Queen and she had previously met Aslan.  She had also witnessed Lucy tell them about Narnia in the past and in spite of her belief at that time that Lucy must be mad, she saw that Lucy was actually right all along:

“The Lion,” said Lucy. “Aslan himself. Didn’t you see?” Her face had changed completely and her eyes shone.
“Do you really mean—?” began Peter.
“Where did you think you saw him?” asked Susan.
“Don’t talk like a grown-up,” said Lucy, stamping her foot. “I didn’t think I saw him. I saw him.”

Like Trumpkin, Susan does not have evidence for her unbelief, she simply asserts that Lucy should not be trusted by saying “Where did you think you saw him?”  She has defaulted to unbelief.

It is Edmund who again engages with Lucy and who asks legitimate questions that seem to raise doubts about what she saw:

“Right up there between those mountain ashes. No, this side of the gorge. And up, not down. Just the opposite of the way you want to go. And he wanted us to go where he was—up there.”
“How do you know that was what he wanted?” asked Edmund.
“He—I—I just know,” said Lucy, “by his face.”

All this results in the five travelers taking a vote on what to do.  Susan defaults to doubting Lucy:

“Don’t be angry, Lu,” said Susan, “but I do think we should go down. I’m dead tired. Do let’s get out of this wretched wood into the open as quick as we can. And none of us except you saw anything.”

In contrast to Susan, it is again Edmund who supports Lucy.  Edmund does not have any evidence to support Lucy’s claim beyond that he has found Lucy to be trustworthy in the past and so in absence of any other evidence he thinks he should trust her to be trustworthy in this circumstance:

“Well, there’s just this,” said Edmund, speaking quickly and turning a little red. “When we first discovered Narnia a year ago—or a thousand years ago, whichever it is—it was Lucy who discovered it first and none of us would believe her. I was the worst of the lot, I know. Yet she was right after all. Wouldn’t it be fair to believe her this time? I vote for going up.”

Edmund and Susan contrast to one another at this point.  Edmund is open to what Peter and Lucy have each claimed – even while he offers intelligent objections, while Susan simply doubts what they say.  Trumpkin is also doubting.  Though he has come to believe in the four kings and queens (and because they have met Aslan, he is obligated to believe that Aslan is real), he is nonetheless resistant to believing that Aslan is as great as he has been told of.  Trumpkin doubts that Lucy has seen Aslan, or - if she has - that Aslan has not gone wild:

“Her Majesty may well have seen a lion,” put in Trumpkin. “There are lions in these woods, I’ve been told. But it needn’t have been a friendly and talking lion any more than the bear was a friendly and talking bear.”
“Oh, don’t be so stupid,” said Lucy. “Do you think I don’t know Aslan when I see him?”
“He’d be a pretty elderly lion by now,” said Trumpkin, “if he’s one you knew when you were here before! And if it could be the same one, what’s to prevent him having gone wild and witless like so many others?”

This is the first time that Trumpkin has offered any logic for why he doubts Aslan.  His arguments are: “the bear was a wild bear, so a lion is likely a wild lion” and “if Aslan was real, then he is probably so old that he must be dead now or else he would have lost his ways and gone wild.”  Essentially, Trumpkin is assuming that Aslan is not really the son of the Emperor over the seas, he is only an ordinary lion.  This is in the face of Trumpkin previously assuming that the four children were just children and being proven wrong.

Trumpkin goes on to assert this same opinion when put to a vote.

“All right,” replied Peter. “You’re the eldest, D.L.F. What do you vote for? Up or down?”
“Down,” said the Dwarf. “I know nothing about Aslan. But I do know that if we turn left and follow the gorge up, it might lead us all day before we found a place where we could cross it. Whereas if we turn right and go down, we’re bound to reach the Great River in about a couple of hours. And if there are any real lions about, we want to go away from them, not toward them.”

Trumpkin’s logic makes perfect sense as long as you assume that Aslan is not anyone special.  Trumpkin’s advice refuses to deal with the question of 'who is Aslan?'

The whole theme of doubt vs. belief – or perhaps vs. good faith, as it is unclear if Edmund really believes at this point – is raised again that evening when Aslan asks Lucy to follow him and follow him even if her family will not follow.

Lucy first tells Susan that she has seen Aslan.  Susan does not engage with Lucy at all, she tells Lucy off for dreaming and implies that Lucy is behaving childishly (the text does not even say if Susan looked to try and see Aslan, as opposed to Edmund who looks and sees nothing):

Then she tried Susan. Susan did really wake up, but only to say in her most annoying grownup voice, “You’ve been dreaming, Lucy. Go to sleep again.”

Lucy then tries Edmund.  Once again, Edmund is responsive; he looks to where Lucy sees Aslan but he cannot see anything.  Edmund of course objects because he cannot see Aslan.  In spite of the evidence, (apparently Aslan is there, but if you look, you cannot see him there), Edmund supports Lucy in waking the others up:

She tackled Edmund next. It was very difficult to wake him, but when at last she had done it he was really awake and sat up.
“Eh?” he said in a grumpy voice. “What are you talking about?”
She said it all over again. This was one of the worst parts of her job, for each time she said it, it sounded less convincing.
“Aslan!” said Edmund, jumping up. “Hurray! Where?”
Lucy turned back to where she could see the Lion waiting, his patient eyes fixed upon her. “There,” she said, pointing.
“Where?” asked Edmund again.
“There. There. Don’t you see? Just this side of the trees.”
Edmund stared hard for a while and then said, “No. There’s nothing there. You’ve got dazzled and muddled with the moonlight. One does, you know. I thought I saw something for a moment myself. It’s only an optical what-do-you-call-it.”
“I can see him all the time,” said Lucy. “He’s looking straight at us.”
“Then why can’t I see him?”
“He said you mightn’t be able to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. That’s what he said.”
“Oh, bother it all,” said Edmund. “I do wish you wouldn’t keep on seeing things. But I suppose we’ll have to wake the others.”

Once everyone is awake, the contrasting reactions of Edmund and Susan are again on display.  Once Lucy has told her story, Susan immediately rides her off:

“I can’t see anything,” said Peter after he had stared his eyes sore. “Can you, Susan?”
“No, of course I can’t,” snapped Susan. “Because there isn’t anything to see. She’s been dreaming. Do lie down and go to sleep, Lucy.”
“And I do hope,” said Lucy in a tremulous voice, “that you will all come with me. Because—because I’ll have to go with him whether anyone else does or not.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Lucy,” said Susan. “Of course you can’t go off on your own. Don’t let her, Peter. She’s being downright naughty.”

Edmund, despite having good evidence to doubt Lucy, supports her:

“I’ll go with her, if she must go,” said Edmund. “She’s been right before.”

Trumpkin once again doubts.  He is offering better reasons now.  Put simply he is saying that he is yet to see any evidence of Aslan’s goodness or that Aslan is really there (given he is invisible).  Presumably Lucy has now told all four of her companions that Aslan said that they will not be able to see him at first, as Trumpkin refers to this reality in his response.  So I think it is fair to say, that Trumpkin is still resistant:

What does the D.L.F. say?”
“Oh, I say nothing at all,” answered the Dwarf. “If you all go, of course, I’ll go with you; and if your party splits up, I’ll go with the High King. That’s my duty to him and King Caspian. But, if you ask my private opinion, I’m a plain dwarf who doesn’t think there’s much chance of finding a road by night where you couldn’t find one by day. And I have no use for magic lions which are talking lions and don’t talk, and friendly lions though they don’t do us any good, and whopping big lions though nobody can see them. It’s all bilge and beanstalks as far as I can see.”

When it is finally time to leave and there is no more time for discussion, Susan stands firm in her opposition, while Edmund stands firm in his support of Lucy:

“He’s beating his paw on the ground for us to hurry,” said Lucy. “We must go now. At least I must.”
“You’ve no right to try to force the rest of us like that. It’s four to one and you’re the youngest,” said Susan.
“Oh, come on,” growled Edmund. “We’ve got to go. There’ll be no peace till we do.” He fully intended to back Lucy up, but he was annoyed at losing his night’s sleep and was making up for it by doing everything as sulkily as possible.

The ability of each traveller to see Aslan is then directly related to how open they are to seeing him.  Edmund is able to see Aslan next, follow by Peter and finally by Susan and Trumpkin.

When Aslan speaks to each of the children, he of course says “Well done!” to Edmund.  (Which has always made me think of “Well done good and faithful servant” but I could be reading too much into that).

Aslan is quite gentle with Susan, being understanding of where she is coming from.

The most interesting encounter is that between Aslan and Trumpkin.  Throughout this story, Aslan has been pursuing Trumpkin (though Trumpkin does not know it) and Trumpkin has been putting up armour to protect himself from Aslan – doubting the four kings and Aslan as realities.  Lewis has Aslan and Trumpkin enact out physically the story that has been playing out up to this point:

Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother cat’s mouth? It was like that. The Dwarf, hunched up in a little, miserable ball, hung from Aslan’s mouth. The Lion gave him one shake and all his armor rattled like a tinker’s pack and then—heypresto—the Dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as if he had been in bed, though he did not feel so. As he came down the huge velvety paws caught him as gently as a mother’s arms and set him (right way up, too) on the ground.

“Son of Earth, shall we be friends?” asked Aslan.

“Ye—he—he—hes,” panted the Dwarf, for it had not yet got its breath back.

I find both Waldon’s and the BBC’s presentation of this encounter to be a bit cringey – my impression is they did not understand the symbolism of what is going on here (I.E. it is about Trumpkin submitting, letting go of his doubts and becoming friends with Aslan – even if he does not feel safe).

See:
Trumpkin meets Aslan - Waldon Media and

Trumpkin meets Aslan - BBC

This though is not the end of the ‘doubt’ theme in Prince Caspian as Trumpkin, Peter and Edmund will enter Aslan’s how where Nikabrik and his fellow conspirators will attempt to cast doubt on Aslan and try to get Trufflehunter, Dr Cornelius and Caspian to call up the White Witch:

“Tell that tale your own way for all I care,” answered Nikabrik. “But whether it was that the Horn was blown too late, or whether there was no magic in it, no help has come. You, you great clerk, you master magician, you know-all; are you still asking us to hang our hopes on Aslan and King Peter and all the rest of it?”

“I must confess—I cannot deny it—that I am deeply disappointed in the results of the operation,” came the answer. (“That’ll be Doctor Cornelius,” said Trumpkin.)

“To speak plainly,” said Nikabrik, “your wallet’s empty, your eggs addled, your fish uncaught, your promises broken. Stand aside then and let others work. And that is why—”

Nikabrik says that it is folly to put hope in Aslan and High King Peter.  He has lost faith in Aslan due to the ongoing suffering.  Trufflehunter however remains faithful in contrast to Nikabrik:

“The help will come,” said Trufflehunter. “I stand by Aslan. Have patience, like us beasts. The help will come. It may be even now at the door.”
“Pah!” snarled Nikabrik. “You badgers would have us wait till the sky falls and we can all catch larks. I tell you we can’t wait. Food is running short; we lose more than we can afford at every encounter; our followers are slipping away.”

The conversation is ironic as Peter, Edmund and Trumpkin are literally “at the door” of the room where this argument is taking place.

Nikabrik has lost faith and his doubt leads him to put his trust in the evil White Witch rather than Aslan.  This is tragic as if Nikarik had held on for only a few more minutes, he would have met Peter and Edmund.  And if Nikabrik had held on for a few more days he would have discovered that Aslan was present and compassionate to the Narnian’s needs too:

“All said and done,” he muttered, “none of us knows the truth about the ancient days in Narnia. Trumpkin believed none of the stories. I was ready to put them to the trial. We tried first the Horn and it has failed. If there ever was a High King Peter and a Queen Susan and a King Edmund and a Queen Lucy, then either they have not heard us, or they cannot come, or they are our enemies—”

“Or they are on the way,” put in Trufflehunter.

“You can go on saying that till Miraz has fed us all to his dogs. As I was saying, we have tried one link in the chain of old legends, and it has done us no good. Well. But when your sword breaks, you draw your dagger. The stories tell of other powers besides the ancient Kings and Queens. How if we could call them up?”

I feel like there is little need to summarize this.  Lewis seems to me to be showing how doubt can be biased and a hindrance.  By direct contrast, he is showing the need to stand firm – to ask legitimate questions – but to be faithful and open to the evidence of what is true.

So what do you think?  Am I overanalyzing and reading things into this book that are not really there?  Is there something else going on in these passages that I am missing?

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

You mentioned in your long introduction when discussing Prince Caspian, that there was a theme of doubt, repeated in the Last Battle.

Regarding the last battle, I do not have time to go into detail at this exact moment (I need to get some work done for the day 😊).

Faithful vs unfaithful in The Last Battle

I was thinking of the contrast between:

The relationship of Shift and Puzzle vs. the relationship between Tirian and Jewel:

• Both are a relationship between an anthropod and a horse-like creature.
• Lewis introduces Shift and Puzzle by saying they called themselves friends, but really you would think their relationship is that of slave and master. Lewis introduces Tirian and Jewel by saying that they are the closest of friends and each had saved the others life in war.
• When Jewel is imprisoned near the stable, Tirian risks his life to rescue Jewel, but when Puzzle goes missing from the Stable, Shift immediately makes up a story and encourages all narnians to kill Puzzle.
• etc.

The relationship of Tirian and his team verses the relationship of Rishda Tarkaan and his team.

• Again, we quickly discover that Rishda has no respect for Shift, but is using him for the time being. Rishda and Ginger are also teaming up not because they respect one another, but because they can use one another.  This contrasts to Tirian who is filled with rage when he sees a horse mistreated, who refused to harm the dwarfs who are trying to harm him and who shows loyalty to each of his comrades for their own sake (he does not leave Jill behind when she disappears, he tries to save Eustace when Eustace is dragged into the stable by the Calormene).
• Rishda and Ginger both see wisdom as "not believing in Tash or Aslan" and are boastful about it, while Tirian keeps his fidelity to Aslan in spite of very difficult doubts that come up due to the Ape’s dealings.

Griffle verses Poggin (and to some degree Diggle in the stable verses Pogin):

• Griffle throws the baby out with the bathwater; upon realizing that the Ape had made a fake Aslan, he chooses to reject the real Aslan and the real king also.  Diggle has the same policy in the stable.  In contrast, Poggin is present to receive exactly the same information as Griffle and Diggle and yet responds faithfully for Tirian and Aslan.  Poggin is amongst those who enter the new Narnia.

So, the Problem of Susan was not in the forefront of my mind for this book.  I would like to go into more detail on the Last Battle, but that's enough for  now 😀 

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

I think that a pattern you have for LWW might also work for Magician's Nephew, to a degree, when both of the books have the lamppost, Jadis, herself, Aslan and much more in common, even the Wardrobe as an entry point, when it was made from the wood of an apple tree Digory planted. But I don't see how other books fit into this pattern particularly well. But by all means, I'm open to debate & discussion, ...

I am not sure if we are agreeing or disagreeing.  As I understand it, neither of us thinks that the pattern I specified works outside of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe + possibly The Magician’s Nephew.  For The Magician’s Nephew, my understanding is that you see the same pattern playing out, generically over the course of the whole book, with:

• the Professors mansion being replaced by the row of houses / more specifically the attic through the houses,
• the Wardrobe being replaced by Uncle Andrew’s study,
• the lamppost replaced by the wood between the worlds,
• meet a Narnian replaced by meeting Jadis (a future Narnia, or at least an other-worldly being).
• spend time with a Narnian covering the period with Jadis in Charn and in London,
• Eat & Converse replaced by Jadis being away with Uncle Andrew, eating while Digory waits,
• the betrayal element is either Polly and Digory’s betray of Jadis, or else they have betrayed the Cabby and his horse by bringing them into Narnia, or they betray Narnia by bringing Jadis into Narnia on the day of its creation,
• and the danger from the White Witch element is present in that Jadis is dangerous throughout the story

Is that correct?

I guess, my first concern is what we are supposed to gain from this repetition from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe being reused in The Magician’s Nephew?  If I am correct and this repeated template does appear in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (I know that is a debated point), then it seems to serve the purposes of:

• Contrasting Edmund and Lucy, where we see Edmund clearly behaving more selfishly,
• Giving us a preview of where the story is going – we saw that Tumnus, working for the White Witch was going to endanger Lucy’s life. When Edmund is conversing with the White Witch and aligning with her, we can easily see how it is going to endanger both Edmund’s family and Edmund himself.  When Edmund begins lying to hide that he has met the witch, we can see how selfish he is being – and how harmful to Lucy.  Lucy, in contrast, tells the truth about Narnia even though her siblings think she is crazy or telling a very silly lie.
• It allows for a contrast between good and bad, both Tumnus and the beavers share a wholesome meal with their guests; the Witch gives Edmund enchanted food that is magically addictive. When Edmund later eats wholesome food with the beavers, he is robbed of the joy of good food because he is obsessed with the taste of bad food.

All this is leading to Edmund’s ultimate betrayal in going to the White Witch and telling her that his family is near by at the beaver’s house.  Therefore, this is setting up Edmund’s need to receive forgiveness and for Aslan to die in Edmund’s place.

If we grant that the same pattern occurs in The Magician’s Nephew, my question would be ‘what purpose does it serve in repeating this pattern again in The Magician’s Nephew?’

The second concern is that the scheme feels ad-hoc (to me) in The Magician’s Nephew rather than implicit to it.  Why does ‘the wood between the worlds’ stand in for The Lamp Post?  I could see it being the magical device between our world and Narnia, in which case could it be argued that it is equivalent to the wardrobe.  Digory and Polly eat toffee from their pockets and then, the next morning, they eat toffees from the toffee tree they grew.  After eating, they talk with fledge about Digory’s hopes for his mother and their mission.  Jadis is listening during this period – so couldn’t this also be an example of sharing a meal, conversing and being betrayed with danger from the White Witch?  The repetition in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is much more literal: The wardrobe is always the wardrobe, the lamppost is always, literally the lamppost, the eating involves the character(s) from our world literally eating with a Narnian, etc.

Posted by: @courtenay

Jadis, in her backstory that Lewis only wrote later, destroyed an entire world with a single word, and yet she's near powerless in our world, and in Narnia she takes most of a millennium to rebuild her power, but even then can't match what she was before. And yet this isn't consistent with her original iteration as the White Witch (meaning this is the form in which Lewis first conceived her), in which she is cast as a cosmic executioner who was in Narnia at the beginning and was given the role of putting traitors to death under the orders of Aslan’s father, the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. That part always comes across to me as a hastily cobbled together explanation for why the White Witch needs to kill Edmund and why Aslan sacrifices himself to save him. It's not one of Lewis's finest moments in his writing, and it's so inconsistent with his later rewrite of the White Witch as Jadis, Empress of Charn, that I find it very difficult to judge her "compellingness" as a villain overall.

I had always read this differently.  In Charn, Jadis is presented to us as a thoroughly selfish and dangerous individual who would happily kill all living things for the sake of getting a ‘victory’ over her sister.  She is self-centered, narcistic and thoroughly evil.

She is also a temptress in Charn and throughout The Magician’s Nephew.  She initially ignores Polly, because she wants to use Digory.  She charms Digory.  Once in our world, she ignores both Digory and Polly because she needs Uncle Andrew.  She manipulates Uncle Andrew to get what she wants.  In Narnia she tempts Digory in the garden, because at this point, she does not want him to plant the tree of protection in Narnia.  There is clear ‘garden of Eden’ imagery employed in this context.  She is essentially presented as an evil deceiver and tempter; the serpent in this scene.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, she is aware of the stone table being present in Narnia from the beginning (which does not necessarily suppose that she was present at Narnia’s beginning – but as it turns out we know from The Magician’s Nephew that she was present at Narnia's beginning).

She again deceives and tempts Edmund in this story.  But she is not merely a deceiver in this story; she is also the accuser.  Once Edmund has changed sides from her team to Aslan’s, she accuses him of being a traitor (which, to be fair, he is) and demands his death.  In this passage, Lewis is picturing her as a satan figure (satan being the Hebrew word for ‘accuser’).  She is demanding Edmund’s death because, her purpose in seducing him to her side was in part about getting him to a place where he was guilty and she could rightfully demand the death penalty for him.  She is “the emperor’s hangman” in that she is the one who delights in ensuring that guilty people suffer and die – that is how she wins.  To be clear, I am not saying that Jadis is an allegory for Satan.  But I think (and as always, I could be wrong) that Lewis does use her as a placeholder for the serpent / the devil in a couple of places.  To me, that does make sense of what Lewis is doing here and it does not make these parts of the novels contradictory.

Posted by: @davidd

I had always read this differently.  In Charn, Jadis is presented to us as a thoroughly selfish and dangerous individual who would happily kill all living things for the sake of getting a ‘victory’ over her sister.  She is self-centered, narcistic and thoroughly evil.

She is also a temptress in Charn and throughout The Magician’s Nephew.  She initially ignores Polly, because she wants to use Digory.  She charms Digory.  Once in our world, she ignores both Digory and Polly because she needs Uncle Andrew.  She manipulates Uncle Andrew to get what she wants.  In Narnia she tempts Digory in the garden, because at this point, she does not want him to plant the tree of protection in Narnia.  There is clear ‘garden of Eden’ imagery employed in this context.  She is essentially presented as an evil deceiver and tempter; the serpent in this scene.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, she is aware of the stone table being present in Narnia from the beginning (which does not necessarily suppose that she was present at Narnia’s beginning – but as it turns out we know from The Magician’s Nephew that she was present at Narnia's beginning).

She again deceives and tempts Edmund in this story.  But she is not merely a deceiver in this story; she is also the accuser.  Once Edmund has changed sides from her team to Aslan’s, she accuses him of being a traitor (which, to be fair, he is) and demands his death.  In this passage, Lewis is picturing her as a satan figure (satan being the Hebrew word for ‘accuser’).  She is demanding Edmund’s death because, her purpose in seducing him to her side was in part about getting him to a place where he was guilty and she could rightfully demand the death penalty for him.  She is “the emperor’s hangman” in that she is the one who delights in ensuring that guilty people suffer and die – that is how she wins.  To be clear, I am not saying that Jadis is an allegory for Satan.  But I think (and as always, I could be wrong) that Lewis does use her as a placeholder for the serpent / the devil in a couple of places.  To me, that does make sense of what Lewis is doing here and it does not make these parts of the novels contradictory.

That's a fair point, that in LWW the White Witch doesn't claim to have been personally present when the "Deep Magic" was put in place at Narnia's beginning — I've just reread those passages to check. It's implied that she was, when Mr Beaver exclaims "So that's how you came to imagine yourself a Queen — because you were the Emperor's hangman." And she does keep on claiming that it is her specific duty to kill traitors, however she attained it — "unless I have blood as the law declares..." But nothing about her purported role is ever exactly confirmed, although nothing she says is denied either. There's at least a little ambiguity and room for interpretation there. 

I do think it's important, though, from a Narnia scholarship point of view, not to place MN first and LWW second and say "Well, Jadis in Charn is this, and then in LWW she's this." LWW was written first, before Lewis had any clear concept of Narnia's origin story, or of the White Witch's own backstory, beyond the few hints we're given in that book. MN was written a few years later, and it's not the only instance among the Chronicles where details in the later books don't match up with earlier ones. Regardless of that, if we want to follow the author's actual thought processes (as far as that's possible), we need to consider the books primarily in publication order, not the chronological order imposed on them by the publishers after Lewis's death.

I think it is fair to say that the White Witch plays a somewhat-analogous-to-Satan role in LWW, where — whether or not she really was given this position personally at the beginning of the world — she claims the divinely appointed right to execute traitors, and Aslan indicates that he can't argue with her on this. Then when Aslan offers himself as a victim in Edmund's place, the Witch agrees, thinking she is now being given the chance to kill her greatest enemy, but she doesn't realise that Aslan's self-sacrifice will in fact destroy the Stone Table, and the whole system of death-for-sin along with it. Lewis seems to be drawing on medieval-era theories of Christian atonement here, but I'm not an expert on that and it's off topic — and in any case, as we both know, Narnia is not allegorical and there is not supposed to be an exact one-to-one relationship between characters and events in the Bible and characters and events in Narnia. (Apart from Aslan himself being Narnia's incarnation of Christ, but even then, his "story" in Narnia doesn't follow the exact pattern of Jesus' "story" in the Gospels.)

But even if we take it that Jadis / the Witch wasn't given the role of "the Emperor's hangman" personally at the beginning of Narnia, but assumed it some time later, knowing that the Deep Magic required traitors to be put to death and somehow figuring she was the one to do it... there are still huge discrepancies between MN and LWW. In MN, we do see that Jadis is present at the beginning of Narnia, and that she brings evil into that world (thanks to Digory, who has to make amends for his own foolish wrongdoing there). But she's also promptly banished from Narnia by the planting of the Tree of Protection, which means she couldn't have come anywhere near the Stone Table for most of the first thousand years of Narnia (going by the sort-of-official Narnia timeline).

So where did the Stone Table come from? How did the system of executing traitors — and the threat of annihilation for Narnia if this isn't done — come about in the first place? In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (which, again, was written first), the Deep Magic behind this system was put into place at the beginning of Narnia, implicitly by Aslan's father, the Emperor, himself — whether or not the White Witch was directly and personally appointed to the role of executioner at that time. But in The Magician's Nephew, Jadis originates in another world entirely and is forced into exile within a couple of days of Narnia's creation, and there is absolutely no indication of the Deep Magic coming into being, or of any system of blood sacrifice being necessary to keep Narnia safe from cosmic destruction. That whole concept, by that stage, sounds quite barbaric and not at all what Aslan would want for Narnia.

As far as I can see, there really isn't a logical in-universe explanation for this — not unless we make a whole lot of assumptions and outright contortions that aren't present or implied in any of the books. But the out-of-universe explanation is simple: Lewis thought up the Stone Table and the Deep Magic as the somewhat awkward explanation for the Witch's demand on Edmund's blood and her acceptance of Aslan as a replacement victim, while he was writing what was then a stand-alone book with no larger concept of how this new fantasy universe would expand. He then basically forgot the details of what he wrote in the first book by the time he decided to write a prequel that included the Witch's origin story, which is how he came to write two books starring the same supervillain with such huge discrepancies between them, when it comes to who and what exactly she is and what her role within that fantasy universe is.

And that — to get back to where we were — is why I find it so difficult to analyse Jadis as a character, because the two books featuring her just do not match up!

Posted by: @courtenay

But even if we take it that Jadis / the Witch wasn't given the role of "the Emperor's hangman" personally at the beginning of Narnia, but assumed it some time later, knowing that the Deep Magic required traitors to be put to death and somehow figuring she was the one to do it... there are still huge discrepancies between MN and LWW. In MN, we do see that Jadis is present at the beginning of Narnia, and that she brings evil into that world (thanks to Digory, who has to make amends for his own foolish wrongdoing there). But she's also promptly banished from Narnia by the planting of the Tree of Protection, which means she couldn't have come anywhere near the Stone Table for most of the first thousand years of Narnia (going by the sort-of-official Narnia timeline).

So where did the Stone Table come from? How did the system of executing traitors — and the threat of annihilation for Narnia if this isn't done — come about in the first place? In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (which, again, was written first), the Deep Magic behind this system was put into place at the beginning of Narnia, implicitly by Aslan's father, the Emperor, himself — whether or not the White Witch was directly and personally appointed to the role of executioner at that time. But in The Magician's Nephew, Jadis originates in another world entirely and is forced into exile within a couple of days of Narnia's creation, and there is absolutely no indication of the Deep Magic coming into being, or of any system of blood sacrifice being necessary to keep Narnia safe from cosmic destruction. That whole concept, by that stage, sounds quite barbaric and not at all what Aslan would want for Narnia.

Yes, that is true.  It does seem to contradict.

Mr Beaver also says (also in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe):

So things must be drawing near their end now he’s come and you’ve come. We’ve heard of Aslan coming into these parts before — long ago, nobody can say when. But there’s never been any of your race here before.

I am sure if The Magician's Nephew had been written first, Mr Beaver would have known about Digory, Polly and especially Frank, Hellen and their various descendants.  I always wonder where all the Narnian people came from who travel with Edmund, Susan and Lucy in The Horse and His Boy - I guess they could have been exiles in Archenland while the witch was in power, but it always seemed strange to me that there were several humans living in Narnia during the Golden Age when Mr Beaver asserts that there were not any.

Anyways, you are right - there is a definite inconsistency there.

Posted by: @davidd

I always wonder where all the Narnian people came from who travel with Edmund, Susan and Lucy came from - I guess they could have been exiles in Archenland while the witch was in power, but it always seemed strange to me that there were several humans living in Narnia during the Golden Age when Mr Beaver asserts that there were not any.

I assume you're talking about HHB here. Again, the out-of-universe explanation is simple — Lewis forgot details of what he'd written in earlier books, or else ignored them when what he originally wrote was no longer consistent with his growing concepts of Narnia. Like, in this case, Mr Beaver claiming in the first book that there had never been any humans in Narnia before. (Archenland technically didn't exist — in Lewis's imagination, I mean — at that point in the writing process, as far as we know.)

Lewis did acknowledge at least once that there were inconsistencies in the Chronicles and he'd like to go over them and make some changes in future new editions to get things to match up better. But he stated that in an interview with a children's book editor (Kaye Webb of Puffin Books) right at the end of his life — I think literally only a few days before he died — and so we'll never know for sure which inconsistencies he had in mind and what he might have done to fix them up!