Chapter 3—
“Finding Out by Experience”:
Belief and Disbelief in Prince
Caspian
The second of the Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian, is an initiation tale,
the story of a young person leaving a sheltered, often ideal environment, to
encounter the harsh realities of the world and through them to grow to
maturity. It is a basic romance motif, often repeated in literature, because it
is a universal element of human experience. Thus the tale follows Caspian from
his childhood, spent listening to stories told by his nurse at the castle,
where he slept between silken sheets and ate from gold and silver dishes (p.
79), through his series of adventures in the woods and as a leader in battle,
to the moment when the High King Peter, at Aslan’s command, “bestowed Knighthood
of the Order of the Lion” on him (p. 204). Caspian has taken at least the first
steps towards maturity when Aslan greets and questions him near the end of the
book:
“Welcome, Prince,” said Aslan.
“Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?”
“I—I don’t think I do,
Sir,” said Caspian. “I’m only a kid.”
“Good,” said Aslan. “If
you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been proof that you were not.
Therefore, under us and under the High King, you shall be King of Narnia, Lord
[ß p. 33] of Cair Paravel and
emperor of the Lone Islands. You and your heirs while your race lasts.” (p.
200)
Prince Caspian, thus, provides
the frame which gives the story a beginning, middle, and end. The unity of this
story, however, is not found in its plot, but in its “heroic” tone; as the tone
fuses with the sequence of events in the plot, it develops also the underlying
theme of trust in Aslan.
The tone of heroism is present from
the beginning, with its emphasis on ancient times, the heroic age of Narnia.
Although the first three chapters occur in the present and describe the arrival
of the Pevensies in Narnia, the discovery of the ruins of Cair Paravel, and the
rescue of Trumpkin the dwarf, their concern is primarily with the past. Their setting
is the ruins of an old castle, which reminds the children of former days: “How
it all comes back,” Lucy exclaims (p. 13). The discovery of the gold chess
piece the children had used centuries before, (“It brought back—oh, such lovely
times”—p. 16), of the apple orchard they helped plant in the past (“Don’t you
remember?”—p. 18), and of the ancient treasure chamber containing the gifts
Aslan gave them long ago (“There was something sad and a little frightening
about the place, because it all seemed so forsaken and long ago”—p. 22) capture
the feeling of “pastness,” of antiquity. It is summed up as Susan twangs her
bowstring “and that one small noise brought back the old days to the children’s
minds more than anything that had happened yet” (p. 25). The details and
reminiscences have taken the children and the readers back to the heroic age of
Narnia, the age of armor and knights, and treasures, of “battles and hunts and
feasts” (p. 25).
The “old days” also dominate the
chapters which introduce the hero of the story. Trumpkin the dwarf, in a
four-chapter flashback, recounts Caspian’s childhood at the new castle, his
escape when a son is born to the usurper Miraz, his reception by the Old
Narnians in the forest, his early, [ß
p. 34] unsuccessful, efforts in the war against Miraz’s forces, and his
decision to blow Susan’s horn in hopes of receiving help from Aslan. Again the
sense of a past, and nostalgia for it, dominate the tone: “I wish—I wish—I wish
I could have lived in the Old Days,” Caspian remarks to his uncle (p. 38), and
Doctor Cornelius urges Caspian to try to be “a King like the High King Peter of
old” in “the Golden Age in Narnia” (p. 50). The past is emphasized as the Old
Narnians establish their headquarters in a mound “raised in very ancient times”
(p. 85), one which seems “to belong to an even older Narnia” (p. 86) than what
Caspian had been told about before, and as they decide to blow the magic horn
of Queen Susan, “which she left behind her when she vanished from Narnia at the
end of the Golden Age” (p. 58). While the opening seven chapters are important,
then, for filling in the background of Caspian’s story, they are equally
important in creating “a great longing for the old days when the trees could
talk in Narnia” (p. 112).
At first glance the first half of
the book, with its four-chapter flashback, seems rather cumbersome. But that
structure has a purpose, beyond allowing the action to begin “in the middle of
things.” The opening three chapters provide readers a touchstone by which to judge
the stories of the past referred to in the following four chapters. The relics
of the past which the children discover, as well as their very presence in
Narnia, attest to the truth of the old stories, unlikely as they seem. Although
some characters always believed the old stories (“Best of badgers,” says Peter
to Trufflehunter, “you never doubted us all through”—p. 168), most experience
doubt to a greater or lesser extent; but the reader knows, because of the
opening three chapters, how groundless all those doubts, and perhaps all such
doubts, really are. Upon that foundation a debate between belief and disbelief
is based, a debate which develops into a key theme of the book. The word
“believe” is used for the first time as Peter delivers his fourth point [ß35] to prove that the ruins they discovered are
those of Cair Paravel: “Can you have forgotten the funny old Lilygloves, the
chief mole, leaning on his spade and saying, ‘Believe me, your Majesty, you’ll
be glad of these fruit trees one day.’ And by Jove, he was right” (p. 18). It
is repeated often, especially in developing three main examples of disbelief.
The first is Caspian’s uncle, the
usurper, King Miraz. When Caspian tells his uncle the stories he has heard, of
a witch and a long winter, of two boys and two girls who became kings and
queens, and of a great lion called Aslan, Miraz labels the stories “fairy
tales” (p. 39) and declares, “There never were those Kings and Queens. . . .
And there’s no such person as Aslan. And there are no such things as lions. And
there never was a time when animals could talk. Do you hear?” (p. 40). Caspian
is informed later, by his tutor, Doctor Cornelius, that all this is a rejection
by Miraz of what he knows to be true, rather than an inability to believe: “It is
you Telmarines who silenced the beasts and the trees and the fountains, and who
killed and drove away the dwarfs and fauns, and are now trying to cover up even
the memory of them. The King does not allow them to be spoken of” (p. 47). As a
part of this rejection of truth, this obscuring and hiding reality, the
Telmarines have made up stories about ghosts haunting the woods and waters:
“Your Kings are in deadly fear of the sea because they can never quite forget
that in all stories Aslan comes from over the sea. They don’t want to go near
it and they don’t want anyone else to go near it. So they have let great woods
grow up to cut their people off from the coast. But because they have quarreled
with the trees they are afraid of the woods. And because they are afraid of the
woods they imagine that they are full of ghosts. And the Kings and great men,
hating both the sea and the wood, partly believe these stories, and partly
encourage them” (pp. 50-51). In their efforts to avoid believing the truth the
[ß p. 36] Telmarines created falsehoods and,
ironically, have begun to believe them. In the end, Miraz is caught by his
efforts to obscure reality. After Edmund has delivered the challenge from
Peter, Miraz responds to his advisors Glozelle and Sopespian:
“King Edmund, pah!” said Miraz. “Does your
Lordship believe those old wives’ fables about Peter and Edmund and the rest?”
“I believe my eyes, your Majesty,” said
Glozelle. (p. 177)
Having
blotted out the past, having refused to learn from the old stories about Aslan’s
power, Miraz lets himself be tricked into accepting the challenge which leads
directly to his death.
The second example of disbelief is
Trumpkin, the Red Dwarf, who, with Nikabrik the Black Dwarf and Trufflehunter
the Badger, finds Caspian, injured while fleeing from Miraz, and nurses him
back to health. As Caspian relates his story and the others discuss it, the
name of the High King Peter is mentioned.
“Do
you believe all those old stories?” asks Trumpkin.
“I tell you, we don’t change, we beasts,” said Trufflehunter. “We don’t forget. I believe in the High King Peter and the rest that reigned at Cair Paravel, as firmly as I believe in Aslan himself.”
“As
firmly as that, I daresay,” said
Trumpkin. “But who believes in Aslan nowadays?”
“I
do,” said Caspian. “And if I hadn’t believed in him before, I would now. Back
there among the Humans the people who laughed at Aslan would have laughed at
stories about talking beasts and Dwarfs. Sometimes I did wonder if there really
was such person as Aslan: but then sometimes I wondered if there were really
people like you. Yet there you are.” (p. 66)
Lewis
reflects here his usual premise, that most things people believe are based on
faith rather than demonstration. Caspian and Trufflehunter are willing to accept
that [ß p. 37] and get on with living.
But Trumpkin will not believe without being shown. He does not believe in
walking trees (pp. 76-77), or in the horn (pp. 90, 92) even when the children
have appeared:
“Great Scott,” said Peter. “So it was the horn—your
own horn, Su—that dragged us all off that seat on the platform yesterday
morning! I can hardly believe it; yet it all fits in.”
“I
don’t know why you shouldn’t believe it,” said Lucy, “if you believe in magic
at all.” (p. 96)
But Trumpkin does not believe
in magic, or in the children. Only when he is shown—by being disarmed by Edmund
in a fencing match, outdone by Susan in an archery contest, and cured by a drop
of cordial from Lucy’s diamond bottle—will he accept the children as the true
kings and queens of old:
“And
now,” said Peter, “if you’ve really decided to believe in us—“
“I have,” said the Dwarf. (p. 104)
But
he is not willing to generalize from that experience. Although he will accept
the children and travel with them to join Caspian, his other doubts continue,
until he can be shown by a more startling experience.
The third example of disbelief is
Nikabrik, who, Caspian remarks later, “had gone sour inside from long suffering
and hating” (p. 168). When Caspian asks if he believes in Aslan, he replies,
“I’ll believe in anyone or anything . . . that’ll batter these cursed Telmarine
barbarians to pieces or drive them out of Narnia. Anyone or anything. Aslan or the White Witch, do you understand?”
(p. 73). Although Trumpkin, as we have seen, is a skeptic, his values are
sound; he retains a clear perspective on things and lives by the moral law.
That is not the case with Nikabrik, who, unlike Trumpkin and the others, is
quite willing to have “an Ogre or two and a Hag” on their side in the battle [ß p. 38] (p. 72). The contrast between the two
dwarfs is shown by their reactions to the moonlight dance on Dancing Lawn.
Dance has been, traditionally, a symbol of harmony and order, in the universe,
society, and individuals. It is significant, then, that Trumpkin joins in,
awkwardly to be sure, but Nikabrik will have nothing to do with it all: “Before
[Caspian] knew what he was doing he found himself joining in the dance.
Trumpkin, with heavier and jerkier movements, did likewise and even
Trufflehunter hopped and lumbered about as best as he could. Only Nikabrik
stayed where he was, looking on in silence” (p. 78). Trumpkin doubts, but
Nikabrik despairs, and out of his despair he brings a hag and a werewolf to the
leaders’ council and prepares to commit treason against his King by having them
call up the White Witch of old: “Don’t all take fright at a name as if you were
children. We want power: and we want power that will be on our side. . . . They
say she ruled for a hundred years: a hundred years of winter. There’s power, if
you like. There’s something practical” (pp. 162-63). In the ensuing skirmish,
Nikabrik is killed, and Caspian expresses regrets: “If we had won quickly he
might have become a good Dwarf in the days of peace” (p. 168). Perhaps so. But there
was in him an attitude that led others to grief as well: only two other
characters are associated with practicality—Miraz is shown to be practical on
pages 55-56 and Susan is said to be practical on page 117. This is not to say,
surely, that belief necessarily implies impracticality; but it does suggest
that belief cannot be entirely safe or self-interested. Trumpkin finally
becomes willing to risk himself, his total identity, in a way that Miraz,
Nikabrik, and Susan (eventually) were not willing to.
An initiation story often includes
the hero’s movement toward spiritual as well as physical and emotional
maturity. In Prince Caspian, however,
the spiritual development is experienced not by the hero but by those who are [ß p. 39] searching for the hero. After Trumpkin
has decided to believe in the children, Peter declares, “It’s quite clear what
we have to do. We must join King Caspian at once” (p. 104). For the children
and the dwarf, the journey they undertake to join Caspian is also a spiritual
journey, a journey into faith.
They leave the island by boat,
choosing their own course—along the coast and up Glasswater Creek—and relying
upon their own efforts. Although the first leg of the journey goes well, they
are left feeling discouraged and uncertain: “Up till now the children had only
been thinking of how to get to Caspian. Now they wondered what they would do
when they found him, and how a handful of Dwarfs and woodland creatures could
defeat an army of grown-up humans” (pp. 109-10). In their own strength, of
course, they could not; yet they do not seek help beyond their own resources: “You’ve got that pocket-compass of
yours, Peter, haven’t you? Well then, we’re as right as rain. We’ve only got to
keep on going North-West—cross that little river, the what-do-you-call-it? . .
. Cross it and strike up hill, and we’ll be at the Stone Table (Aslan’s How, I
mean) by eight or nine o’clock” (p. 114). Edmund’s slip in referring to their
destination by its old name, the Stone Table, instead of by its new name, Aslan’s
How, anticipates a problem, however. Things have changed since the heroic age
of the children’s previous visit to Narnia, and Peter eventually has to admit,
“We’re lost. I’ve never seen this place in my
life before” (p.119). At that point Lucy, the youngest of the children
and the one least involved in making the decisions, sees Aslan, indicating, by
his expression, that he wants them to go the opposite direction from the one
they have chosen. The others prefer, however, to rely on their own judgements
and to go their own way: the result is a long, tiring walk, an attack by some
sentries of Miraz, and a time-wasting return along the way they had come.
That night Aslan awakens Lucy from a deep sleep
and [ß p. 40] teaches her a valuable lesson about commitment.
She begins defending herself for going along with the others and ends up
realizing that often, in crucial matters, one must go it alone: “I couldn’t
have left the others and come up to you alone, how could I? Don’t look at me
like that . . . oh well, I suppose I could.
Yes, and it wouldn’t have been alone, I know, not if I was with you” (p. 137).
She then is told to act upon that lesson: “Go back to the others now, and wake
them up; and tell them you have seen me again; and that you must all get up at
once and follow me—what will happen? There is only one way of finding out” (p.
137). The word “wake” invites a figurative reading as well as the literal one
and, together with the allusion to Christ’s words directing his disciples to
“follow me,” it confirms the spiritual aspect of the journey. The episode
conveys the essence of trust, especially in the instructions Aslan gives to
Lucy: if the others will not come, Aslan says, “then you at least must follow
me alone” (p. 139). Actions in Narnia once again reflect the ideas of Mere Christianity. Lewis wrote there
that at some point in the process of moving toward Christian maturity, we must
undergo either suddenly or gradually a change “from being confident about our
own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves
and leave it to God” (p. 128). We cannot, Lewis asserts, get into the right
relation with God until we have discovered that fact of our bankruptcy: “When I
say ‘discovered,’ I mean really discovered: . . . really finding out by
experience that it is true” (p. 127). The children and Trumpkin make that
discovery. They have tried their hardest and have failed; now they must admit
their defeat, accept their inadequacies, and hand themselves over to Aslan.
As Lucy tries to get the other children and the
dwarf to accompany her, Lewis uses, as he does elsewhere in depicting faith, a
play on the phrase “seeing is believing.” In Lewis’s version, those who believe
are able to see; those [ß p. 41] who do not believe cannot see—that, he
writes in a note commenting on Till We
Have Faces, is “the way the thing must have been.”1 When Aslan
instructs Lucy to go to the others and tell them to follow him, she asks, “Will
the others see you too?” His reply is, “Certainly not at first. . . . Later on,
it depends” (pp. 137-38). The image is
the same Lewis would use later in The
Last Battle and again in Till We Have
Faces. In the former, the dwarfs do not see Aslan or the feast he offers
them because they do not believe in him or his gifts. In the latter, Orual is
unable to see the palace in which Psyche lives with her divine spouse because
Orual is unable to believe in the gods or in the palace. What a person sees
depends on who he or she is and what he or she is looking for, as Uncle Andrew
demonstrates in The Magician’s Nephew (p.
125). Because Lucy’s companions do not believe Aslan is present, they do not
see him. They are greatly confused (“Why should Aslan be invisible to us? He
never used to be”—p. 142) and even angry (“There isn’t anything to see. She’s
been dreaming”—p. 141) at their inability to see Aslan, but at last they do
come, a first step of faith. Initially, of course, they are just following
Lucy: “The others had only Lucy’s directions to guide them, for Aslan was not
only invisible to them but silent as well” (pp.143-44). As they do follow her
and as they are led successfully down a steep cliff and across a roaring river,
their trust increases and first Edmund and Peter, then Susan, and finally even
Trumpkin are able to see him.
Susan and Trumpkin provide an interesting
contrast as they come to accept Aslan. Susan believed all along in Aslan’s
existence, but her emotions kept her from putting her trust in him: “I’ve been
far worse than you know. I really believed it was him—he, I mean—yesterday.
When he warned us not to go down to the fir-wood. And I really believed it was
him tonight, when you woke us up. I mean, deep down inside. Or I could have, if
I’d let myself. But I [ß p. 42] just wanted to get out of the woods
and—and—oh, I don’t know. And what ever am I to say to him? (p. 147). It is the
sort of situation Lewis warned the Christian in our world about when he wrote,
in Mere Christianity, “The battle is
between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other”
(p.122). Aslan recognizes and ministers to her problem in just that light:
“’You have listened to fears, child,’ said Aslan. ‘Come, let me breathe on
you’” (p.148). Trumpkin, on the other hand, continues to the end to assert his
disbelief: “I have no use for magic lions which are talking lions and don’t
talk, and friendly lions though they don’t do us any good, and whopping big
lions though nobody can see them. It’s all bilge and beanstalks as far as I can
see” (p. 142). Trumpkin, doubting Thomas that he is, again must be shown before
he will believe, and Aslan ministers to him in his weakness accordingly: “And
now, where is this little Dwarf, this famous swordsman and archer, who doesn’t
believe in lions?” (p.148). By taking Trumpkin and tossing him high into the
air, as one might do with a child, Aslan makes the dwarf physically
dependent upon him: “The Dwarf flew up
in the air. He was as safe as if he had been in bed, though he did not feel so.
As he came down the huge velveted paws caught him as gently as a mother’s arms
and set him (right way up, too) on the ground” (p. 149). Having seen Aslan,
Trumpkin believes; having, without choice, been forced to “leave it” to Aslan,
he is ready to move on and act upon his faith.
In describing Christian belief early in Mere Christianity, Lewis uses this
metaphor: “Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is
the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in
disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage”
(p. 51). In a sense this is the image behind the plot of Prince Caspian as a whole, as the rightful kings and queens,
including Aslan, “the highest of all [ß
p. 43] High Kings” (The Voyage of the
Dawn Treader,” p. 135), land in Narnia and conduct a campaign against the
enemy forces who occupy the land. The effect of that image comes through
particularly after the children and the lion arrive at Aslan’s How. The
campaign of sabotage takes two strikingly different directions. The first is
battle. Peter and Edmund, after putting down the insurrection by Nikabrik,
arrange—with the help of some duplicity within the enemy ranks—a single combat
between Peter and Miraz. The challenge reminds the reader again of the past, as
Peter “recalled to his mind the language in which he had written such things
long ago in Narnia’s golden age” (pp. 171-72). The scene—from the wording of
the challenge, to the assignment of marshals, to the fight itself, to Peter’s
courtesy as “a Knight” (p. 189)—is straight out of the romance tradition. The
combat ends, however, very unheroically—through villainy on the part of the
Telmarines: “’ To arms, Narnia.
Treachery!’ Peter shouted” (p. 189). In a story whose theme has been belief and
faith, in a genre based on a code which emphasized honor above all else, the
deciding incidents, ironically, proceed through a series of violations of
trust: the insubordination and rebellion of Nikabrik, the treachery of Glozelle
and Sopespian in goading Miraz into fighting and in attacking the Narnians
before the combat has ended, and the infidelity of Glozelle in stabbing the
fallen Miraz in the back. The Telmarines’ lack of belief in Aslan is reflected
in their lack of respect for their fellow creatures, as it has been, in fact,
ever since they entered Narnia.
The second direction in which the campaign of
sabotage moves is revelry. Dance has appeared throughout the story as a symbol
of harmony (pp. 45-46) and of a proper response to Aslan—the dance of the fauns
in Chapter 6 and the dance of the trees in Chapter 10 anticipate the wild romp
which begins in Chapter 11 and continues in Chapter 14. Imagery of dance is
common in Lewis’s fiction, but it [ß
p. 44] is complicated here by the introduction of “a youth, dressed only in a fawn-skin, with vine-leaves wreathed
in his curly hair” (p. 152). He is Bacchus, the Greek god of wine and revelry,
who, with his strange company of maenads, satyrs, and sileni, had been a
frequent visitor in Narnia in its heroic age: “[In] summer when the woods were
green . . . old Silenus on his fat donkey would come to visit them, and
sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run with wine instead of
water and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on
end” (The Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe, p. 13). Lewis introduces him here to reinforce and expand the
sense of joy and freedom as the invaders liberate the occupied territories. The
use of Bacchus presents its dangers; the Greek recognized the harmful potential
of wine and Bacchus was characterized by drunken frenzy and cruelty as well as
by release and mirthmaking. The story acknowledges those dangers in Susan’s
remark,
“I wouldn’t have felt very safe with Bacchus and
all his wild girls if we’d met them without Aslan.”
“I should think not,” said Lucy. (p. 154)
With
Bacchus under the restraints of Aslan’s greater power, however, he can be used
to symbolize the meaning of Aslan’s coming. Part of what Bacchus adds comes
through in Edith Hamilton’s description of the Bacchic festivals in later Greek
history: “No other festival in Greece could compare with it. It took place in
the spring when the vine begins to put forth its branches, and it lasted for
five days. They were days of perfect peace and enjoyment. All the ordinary
business of life stopped. No one could be put in prison; prisoners were even
released so that they could share in the general rejoicing.”2 Lewis
draws on the joy, change, and freedom traditionally associated with Bacchus to
celebrate the restoration of the “long-lost days of freedom” in Narnia (p. 48).
[ß p. 45]
The celebration begins with a wild
romp: “But nearly everyone seemed to have a different idea as to what they were
playing. It may have been Tig, but Lucy never discovered who was It. It was
rather like Blind Man’s Buff, only everyone behaved as if he was blindfolded.
It was not unlike Hunt the Slipper, but the slipper was never found” (p. 152).
Later Aslan declares a holiday and the whole party moves off, “Aslan leading,
Bacchus and his Maenads leaping, rushing, and turning somersaults, the beasts
frisking round them, and Silenus and his donkey bringing up the rear” (p. 192).
The freedom within that company soon reaches out to others—first to the Beruna
River:
Before they had begun to cross [the bridge], however,
up out of the water came a great wet, bearded head, larger than a man’s,
crowned with rushes. It looked at Aslan and out of its mouth a deep voice came.
“Hail, Lord,” it said. “Loose my
chains.”
“Who on earth is that?” whispered Susan.
“I
think it’s the river-god, but hush,” said Lucy.
“Bacchus,” said Aslan. “Deliver him from his chains.”
“That means the bridge, I expect,” thought Lucy. And so
it did. (pp. 192-93)
Soon
strong trunks of ivy and other vegetation cover the bridge, break it down, and
give the river its freedom. “Wherever they went in the little town of Beruna it
was the same” (p. 195). The coming of Aslan liberates (“Chained dogs broke
their chains”—p. 195), comforts (“The boy, who had been crying a moment before,
burst out laughing and joined them”—p. 195), and heals (“Why I do declare I
feel that better. I think I could
take a little breakfast this morning”—p. 197).
The battle and revelry, then, are
contrasting but complementary actions, together defeating the Telmarine forces
which had “silenced the beasts and the trees and the fountains, and . . .
killed and [driven] away the dwarfs and fauns” (p. 47) and which had enslaved
the spirits of their [ß p. 46] own people by wiping out the very memory
of Aslan and all that he stood for. Contrasting responses to Aslan’s offer of
freedom are illustrated by the two schoolteachers whom the revelers encounter.
“The first house they came to was a school: a girl’s school, where a lot of
Narnian girls, with their hair done very tight and ugly tight collars round
their necks and thick tickly stockings on their legs, were heaving a history
lesson” (pp. 193-94). The confinement and repression are symbolized by the
girls’ clothes and by the history lesson, for Caspian’s education much earlier
illustrated the New Narnian use of history. Miss Prizzle, the teacher, after
reprimanding Gwendolen for looking out the window and talking nonsense about a
lion, sees her tidy schoolhouse dissolve into a forest glade and flees from
nature and freedom with her class—except for Gwendolen, who joins the dance and
is released from some of the “unnecessary and uncomfortable” clothes she was
wearing (p. 195). In contrast to Miss Prizzle’s response is that at another
school, “where a tired-looking girl was teaching arithmetic to a number of boys
who looked very like pigs. She looked out of the window and saw the divine
revellers . . . and a stab of joy went through her heart” (p. 196). After
Bacchus frightens off her insolent, belligerent pupils and turns them externally
into the pigs they already were internally, she yields to the divine longing
within her, jumps down and joins the celebration. “And so at last, with leaping
and dancing and singing, with music and laughter and roaring and barking and
neighing, they all came to the place where Miraz’s army stood flinging down
their swords and holding up their hands” (p. 198) and the two parts of the
campaign of sabotage are united in victory.
In the final chapter, the celebration of the victory of Old Narnia over
the New concludes with a dance and a feast, and the earlier themes are
reiterated. The hero is given renewed
attention when his history as a member of the Telmarine race is recounted (pp.
210-12); the theme of [ß p. 47] faith is reasserted by the reaction of
the Telmarines to the door Aslan set up
for passage back to an island in the Pacific: “We don’t see any other world
through those sticks. If you want us to believe in it, why doesn’t one of you go?” (p. 213); and the heroic tone
is reemphasized by Reepicheep’s quick response, “If my example can be one of any service, Aslan, . . . I will take
eleven mice through that arch at your bidding without a moment’s delay” (p.
213). The ending unifies the plot and themes of the book, but does not complete
the story of the growth of the hero—the cycle of Caspian’s life extends into
the next two books. Prince Caspian
describes Caspian’s initiation and the first steps towards his maturity: he
rides off from his sheltered, secure homelife “to seek adventures” (p. 59) and
as a result he is said later to be
hardened “and his face wore a kinglier look” (p. 79). But that kingliness does
not come through strongly in this story: Caspian’s leadership of the army is on
the whole unsuccessful; Peter takes command after his arrival at Aslan’s How; and Peter, not Caspian, fights the
decisive, character-testing duel. Rather than stressing the heroism of the
prince, Lewis subordinates his title character in the second half of the book
in order to emphasize the theme of faith. As a result, the theme of this story,
the quality that gives the book its
distinctiveness, is not the heroism of human efforts or achievements but
of trust, of “handing everything over”
and relying completely on Another. [ß
p. 48]