Posted on by TracyC

Last Battle

The Chronicles of Narnia

Last Battle by C.S. Lewis, 1956.

This is the last book in The Chronicles of Narnia series, and this is the book that shows the final days of the land of Narnia.

In Narnia, a wily old ape called Shift lives with a donkey called Puzzle. Shift is more clever than Puzzle and often tricks Puzzle into doing all his work for him. One day, they find an old lion skin in a pool. They think that it probably belonged to a non-talking lion that a hunter killed, but talking animals still show respect to lions because of Aslan. Puzzle thinks they should give the old lion skin a decent burial, but Shift says that he will use the lion skin to make a winter coat for Puzzle. Puzzle doesn’t think that sounds like a good idea because he wouldn’t like to have people thinking that he was trying to look like Aslan. Shift says that sounds like nonsense and makes the lion skin into a coat for Puzzle. Of course, sly Shift has a more diabolical plan in mind.

When Puzzle tries the coat on, he does look like a lion. Shift says that Puzzle looks like Aslan, and if people saw him, he could tell them what to do, and everyone would do it. Puzzle is alarmed at the idea, but Shift insists that Puzzle pretend to be Alsan with him advising him about what to say. Puzzle worries that Aslan would be angry, but Shift isn’t concerned because Aslan hasn’t appeared for a long time. At that moment, there is a thunder clap and a small earthquake. Puzzle is convinced that’s a warning sign from Aslan, but Shift tries to convince Puzzle that it’s actually a sign of approval.

The last king of Narnia is King Tirian. He is a young man, and he has a unicorn friend named Jewel. Word has reached him that Aslan has reappeared in the land, and he is very excited. A centaur wants him that this story much be false because the centaurs study the stars and have not seen the signs that should precede Aslan’s arrival. He is sure that the story about Aslan appearing is an evil lie. Jewel says that it’s difficult to say because Aslan is known to not be a tame lion, and that would make him unpredictable.

Before they reach any conclusions, a dryad stumbles toward them, wailing because the talking trees are being cut down, and her kind are dying. She falls dead at their feet because her own tree is cut down in the forest. The king is appalled and horrified! He insists that he and Jewel immediately go to the forest and find out what is happening and put a stop to it. The centaur urges caution, but the king doesn’t want to wait, telling the centaur to return to Cair Paravel to assemble his troops and follow him to the forest.

When King Tirian and Jewel come to a river, they are horrified to see a river rat with a newly-built raft, floating logs down the river. The king demands to know what he’s doing and by whose authority. The river rat says that he’s taking the logs to sell in another kingdom and that he’s doing it because Aslan the lion commanded it. King Tirian and Jewel find that alarming and difficult to believe, so they continue on to the forest. There, they see men from another country, known to be cruel, chopping down trees. They have also enslaved talking horses to help them. When the king and Jewel witness a couple of men abusing a horse, they kill them on the spot. They ask the horse how he was taken captive, and the horse says that it was at the command of Aslan.

The other men and talking animals realize that the king and Jewel have killed two of their people and turn on them. The king jumps on Jewel, and they run away, but they feel guilty about the men they killed. King Tirian realizes that this impulsive killing was murder because they had not needed to defend themselves. They also worry about whether they have violated Aslan’s command. They are not sure whether the Aslan who commanded these terrible deeds is the real Aslan. None of what has happened sounds like anything Aslan would want to happen, but Aslan is known to be wild and unpredictable, so they can’t be sure. What if they have become sinners for interfering with some grand plan of Aslan’s? Although they are afraid and feel guilty, they decide that the only thing they can do is surrender themselves to the horrible band and ask to be taken before Aslan, both to see if this Aslan is the real Aslan, and if necessary, submit themselves for punishment for killing the men, even if it means their lives.

When they are captured by the men, they are taken before Shift the ape. Shift has dressed himself as a king with a paper crown, and he tells everyone that he’s a human, just that he looks like an ape because he’s very old. He refuses to let anyone see Aslan up close, saying that he will deliver any messages Aslan has for them. He threatens the other animals with dire consequences if they don’t obey all of “Alsan’s” commands. He says that Aslan will turn the country into something amazing with lots of oranges and bananas (the things Shift wants more than anything) and roads and whips and kennels. The other animals try to say that they don’t want all those things, but Shift says that they should want what Aslan wants. A small lamb wants to know why they have to work with the men of the other nation when they know that they worship a different god, one who requires human sacrifices, instead of Aslan. Shift tells the lamb he’s stupid and these other people worship Aslan as well, just under a different name. Some of the animals are fooled by this logic, but others protest. Shift has a cat who protests taken away.

The mice are nice to the captive King Tirian, bringing him food and water. They want to help him, but they are afraid to help him too much because they are afraid of opposing Aslan. King Tirian asks them if it is the real Aslan, and the mice think it is. They say that “Aslan” is in the stable. As King Tirian watches “Alsan” appear by a bonfire on the hill, he notices that the “lion” doesn’t move like a lion should, and when he thinks about what the ape said about Alsan being the same as the cruel god who wants sacrifices, he sees through the fraud. He thinks about the past king and queens of Narnia and calls out to the Pevensies to return to Narnia and help him. To his surprise, he has a vision of the Pevensies at a dinner table, and he realizes that they can see him. The High King Peter calls out to him to speak, but then, the vision fades. Still, he has managed to let the Pevensies know that Narnia is in danger and needs them one more time.

The next morning, a strange boy and girl appear before him, and he recognizes them from his vision because they were at dinner with the Pevensies. The boy is the Pevensies’ cousin, Eustace, and his friend, Jill. Eustace and Jill untie King Tirian and help him escape. When they are safe, Eustace and Jill explain some things about their past adventures. King Tirian recognizes them as the children who rescued an ancestor of his. They also explain to him about the magic rings (which were introduced in The Magician’s Nephew and which they retrieved in his book). They were going to use the rings to reach King Tirian in Narnia, but they were on a train on their way to reach them when they felt a terrible jerk and suddenly found themselves in Narnia anyway.

With the past saviors of Narnia on his side, King Tirian recruits them to help him save Jewel. Jill finds Puzzle in the stable with the lion skin tied to him. She thinks that’s hilarious, but she convinces Puzzle to come with her. At first, King Tirian wants to kill Puzzle for his deception, but Jill persuades him not to because this situation isn’t Puzzle’s fault. Puzzle explains how Shift convinced him that Aslan wanted him to do this, and he says that he doesn’t know much about what’s been happening lately because Shift doesn’t let him out of the stable much. King Tirian agrees to spare Puzzle, and he is sure that many people will change their minds about Shift and what he’s been doing once they see Puzzle in his lion disguise.

King Tirian and the others begin showing Puzzle to everyone and explaining how Shift lied to them and tricked them. Some of the dwarfs find Puzzle as laughable as Jill did, but the humans from the cruel country are angry and fight them. They end up having to kill one of them. Some of the dwarfs disbelieve King Tirian and the children. The dwarfs explain that, yes, they see that the ape’s story about Aslan was a lie, but since they’ve been fooled once already, they’re not prepared to believe anybody else about anything. They don’t want to believe that King Tirian serves the real Aslan or that the real Aslan sent the children to Narnia to help. They don’t want to hear anything more about Aslan being real from anyone, and after the ape king, they don’t want anymore kings of any kind. They know that they were used by the ape, but what’s to say that King Tirian didn’t rescue them from the ape just to use them for some selfish purpose of his own. Having been fools once, they don’t want to risk being fools again by believing in anyone or anything else again. King Tirian and his allies realize that one fake Aslan, even one that was such an obvious fake, has damaged everyone’s faith in the real one because the fraud damaged everyone’s trust. The dwarfs say that they will now be entirely for themselves first and won’t listen to anyone else.

King Tirian thought that once people saw the truth, they would go back to being the way they were before, but he had underestimated the ways people can react when they find out they’ve been tricked. Not everyone will agree that they’ve been tricked, even when presented evidence, and even those who agree that they’ve been tricked may not have faith in the people telling them the truth. Also, now that the ape’s ruse has been exposed, others have seen how trickery can help them gain power and influence over others. Before King Tirian and his friends can tell others about the fake Aslan, Shift’s cronies start spreading their own fake stories about King Tirian and Aslan. Shift accuses Puzzle of being the deceiver because he’s the one who is wearing the lion skin, and it’s difficult to prove that Shift was the one who started all this in the first place. (What’s the best way to survive a witch hunt? Be the one who starts it. Bonus points if you can accuse other people of starting it later and blame them for victimizing you.) When King Tirian and the children try to tell people the truth, they’ve already heard so many lies and conflicting stories, many either aren’t convinced of the truth or are just so confused that they don’t know what to think. Some people realize that Shift has been playing them with the entire time and turn against him, while others still listen to Shift’s explanations and try to follow the convoluted logic and the scary things he promises them if they refuse to listen to them. Some people ally with King Tirian, while others stay loyal to Shift and his cronies, and others don’t want to trust either side and prefer to just try to look out for themselves.

When news reaches them that their enemies have already taken Cair Paravel and killed everyone there, they realize that the end of Narnia is close at hand. There is only one thing left to do: face down the enemy in a final battle for truth and the very souls of Narnia.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

I was not looking forward to this book because I don’t like apocalyptic stories, and it was difficult for me to get through. I knew that this story would be about the end of Narnia, and in the Biblical tradition, the end of Narnia’s days are full of horrible things. It’s depressing to go into a story knowing that horrible things are going to happen, followed by the end of the world, at least a world that we’ve come to like through the other books in the series. I also knew that most of the characters we’ve come to know and love get killed in this story. Still, I decided to suffer through the story just to finish off the series and discuss my feelings about it.

It is also important to realize that the last battle of Narnia isn’t really about armies facing each other so much as the battle for truth against falseness, a subject of much debate in real life. Readers of this story are in on the objective truth of the situation along with our main characters, and they see how their enemies play tricks with lies and half-truths to manipulate other people. Their aim is to confuse people so they don’t know what to think, and then, everyone will follow them because they act like they are certain they are on the side of right. People who are insecure and uncertain in themselves will follow people who act confident, regardless of whether that confidence is real or deserved or not. That is the major theme that runs through the entire book. I think it’s an important lesson, but one that also makes me angry because I have seen people doing these things in real life, especially in recent years. I don’t really think that the end of our world is immediately at hand, although I’ve seen some people speculating about that because of things that have been happening.

Life is Unpredictable, and So Is History When You Live It

I was truck by the scene with Tirian remembering past glories of Narnia and its rulers, when there were bad times, but things went right in the end. He thinks how things like that don’t happen anymore, and it seems like there is no happy ending to this story. It reminds me of people who feel nostalgic and patriotic about things like World War II, when the Allied nations united and defeated a great evil and how it seemed like all of society agreed on the vision of victory and achieved it. Some people now, in the 21st century, almost seem like they wish they could return to those days. The only reason why those times provide any comfort now is because we are looking at them in hindsight.

We know what eventually happened and that the world wasn’t destroyed, but the people who actually lived during those times didn’t know that. They had no guarantees that they were going to survive, many of them didn’t. Many people died during WWII, in combat, in bombings, in concentration camps, etc. I’m sure that none of it seemed glorious at the time. At times, it must have seemed like the end of world to the survivors. Knowing the resolution of that conflict gives the false impression that people back then knew what outcome they wanted and were united behind that vision. They weren’t. There were some people who felt like the Nazis were in the right or at least couldn’t be opposed. Even in the United States, there was a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. (Video footage on YouTube, courtesy of PBS.) If someone had told the people at that rally on the day the rally was held what was going to eventually happen, they probably would have felt that the defeat of the Nazis would be the end of the world because they were convinced that they were the ones in the right and everyone else was in the wrong. Whether they still felt that way by the time the war actually ended is debatable, but from where they stood at that moment, what was best for the rest of the world would have seemed terrible to them.

Even in Britain, there was sympathy and support for the Nazis among the aristocracy, like the Mitfords and even members of the royal family. C. S. Lewis would have been aware of people like that during his time, and the Mitfords are a good example because they were well-known for their scandalous political views. (P. G. Wodehouse’s character, Roderick Spode, was a parody on the husband of one of the Mitford sisters, who was the leader of the British Union of Fascists during the 1930s.) Their support for Nazis changed some of their lives for the worst, and some of them probably wouldn’t have wanted everyone to remember their earlier stances after the war was over, but while the entire situation was unfolding, they were certainly very sure of themselves. They may have thought that they knew what they wanted and what was going to happen, but outcomes were never guaranteed for anyone.

Life is unpredictable, like an untamed lion. While many of us have a sense of when things are going wrong or seem unreasonable, we’re not always right, and even when we are, it can be difficult convince others of that if they think they have reason to believe otherwise. The truth is that we have never had any guarantees at any point in our history. While we like to think that God will carry us through any situation, bad things do happen along the way, often to good or normal people. Outcomes are not completely assured for anybody. Every disaster, while not bringing about the total end of the world just yet, have been the end of days for some individual people, who didn’t live through them.

The only moral I can think of from that is not to envy people from the past too much. Their problems don’t seem as bad now because we know that the survivors survived, and the world went on. But, the world didn’t go on for everyone caught up in those situations, and survival wasn’t guaranteed for everyone in the middle of the crisis. Even those who did survive in the end couldn’t know for sure whether they would or not while they were struggling along. They didn’t even always have the comfort of knowing absolutely, for certain that they were on the side of right or not not or if they were carrying out their missions in the right way. While I’m sure that they tried to do what they thought was right in spite of everything, there were voices in their ears trying to tell them that they were in the wrong and it was time to give up at every step and stage. Of course, I would argue that Nazi supporters were the ones who really needed to be told that and that they should have taken it to heart, but while the situation was in motion, everyone just had to keep playing out their chosen parts to the end. You can’t rewrite people or situations while they’re in the middle of writing their own histories themselves.

The same is also true of the rest of us. I’ve said before that history is not written by “winners” but by writers, and actions are a form of writing history. We all do it, all the time. Nothing is guaranteed for us. Whatever you stand for and whatever sides you pick to follow are the parts you’ve written for yourself by your choices. Our outcomes will all be determined by the parts we’ve chosen to play and the way we’ve written them for ourselves to act out, and unfortunately, what others choose to act out upon us. We can’t control everyone’s decisions, only our own, and that’s part of what makes life and history unpredictable.

“Fake News!”

When C. S. Lewis wrote the Narnia books, he had already lived through WWII and knew the power of propaganda. From the beginning of the story, propaganda, or more simply, lies, play a major role. It starts with Shift’s plan to put his donkey stooge into a lion costume and use him to get bananas and oranges (or, more generally, wealth that can be used to buy these things). However, along the way, Shift himself becomes a stooge for other people who see the power of his lies and want to use lies for their own purposes. As the situation spirals out of control, the concept of truth itself loses meaning for people, and many people struggle with what to believe. Oh, gee, where have I heard that before about a million times over the last several years? They think they’ve gamed the system, but their own system of lies have gamed them, and none of them are bright enough to notice until it’s far too late. From there, it’s just a slow, excruciating train wreck to watch. (By the end of that book, the metaphor is disturbingly real.)

Yeah, I know that’s a political statement these days, but if you recognize what I’m criticizing without being told directly, you must know what I’m complaining about and why. (I’m sure I’ve complained about this before somewhere on this site because I never suffer anything in silence, and I’m my only editor.) In the story, when King Tirion tries to reveal the truth about the Aslan donkey hoax to everyone, it proves harder than he expected because everyone has been so inundated with lies that they either don’t know what to think or just don’t want to think anything about anything anymore. The villains in the story start spreading their lies faster than our heroes can explain the truth to everyone, and all the villains have to do is to accuse our heroes of being the liars or let others think that they’re just as bad as everyone else telling tales. (“Fake news!”, “Election fraud!”, “All politicians lie” and “Who cares if our favorite ones lie when it benefits us and makes us feel good?” – I could go on and on, but what would be the point? People who have seen the problems with all of this already understand, and those who say they don’t have already made a decision.) Everyone is left to make up their own mind, which wouldn’t be so bad except what some of them decide to do is to let the villains make up their minds for them. When they don’t know who or what to trust, they trust in what they’re accustomed to, and some of them have become accustomed to listening to Shift and his pals because they were the ones who started the whole situation and have been yelling the loudest since.

Puzzle the donkey keeps saying that the reason why he keeps letting Shift talk him into doing things is that he knows he’s not as clever as Shift, so he thinks that he’d better let Shift make the decisions. It’s not unlike those people who assume that someone with a lot of money or a high position must have gotten there through brains. It’s not always true. Sometimes, they don’t have to be bright or talented if they just convince other people that they’re not. Puzzle is sure that Shift is smarter than he is, but actually, Shift is just more manipulative. Yes, he knows how to sew, but it’s the only talent he uses other than lying and manipulation. He wouldn’t have even half of what he’s got if he didn’t routinely talk Puzzle and others into doing things for him or giving him things. Ultimately, he’s a conman. Of course, most of the reason why Puzzle thinks he can’t be clever or competent by himself is that Shift has been telling him that and insisting on making the decisions. Puzzle doesn’t have the confidence to stand up to him, even when he knows that Shift is asking him to so something wrong. Eustace gets frustrated with Puzzle’s attitude and tells him that he wouldn’t have to worry so much about how clever he is if he just focused on being as clever as he knows how to be. If you know better, do better! It’s a Christian concept, and the Narnia stories have Christian themes. Eustace is trying to get Puzzle to listen to those doubts that he has about Shift and what Shift wants, to take them seriously, and recognize that he can say “no” to Shift when he’s asking for something unreasonable.

So, what can you actually do in a situation where you’re not sure who’s telling the truth or what the best thing to do is? There are no hard and fast answers to that, but my answer is … don’t depend on hard and fast answers at all. Never be so married to any particular stance that it would be like ripping out a part of your soul to simply change your mind and change course. Again, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Be open to incoming information and feedback that lets you know how you’re doing and if you’re really understanding the situation correctly. The way I look at it, all humans are capable of being fooled, but those who aren’t afraid to back up or change their minds and are open to updating the information and understanding in their own minds are likely to spend less time continuing down a wrong course, even if they were wrong before.

Also, make sure that you have personal limits. Know when someone is pushing you to your limits or over them, and know when it’s time to back off. Puzzle the donkey has no boundaries whatsoever. Shift can talk him into anything, even things that are personally risky or harmful to him or downright immoral because, while there are things that Puzzle thinks are morally wrong, there is nothing in Puzzle’s moral view that is so far wrong that it would cause Puzzle to stop listening to the person telling him what to do. The only thing Puzzle is sure of is that Shift is smarter than he is, and he clings to that in spite of all evidence to the contrary. In the end, Puzzle is a major part of what brings down all of Narnia because he was the one person who could have stopped its destruction before it started, if he had only said no when he had misgivings. He didn’t invent the scheme, but he’s the one who chose to carry it out, even when he really knew he shouldn’t.

Trains Crash, Everyone Dies

This whole book was like a slow train wreck. It’s well-written, but it’s a well-written slow train wreck. There is the figurative train wreck, where everything spirals out of control in Narnia, and the world ends. Then, there is the literal train wreck that kills most of the characters we’ve come to know and love.

Eustace and Jill die in England at the moment they enter Narnia to help Tirian. Since time in Narnia works differently from time in our world, they don’t find out that they are dead or in the middle of being killed in a train accident until they reunite with the rest of their friends in the “true” Narnia, which is part of Aslan’s Country, which represents heaven. Although the Narnia they all knew before is gone, all the best parts of it and the friends that they knew from past eras of Narnia in their previous adventures are all alive again in True Narnia. The True Narnia is also one of all the “true” versions of all of the other worlds, including ours. The Pevensie children’s parents were also on the train when it crashed, so they appear in the True England that is also part of Aslan’s Country.

The only young Pevensie who isn’t killed in the railway accident on Earth is Susan, who was more worldly than the others and wasn’t on the train. We don’t see her reaction to the deaths of her parents and siblings or learn what the rest of her life on Earth is like. Her siblings say that she has stopped believing in Narnia, remembering it only as a game that the siblings used to play. Her main interests now are parties and fashion, much like other young women. The other characters think that she has become “silly” and has lost sight of what’s important. She may have, but this part of the book gets a lot of criticism because, from the description we have of her, she is just going through a normal phase of life where she wants to have fun, make friends, and date. She might be kind of silly in the way she’s going about it, but by itself, it’s not something abnormal or deserving of scorn. As I said, we also don’t know what the rest of Susan’s life will be like. I think there is an implication that she will someday come to True Narnia, too, because she was also once a Queen of Narnia, and once someone is a King or Queen in Narnia, they will always be a King or Queen there.

The rest of the characters who died in the train accident and are now in True Narnia spend the rest of eternity exploring Aslan’s Country and having endless adventures. It’s framed as a positive because it means that they get to be young forever in the True Narnia, having amazing adventures with the people they love, but it’s still upsetting to me. It bothers me because it occurs to me that they were destined for True Narnia eventually in any case, and I would have liked for them to have lived their full lives on Earth to old age first. Yes, True Narnia is wonderful, and they will get to enjoy eternity there, but it just seems to me kind of sad that they couldn’t have put it off for a few more decades anyway. Polly and Digory are elderly when they are killed, and Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had the chance to enjoy their marriage and children before the accident, and it just seems like a shame that the young Pevensies didn’t have those opportunities. It’s also sad to think of Susan, mourning the loss of her entire family.

Another Problem

One other thing that bothered me about this book is that the Calormenes are described as being darker physically than the human Narnians. During the final battle of the book, Narnians jeer at them and call them “Darkies.” I don’t like the idea that that the light-colored people are described as being the good ones and the dark ones as the bad ones, especially not when paired with a known racial slur. These people are set in another world, but it just echoes the racism of this world too much for me.

Posted on by TracyC

The Magician’s Nephew

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis, 1955.

Although this is not the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia, it takes place earlier in time than the other books and explains much of what happens in the later books. It starts in London in the late 1800s. No exact date is given, but the story says that it’s when Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastable Children were hunting for treasure (a reference to a Victorian children’s book by E. Nesbit). In fact, the characters make many other references to popular literature of the period throughout the story.

A girl named Polly Plummer is living in London when a boy called Digory Kirke comes to live with his aunt and uncle in the house next door. Digory is very unhappy because he used to live in the countryside and have his own pony, and he doesn’t like the city. The reason why he has to live with his aunt and uncle is that his father needs to go to India, and his mother is very ill and may die, something that has Digory very worried. He also tells Polly that his aunt and uncle are very strange, and it makes him nervous. His uncle spends most of his time in his study at the top of the house, a room where Digory is forbidden to go, and Digory thinks that there might be some terrible secret there. He once heard what sounded like a scream from that room. There are times when his uncle starts to talk about something while they’re eating together, but Digory’s aunt (his uncle’s sister, not his wife) keeps interrupting him and stopping the conversation before it even starts. The children speculate that Digory’s uncle’s secret might be that he’s keeping a mad wife in the attic (like in Jane Eyre) or maybe he’s involved with pirates, like in Treasure Island. Polly thinks all this secrecy and mysteriousness sounds exciting, but Diory says she might not think so if she had to live in a house like that. His uncle is a sinister person, and Digory thinks he might be mad. After a fashion, Digory is correct.

Digory and Polly become friends and play together over the summer. The weather is frequently rainy, so they spend most of their time inside, exploring their own houses. Their houses are part of a row of adjoined houses, and Polly discovers an attic crawl space that links all of the houses together. The children realize that they can use this crawl space to access other houses in the block. They don’t want to trespass into an occupied house, but there’s an empty house beyond the one where Digory’s aunt and uncle live that’s been empty for years. The children are curious about that house and think maybe it’s haunted, so they decide to use the crawl space to access the empty house. Unfortunately, the children accidentally come out of the crawl space in Digory’s uncle’s secret study.

When Digory’s Uncle Andrew catches the children in his study, he locks them in, saying that children are exactly what he needs for his experiment, and this time, his sister can’t interfere. The children are frightened and ask to leave, but Uncle Andrew offers Polly one of the yellow rings he has on a table. Polly can’t resist touching one of the yellow rings, and she suddenly vanishes from the room. Digory angrily demands to know where Polly went, and Uncle Andrew explains that this is his experiment.

Uncle Andrew calls himself a scholar, but he’s also a magician, and he’s been experimenting with dangerous magic. When he was young, he had a godmother named Mrs. Le Fay. Mrs. Le Fay was a somewhat disreputable person who had been to prison (for things that Uncle Andrew doesn’t want to explain), but she was always nice to Andrew because they shared common interests. Their interests were magic and esoteric knowledge. Mrs. Le Fay was one of the few living humans who had some fairy blood in her, so she was Andrew’s “fairy godmother.” Before she died, she gave Andrew a strange box and told him to destroy it using a magical ritual after her death. Of course, Andrew broke his promise and kept the box to study it. Uncle Andrew thinks of himself as a great scholar and researcher, and things like promises and ethics and even the welfare of other human beings are not going to stand in the way of his pursuit of arcane knowledge.

After spending considerable time studying the box, he realizes that it was made in the ancient land of Atlantis, but more than that, the contents, a set of yellow and green rings, came from another dimension, another world in another universe. Uncle Andrew realized that the rings would allow a person to access that other dimension. The yellow rings would send people to the other dimension, and the green ones (he’s pretty sure) allow them to return from that dimension. Naturally, he thought of himself as too important to risk in the experiment, so he needed to send someone else instead. He tried it at first with guinea pigs, but he couldn’t tell the guinea pigs what to do to come back, so he realized that he needed to send humans. Now that he has tricked Polly into going, he says that the only way Polly can come back is if Digory goes, too, and brings her one of the green rings that she can use to return. Digory is angry at his uncle for trapping them in this way, but since he knows his uncle won’t rescue Polly, he agrees to go find her.

After using one of the yellow rings himself, Digory finds himself coming out of a pool in a strange forest. Polly is there, but something about this forest muddles their minds so they have trouble remembering who they are, where they’re from, and what they’re supposed to do. After talking to each other awhile, they remember. They’re about to return to their own world by putting on their green rings and stepping into the pool they both came from when Digory realizes that there are other pools around them that could lead them to other worlds. Digory is excited and wants to explore these other worlds, but Polly sensibility insists that they carefully mark the pool that will take them home and test it to make sure that it will allow them to return before they try going to a different world. They change rings before they are fully in their own world again, so they won’t immediately return to Uncle Andrew before they’ve fully understood what these other places are and what they’re about.

When the children try entering a different world, they find the ruins of an ancient palace and city. There is no one around, and it looks like it’s been dead or abandoned for ages. Exploring the palace, they find a collection of statues in royal clothes and crowns. Some of the statues seem to have kind and wise faces, while others are cruel and distressed. Then, the children see a little bell and a hammer with a warning on the bell in a strange language that the children are somehow able to understand. Polly thinks that they should leave the bell alone, but Digory feels a strong urge to strike the bell and see what happens. Digory grabs Polly’s arm to stop her from leaving this ruined world and strikes the bell. Almost immediately, the children realize that this was a terrible choice.

The bell wakes one of the statues, a tall and beautiful but cruel woman who says that she is Jadis, the last queen of this world. Digory finds her impressive at first, but that feeling turns to horror as she tells them her story. Jadis says that she and her sister were fighting for the throne, and her sister’s forces were winning. As she stood on the brink of defeat, Jadis used a terrible spell that immediately killed everyone in their world except herself, including her sister, her forces, and all of the citizens. Jadis says that the citizens served no other purpose than to serve her anyway, since she is rightful queen, and she blames her sister for not simply giving her the crown when she demanded it. After everyone was dead in her world, Jadis put herself into a magical sleep until someone came to wake her up. When she has finished telling the story, Jadis commands the children to take her to their world so she can rule them instead.

Polly and Digory try to use their magic rings to escape from this terrible queen, but Jadis grabs hold of them and is brought to Earth anyway. Although Jadis’s magical powers don’t seem to work on Earth as they did in her world, she is still unnaturally strong and formidable. She is as cruel, selfish, and vain as Uncle Andrew, but she could easily wipe the floor with him, if she wanted to. Uncle Andrew’s initial joy at his experiment being an unqualified success that actually bought someone from another world into his world turns to panic when he realizes that Jadis is more than he can control and regards him as no more important than one of his guinea pigs was to him. Digory apologizes to Polly for ignoring her warnings and waking Jadis, and the children try to figure out how they can get rid of her before she can take over their world.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I didn’t read this book when I was a kid, but I’m glad I did as an adult because I enjoyed it, and I appreciated the explanations behind some of the things that happen or exist in the other stories. Digory Kirke is actually the old professor the Pevensie children go to stay with in the country when they are evacuated from London during WWII in the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We also learn that he and Polly actually witness the creation of Narnia when they try to get Jadis back to her own, crumbling world. Jadis was inadvertently responsible for the lamppost that the Pevensie children find in the woods when they first visit Narnia. Jadis also becomes the White Witch who tries to make herself Queen of Narnia. At the end of the book, we also learn the origins of the magic wardrobe and what makes it so special.

There are Biblical themes throughout the story, but especially around the creation of Narnia and the mission that Aslan gives Digory to make up for accidentally bringing Jadis to Narnia. Narnia’s creation isn’t quite like the Biblical creation story. In this book, Aslan the Lion sings Narnia into existence. However, there is a pairing up of animals that almost mimics the pairs of animals being chosen for the Ark in the Noah story.

After Digory admits that he is the one who brought Jadis to this new world, Aslan sends him to fetch an apple from a distant garden, from which Aslan says he will plant a tree that will protect Narnia for years. The apple and the garden mimic the story of the Garden of Eden. The garden has a fence around it with a warning about trespassing and stealing fruit for selfish purposes. Digory retrieves the apple that Aslan asks for, and he is tempted to take one himself, but before he can go much further with that thought, he catches Jadis in the garden, stealing an apple for herself. When Jadis eats the apple, it turns her into the pale witch she becomes. Jadis says that she will now live forever and never age. She tries to convince Digory to eat the apple he has picked or give it to his ill mother, but Digory successfully resists the temptation. Aslan tells Digory that it is good that he resisted the temptation because, while the fruit would grant eternal life to whoever eats it, it comes with a heavy price if the fruit is obtained through dishonest means. Jadis/the White Witch is granted unnaturally long life, but she is never the same again. Aslan does give Digory the means to heal his mother before he returns home.

I really liked the children’s hideout in the crawl space that spans the houses. They use the crawl space and its relationship to the houses to explain how there can be parallel worlds that can be connected, but I like the setting so much that I would have liked to see a children’s mystery or adventure story in a similar setting. I found myself wondering what would have happened if the children had managed to reach the empty house they wanted to enter and explore. They never did because they got into Uncle Andrew’s study by mistake, but I think it’s fun to imagine what they would have done if they had. Maybe they would have turned it into a secret hideout, or maybe they would have encountered criminals who had already turned it into their hideout. Maybe someone would eventually buy the house and move in. The whole setup offers possibilities.

Posted on by TracyC

Prince Caspian

The Chronicles of Narnia

Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis, 1951.

This book starts with the four Pevensie children from the previous book in the series heading to their boarding schools by train. The girls are going to one school, and the boys are going to another. As they’re waiting for their trains at the station, they suddenly feel themselves being pulled and dragged by some unseen force. They feel like it’s magic of some kind, and they all join hands to stay together. The next thing they know, they’re in a forest. They wonder if they might have returned to Narnia.

They explore the area and realize that they are on an island. When they search for food, they find an abandoned apple orchard and the ruins of a castle. Something about the ruins seems strangely familiar to the children. When Susan finds a golden chess piece, they realize that the castle is the ruins of Cair Paravel, the castle where they used to live as kings and queens during their previous time in Narnia. The children are sad that the castle is now ruins. They’re also puzzled at how it can be ruins when they last saw it intact, and when they lived there, the castle was on a peninsula, not an island. Even though their previous adventures only took place a year before for them, it looks like many years, maybe centuries, have passed in Narnia.

They find their way into their old treasure room and discover that it is undisturbed. They leave the jewels and riches there, but they find the special presents that they were given during their last adventure and take them because they may be helpful during this adventure. The one thing they can’t find is Susan’s magic horn, which can be used to summon help in desperate times. Susan realizes that she had it with her during the stag hunt right before they returned to their own world from Narnia, and it was probably lost in the woods.

When they rescue a dwarf from some men holding him captive, the dwarf thanks them. He says that they were planning to drown him as a criminal, but he doesn’t fully explain. Instead, he offers to catch some fish for them all to have breakfast because all the children have are apples. When the children mention that there is firewood at the castle, he is amazed. He’s heard stories about an old castle there, but he wasn’t sure that it was real. The rumors are that the forest around the castle ruins is haunted.

After they eat, the dwarf explains that he is a messenger for Caspian, the king of Narnia. He then qualifies that by explaining that Caspian should be the king. The old Narnians recognize him as the rightful king, although he is considered one of the new Narnians himself. Prince Caspian was an orphan raised in the castle of his Uncle Miraz. He was mostly raised by his nurse and wasn’t very close to his aunt and uncle, but his uncle acknowledged him as his heir because he had no children.

According to the dwarf’s story, Prince Caspian has a fascination for the old days of Narnia from his nurse’s tales, when there were fauns and talking animals in Narnia, but his uncle says those are just fairy tale stories for little kids. The Pevensie children realize that the legends that Prince Caspian was told as a young child were about them and their adventures. People still tell stories about them, but not everyone believes them.

Miraz forbids Caspian from believing in those stories or talking about them again and sends away Caspian’s nurse. Instead, he hires a tutor for Caspian called Doctor Cornelius. Caspian misses his nurse, but he enjoys his lessons with Doctor Cornelius. From Doctor Cornelius, he learns that his ancestors and other humans came to Narnia from another land and conquered it. However, Doctor Cornelius is reluctant to explain exactly whom his ancestors conquered. Doctor Cornelius quietly admits that Miraz forbids anyone from talking about Old Narnia because it’s supposed to be a secret. Over time, Doctor Cornelius lets Caspian know the secrets of Old Narnia, which confirm to him that his nurse’s stories were true.

Caspian’s ancestors were the ones who silenced the taking animals and drove away or killed other races who inhabited Narnia. The reason why Miraz won’t let anybody talk about the history of Old Narnia and denies that other species once lived there is to cover up that his ancestors stole Narnia from its rightful inhabitants and that most of the humans are merely transplants to this land, not its rightful heirs. Doctor Cornelius reveals himself to be a dwarf, one of those few who still live in Narnia in secret. He is also part human, which is how he is able to pass for a human. He says that there are others there in disguise. Caspian feels like he should apologize to Doctor Cornelius, although he knows that what his ancestors did to the dwarves was not his fault. Doctor Cornelius says that apologies are not necessary, but he knows that Caspian will one day be king and can help the remaining Old Narnians who still live there, hiding from Miraz.

The stories about the woods around Cair Paravel being haunted were invented by Caspian’s ancestors to hide Narnia’s past and also because they want the forest to separate them from the sea. Caspian’s people fear the sea because, although they deny that Aslan exists, the legends all say that Aslan will return from across the sea. They fear the wrath that Aslan may visit on them for what they did to Narnia and its peoples. However, not all humans have this fear of Aslan and Old Narnia. Others, like Caspian, are fascinated and would like to see Narnia become more like its past self, with magic and talking animals and dwarves and fauns. As Caspian gets older, he realizes that many people in Narnia are unhappy with Miraz and the way he rules Narnia. He is a cruel king.

One night, while Caspian’s aunt is very ill, Doctor Cornelius wakes him and prepares him for a journey. He tells Caspian that he is not just the prince but the true king of Narnia. His father was the true king, and after Caspian’s parents were dead, Miraz took the throne for himself. Miraz murdered or exiled Caspian’s father’s old friends and supporters. Caspian was too small at the time to understand or have any memory of this, but now, Miraz is planning to murder Caspian. His aunt’s “illness” was actually childbirth, and now that she has given birth to a son, Miraz is planning to eliminate Caspian so his own son can be his heir with no opposition from the true heir. Doctor Cornelius says that Caspian has no other choice but to flee to another, friendly kingdom. To help him on his way, Doctor Cornelius gives him some food, a purse of gold, and Susan’s magic horn, an Old Narnian artifact found after she and her siblings disappeared from Narnia.

While Caspian is fleeing, he has an accident and is knocked unconscious. He is found by a dwarf and talking animals. They almost kill him as one of their enemies, but Caspian explains who he is and why Miraz wants to kill him. The dwarf still wants to kill him, but the badger realizes that Caspian is a hopeful sign. The golden age of Narnia was when human children ruled, and young Caspian’s belief in the Old Narnian stories and assertion that he has longed to meet Old Narnians like them are signs that he could be a true high king like King Peter. The badger says that he would be willing to follow King Caspian if he remains true to Old Narnia and its people.

Caspian is allowed to stay among the Old Narnians in hiding. He gradually makes friends with different species, and they begin to form a rebellion against Miraz. Doctor Cornelius finds Caspian and warns him that his uncle is searching for him. Caspian’s supporters convinced him that it was time to blow Susan’s horn to summon help, and that was how the Pevensie children were summoned back to Narnia.

The dwarf explaining all this to the Pevensie children is the same doubting dwarf who almost killed Caspian and ended up joining his supporters. The men trying to kill him were Miraz’s people. Trumpkin, the doubting dwarf, now doubts that the Pevensie children are the help they were hoping for. They are children again, not the great kings and queens they were when they left Narnia. The children aren’t too troubled by his doubts because they know who they are and the victories they have already achieved in Narnia. They have not lost all the skills they gained in Narnia before, and the more time they spend in Narnia, the more they become like the kings and queens they once were and still are. They outfit themselves from their old treasury and prepare to once again battle again evil in Narnia in support of Aslan.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including some in different languages).

My Reaction

The books in The Chronicles of Narnia are famously Christian allegories, and Christian themes continue through this book. There are people who are doubters, but those who remain faithful believers in Aslan (who represents Jesus in this series) are the ones who prevail in the end. Like Jesus, Aslan wants his followers to do what they can on their own but is often near to offer them strength, support, and hints about the right thing to do. However, some people are more perceptive to his guidance than others, especially Lucy, and there is a theme that runs through the story about belief in things from people who have not seen them directly and are relying on other people’s experiences. As Lucy has a greater capacity for perceiving Aslan, some other people have a greater capacity for general belief. Edmund has learned his lessons from the previous book. Feeling badly about his earlier doubting of Lucy and how he had once belittled her, he becomes her biggest supporter during times when she can see Aslan and others can’t, urging his older siblings to listen to her. Some people, including Peter and Susan, doubt whether Lucy has actually seen Aslan when they haven’t seen him himself. Trumpkin, the doubting dwarf, is the classic Doubting Thomas of the story. He doubts everything, every step of the way, from Caspian’s intentions to the existence of the Pevensies and Aslan, but he keep son going until he sees the Pevensies himself and has the opportunity to see their abilities in action. Among Caspian’s followers, there are some, like the badgers, who have always believed in Aslan and always will, and there are others who are won over when they see for themselves.

There are also themes in the story that can apply equally to religious issues and political ones. Miraz struggles from the beginning to control the narrative of how his family came to rule Narnia and how he himself became the king when his brother’s son was actually the true heir. There are people who know the truth about both of these issues, but he’s not above censoring people, exiling them, and even killing them to prevent people from talking about the truth openly. Miraz is not a good king and has his self-interest in mind more than his subjects’, but he’s sharp enough to know that nobody really likes him or wants him to be king except he has convinced them that he has the authority to be king and that their self-interest lies with him. If people came to see him and his family for who and what they truly are and what they’ve actually done, he would lose all of that, and he knows it. Authoritarian rule is like that. It relies on maintaining the sort of image that, realistically, they can’t maintain if people know what the individuals involved are really like. Authoritarians try to make themselves look stronger and better than normal humans to cover up for their flaws, but the image collapses when they can’t or won’t deliver what they promise, and people see them for the flawed humans they really are, often more flawed than the people they tried to convince were weaker.

Aslan eventually reveals that Caspian and his people are not just from a foreign country in the world of Narnia, but their distant ancestor were actually pirates from our world. They had conquered and looted an island in the South Seas, murdered many of the inhabitants, and taken the women for their own. Then, they had argued and fought among themselves. Some of the pirates took their women and tried to hide in a cave from the others, but it was a gateway to the world of Narnia, and that was how they got there to later conquer Narnia. When Caspian hears this, he says that he wishes that he had come from a more noble lineage than murdering pirates, and Aslan tells him that, further back than the pirates, he is also a son of Adam and Eve, just like the Pevensies, and that lineage is noble enough. I liked this explanation because, in modern times, people have struggled with the concept of having slave-owning ancestors, fearing criticism, punishment, or some form of reparations for it. I’ve heard some people saying that they don’t want to be ashamed of themselves or their ancestors. They are hung up on one part of their family’s history, a history that, when you think about it, goes back as far as humans go, and they fear blame and shame for that. I don’t think I’ve heard many consider that their family didn’t always own slaves. They were something other than slave-owners before that, even if some of them can’t quite remember what that was. I’m not big on ancestor veneration and imitation, but everyone’s ancestry goes back too far to remember every generation. Even if some generations weren’t good examples, they’re not the only past generations, if you see what I mean. Maybe, instead of looking at what their family used to be and lost and might be blamed for even having, they should consider that what they’ve become since then might just be a return to what they were before that period in their family’s history, which might just be better and noble enough.

Earlier in the story, when the Old Narnians talk about whether to support Caspian or continue to support him, there are some who waiver in their support or withhold it, also out of self-interest. While nobody really likes Miraz, Narnian history and legends influence the way that the Old Narnians feel about Aslan and his supporters. Most of the Old Narnians remember the White Witch from the previous book as a wicked ruler, but the dwarves and wolves fared better under her than other species. Their descendants forget that their relatively better treatment came from their collaboration with the witch and their participation in her wickedness, and even then, the relatively better treatment still wasn’t that great. (Plus, some of the wolves are actually werewolves, not just talking animals, like the others.) They just vaguely remember that there was a time when a ruler put them in a better position relative to other species, which they are not now. In fact, they feel like they are now treated worse and given fewer supplies than the other groups. The other groups say that’s not true, but it feels like it is to them because they are no longer better off than the others. They miss that and want it back. When they become impatient with Caspian and feel like he won’t give them the treatment they want, they rebel, and some of them are killed. Prince Caspian and the others feel badly about that because the might not have rebelled and been killed in the struggle if circumstances were different and they had felt more satisfied, but they had no choice but to defend themselves from their attack.

The book also looks at the type of people who support authoritarian rulers. Much of their support also has to do with self-interest or apparent self-interest. Miraz does have supporters among the human nobility who helped him accomplish his rise to power and who helped do his dirty work in getting rid of his brothers old allies. Since then, some of them have become disillusioned with Miraz. Miraz has not followed through on what he promised them before in exchange for their loyalty and support, furthering his own self-interest instead of theirs, and that’s the one thing they can’t accept. The thing about supporting someone who is selfish and is willing to throw former supporters to the wolves or even kill relatives in pursuit of power … is that you end up being one of those former supporters who may be thrown to the wolves or killed when your leader pursues self-interest and power. Some people never think anything through. They may have assumed that they would be a special exception to the leader because of their support, but nobody is special to Miraz but himself. Everyone else is just a tool to be used until he can’t find a use for them or they seem to be a hindrance.

When Aslan reveals the true history of Caspian’s people to them, many of them are afraid that Aslan is going to kill them all for what they’ve been and what they’ve done, which is another factor in their support of Miraz and his narrative. Even some of those who knew the truth before were too scared to say anything or do anything about it because they feared the blame, guilt, and consequences that might follow acknowledging the truth. A major reason for their fear is that they and their ancestors have not been merciful to anybody, so it never occurs to them that someone else might have better intentions for them.

At the end of their adventure, when it’s time for the Pevensies to go home, Aslan tells them that Peter and Susan will not be returning to Narnia next time because they are getting too old, but Edmund and Lucy will return someday. It’s a common theme in children’s fantasy books that only children can experience certain types of magic, and when they get older, they can no longer experience it or believe in it. It’s a trope that is meant to explain why grownups don’t experience this type of magic in the real world and why the adults in stories think that the children are just imagining things when they experience magic, but to me, it doesn’t logically follow in this story. We already know that at least one adult the Pevensie children have met believes in Narnia and magic because he has also experienced them, and we know that the ancestors of Caspian’s people arrived in the world of Narnia as adults. The Chronicles of Narnia don’t seem to have a consistent principle about who can visit the world of Narnia or believe in it, not in age or even in moral character because Caspian’s ancestors were murdering pirates. I think, in the case of Caspian’s ancestors, it might have something to do with explaining how even flawed and immoral people can rise to power or even seemingly have God’s favor, when it seems like they’re the last ones who should. It seems to be a combination of random chance (happening to wander into the right cave, in this case), their own choices (conquering other people), and possibly, part of a much longer game on Aslan/God’s part (eventually producing Caspian, who is the kind of ruler Narnia needs, even though it involved a lot of evil along the way – the evil being the humans’ choice, not a requirement). That’s some speculation and interpretation on my part, but I think the story kind of sets that up. Aslan seems completely aware of what’s going on and what has been happening but hasn’t tried to interfere until the critical moment in this story when Prince Caspian needs his help to fulfill his destiny.

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The Chronicles of Narnia

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, 1950.

During WWII, the four Pevensie children are sent away from London to the countryside as child evacuees. They end up staying in a strange old house with an unmarried professor. The children are fascinated by the professor’s big, old house, and on their first rainy day there, they decide to go exploring. In a spare room, the children see a big, old wardrobe. While her older siblings move on to look in other rooms, Lucy can’t resist looking inside the wardrobe. The wardrobe is full of old coats, but Lucy enters the wardrobe and pushes past the coats to see how far back the wardrobe goes.

As Lucy continues trying to find her way to the back of the wardrobe, she feels like the old coats are starting to feel like tree branches. When she emerges from the wardrobe, she is in a snowy forest. She sees a faun hurrying by with some parcels, and she talks to him. The faun, Mr. Tumnus, is surprised to see her and asks her if she’s a “daughter of Eve”, meaning a human girl. Lucy finds that question confusing at first, but she confirms that she is a human girl. Mr. Tumnus convinces Lucy to join him at his house for tea. While she’s there, Mr. Tumnus plays music for her. Lucy is enchanted, and she almost falls asleep, but then, she suddenly realizes that she should return to her siblings. To her surprise, Mr. Tumnus is upset and guilty. He explains that he has been forced into the service of the White Witch, who has commanded him to charm any human children he finds until she can come and collect them from him. Lucy is shocked and disbelieving because Mr. Tumnus has been so nice to her. Mr. Tumnus hates having to work for the evil White Witch, but she does horrible things to anyone who defies her, often turning her enemies into stone statues. The White Witch controls the land of Narnia, where they currently are, and she’s the one who has made it eternally winter but never Christmas. However, Mr. Tumnus just can’t bring himself to turn Lucy over to her, so he agrees to help her get back to the wardrobe without telling the witch about her.

Lucy returns to her own world through the wardrobe and eagerly rushes to her siblings to tell them where she’s been. When she sees her siblings, she learns that almost no time has passed since she first went into the wardrobe, and nobody has missed her. Her siblings can’t believe that she’s been to a magical land and that no time has passed while she was having this adventure. They go to the wardrobe themselves and look at it, but when they look, it’s just an ordinary wardrobe with a back. They think that Lucy was just playing a prank, but Lucy is very upset because she knows that it wasn’t a joke or a dream. Her oldest siblings, Peter and Susan, would be ready to forget the entire matter, but Edmund can’t resist teasing Lucy about it.

During a game of hide-and-seek later, Lucy goes through the wardrobe again, and this time, Edmund follows her. Edmund is shocked to find himself in the same snowy woods and to realize that Lucy was telling the truth. At first, he looks for Lucy, having lost track of her, but then, he encounters a strange white lady in a sleigh. This is the White Witch. Not knowing who she is, Edmund accepts the witch’s offer of a hot drink and his favorite treat, Turkish Delights. The treats that the witch gives him are enchanted to give him a terrible craving for more. The witch is careful about how many she gives him, but that craving and her promise of more keeps Edmund wanting to please her and to tell her everything she wants to know. He tells the witch about Lucy and her earlier trip to Narnia. The witch asks him if he has any other siblings, and she is strangely interested when he says that he is one of four. The witch tells Edmund that she is the queen of Narnia, but she has no children. She says that if Edmund will bring all of his siblings to meet her, she will make him the prince of Narnia, and he can live in her palace and eat Turkish Delights all day. Edmund is reluctant to bring her his siblings because he craves her treats so much he would rather just go to her palace at once, but the witch insists that he must bring her his siblings.

Lucy and Edmund meet back at the wardrobe entrance to Narnia, and Lucy is pleased at first that Edmund has now seen that Narnia is real. However, when they return to their own world and see Peter and Susan, Edmund spitefully tells them that Narnia isn’t real and that they were just playing pretend. After all of his earlier teasing, he can’t bring himself to admit that he was in the wrong for saying that Lucy was just making it all up before. Lucy is deeply hurt that Edmund is denying something they both know is true and becomes very upset.

Peter and Susan know that Edmund is being mean to Lucy, but they are also concerned about why Lucy seems to suddenly be making up these strange fantasies, when she’s never done anything like that before. Thinking that maybe the stress of being sent away from home is making Lucy crazy, they talk to the professor about what’s been happening. The professor listens to their story and their concerns very seriously, and they are surprised when the professor asks them how they can be sure that Lucy isn’t telling the truth. He admits that this old house is very strange, and he hasn’t even lived there very long himself, so he can’t say for certain what might be happening there. There have been some strange stories about this house before, and sometimes, they even get tourists stopping to see the house. Peter and Susan say that they doubt Lucy’s story because Edmund says it wasn’t true and because they saw nothing in the wardrobe when they looked themselves. They think if the wardrobe was really a portal to a magical world, surely it would be there all the time, for anyone who looked. The professor says that might not be true, that there might be thinks that are real that aren’t necessarily there or visible all the time. Part of his reasoning is that, if Lucy was playing a prank of some kind, she would have hidden for longer before coming to tell them of her adventures so that her story would seem more plausible. Lucy’s story is so implausible that the professor is inclined to believe it. The professor says that time might work differently in Narnia and that’s why it seemed like no time has passed. As for Edmund’s word, the professor asks Peter and Susan whether they would have thought Lucy or Edmund more reliable before. They say that Lucy is usually more reliable than Edmund, so the professor dismisses Edmund’s story in favor of Lucy’s. Peter and Susan still aren’t sure what to do about the situation, even if Lucy really has visited a magical land. The professor’s suggestion is that they mind their own business for now. Not knowing what else to do, Peter and Susan decide to wait and see what happens.

The truth is revealed when the children find themselves in the room with the wardrobe again while trying to avoid a group of tourists the housekeeper is leading on a tour of the house. Hearing the housekeeper approaching they all decide to hide in the wardrobe, and this time, they all find their way to Narnia. Peter and Susan are amazed and apologize to Lucy for not believing her before. It’s cold in the snow, so Susan sensibly suggests that they borrow some of the coats in the wardrobe to wear. Edmund gives away his earlier lie about not having been to Narnia by mentioning the position of a street lamp that is oddly in the forest. Peter is angry with Edmund for lying to them and trying to make Lucy look like either a liar of crazy person. Like a lot of people caught doing something bad, Edmund becomes sullen and resentful that the others are rightfully angry with him for what he’s done.

Lucy wants to introduce her siblings to Mr. Tumnus, but when they reach his house, they learn that he has been arrested. Lucy knows that he was arrested for defying the White Witch, and she explains about the witch to her siblings. Edmund doesn’t tell the others that he has met the White Witch himself, although he tries to introduce the idea that none of them really know what’s going on in this land, asking how they know if the witch is really evil or not. The others don’t listen to him and agree with Lucy that they should try to help Mr. Tumnus, if they can.

At first, they don’t know where to go or what to do, but a friendly robin guides them to meet a beaver. Animals talk in Narnia, and the beaver takes the children to his house, where he explains to them what happened to Mr. Tumnus and the truth about the White Witch. Although the White Witch calls herself the queen of Narnia, the actual ruler of Narnia is Aslan, the emperor. The beaver is vague about exactly what Aslan is, but he says that Aslan is not human, and neither is the White Witch, although she looks sort of human and would like people to think she is human. The truth is that, while humans are “sons of Adam” or “daughters of Eve” (referring to the Biblical Adam and Eve), the White Witch is actually a descendant of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. (According to folklore/mythology, as this video explains, Lilith was created by God at the same time as Adam, but she was not faithful to him. She left him and mothered a race of demons with other creatures. Therefore, in Lewis is following folklore, the White Witch is actually a demonic enchantress. The book doesn’t go into all this backstory. The beaver describes the White Witch as being the product of a djinn and a giant, but based on folklore, that’s the implication that she’s demonic. The White Witch is not just a human who practices evil magic; she’s a non-human demon. Being half-djinn and half-giant sounds less scary for kids, but it’s really more sinister, if you know the folklore and think more deeply about it. That’s what the beaver means when he refers to being careful about things that look human but actually aren’t. In folklore, demons and other evil creatures can sometimes make themselves look human to get people to trust them.) The reason why the White Witch is so concerned about human children is that there is a prophecy that four human children will take the thrones in the castle of Cair Paravel, and that will bring her evil reign to an end. Any time human children come to Narnia, the White Witch tries to get her hands on them to prevent the prophecy from coming true. (She has no intention of adopting Edmund as a prince. If she gets her hands on all four Pevensie children at once, she’ll turn them all into stone statues, as she does with all of her enemies, to prevent them from taking the thrones.) However, the word is that Aslan is returning, and the presence of the four children is a sign that the prophecy will soon be fulfilled.

During the course of this explanation, Edmund slips away from the others, wanting to seek out the White Witch because of her promises to him and his irresistible craving for what she has offered him. When the others realize that he is gone, Peter thinks that they should search for him, but the beaver has accurately realized that Edmund is under the influence of the witch. There is no point in going after him because he is not in a state where he will listen to them and is in the process of betraying them all. Their only hope is to leave before the White Witch comes and to seek out Aslan!

This book is the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia, although the books in the series jump around in time. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It has been made into movies multiple times.

My Reaction

When I was in high school, my history teacher brought up this book, saying that it was more than just a fantasy book, asking the class if we knew what it was supposed to be an allegory for. I said that it was religious allegory, and she told me that I was wrong and that it was an allegory for World War II. The story takes place during World War II, but it is definitely religious allegory. All the talk about “sons of Adam” and “daughters of Eve” and the references to Lilith are not coincidence. C. S. Lewis was a lay theologian and also wrote nonfiction books on the subject of religion. This book was written for his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield. Aslan is a lion in the story, but he also represents God, and toward the end of the story, he performs a Christ-like sacrifice of himself for the sake of Edmund’s sins (Edmund’s betrayal of his siblings has made him the property of the White Witch and a sacrifice for her until Aslan voluntarily takes his place to free him from the witch) before rising to life again and restoring life to all the people who had been turned to stone.

The Chronicles of Narnia is a popular Christian series, and some Sunday schools even use the series to teach Christian lessons. However, because of the fantasy themes and the style of the stories, not all Christians approve of them. Reception among atheists and people of other religions has been mixed, although the series is generally famous and has become a classic among children’s literature. One of the chief problems people have with the stories occurs toward the end of the series, where children who grow up and become interested in dating are at least temporarily lost to godliness or Heaven or the magic of Narnia, and the children who die young are the ones who live in Narnia eternally. It does creep me out a little that dying young instead of growing up is depicted as a virtue. It probably would have creeped me out even more if I had read the last book in the series as a child instead of an adult. As an adult, I see it more as a result of the author’s possible disillusionment with the habits adults develop when they lose their youthful sense of innocence and, even more likely, that problem that fantasy authors often seem to struggle with, explaining how these magical lands and adventures can exist without grown adults knowing about them. Many fantasy authors include an element in their stories that only children can experience certain magical things and that those children will forget about them as they age, allowing young readers to indulge in a belief in magic they can experience that adults living in the real world don’t experience. But, as I’ll discuss more later, the end of this series does bother me because the author kills off most of the characters that we have come to know and love, which I don’t think should be necessary. The girls in the story are also not allowed to take an active part in the battle at the end of the story, fulfilling more support roles, and the story itself admits that it’s because they’re girls. The roles that the girls in the story play are important, and they have their share of excitement, but few modern stories would make this type of distinction between boys’ and girls’ roles like this.

Time functions differently in Narnia, and there are odd jumps in time, both within this book and the rest of the series. Whenever characters are in Narnia, no time passes in our world. The four Pevensie children become kings and queens in Narnia and live full lives there for decades (which helps me feel a little less sad that they don’t live as long in the real world, but still not great). They are adults in Narnia when they find the way back to our world, and suddenly, they find themselves children again in the professor’s house during WWII. Returning to their old lives is a shock, but the professor tells them that they will return to Narnia again someday. The professor knows about Narnia because he was there as a child himself. His backstory is covered in a later book, which also includes an explanation about why there is a street lamp in the forest in Narnia. During later books, when the children and their friends return to Narnia, centuries have passed there, and their adventures from this book have become legends for the people of Narnia.

As a side note, I also liked how the book repeatedly warns readers that smart people realize that, if you ever explore a wardrobe, you should always leave the door open behind you because you don’t want to get shut in. It’s a practical point and one worth making to kids who might want to try exploring a wardrobe or two to see if they can find magic doors.

Posted on by TracyC

The Ruby Princess Sees a Ghost

Jewel Kingdom Series

The Ruby Princess Sees a Ghost by Jahnna N. Malcolm, 1997.

Princess Roxanne lives in the Ruby Palace in the Red Mountains, and each of her sisters live in and rule over a different part of the Jewel Kingdom. The sisters visit each other from time to time, but Princess Roxanne has noticed that her sisters seem reluctant to visit the Ruby Palace. She finds out why the first time her sisters come to visit her.

Princess Sabrina tells her that she saw someone in white waving from a tower as she approached the Ruby Palace, but Roxanne knows it wasn’t her and there shouldn’t have been anyone in the tower. That’s when her sisters tell her that there are rumors that the Ruby Palace is haunted.

Roxanne says that she’s never noticed anything strange about the Ruby Palace that would make her think it was haunted. But, almost immediately, strange things begin to happen. The cook sees a ghost in the kitchen. A picture falls off the wall, and the princesses hear mysterious laughter.

To Roxanne’s dismay, her sisters are all too scared to continue their visit. After the other princesses leave, Roxanne hears the ghost threatening to come get her, but as she tries to get away, she picks up a ring dropped by the ghost.

Roxanne knows that she has to get to the bottom of this mysterious haunting or she’ll never feel comfortable in the Ruby Palace again. Fortunately, Sabrina decides to return to the Ruby Palace to help her, and she recognizes the crest on the ghosts’ ring as the crest of Lord Bleak, their arch-enemy. Roxanne and Sabrina also discover a hidden door and secret passage in the Ruby Palace. Is Lord Bleak responsible for this haunting? Did he somehow send the ghost, or is this ghost more than just a ghost?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

I thought this was a cute story. I didn’t read this series when I was a kid, although I saw books for sale. This is the first book in the series I read, and fortunately, it provides enough backstory to explain who Lord Bleak is and why he might be staging a haunting in the Ruby Palace. It’s a pretty easy read, just a short chapter book, and I think the mystery is probably not too difficult to figure out if you already know the backstory of the series and who Lord Bleak is. Still, I think a young child would still enjoy the suspense and atmosphere of the story and how the princesses turn the tables on the fake “ghost.” There is also a twist at the end of the story where there is actually a ghost who haunts the Ruby Palace, but it’s not the one they think, and she’s on Roxanne’s side.

I think the setting is the most fun part of the Jewel Kingdom stories. The Jewel Kingdom is divided up into different regions, each with its own terrain and magical creatures. Each princess rules over a region that fits her personality. The Ruby Palace is described as being made of stone and rather drafty and mysterious compared to the other princesses’ palaces, but Roxanne loves it.

Posted on by TracyC

The Light Princess

The Light Princess by George MacDonald, 1864.

A long time ago, a king is irritated with his queen because they have no children. The queen tells him to be patient, and she eventually gives him a daughter. The king is very happy, but he makes a critical mistake. He forgets to invite his own sister to his daughter’s christening. It would be embarrassing for anybody to forget to invite a family member to an important event, but it’s a serious problem in his case because his sister is a wicked witch. She has a nasty temper and is vindictive. So, she decides to show up for the christening anyway and get her revenge by putting a spell on the baby princess. From that moment on, the baby is weightless, no longer bound by gravity.

It doesn’t take the little princess’s parents long to realize who has caused this strange malady in their child. It’s not all bad. Her nurses find her very easy to carry around, and people in the palace have fun playing ball with the princess as the ball, and the little princess herself seems to find all of this delightful. However, there is always the fear that she could blow away by accident, which does happen once, when she is blown out of a window and into the garden. Her parents continually worry about her future. At the queen’s urging, the king attempts to go to his sister and apologize about forgetting her invitation to the christening and ask her to lift the spell on the princess, but his sister denies all knowledge of the spell. The king knows she’s lying, but as long as she continues to deny it, there isn’t much he can do.

The problem goes much deeper than the princess having difficultly keeping her feet on the ground literally. She also has difficulty keeping her feet on the ground mentally. Her lack of gravity extends to an inability to see the “gravity” or seriousness in any situation. She laughs all the time, at everything, even when nothing is funny, although there is no real depth of feeling to her laughter. Even though she laughs all the time, she never smiles, leaving it open to question whether she ever really feels happiness or any emotion at all. She certainly doesn’t understand genuinely serious or catastrophic situations or other people’s emotions. When her mother cries, the princess just thinks that she’s making funny faces and odd sounds because she can’t seem to understand what crying means or the emotion behind it.

When the princess gets older, her parents talk to her about her condition, but the princess refuses to take it seriously. They try to ask her about what she feels. The princess says that she doesn’t feel anything, except that she sometimes feels like she’s the only one who has any sense, and then, she bursts into a wild, inappropriate fit of laughter. When they ask her if there’s anything she wants in life, all she can think of is to have someone tie a string to her and fly her like a kite, and then, she bursts into laughter again.

Since it’s useless trying to get through to the princess, the king and queen try consulting others, but nobody can agree on a solution. They consider metaphysics and philosophy. They recommend education and bloodletting. Her parents wonder if she would acquire some gravity if she fell in love, but the princess can’t seem to fall into anything … until the day she falls into the lake.

There is only one thing that the princess seems to love at all, and that’s the lake near the castle. When they take the princess out in a boat one day, she falls into the lake, and when she is in the water, she has gravity. She loves the water and loves swimming. She seems to have a better temperament when she is in the water, and she behaves better after a swim. Since water seems to affect the princess, they begin to consider that the cure to her problem might be to make her cry – a way of producing water that requires a grave emotion. However, nothing seems to make the princess cry. She is too flighty. (This book is full of puns related to gravity and flying, and they’re all given in a grave, direct manner.)

Then, one day, a prince tries to rescue the princess from the lake because he thinks she’s about to drown. When he pulls her from the water, she loses her gravity, and she angrily tells him to put her back in the lake. Unsure of how to do it when she’s weightless, the prince grabs hold of her and jumps into the lake with her. The princess is surprised and delighted because she has never truly fallen before. Now, she has fallen in with the prince … maybe in more ways than one.

However, even though the princess is starting to feel something for the prince, she has trouble understanding what she feels, not having felt much of anything for most of her life. When the lake suddenly begins drying up, the princess’s condition starts getting worse. The prince, who has truly begun to care about the princess, is willing to sacrifice himself to save the lake and the princess. It is only when the princess is confronted with the full reality of the prince’s sacrifice on her behalf that she is able to fully feel something and break free of her curse.

This book is now in the public domain, and you can read it online in your browser at Lit2Go. It is also accompanied by audio readings of each of the chapters.

My Reaction

Like other Victorian era children’s stories, there is a moral to this one, but it’s phrased in a unique and fun way. I remember liking this story the first time I read it as a kid, but I forgot about all of the puns involving “gravity”, which can refer to the force that makes things fall to earth or a state of serious emotion. The princess in the story lacks both, so she is very literally “flighty” and “can’t keep her feet on the ground.” Both of those terms are related to the idea that serious people have more emotional gravity, and unserious people lack it. For most of the book, the princess is an unfeeling air-head. I also missed the mention that the king doesn’t like puns, which may tacitly explain why his sister chose to make her curse in the form of a pun, knowing that her brother wouldn’t understand it.

The book notes that real happiness requires some emotional gravity because the person has to have enough emotional depth to understand their real emotional state and react appropriately to their emotions. That’s why the book describes the princess as never seeming happy, even when she laughs insanely at everything. She has no emotional depth or understanding. She doesn’t feel very much emotionally, and she has trouble understanding even her own limited emotional range. People often have trouble telling the difference between her laughing and screaming. Either way, it’s just a lot of loud noise with no real feeling behind it, and it’s pretty disturbing. It’s only when confronted with the apparent loss of the man she loves that the princess is able to feel a definite emotion. Fortunately, it all ends happily for our prince and princess. At the last minute, she decides to sacrifice her lake to save him, and finally, cries for the first time in her life, and that breaks her spell.

People don’t like to feel negative emotions, and some will use all kinds of defense methods to avoid what they’re feeling, but negative emotions (within reason, not taken to excess) are important to emotional health. People need to feel their full emotional range, and negative emotions often act as safety features in our lives. They tell us when we’re in an unsafe or unhealthy situation or when we’ve done something wrong, and they motivate us to do whatever is necessary to fix the situation. The princess’s habitual reaction to anything and everything is crazed and unfeeling laughter, but that’s not what she needs. She needs real feeling and honest tears to restore both her physical and emotional gravity. The princess, staring at the prince as he is about to die is literally staring death in the face and feeling the “gravity” of it. Contemplating the impending death of the prince and understanding for once the seriousness and finality of it, the princess experiences sadness and loss, and through that, she comes to understand love and sacrifice. Only when she has been through all of that is the princess truly able to be happy with her prince and his recovery. The princess has a difficult time adjusting to her new gravity, in more ways than one. She has to learn to walk for the first time because she always floated easily through life before, and sometimes, she falls down and hurts herself. She sometimes complains about it, but it’s still worth it because she has gained the ability to fully feel and to love and be loved.

During the story, none of the main characters actually have names. They are only referred to by their titles: king, queen, princess, and prince. Their names aren’t as important as their roles in the story.

There is a more modern story called Princess Hyacinth: The Surprising Tale of a Girl Who Floated from 2009 that uses the concept of a princess who is unaffected by gravity, but in a different way. It’s a picture book, and in that story, the princess isn’t cured of her lack of gravity. Instead, she learns how to make the most of it.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

The Princess and Curdie

The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald, 1883.

This is the sequel to The Princess and the Goblin, but it isn’t as well-known. Personally, I prefer The Princess and the Goblin, but it’s worth explaining what this book is like and how this two-book series ends.

When we last met Curdie, he was living in a cottage in the mountains and working in the mine with his father. At the beginning of this story, he is still there and still working in the mine. Most of the goblins who inhabited the mines were drowned at the end of the previous book. The beginning of the story briefly recounts the previous adventure and how the king offered Curdie a position in his guard after he helped to rescue the princess and fight the goblins. Curdie turned down the position to remain with his parents, and the king accepted his decision because he approved of the boy’s loyalty to his family. Since then, the king took Princess Irene away with him, and Curdie has missed her.

Since the old, castle-like manor house where the princess spent her earliest years flooded at the end of the story, Curdie has wondered what happened to the great-great-grandmother the princess always spoke of. Nobody ever saw her leave the house, but then again, nobody but the princess and her father ever saw her at all. Curdie’s mother says that she once saw a mysterious light, like the kind Princess Irene said that her great-great-grandmother had, but Curdie still thinks maybe the princess just dreamed that she had a great-great-grandmother, even though he once followed the magical string that the great-great-grandmother gave her.

As Curdie grows up, he believes in fewer things than he once did and focuses more on being a miner than on the little things he once noticed in the upper world. The book describes him as becoming mentally dull and more rigid and common in his thinking. Like other common and mentally-dull people, he is starting to follow the path of being so afraid of being fooled into believing something foolish that he is at risk of making a fool of himself because he is unable or unwilling to think about things deeply, consider possibilities, and believe things that he should:

“There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection. One of the latter sort comes at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more afraid of being taken in, so afraid of it that he takes himself in altogether, and comes at length to believe in nothing but his dinner: to be sure of a thing with him is to have it between his teeth. Curdie was not in a very good way then at that time.”

Curdie’s parents worry about this change in him and find themselves wistfully thinking about how he was when he was younger. Curdie no longer makes up the songs and verses he used to because it is no longer necessary to scare the goblins away. He seems to have lost much of his former creativity, imagination, and mental flexibility because he has not been exercising them, and with them, he has been losing his critical-thinking and analysis skills and his ability to look outward and see the big picture of life and other people.

One day, Curdie makes a bow and arrows, and he uses them to shoot a pigeon. As he watches it die, he is horrified at what he has done. He suddenly remembers what the princess said about her great-great-grandmother keeping pigeons, and he feels terrible that he has killed something so lovely. His remorse stirs his heart and brings back the memories and feelings of the boy he used to be. Then, the pigeon moves, and he realizes that it is still alive, and he sees the globe of light of the great-great-grandmother. Curdie hurriedly takes the injured pigeon to the old castle. The door is open, so he goes inside and follows the sound of a spinning wheel to find the princess’s great-great-grandmother, seeing her for the first time.

Curdie admits what he has done to the great-great-grandmother and gives her the bird. The two of them discuss right and wrong, and Curdie comes to realize that he has done a great many wrong things for some time because “I was doing the wrong of never wanting or trying to be better. And now I see that I have been letting things go as they would for a long time. Whatever came into my head I did, and whatever didn’t come into my head I didn’t do.” In other words, Curdie has fallen into the habit of being thoughtless, and this is the first time in a long time that he’s paused to think about things he’s been doing or could have been doing instead. He realizes that he has even been grumbling about his work and not adequately helping his parents, and even though he noticed that they’ve been seeming unhappy and he suspected it had to do with him, he never once asked them how they felt or why.

After they have this talk and Curdie realizes the real problems behind the things he’s done and is genuinely sorry for them, the lady tells him not to worry because the pigeon will recover now, and she will take care of it. She merely gives him the caution to “Do better, and grow better, and be better. And never kill anything without a good reason for it.” Curdie offers to destroy his bow and arrows, but the lady tells him not to because there are bad things that need to be killed and that the bow and arrows may be useful someday. She also tells him that there are people who tell stories about her and laugh about her, and she asks that Curdie not laugh with them or side with them.

Curdie goes home and tells his parents what happened. They believe him and say that he should do what the lady says. The next day, when the other miners are telling stories about the lady, saying that she’s an evil witch, Curdie has to fight to hold his tongue. When they press him for what he thinks, he only says that he thinks that, if they’re going to tell stories about her, they’d better be sure that they’re true because she wouldn’t like to be slandered. The others laugh at him for being afraid of her or for wanting to defend her.

The lady appears to Curdie and his father again later. She tells them that they have the blood of the royal family in their veins, and she hints that there is a special destiny in store for Curdie. Curdie tries to ask her some questions about who she really is and about her changing appearance, but all she says is that she has many names and can appear in many different forms, and even different people see her differently. She tells Curdie to come see her alone in her tower the next night.

When he sees her the next time, the lady asks if he is ready for a difficult trial. She says that it will hurt and that it will require trust and obedience, but it will be good for him. When Curdie tells her to command him, she tells him to put both of his hands into her fire. He does it quickly, trying not to think about it, and it does hurt at first. However, it stops hurting, and when he takes his hands out of the fire again, he discovers that they are softer than they were before. The roughness and callouses from his work in the mines are gone. The lady tells him that his hands have changed more than that. She says that he will now be able to feel when he touches the hand of a man who is actually a beast on the inside, but he will lose that gift if he uses it for a selfish purpose. To demonstrate the gift, the lady calls a strange creature called Lina to them, and when Curdie feels the creature’s paw, it feels like a child’s hand. Although the creature appears strange and menacing, it’s actually good and gentle on the inside.

The lady tells Curdie to tell his parents that he must go to the king’s court the next day. She has given his father an emerald that they can use to see if he is all right during his travels because its appearance will change if he isn’t. The lady also sends Lina with Curdie to help him on his journey. Curdie is a little uneasy about that because he can tell that Lina is one of the goblins’ creatures, but Lina is genuinely helpful to him, and he becomes fond of her.

When they finally reach the king’s city, Curdie meets the king’s baker. The baker stumbles on a stone sticking up out the street and curses the king for not maintaining that road. Curdie argues that the baker himself bears some responsibility for watching where he’s going, especially since he says that he’s tripped on that stone before and knows it’s there. However, Curdie has his pickaxe with him and sees an easy way of dealing with the problem. He breaks up the rock that’s sticking out of the road, but a piece of it flies out and breaks the barber’s window. The barber comes to complain about it, and he insists that Curdie pay him more than the window is actually worth. Curdie gives him what he thinks is a fair price, and he feels the animal paw in the barber’s hand, showing what kind of man the barber is and that Curdie’s gift is still working.

There are other cruel, hard-hearted, immoral, and brutish people in this city, and sadly, some of the nicer people tend to be on the receiving end of the malicious gossip of the others. Curdie and Lina are taken in by a woman who is rumored to be a witch simply because she prefers to live quietly and not gossip like the others. Of course, everyone immediately begins gossiping about Curdie and his strange animal companion. The local magistrate believes the slander of a couple of people whose dogs Curdie had to kill because they were trying to kill him and Lina. These people claim that the dogs were harmless and Curdie killed them for no reason. When the magistrate and his soldiers come to arrest Curdie, he says that he’ll surrender, but he refuses to restrain Lina so they can kill her. Lina chases off the crowd that’s gathered to watch, but then, she vanishes herself, and Curdie is arrested. Fortunately, Curdie manages to escape and reunite with Lina. Then, he and Lina find their way into the king’s cellar and kitchen. There, he finds that the king’s servants are drunk and passed out. His touch tells him that these people are beasts inside. Going further into the palace, he finds the king’s chamber, and there, he meets Princess Irene again.

Princess Irene recognizes Curdie again immediately. It’s been less than two years since they last saw each other. She was about eight years old then, so she can’t be more than ten years old now, but Princess Irene seems older than she should be because of everything that’s been happening in the king’s palace. Her father has been ill for a year and is not in his right mind. Princess Irene thinks that the entire kingdom is concerned for him because that’s what the lord chancellor has told her, but Curdie knows that isn’t true because he hasn’t heard a word about there being anything wrong with the king outside of the palace. Princess Irene says that the king has also asked for Curdie, and his staff claimed that they tried to send for him but couldn’t find him. Curdie knows that definitely isn’t true because, until he started his journey to the king’s palace, he had been living in the same cottage where he always lived, and no one from the palace tried to find him or sent him any message.

It’s obvious that there are wicked people in the palace. These people are responsible for the king’s current condition, and they’re trying to keep the public from finding out what’s been happening. With his gift of telling who is a beast on the inside, can Curdie help Princess Irene to find and deal with the conspirators and restore the king to his right mind?

The book is public domain now. It is available to read online through Project Gutenberg (multiple formats) and Internet Archive (multiple copies). You can also listen to a LibriVox audio reading online through YouTube or Internet Archive.

My Reaction and Spoilers

As with the first book, royalty is used to represent people with the best morality in the story. Curdie and his family have royal blood because they are more wise and moral than other people around them. It feels a bit classist to think that royalty is supposed to be morally superior to everyone else just because they were born into a particular family. That certainly isn’t how these things work in real life. Just think of Prince Andrew. However, this type of comparison does fit with the fairy-tale setting of the story.

In spite of whatever royal blood he has, Curdie isn’t perfect. He was falling into bad habits until he realizes that he has done a terrible thing by shooting the pigeon, which causes him to seek out the great-great-grandmother Princess Irene told him about and to do some soul-searching about his behavior. During the time when Curdie is being thoughtless and falling into bad habits, he is portrayed as being too common, like the other men working in the mine. However, I would argue that the bad habits of the miners, like their wild, gossipy stories and rude joking and teasing, are not because they lack royal blood but because they lack thought. Curdie and his father say as much when they’re talking in the mine. The other miners are being thoughtless, and they’re simply not making any effort to be more thoughtful. More than any royal blood, Curdie proves himself worthy by his ability to be thoughtful about other people, and he gets that ability by wanting to improve himself and making the effort to do what it takes to improve.

A large part of this book comes off as a lecture about morality, but that’s not unusual for a Victorian era children’s book. The Princess and the Goblin had some of that, too, but this book has much more. That might be part of the reason why this book seems like it’s less well-known than the first book, but the ending of the book is also strange and kind of depressing.

As one might expect in a fairy-tale story of this kind, Princess Irene marries Curdie (not immediately, because they’re still children, but eventually), and the two of them are said to rule their kingdom wisely for many years. It seems like a happy ending because, thanks to Curdie’s ability to sense the true nature of people, they are able to surround themselves with the best people, and the city becomes less wicked under their rule. However, the story doesn’t end there. In the final paragraphs of the book, it says that Curdie and Irene had no children to inherit the crown. Without a blood heir to the kingdom, someone else was chosen to rule instead, and this person was wicked and greedy, so the royal city went back to being wicked. In fact, this new king was so greedy and stupid that he had his people mining continuously, right under the city itself, to bring him riches. They eventually completely undermined the entire city, so the city physically collapsed in on itself, destroying it completely and killing everyone there. I guess that’s meant to explain why this fairy tale kingdom no longer exists, but that’s quite an ending to this story! With this royal family apparently having some kind of magic about them, it seems incredible that their kingdom would have gone this way, but then again, maybe the author just didn’t want to write about them anymore.

Note to the wise: Wherever your source of wealth comes from, for the love of all that is good in the world, don’t mine your support beams! They serve a purpose and need to stay there for a reason.

Posted on by TracyC · 5 Comments

The Princess and the Goblin

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1872, 1920, 1986.

“But, Mr. Author, why do you always write about princesses?”
“Because every little girl is a princess.”
“You will make them vain if you tell them that.”
“Not if they understand what I mean.”

The Princess and the Goblin, Chapter 1: Why the Princess Has a Story About Her

This is an enchanting fairy tale-type story about a princess. One of the best parts comes at the beginning of the book, when the reader supposedly interrupts the author as he starts to tell the story, asking him why he likes to tell stories about princesses. The author explains that princess stories remind every little girl that she is a princess, that they are all the daughters of kings (apparently in the sense that any man can be the king of his family with all the dignity and wisdom that implies, and it reflects well on them when their daughters behave well, as if they were raised with the manners of royalty), even if they sometimes forget that and behave in very un-princesslike ways. He wants to remind them that they are all princesses and can behave with the grace and dignity of princesses, and he can also pamper them a little because, in the course of the story, he can give them every beautiful thing he wants all the little princesses of the world to have. There’s kind of a behavioral caution in that explanation, but also a sweet sentiment. Even if you’re just an ordinary girl, you can still act with royal dignity and grace, and through the story, you can vicariously enjoy all the riches and adventure that a fairy tale princess can have.

The princess in the story, Princess Irene, is about eight years old, being brought up in a castle or manor house in the countryside because her mother was not physically strong when she was born and is now dead. She is largely raised by her nurse and only sees her father, the king, occasionally. Her father spends his time traveling between his castles and manors, visiting various parts of his country to make sure that everything is in order. Princess Irene cannot go with him because she is still too young to travel that much.

There are caverns under and around the castle-like manor house where Princess Irene lives. There are mines in the area, and the caverns are inhabited by creatures like kobolds or goblins. The story says that there are legends that these creatures once lived above ground, but having some quarrel with requirements imposed on them by the king or human society, they retreated underground to live there in secret. From generations of living underground, they have become physically altered into deformed creatures, but they have also acquired arcane knowledge and delight in playing mischievous tricks. Because of fears of the goblins coming out at night, Princess Irene is kept safely indoors before the sun goes down and has never seen the night sky by the age of eight.

One rainy day, Princess Irene is sitting in her nursery, bored. She has many fabulous toys (so amazing that the author of the book declines to describe them and cautions the illustrator against attempting to draw them, so readers can imagine any fabulous toys they like), but Irene in not in any mood to be amused by anything. Princess Irene is restless and doesn’t even quite know what she wants. When her nurse leaves the room, Irene takes the opportunity to run off and explore parts of the castle she has never before explored. She runs up some stairs into a passageway full of doors. She continues running through the passageways with doors leading to rooms with nobody in them until she becomes lost and confused. The corridors are empty, and there is no sound but the rain. One of my favorite quotes from this book says, “It doesn’t follow that she was lost, because she had lost herself though.” Just because Princess Irene doesn’t know where she is or where she’s going doesn’t mean that she isn’t heading in the right direction, where she needs to be.

Frightened, Princess Irene tries to find her way back to the nursery. Eventually, she finds her way to a room where she hears a humming sound. When Irene enters the room, she finds a beautiful old lady with silver hair sitting at the spinning wheel. Irene isn’t sure how old the lady is because she seems almost ageless. The lady notices that she’s been crying and asks her why, and Irene explains that she is lost. The lady is kind to her, washing her face and hands, and she introduces herself as Irene, too. She says that she is the princess’s great-great-grandmother and that Princess Irene was named after her. Princess Irene wonders why she’s never seen her before, and the elderly Queen Irene says that no one else knows that she is here. She shows Princess Irene the pigeons she keeps and promises that Princess Irene will see her again. Then, she guides the little girl to the stairs back to the nursery.

When Princess Irene is back in her nursery, her nurse is relieved because she’s been looking for her. The princess explains that she was with her great-great grandmother, but her nurse doesn’t believe her. Princess Irene is offended that her nurse thinks she made up the whole story. The next day, Princess Irene tries to find the old lady’s room again, but she can’t. She almost starts to wonder if she did just dream about her.

After the rain is over, the princess and her nurse spend some time outside. They wander farther than they should, and the nurse realizes in a panic that they cannot get back to the castle before the sun sets. The nurse grabs the princess’s hand and begins running for home. She becomes even more panicked when the princess thinks she sees little men and hears a sound like laughing. In their haste and panic, they get lost. The princess doesn’t understand why her nurse is so panicked because no one is supposed to scare her by telling her about the goblins.

Fortunately, they meet up with Curdie, a young miner boy. It scares the nurse that Curdie is singing about goblins, but Curdie says that goblins can’t stand singing. Goblins don’t bother Curdie because he’s used to them and doesn’t let them frighten him. This is the first time Princess Irene learns about the goblins. When the nurse tells him who the princess is, Curdie says that they wouldn’t have gotten lost if they weren’t frightened and that it was a bad idea to say the princess’s name because the goblins might have heard and will recognize her if they see her again. Curdie guides them back to the castle before anyone realizes that they are missing. Irene likes Curdie and wants to give him a kiss for helping them, but the nurse stops her. Curdie tells her that there will be another time, and she can keep her promise of a kiss later.

Curdie can tell that the goblins are angry with him for interfering with their pursuit of the princess by their behavior toward him the next day. It doesn’t bother him much because he knows exactly how to deal with them. Goblins are intimidated by songs and rhymes, probably because they can’t make any themselves. Miners who are good at remembering songs and rhymes or making new ones for themselves don’t need to worry about the goblins, and Curdie has a talent for this sort of thing.

While Curdie is in the mine after the other miners have left, he overhears a goblin family talking, and he learns some useful things. First, he finds out that goblins’ feet are a vulnerable point on their body. Their heads are very hard, but their feet are very soft, and they have no toes. The only one who wears shoes is the goblin queen, and the goblins say that’s because the goblin king’s first wife wore shoes, and the second queen doesn’t want to seem inferior to the first. The goblin king’s first wife was a human woman, who died giving birth to their son. Second, the goblins are building new homes further away from where the miners have been mining. Third, the goblins are planning some kind of disaster against the miners. Curdie secretly follows the goblins to find out where the goblin palace is and learn more of their plans. At the goblin palace, he hears them discussing their plans. They don’t offer many new details, but it is clear that they are planning some sort of revenge against humans.

Princess Irene finds her way to her great-great-grandmother’s room again one night. This time, the old Queen Irene shows Princess Irene what she is spinning. She is spinning spiderwebs to make something for Princess Irene. She heals a wound on the princess’s hand and invites her to spend the night with her. When Princess Irene wakes up, she is back in the nursery, but she now believes that it wasn’t just a dream.

Later, the princess is frightened by a horrible goblin creature that enters her nursery through a window that the nurse left open when it was getting dark. Terrified, Princess Irene runs out of the castle into the darkness (somehow missing the extra guards that her father left at the castle for her protection). Fortunately, her great-great-grandmother sends her a magical lamp that guides her back to the castle. There, she gives the princess the present that she has finished making: a ball of finely-spun spider silk. She also gives Princess Irene a ring with a fire opal. She tells the princess that these things will guide her to safety any time that she is frightened.

The magical spider silk thread helps Princess Irene to find Curdie when he is captured by the goblins. Curdie has been trying to learn more about the goblins’ plans. Curdie discovers that the goblins are planning to kidnap Princess Irene as both a hostage and a bride for their half-human, half-goblin prince. Worse still, if their plot to abduct the princess doesn’t work, they plan to flood the mines and drown the miners!

This book is in the public domain. It’s available to read online through Project Gutenberg (multiple formats) and Internet Archive (multiple copies). You can also hear a LibriVox audio reading of this book online through YouTube and other audio recordings at Internet Archive. The story was made into an animated movie in 1991, and you can see it online through Internet Archive. There is only one sequel to this book, The Princess and Curdie. Personally, I think the original is better than the sequel.

My Reaction

This is a classic children’s fantasy story! The princess is sweet, the villains pose a real threat, and the story doesn’t shy away from the goblins’ evil. When they’re describing what to do with the princess when they get her, they talk about how they’re going to make her toes grow together so she’ll be like them. As princess stories go, this one isn’t as sparkly and pink as many modern princess books. Still, as the author notes in the beginning, this story allows all little girls to think of themselves as princesses and imagine themselves going through the adventure with Princess Irene.

As with many other Victorian era children’s stories, there are moral lessons in this one. The author periodically reminds readers about how princesses should behave with bravery and should keep their promises. There are also various other morals in the story, like the value of hard work and duty to others, learning to understand other people and give them the benefit of the doubt, and having the courage to admit mistakes and make them right. All of these values are described as being noble, and it’s implied that Curdie might have princely blood for exhibiting these values. The book uses royalty or the behavior of princesses and princes as a sort of metaphor for moral behavior.

Princess Irene’s great-great-grandmother is never fully explained. At one point, Princess Irene brings Curdie to see her, but he can’t see her, even when the princess is sitting on her lap. However, the king himself goes to see her without the princess. The princess knows that’s where he’s going because he’s heading in that direction. He is aware that the old Queen Irene is there, but he doesn’t share that knowledge with anyone else. When Curdie tells his mother that the princess tried to show him her great-great-grandmother but nobody was there and he thought that she just made it all up, his mother tells him that there is something very odd about the royal family. She says that they’re not sinister, but there are rumors and implications that there is something magical about them or that they are not quite normal humans. At the end of the story, we never get a firm answer about what Queen Irene really is. When I first read this book, I thought that she might be a ghost because, as an ordinary human, she shouldn’t be alive anymore, and I figured that she only shows herself to members of her own family. However, that doesn’t fully explain her magic, and from what Curdie’s mother says, maybe she’s some kind of fairy or elf or maybe a powerful sorceress, who can either live forever or for a long period beyond the normal human lifespan.

One of the parts that I always liked best about this book is the illustrations. They’re charming and magical! These particular illustrations were made by Jessie Willcox Smith, a famous illustrator of children’s books in the early 20th century, in 1920.

Posted on by TracyC

The Night Before Christmas

The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore, illustrated by Corinne Malvern, 1949.

This version of The Night Before Christmas is part of the classic Little Golden Books series. The original poem, A Visit From St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore, has been made into picture books for children many times since it was first published in 1823, but this version has some sentimental value to me. I think it was the first version that I ever read as a child. I had forgotten which version it was for years, but when I found this book again recently, I recognized the pictures. (It’s funny, but I remember thinking as a child that the youngest child looks a little too big to be in a cradle, but she is in the picture when the children are being put to bed.) Most people think of the poem as being called The Night Before Christmas instead of its original title, A Visit From St. Nicholas, because the phrase “the night before Christmas” appears in the first line of the poem. Many of the picture book versions that we read as children used The Night Before Christmas or ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas as a title.

This Little Golden Book makes a cozy and pleasant bedtime story for Christmas Eve with its images of a 19th century/Victorian family hanging up their stockings and going to bed on Christmas Eve with the anticipation of the sweets, presents, and fun of the next day. Then, the father of the family is suddenly woken when he hears Santa Claus arriving.

This 19th century poem established and popularized the image of Santa Claus as generations of Americans came to know it. It describes him as a fat and jolly little old man and names all of the reindeer who pull his sleigh. This is probably the first piece of writing that established that Santa has eight reindeer and gave them specific names, which would later be echoed in the storybook and song versions of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

The father of the family in the poem happily watches Santa Claus leaving presents for his children and then leaving by the chimney and riding off in his sleigh with a cheery, “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!”

Various picture book versions of this poem are available online through Internet Archive, including this Little Golden Book version.

Posted on by TracyC

The Light at Tern Rock

The Light at Tern Rock by Julia L. Sauer, 1951.

Not long before Christmas, the lighthouse keeper at Tern Rock, Byron Flagg, approaches Martha Morse, asking her if she would be willing to temporarily take the job of tending the lighthouse while he takes a vacation. The lighthouse can never be untended because ships rely on that light, and it can be difficult for Mr. Flagg to find someone to take over his duties for an extended period of time, especially so close to Christmas. Mr. Flagg wants to hire a substitute with experience tending the lighthouse. Mrs. Morse lived there for 14 years while her late husband was the lighthouse keeper. Although many people would be daunted by the isolation of the lighthouse, Mrs. Morse actually loved it because she enjoyed the beauty of the sea and nature. She knows that she would enjoy staying there again. However, she hesitates to take the job of temporarily tending the light because she is caring for her young nephew, 11-year-old Ronnie. Ronnie might enjoy the adventure of staying in a lighthouse, but he would have to miss some school.

Mr. Flagg appeals to Mrs. Morse’s sense of nostalgia about the lighthouse and points out that Ronnie could bring along some of his schoolwork to study during their stay. Mr. Flagg says that their stay will only be for two weeks, and that he’ll return and relieve them on December 15th. Mrs. Morse points out that the weather around Tern Rock can be unpredictable and that he might not be able to return when he says he will, but Mr. Flagg says he is confident that he can. They talk to Ronnie about it, and Ronnie says that he would like to see the lighthouse, but he wants to be home for Christmas. Mr. Flagg assures them that won’t be a problem and that they will enjoy their stay at the lighthouse, so they agree to go.

When they arrive at the lighthouse, Ronnie is awed by rugged environment of Tern Rock and daunted by the isolation of the lighthouse. His Aunt Martha says that she understands how he feels, that he wonders if they’re up to the task, but she assures them that they are. The job they will do is a necessary one because, without the light, the rocks in this area are a danger to ships.

As they settle in, Ronnie becomes fascinated with the lighthouse. The interior is comfortable and designed to be compact, almost like the interior of a ship. His Aunt Martha establishes their schedule, teaching Ronnie what they need to do. She turns off the light at sunrise and lets it cool down while they have breakfast. Then, they clean the lamp, polish its lens, and do other chores to keep the light in working order. Ronnie does his schoolwork in the afternoon, and they turn on the light when the sun goes down. They spend their evenings doing quiet activities, like reading and playing games. Although Aunt Martha wasn’t sure that the quietness and monotony would appeal to an active boy like Ronnie, Ronnie finds the newness of the environment and the change in his usual routine fascinating.

Ronnie’s feelings change when December 15th arrives, and Mr. Flagg doesn’t. The weather is good, so there’s no reason why a boat shouldn’t approach Tern Rock, but Aunt Martha says that there may have been some other problem that delayed him. She doesn’t think an extra day or two at the lighthouse will hurt them, but the days go by, and still, Mr. Flagg doesn’t come. They are still comfortable in the lighthouse and there haven’t been any problems with the light, but Ronnie is angry because he realizes that Mr. Flagg lied to them. Christmas is approaching, and it becomes clear that Mr. Flagg never had any intention of being back at the lighthouse in time for Christmas.

Ronnie has trouble understanding and excepting Mr. Flagg’s lies and broken promises. Ronnie and Aunt Martha discuss the importance of honesty and the meaning of broken promises. Ronnie thinks that Mr. Flagg has been wicked. He has certainly been unfair, but Aunt Martha says that there are worse kinds of wickedness, and before they jump to conclusions about what has happened, they need to know the reasons for it.

Aunt Martha says that the Christ Child visits every home on Christmas, and no place is too distant for Him to reach, so they should make the lighthouse ready and prepare for Christmas. Ronnie doesn’t see how they can because they didn’t bring any decorations or anything for Christmas. Ronnie considers firing the cannon that would signal an emergency to bring someone out to the lighthouse, but Aunt Martha firmly tells him no. The cannon is only for serious emergencies, when there are lives in danger, not for mere disappointment and self-pity. However, Mr. Flagg has left some special surprises for them.

It is true that he intentionally deceived them about being back in time for Christmas. When Ronnie finds a sea chest with a Christmas message, he knows for certain that Mr. Flagg was lying to them the entire time, which makes him angrier. However, a letter that Mr. Flagg left explains his reasons, which earns their sympathy. To soften the blow of his deception, he has also left them some special presents and treats gathered from exotic places. This still isn’t the Christmas that Ronnie and Aunt Martha had originally planned, and being lied to doesn’t feel good. Still, in the end, this Christmas is pretty special and memorable, and they both realize that they are exactly where they need to be.

The book is a Newbery Honor book. It is recommended for ages 8 to 12 years old. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The author, Julia L. Sauer, also wrote Fog Magic.

My Reaction

I wasn’t familiar with this story when the Coronavirus Pandemic started, which is a pity because this would have been a great book for the type of Christmas we had in 2020. Still, this is a lovely Christmas story, and the pandemic isn’t quite over yet. Things have improved considerably since 2020 because people have been vaccinated, but for those who still need to be cautious and are disappointed that things aren’t completely back to normal or anyone who has hard feelings toward someone or is having a rough Christmas for any other reason, this story is a useful reminder that disappointments are still temporary, and sometimes, the place where you find yourself is exactly where you need to be. Also, disappointments and inconveniences can come with compensations, if you’re open to experiencing them.

Mr. Flagg shouldn’t have lied to Mrs. Morse and Ronnie. He acknowledges in his letter that this was a hurtful thing to do, and he explains his reasons. Basically, he was lonely and desperate. As a lighthouse keeper, he is what we might call an “essential worker”, someone who can’t easily take time off from his work because he does a necessary job that can only be done in a particular place. People’s lives depend on the light from the lighthouse, so Mr. Flagg can’t leave his job for any length of time unless he finds someone qualified who is willing to take his place. This story is set during a time before lighthouses became automated, so there must be a human in this role.

Mr. Flagg is in his 60s, and he explains in his letter that he has spent most of his Christmases either alone or with other adults because of his life as a sailor and lighthouse keeper. He has a niece who has several children and who would be happy to have him for Christmas, but he has never managed to find anyone who was willing to relieve him from his duties during Christmas before. He was desperate to spend at least one Christmas with his family, so he resorted this deception out of desperation, but he left all the presents and special treats for Aunt Martha and Ronnie because he didn’t want them to be miserable.

Aunt Martha is getting older herself, and she understands how Mr. Flagg feels, having lived a similar sort of life. When she lived at the lighthouse, she and her husband were together, but Mr. Flagg has never married, and he was desperately lonely. Ronnie has more trouble understanding the feeling because he is younger and hasn’t experienced this type of loneliness before. Aunt Martha points out that Ronnie will have many more Christmases before him, more than either she or Mr. Flagg have left. One disappointing or just bizarre Christmas won’t mean that much to him in the long term. With maybe 50 or more future Christmases to come as well as the ones he’s already experienced, this strange Christmas in the lighthouse is just one more memory or story to tell other people in Christmases to come.

Part of this story is about forgiveness, but they don’t use that word at all in the story. People have different views about what forgiveness entails, but I think it’s important that Aunt Martha and Ronnie don’t excuse Mr. Flagg’s actions. They come to understand his motives, and they feel pity or sympathy for him for the kind of rough and lonely life he’s lived, but that doesn’t make lies to them good or right. He did something hurtful by betraying their trust, and there will probably be some kind of reckoning between them when Mr. Flagg eventually shows up. Mr. Flagg acknowledges that in his letter, that the knowledge that he betrayed their trust will keep him from fully enjoying Christmas with his family, even when he’s finally getting the kind of Christmas he has wanted, and he can’t blame them for whatever they’re feeling as they read his letter. So, the story never says that what Mr. Flagg did was okay or that it didn’t hurt that he lied to the people who were helping him. Lying was wrong, and it was hurtful, and the characters are honest about that. They don’t try to pretend that they’re not hurt, which I think would have made their feelings worse in the long run. Instead, it’s about looking past that hurt to something better and finding things to be happy about even in a situation where they didn’t want to be.

Aunt Martha sees that what’s really preventing Ronnie from enjoying Christmas as they happen to have it is his anger, disappointment, and bitter feelings and the way he broods about them. Brooding about the angry things he wants to say to Mr. Flagg when he sees him isn’t making his Christmas any better. Aunt Martha compares cleaning out negative emotions to cleaning house before the holiday. You have to clear out all the dust and negativity to let in something better. They will eventually see Mr. Flagg, and there will probably be words between them, but those words can wait while they enjoy themselves as best they can for this Christmas. By then, each of them will probably have a better sense of just how they really feel about the situation and what they want to say about it anyway.

Once Ronnie works through his feelings and is able to put aside his anger, he realizes that this Christmas is something special. He does miss the class Christmas party the rest of his school is having, but in return for that sacrifice, he is experiencing something truly unique that his school friends will probably never experience. He doesn’t fully consider how unique this experience actually is at first, but he senses that there is a unique feel to Christmas in the lighthouse, with its giant light. Ronnie considers the tradition of putting candles in windows at Christmas, to guide the Christ Child or other travelers. (They emphasize candles as welcoming the Christ Child in the story, but when I first heard of the tradition, it was to welcome travelers or absent family members.) He realizes that, by tending the lighthouse, he and his aunt are doing the same thing, but they’ve got the biggest candle of anyone!

Whatever your Christmas happens to be this year, wherever you’re spending it, and whoever you’re spending it with (even if it’s just yourself), don’t forget to do the little things to make it special and enjoy it for whatever it is! Merry Christmas!