Although I'm usually the first person to refute the notion that everything in Narnia is secretly a metaphor for something else in classical mythology or religion, i do think the Wood Between The Worlds bears at least some similarity to Yggdrasil, the "World Tree" from Norse Mythology which connects the Nine Realms. Yes the visual imagery is somewhat different (Woods vs Tree) but its in the same ballpark.

To that end then i guess it means that makes Charn akin to Svartalfheim or Helheim, Narnia akin to Asgard or Vanaheim and Aslan's Country akin to Vallhalla? I dont know, i'm not really a mythology expert, though i'm sure someone could stretch the metaphor out into a "Planet Narnia" style bestseller 😉

It's certainly interesting on what the meanings could be. Charn is definitely something that is curious though. I've seen fan writings about it and reading through MN certainly gives Atlantis thoughts (granted I've seen some artwork of it in a MN copy that gives that idea). Curious on what people think about the Wood Between Worlds and Charn. 

It recently struck me that the Wood Between the Worlds is actually a pretty good example of a liminal space. This term recently got re-popularized on the internet (largely due to memes like the Backrooms, etc.) but it actually goes all the way back to Plato (who, as most Narnia readers are aware, gets a couple references in the books and was a huge influence on Lewis). In Plato's Republic, he writes about prisoners who are trapped in a cave facing the wall, where they exist in an in-between realm where nothing ever happens and they are unaware of  any outside realities. However, a freed prisoner escapes the cave, embarking on a symbolic journey from ignorance to enlightenment. 

 I don't know how specifically that applies to what Lewis wrote here, but I could see this idea having some impact on his thinking. Generally, it could just refer to the kids' (and the Cabbie's, and Uncle Andrew's) various journeys of enlightenment as they all go through significant growth because of their travels through the Wood. You could even say the same about the way all of Digory and Polly's adventures are kicked off by them exploring the passage in the house.  However, I think it safest to say that if there is any direct inspiration being taken from Plato here, it's just the idea of an in-between place where nothing ever happens. 

Posted by: @scientific_archer

In my time of getting back into Narnia, I ran across the Wood Between Worlds in The Magician's Nephew. 

It's a super intriguing place with pools that connect other worlds (and in this day and age where everything is a multiverse in fantasy or otherwise). Obviously Lewis wasn't wanting a multiverse but I have a couple questions: 

1. What do you think the Wood Between Worlds means? 

2. What do you think Charn means? 

3. Are there other worlds out there than just Narnia and Charn? 

4. What do you feel the rings used to get into the Wood imply?

Interesting questions!

What do you think the Wood Between Worlds means?

I would be extremely wary of any attempts to explain what a certain place (or character, or event) in any of the Narnia books "means". Lewis himself was absolutely adamant that he was not writing allegories — despite the infuriating number of modern commentators who describe the Chronicles of Narnia as such, without any real understanding of what "allegory" means.

Lewis explained many times, in letters to fans and in interviews and other things he wrote, that he was not attempting to write stories in which characters or places or events stand for something specific in the Bible, or in our world's history, or in any other kind of meta-narrative (to use a modern term that he wouldn't have used). There are of course echoes of Biblical accounts and theological ideas and so on all through, but that doesn't mean that elements in the Chronicles are meant to BE those things.

So I don't think it would be correct to claim that the Wood between the Worlds (to give its actual name from the book) "means" anything in a larger sense. It's fair to say that it's Lewis's imagining of "an in-between place", as Digory describes it in chapter 3 — not a world in itself, but a place that gives access to all the other worlds:

"... Think of our tunnel under the slates at home. It isn't a room in any of the houses. In a way, it isn't really part of any of the houses. But once you're in the tunnel you can go along it and come out into any of the houses in the row. Mightn't this wood be the same? — a place that isn't in any of the worlds, but once you've found that place you can get into them all."

The Wood between the Worlds is of course a concept that Lewis came up with rather late in the process of writing the seven Chronicles, which is why there aren't any hints of it in the other books — we're not told anything about when and how it was created, or how many worlds there actually are. It's largely a plot device, in that regard, to allow the events of The Magician's Nephew to take place. As none of the other books in the series involve travelling from our world to any worlds other than Narnia, there wasn't any call for Lewis to think up this "in-between place" earlier than this book (it's the sixth in the series in published order, and I believe it was the last one he finished writing, as the last few books in the series were completed some time before he published them).

What do you think Charn means?

Again, this is not allegory. Lewis, going by his own statements about his work in general, did not intend for Charn to "mean" anything in a concrete sense. It's one of the many worlds that Digory and Polly could have got to through the pools in the Wood, and it happens to be a dying one. It is of course also the place where Digory's rashness leads to him waking Jadis, whom he later unintentionally brings into Narnia at its creation, which gives us the backstory of how the White Witch, one of the greatest villains in Narnia's history, came into Narnia in the first place. (All of which is totally and irreconcilably inconsistent with what we're told of the White Witch — including in her own words, with which Aslan agrees — in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but Lewis wasn't exactly brilliant at worldbuilding and wasn't trying to be. It's just further evidence that he didn't have any larger underlying plan to the Chronicles, despite some commentators' efforts (Planet Narnia is the most egregious example) to prove otherwise.)

From the relatively little we see and hear about Charn, it's heavily implied that it's a world where the rulers started out good and wise but gradually became more and more selfish and cruel and corrupt — that's what Digory and Polly see progressively in the faces of the statues of Charn's past kings and queens — until they culminated in Jadis, who destroyed every living thing in her world rather than lose her rulership. In the final chapter of the book, back in the Wood between the Worlds, Aslan shows Polly and Digory the place where the pool that led to Charn was — "That world is ended, as if it had never been" — and gives the children the warning that their (and our) world is "becoming more like it":

"... It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware...."

That's an obvious reference to the threat of atomic warfare — very much in everyone's minds after the end of World War 2 and the start of the Cold War, the exact era in which Lewis was writing — and to the dictatorships of the 20th century (and beyond), unspecified so that we can fill in the blanks for ourselves. If Charn "means" anything, it's just that: that a world can be literally destroyed by tyranny and the power of evil, and much the same thing could happen to ours.

Are there other worlds out there than just Narnia and Charn?

Is this even a question? Why would there be so many pools in the Wood between the Worlds, unless they all led to other worlds? Digory and Polly come to that very conclusion soon after they get to the Wood, even before they've tried jumping into any other pools, and there is never the slightest reason given for us to think they're wrong about that. We never see any of those other worlds, of course, but to assume that only three of the pools in the Wood give access to worlds — the one for our world, the one for Charn (which later dries up), and the one for the empty world that becomes Narnia — and all the rest are just ordinary pools of water, presumably only there for show... that makes absolutely no sense at all.

And of course, the Wood retrospectively backs up this exchange in LWW between Peter and the Professor (who, as we learn in MN, is Digory Kirke himself):

"But do you really mean, sir," said Peter, "that there could be other worlds — all over the place, just round the corner — like that?"

"Nothing is more probable," said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, "I wonder what they do teach them at these schools."

As for "Obviously Lewis wasn't wanting a multiverse" — well, he clearly wasn't wanting to write about one, especially at the late stage at which he developed the concept of the Wood between the Worlds. Perhaps if he'd thought of it when writing the first book, or the second, it would have featured in all the other books and every adventure in the series might have taken place in a different world (or several)!

The Wood definitely implies what we would call a multiverse — I'm not sure if that term was in use when Lewis was writing — even if we don't get to explore it any further. But Lewis regularly encouraged his young readers to write their own stories about Narnia if they wanted to, and I'm sure plenty of fans in his time and since then must have come up with their own ideas for other worlds that you can get to through the pools in the Wood.

What do you feel the rings used to get into the Wood imply?

Well, there's another question with no real answer. Magic rings are a common enough trope in fantasy stories and ancient legends — the Ring of the Nibelung (best known from Wagner's operas, of which Lewis was a fan as a young man), Bilbo's ring of invisibility in The Hobbit that Tolkien later turned into the One Ring to rule them all, and so on. There aren't any allusions to Biblical stories or Christian history here, so I think the only reasonable conclusion is that Lewis needed a device to transport Digory and Polly to other worlds, something infused with Uncle Andrew's dust from another world (presumably it was soil from the Wood between the Worlds itself), and magic rings were what he came up with. There are no reasons given, or even hinted at, for us to assume that there's some hidden significance to them being rings, or to the colours of them (yellow and green), or anything else about them. They're just something that worked in the context of the plot that Lewis was writing.

I don't think we can know for sure what the Wood Between The Worlds actually is.

And what does Charn even means? It obviously would have started decent (given expressions of the statues that looked kind and gentle that Digory and Polly saw in the Hall of Images, while the rest looked cruel). So it's likely that it became corrupt as time went on.

Tolkien followed a similar pattern with Numenor in Middle Earth, where it started out as decent but became corrupt as time went on.

So in the Wood Between the Worlds, given that the pool that led to Charn dried up to nothing near the end of MN, is it possible that if any of the worlds have come to an end, did the pool dry up as well? Did the pool that led to Narnia dried up when it came to an end in LB?

Aslan mentioned to Digory and Polly that our world was on its way to becoming more like Charn with dictatorship. There had been world leaders throughout history that brought on dictatorship (though do we really know if Aslan was foreshadowing what would happen with Russia or Germany or Italy or even beyond?)

And what about Narnia? It had gone through different tyrannical reigns (notably the White Witch in LWW and Miraz in PC), and the Lady of the Green Kirtle would've been one in SC if it had not been for Eustace and Jill, with help from Puddleglum rescuing Prince Rilian. Prince Rabadash would've invaded Narnia in HHB if it had not been for the Narnians and Archenlanders fighting back to defend Anvard. Rishda was most likely on the edge of becoming a dictator of Narnia in LB, and would have done so if it had not been for Tirian pulling him into the stable with him at the Battle of Stable Hill.

So I don't think we can know for sure what the Wood Between The Worlds actually is (though it is is one of my favorite scenes in the series).

Did Lewis have his idea of the Woods between the worlds long before The Magician’s Nephew was written?  I was wondering about Charn too. There must have been a reason why he wanted Charn before the creation of Narnia.  The woods with the pool was a transition place, and it worked very well, but could he have just started with the creation of Narnia and the next thing have Digory and Polly arriving from our world? Jadis could still come from Charn and cause trouble.  I always wondered why the creation of Narnia wasn’t at the very beginning of the book. I don’t know if the book could have existed without the Woods Between the Worlds, and I wondered if it was really necessary for the children to visit Charn. People who are in favor of the chronological order of reading the book might want the creation to be at or near the beginning of the book, and possibly introduce the series. However, I think the wardrobe is the best thing to introduce new readers to Narnia. 🙂

Posted by: @narnian78

Did Lewis have his idea of the Woods between the worlds long before The Magician’s Nephew was written?

I don't know if we have any evidence either for or against that. Lewis destroyed most of the drafts and notes of his books once he'd finished writing them, so there are only a few snippets still extant, none of which tell us when he came up with this specific concept. The longest and most famous surviving draft by him is of course the "Lefay Fragment", which is clearly an early version of The Magician's Nephew, but there's no absolute certainty as to when it was written. (Walter Hooper suggests directly after Lewis wrote LWW, but I've heard it theorised that Lewis might actually have written that fragment first, got stuck as to where to go with it, and then turned to his other ideas of a faun in a snowy wood and so on.)

In any case, the Lefay Fragment doesn't contain any references to the Wood between the Worlds or anything like it, so we don't know when that particular idea came into Lewis's head.

 I was wondering about Charn too. There must have been a reason why he wanted Charn before the creation of Narnia.  The woods with the pool was a transition place, and it worked very well, but could he have just started with the creation of Narnia and the next thing have Digory and Polly arriving from our world? Jadis could still come from Charn and cause trouble.

Well, maybe, but as far as I can see, that would mean cutting out nearly all of the major themes of the story. The way Lewis writes it, it's essential to the plot that Digory is to blame for waking Jadis and bringing her into Narnia, and that is how it comes about that Narnia, despite being a land of talking beasts and other magical creatures, needs to have humans as its rulers in order for things to be as they should be — "Narnia was never right except when a son of Adam was King... It's not Men's country... but it's a country for a man to be King of," as Trufflehunter says in PC.

Here in the story of Narnia's beginning, we find out why that is. It's directly in response to Digory's confession of his wrong-doing that Aslan says "And as Adam's race has done the harm, Adam's race shall help to heal it" — and it's at that moment that he calls Frank the Cabby over, summons Frank's wife from our world, and declares them the first King and Queen of Narnia. Without that context — that one human, Digory, has brought evil into Narnia, and so humans are tasked with helping to heal it — then none of this would make sense. Just having Digory and Polly arrive somehow from our world, and then Jadis coming in, would turn it into a completely different story, and probably a much less deep and satisfying one.

 I always wondered why the creation of Narnia wasn’t at the very beginning of the book.

I'd say the fact that it isn't, gives us far more time to get to know Digory and Polly as characters — who they are and what their motives are, in particular Digory's despair over his mother's impending death and his desire to find some way of healing her. And of course, the whole set-up with Uncle Andrew and his experiments with magic — arguably a more sinister sort of thing than we see in any of the previous Narnia books, as it leads into a fair bit of commentary (throughout the book) on those who use people and things around them entirely for their own selfish ends, which we see far more chillingly in Jadis.

If the creation of Narnia happened at the very beginning of the book, basically, we'd have no background to any of the main characters, no idea how they got there, no grounding for their very different reactions to the new world arising around them and to the Lion who is creating it (Digory, Polly and Frank respond with wonder; Jadis is filled with hatred and terror; Uncle Andrew can only see it in terms of how he could make money out of it, and yet at the same time he blocks himself from being able to hear Aslan's song or to understand him or the Talking Beasts when they speak). And in turn, no proper context for the quest that Digory and Polly need to go on, and no comprehension of just why all this is so momentous and heart-wrenching for Digory.

I don’t know if the book could have existed without the Woods Between the Worlds, and I wondered if it was really necessary for the children to visit Charn.

Well, apart from it being one of the most chillingly memorable episodes in any of the books... without the visit to Charn, we don't have Digory giving in to a rash and foolish impulse and ringing the bell, and we don't meet Jadis in her own dying world and learn directly from her how she personally destroyed it. Which then throws away (or at least greatly diminishes) that theme that continues throughout the book, of power being abused for selfish ends, culminating in the warning that Aslan gives Digory and Polly in the last chapter — that the same kind of thing is already happening in our world, and it could end up being destroyed in a similar way to Charn. None of that would make any sense if we hadn't seen Charn ourselves and heard from Jadis herself what she did to it and why.

Honestly... does anyone genuinely believe that The Magician's Nephew would be a better book if it started with something like "In the beginning there was darkness and nothingness, and then began the song of the Lion..." — and then once the whole creation has been described, two children from our world, about whom we know nothing, stumble in out of who-knows-where, followed by a Witch who wants to cause trouble, and we're clueless as to the reason for that as well? In what way, exactly, would it enhance the plot to (in my view, at least) gut out practically everything that makes this story as rich and meaningful as it is?

Seriously — I'm baffled.  

@courtenay 

I just wondered if there was another way of having the witch come from Charn after the creation of Narnia without necessarily bringing the children there. I had not suggested that Lewis “gut” his story, but I just wondered what would have happened if he had taken a different course.  But if even bringing this up offends you (which certainly wasn’t my intention in the first place) I think perhaps it is better not to continue this discussion. 

@narnian78 Oh no, it doesn't offend me — I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. I was just surprised and baffled at the apparent suggestion that the entire first half of the book isn't important to the plot and could be got rid of, which is what starting the story with the creation of Narnia would have to entail.

I also love the whole creation episode — one of the best and most remarkable extended scenes that Lewis ever wrote, I think. But putting it right at the beginning of the book, cutting out everything we see and learn before it, would surely turn MN into a completely different story. As I said, we wouldn't know anything about Digory's and Polly's backgrounds — especially Digory's, as the main character who's in such a heartbreaking situation — and telling all that just in his words, or in a flashback, wouldn't be anywhere near as effective (I reckon) as us spending several chapters getting to know him and his circumstances directly, as we do in the book as it is.

And if Jadis comes in from Charn after the creation of Narnia without the children necessarily having gone there — well, again, that means we lose Digory's culpability in waking her and bringing her into Narnia, which is another major element of the plot.

Naturally, yes, Lewis could have started the story with the creation of Narnia, and left out everything about Charn, and the Wood between the Worlds (to get back to the theme of this thread), and about Digory's mother and Uncle Andrew and all the rest. But don't you think that would change the whole plot so completely that it simply wouldn't be the same story any more? I'm just surprised anybody would want to do that. But I'd be genuinely interested to hear your (or anyone else's) suggestions for how the story could have gone instead.   (That would probably need to be a separate discussion, though, since it's going off the topic of this one.) 

Posted by: @courtenay

Naturally, yes, Lewis could have started the story with the creation of Narnia, and left out everything about Charn, and the Wood between the Worlds (to get back to the theme of this thread), and about Digory's mother and Uncle Andrew and all the rest. But don't you think that would change the whole plot so completely that it simply wouldn't be the same story any more? I'm just surprised anybody would want to do that. But I'd be genuinely interested to hear your (or anyone else's) suggestions for how the story could have gone instead.   (That would probably need to be a separate discussion, though, since it's going off the topic of this one.) 

Yes, CS Lewis could have started MN with the creation of Narnia. Not only that, but he could have started the whole Narnia series with the creation of Narnia (that could be another discussion, though)

Anyhow, the Wood Between the Worlds have always intrigued me. We may not even know for sure what it actually is, but it is sure an interesting discussion.

As I mentioned before, because there are very few surviving drafts or notes for the Narnia books, I don't think we have any definite indication of when, in the process of writing the series, Lewis thought up the particular concept of the Wood between the Worlds. Thinking about it, however, I would guess that it came pretty late in that process, possibly only as he was writing MN and not before.

We do have indications elsewhere in the series that there are other worlds apart from Narnia and our own — along with the Professor's "Nothing is more probable" comment in LWW, there's also, for example, Aslan's remark (as he transforms from a Lamb back into a Lion) near the end of VDT: "There is a way into my country from all worlds." But MN — written right at the end of the series (I believe it was the last one Lewis finished writing) is the first and only book in which the plot involves travelling to another world apart from Narnia or ours. So I would guess that's what actually led Lewis to think up an "in-between place" that allows access to (presumably!) all the different worlds in existence, which there wasn't a need to have in any of the earlier books.

I've been thinking about why Lewis might have chosen a wood with pools in it as that "in-between place". Perhaps it's something to do with the "naturalness" of that setting — I mean in terms of it being the natural world, so to speak. Trees and water, rather than (say) an apparently "constructed" setting like a room or hallway with many different doors — or a sci-fi kind of setting with portals of glowing light hovering in the cosmos, or something like that...   The Wood just feels rather more like something that the Creator of Narnia and of our world would also create. (And there's absolutely no question that the Wood was created by Aslan. Lewis was such a committed Christian that I cannot imagine him coming up with more than one creator for his fictional universe / multiverse, or for any portion of it!)

I just love the atmosphere Lewis evokes in telling us about the Wood — I don't have the book with me just now, so I can't quote directly, but I know he remarks on the greenness (my favourite colour, as it happens!) and the quietness, to the point where (as I think he says) you can almost hear the trees growing. We're not told what kind of trees they are or look like, but they're obviously extremely tall. (They may well be a different species from any in our world, but being an Aussie, I'm going to plump for them being something like Eucalyptus regnans. Tallest non-coniferous species on our planet, evergreen and with a trunk that really does go up and up and up almost as far as you can see, with no branches until near the very top, which is pretty much what the trees in the Wood between the Worlds sound like in the book. Probably no koalas up there, though. )

And the pools — again, an element of the natural world that makes sense as something you'd see in a wood, but that could also be a portal to somewhere else (if you have the correct ring on). There's a plot element there, too, that I was reminded of a while ago when the Talking Beasts podcast remarked on it: after Digory, Polly, Uncle Andrew, Jadis, the Cabby AND his horse all get transported from London into the Wood together, Strawberry the horse, understandably after all he's been through, walks into to the nearest pool and takes a drink. That is what triggers their journey into the empty world that becomes Narnia — because Digory assumes it's the pool leading to Charn that Strawberry is standing in, and so that's where they all go next. As the Talking Beasts hosts put it, Strawberry may inadvertently have made the most important decision in Narnia's history at that moment!

There's something else I just thought of — maybe the pool for Narnia had only recently appeared in the Wood, since it's a totally new world that hasn't been created yet when our protagonists get there? And maybe the pool leading to Charn had dried up already, because with Jadis gone, there was no longer a single living being left in that world, and so it finally ended (which presumably it couldn't do while Jadis was still there, in an enchanted sleep but still alive)? Perhaps, in order to keep the cosmic equilibrium, Aslan creates a new world for every old one that comes to an end?? We don't have any proof of that, either, but it stands to reason, and it's fun to speculate...  

I wonder how The Wood Between the Worlds could be portrayed using modern technology and how Digory and Polly could be shown disappearing into the pools. It certainly would be a challenge for the filmmaker, but I think an animated production could accomplish it. 

I had always pictured Charn to look something like Vulcan on Star Trek, although it would have to have a more abandoned appearance. Probably the Star Trek movie sets would have worked, although they most likely no longer exist.

I always wondered how old the Wood Between the Worlds was, and if it was created long before Narnia.  Although it seems almost timeless it could not have existed forever.  Also, was it even mentioned in any of the other books or was it only created for The Magician’s Nephew?  Lewis may have thought of it before but decided not to use it until the sixth book. The Wood Between the Worlds may have been something that he wanted to create for only one book.  There is nothing else like it in the other six books of the series.