Among the artworks supplementing this opinion piece were two gorgeous works, one under the subheading “Riding On Aslan’s Back” and one under the subheading “The Lion As King of Beasts.” The color, energy and brushwork of these pieces is jaw-dropping (to me).

Does anyone know the source of these two pieces? I think they’re just stunning, some of the best Narnia art I’ve ever seen.  If it’s from a published edition of the Chronicles I must secure a copy 😊.

In TLB there are no Four Horsemen, no angels with seven trumpets or bowls holding the seven last plagues to be poured out on the earth. I suppose Tash, Puzzle and Shift could be considered the Narnian equivalent of the diabolical trinity of Dragon, Beast and False Prophet in Revelations.  Except that in Revelations all three are cast into the lake of fire to be tormented forever, while in TLB the Dragon figure (Tash) devours the False Prophet figure (Shift) before being banished to parts unknown, while the Beast figure (Puzzle) ends up among the redeemed in Aslan's Country!

Even the central image of Judgement in TLB is clearly inspired, not by anything from Revelations, but by the parable of the Sheep and the Goats in The Gospel of Matthew. Even then Lewis puts his own spin on it, in that the Narnians are judged not so much by Aslan as by themselves, depending on whether they love or hate Aslan.

I can't help wondering if the people who make this claim have ever read Revelations, or even if they've ever read TLB properly. 

Why do you think Lewis has so many quiet locations in this book?

• Is he trying to communicate something thematically through the repeated use of silence? (Generically, it always seems to be either the silence of peace, the silence of death, the silence of waiting or the silence of adventure).
• Is it some sort of framing device?
• Is something else going on?
• Am I reading to way much into this and honestly I could get just as excited that he repeatedly uses the word "the" and wonder what Lewis was doing with the repeated use of 'the definite article'?

For refence:

Polly's Tunnel is quiet, safe and private:

She had often drunk a quiet bottle of ginger-beer in there: the old bottles made it look more like a smugglers’ cave.

When Digory and Polly search for the empty house, the tunnel is again silent – but it is the silence of adventure:

“We mustn’t make a sound,” said Polly as they climbed in again behind the cistern. ... It was very dark and dusty and drafty and they stepped from rafter to rafter without a word except when they whispered to one another, “We’re opposite your attic now” ...

The Forbidden Study is silent (with a foreboding anticipation) before Uncle Andrew reveals himself:

Then, with a great shock, they saw that they were looking, not into a deserted attic, but into a furnished room. But it seemed empty enough. It was dead silent.

The Wood Between the Worlds has a living, peaceful silence:

The silence of the Wood had been rich and warm (you could almost hear the trees growing) and full of life ...

Charn has the silence of death until Digory rings the bell:

... this was a dead, cold, empty silence.

“It is silent now. But I have stood here when the whole air was full of the noises of Charn; ... All in one moment one woman blotted it out forever.”

Digory and Polly's homes are silent with boredom and waiting in the afternoon:

“I wonder what Polly’s doing?” thought Digory.  He wondered about this a good deal as the first slow half-hour ticked on. ...

So while Digory was staring out of the dining-room window, Polly was lying in bed, and both were thinking how terribly slowly the time could go. ... And in between these false alarms, for what seemed hours and hours, the clock ticked on and one big fly—high up and far out of reach—buzzed against the window. It was one of those houses that get very quiet and dull in the afternoon and always seem to smell of mutton.

Once Polly puts on the ring, it becomes comparatively silent again as they approach the Wood Between the Worlds:

He made a third grab: caught the heel: held on like grim death, shouting to Polly “Go!” then - Oh, thank goodness. The angry, frightened faces had vanished. The angry, frightened voices were silenced. All except Uncle Andrew’s. ...

But Strawberry, the horse, shook his head, gave a cheerful whinny, and seemed to feel better. He became quiet for the first time since Digory had seen him. His ears, which had been laid flat back on his skull, came into their proper position, and the fire went out of his eyes.

The world of Narnia is silent and empty until Aslan sings Narnia to life (side point: does the Cabby's song about crops foreshadow Aslan's song):

“This is not Charn,” came the Witch’s voice. “This is an empty world. This is Nothing.”

And really it was uncommonly like Nothing. There were no stars. It was so dark that they couldn’t see one another at all and it made no difference whether you kept your eyes shut or opened. Under their feet there was a cool, flat something which might have been earth, and was certainly not grass or wood. The air was cold and dry and there was no wind.

The flight with Fledge is implied to be quiet:

As they came down nearer to the earth and among the hills, the air grew warmer and after traveling so many hours with nothing to listen to but the beat of Fledge’s wings, it was nice to hear the homely and earthy noises again—the chatter of the river on its stony bed and the creaking of trees in the light wind.

The Garden is quiet (perhaps peaceful, perhaps foreboding) until Digory encounters Jadis:

Now that he could see into the place it looked more private than ever. He went in very solemnly, looking about him. Everything was very quiet inside. Even the fountain which rose near the middle of the garden made only the faintest sound.

This may be going too far, but Aslan gives Uncle Andrew the gift of peaceful silence:

But I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. ...”

He bowed his great head rather sadly, and breathed into the Magician’s terrified face. “Sleep,” he said. “Sleep and be separated for some few hours from all the torments you have devised for yourself.” Uncle Andrew immediately rolled over with closed eyes and began breathing peacefully.

While silence is never explicitly mentioned, Digory's mother appears to me to first lie in a silent room of death and then after she eats the apple in a silent peaceful state of healing:

And there she lay, as he had seen her lie so many other times, propped up on the pillows, with a thin, pale face that would make you cry to look at it.

...

And no sooner had she finished it than she smiled and her head sank back on the pillow and she was asleep: a real, natural, gentle sleep, without any of those nasty drugs, which was, as Digory knew, the thing in the whole world that she wanted most. And he was sure now that her face looked a little different. He bent down and kissed her very softly and stole out of the room with a beating heart; taking the core of the apple with him.

Example: THE HORSE AND HIS BOY.

As they arrive and prepare for attack, King Lune at Anvard at the gates watching for the boy (or vision, or ghost) until Lune realizes he isn't coming.

Perhaps, one could construe that Narnia didn't really end, and that no one really died :

1 At the beginning, in The Magician's Nephew, Aslan drew Diggory's attention to the fact that he had inadvertently let evil loose in the new world that had been created.

2 In Prince Caspian, Aslan mentioned that portals between Earth and Narnia had been shrinking in number.

3 Therefore, could it be that Aslan disapproved of such ingresses into Narnia that hadn't been in accordance with His creation, and that He only sought to let enter the most fitting humans into Narnia through His methods.

4 Keeping this in mind, the wardrobe might not be a portal, but Aslan's handiwork. After all, He did let Diggory pluck the apple from the newly-planted tree, and therefore must be aware of its magical properties. Diggory and Polly, though, along with those first others, did enter Narnia through external means ( the rings ), as did the Telmarine ancestors years later. However, the children redeemed themselves, when tasked to provide that which would keep Jadis at bay for a time.

5 Perhaps such magic as was contained in the rings or that worked its way into creating portals, or gaps, was of a dark, invasive nature, that Aslan sought to avoid when creating Narnia, as it was capable of admitting wicked forces. ( Interestingly, apropos 𝘛𝘓𝘉, there is another theory somewhere that Aslan did not approve of travel through means of the rings, and hence pulled the characters out of the world before they could do so ... )

6 Keeping all of this in mind, would it be too much of a stretch to suppose that the stable-door was in a very literal sense the most perfect entrance to the 'Real Narnia', and by extension the 'Real Earth', and other such worlds, and that Aslan had been at pains to seal any extant portals, and to create this wondrous, naturally-interconnected ( across mountains ) world, with the stable-doorway ( stable, in more than one sense ? ) to ensure, once for all that it remains free of evil, and contain everything good from all time. Therefore, the moment when it became active, the door, sort of, by default, excluded everything manifestly false, and therefore only evil was left outside, as Narnia was within all along.

7 The destruction we witness might simply be to ensure that any traces of Narnia might not remain in order that it might not spur another such fracture in an imperfect Earth, and admit and trap anyone unawares.

8 Coming to 𝘛𝘓𝘉, then, the state of events might well have been that there have taken place numerous such secret influxes of beings from several worlds over time, and that Narnia's very fabric is torn apart by strife, and conflicting loyalties. This is what has caused King Tirian to ask for help.

9 Now, the Narnian friends have embarked on their course of action, with the rings in possession, and then the railway incident takes place - Aslan, then quickly rescues all of them ( the ones He has deemed worthy of entering Narnia ; not that Susan isn't, only that He doesn't wish to impose His will on her, but more of that below ) and they enter Narnia, truly. This does not mean He had any hand in the accident. He did what He could to mitigate circumstances.

10 Perhaps the railway accident is such that no fatalities occur and that the other passengers are perhaps injured or flung in areas to prevent serious harm. The Pevensies's parents are also pulled into the 'Real' world, as unlike before ( with Narnia, beyond a certain age or set of experiences, one could not return ) it was possible to learn something at any age in this new place, and maybe they were curious and had hence accompanied the others.

11 That is why it would appear that all of the cast of characters from previous stories are seen gambolling about this new place, as this truly is a new experience for them, having perhaps crossed into it across the mountain tops from whatever realm they once inhabited. And Peter, shutting the stable-door would seem to indicate that, at last, all such chinks between worlds have been sealed. 

12 And, finally, Susan perhaps truly wished to approach her experiences in Narnia a bit differently, and that gradually, over time. It isn't easy for everybody to believe wholeheartedly, and therefore Susan might obsess over what might be labelled 'superficial', but there is a sense of attainment of beauty there, too - more tangible, more easily controlled and not lost to memory like her time in Narnia.

In 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘦 Susan and her siblings transition into their childhood selves and clothing after returning through the wardrobe. They must have left their royal outfits behind. In 𝘗𝘊, Susan and the others are at a platform when pulled into Narnia. In 𝘛𝘓𝘉 Aslan ensures that Peter and the others are dressed differently when they show up. It could be conceived that their original clothing, the rings and such were left behind ? Perhaps these are signs that Aslan would expect Susan to spot and understand exactly where everybody vanished to and turned up at. Given the erratic nature of passage of comparative time sequences between worlds, she may have been informed by the lot that they planned to make contact with Narnia again. As for Aslan mentioning that 'there was a railway accident and...' it might be precisely to reassure them that Susan had not been excluded or left behind. Also, the term 'Shadowlands' conveys vagueness, and to all the world, they'd be 'missing persons', or 'lost in the shadows of time' after a while and hence presumed dead. After all, Reepicheep, Eustace and Jill have allowed for an active glimpse into a world beyond Narnia in previous books. This incident just might have also provided a way for the rings to be lost, or even destroyed in the crash, thus not facilitating further travel. Though, one cannot be certain, as Andrew Ketterley managed to preserve the mysterious dust with those rings, and we aren't really told just what this powder really is.

Anyway, I'm truly sorry for being rambling and incoherent, but I just had to get this down. I have attempted to think of the series as a whole narrative, but please do let me know what I've missed and what doesn't fit.

for instance:

1. When Peter fights Maugrim in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe she thought it was an allusion to the “Peter and the Wolf” folk tale. (Beyond the name, I’m not sure there is much similarity here.)

2. When the mice eat the chords that bind Aslan to the stone table, she insisted this was an allusion to “The Lion and the mouse” folk story. (To the ending where the mouse eats through the chords of the net where the lion is trapped by the hunter.)

3. When Reepicheep has his tail cut off at the end of Prince Caspian, she said this was an allusion to the nursery rhymes “Three Blind Mice”.

4. I have heard other people say that Prince Caspian is an allusion to Hamlet (though I hear this claim for any story about a Prince whose father was murdered and had the throne usurped, so I feel this is pretty loose).

My question was does anyone think these allusions were intended by Lewis and if so are there any others?

Why don't the Pevensies have psychological trauma?Like, Peter and Edmund saw and participated in a real war.Lucy and Susan literally witnessed Aslan's death. Shouldn't they have some kind of psychological trauma?How can one explain the fact that they avoided any psychological problems, having witnessed not entirely pleasant events?

All the best to everyone.

(For moders:Sorry, I probably  chose wrong topic, if possible, edit it)

(Thank you! We've moved it here to Talk About Narnia. Varna, TAN moderator)

“Haa-a-arrh!” roared Aslan, half rising from his throne; and his great mouth opened wider and wider and the roar grew louder and louder, and the Witch, after staring for a moment with her lips wide apart, picked up her skirts and fairly ran for her life.

U.S.:

"Wow!" roared Aslan half rising from his throne; and his great mouth opened wider and wider and the roar grew louder and louder, and the Witch, after staring for a moment with her lips wide apart, picked up her skirts and fairly ran for her life.

So…why on earth was this changed? I much prefer the original, the American one is just strange.

(Not the only change for the worse the American editions had, though; renaming Maugrim as “Fenris Ulf” was also a bad decision imo.)