Lewis, C. S. (1898-1963)

views updated

Lewis, C. S. (1898-1963)

C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, published during the 1950s, are the most widely read Christian fairy tales of the twentieth century. Children devour them, not realizing, in most cases, that they are reading religious morality tales in the guise of pagan fantasy.

Clives Staples Lewis (called "Jack") was born November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His mother died when he was nine, devastating him and his brother Warren. As a child, Lewis was bookish and precocious, and enjoyed writing of an imaginary world of talking beasts called "Animal-Land." In adolescence, he became an atheist; his education at Oxford and experience in the trenches in World War I did little to change his philosophy.

Between 1925 and 1954, Lewis was Fellow of English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. When he was in his early thirties, as a result of his father's death and his intellectual friendships at Oxford, Lewis's religious beliefs changed drastically and he became a Christian apologist. From then on, he devoted much of his time to writing literary works that might convince others of the merits of Christian thought.

The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven children's books, fall into this category. Lewis peopled his imaginary country with fantastic creatures (fauns, witches, centaurs) usually associated with paganism—but had the great lion Aslan, a Christ figure, rule them. The author described the Christian meanings of the series thus: the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, was about "the Crucifixion and Resurrection"; Prince Caspian dealt with the "restoration of the true religion after a corruption"; The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, "the spiritual life"; The Silver Chair, "the continuing war against the powers of darkness"; The Horse and His Boy, "the calling and conversion of the heathen"; The Magician's Nephew, "the Creation and how evil entered Narnia"; and The Last Battle, "the coming of Antichrist (the ape), the end of the world and the last judgment."

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the best-known of the Chronicles. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was made into a feature-length cartoon and a live-action version for television. In the story, four children—Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter—enter an old wardrobe and emerge in Narnia, a land caught in perpetual winter under the evil rule of the White Witch. Through the sinister influence of some magical Turkish Delight candy, Edmund betrays his brother and sisters; to save the boy, the great lion Aslan must sacrifice his life. Aslan is gloriously reborn through a "deeper magic," and seats the "sons of Adam and daughters of Eve" on four thrones at Cair Paravel. After many years of benevolent rule, the kings and queens of Narnia return through the wardrobe to find themselves children again.

Lewis insisted that the Chronicles were not Christian allegories, but "supposals." He explained the difference by saying that Aslan "is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question 'what might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in THAT world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not an allegory at all…. Allegory and such supposals differ because they mix the real and the unreal in different ways."

The Narnia books were written, however, to familiarize people, especially children, with the Christian faith. Lewis said he was trying to get across "mere" Christianity, or "that which has been believed everywhere, always, by all": ecstatic love for the world. He said he wrote the stories to "set before our imagination something that has always baffled the intellect." They are not at all didactic—Lewis despised religious education as a child. He wanted to recreate the beauty and love he found in Christian stories, not teach about it. Lewis thus made Christianity palatable to agnostics and atheists. The Chronicles of Narnia appealed to Christians and non-Christians, and in most cases children do not know they are getting bible stories through a pagan lens.

In addition to the Chronicles, Lewis was an author of science fiction novels including the Space Trilogy (which includes Out of the Silent Planet, in which the hero, Edwin Ransom, is roughly based on his friend and fellow Inklings member J.R.R. Tolkien; Perelandra, a retelling of Paradise Lost set on Venus; and That Hideous Strength). He considered Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the Eros and Psyche myth, to be his best novel.

Lewis was an articulate proponent of Christianity, arguably the most important Christian writer of the twentieth century. His most important theological works are The Problem of Pain, a defense of pain and the existence of Hell as evidence of an ordered universe; The Screwtape Letters, a correspondence between Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood concerning possession of the soul of an unsuspecting human; and Mere Christianity, a published version of the radio addresses he made during World War II as "the apostle to skeptics" in Britain and the United States. His spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy, is still widely read.

In 1956, Lewis married Joy Davidman, who had converted to Christianity from Judaism partly under the influence of Lewis's books. Soon afterward, Joy became ill from bone cancer, and she died in 1960. Lewis died three years later, on November 22, 1963, the same day that John F. Kennedy was shot.

—Jessy Randall