Chapter 8—
“My True Country”:
Longing in The Last Battle
If The Magician’s
Nephew responds to the human hunger to know the beginning of things, The Last Battle fulfills the need for
knowledge about the end. Northrop Frye describes the last of his four phases as
the “darkness, winter and dissolution phase. Myths of the triumphs of these
powers; myths of floods and the return of chaos, of the defeat of the hero” (Fables of Identity, p. 16). This
describes well the pattern Lewis found best suited to his account of the
dissolution and destruction of the Narnian society and world. But for Lewis, as
a Christian, dissolution is not the end and The
Last Battle concludes in the second phase, “the zenith, summer, and . . .
triumph phase. Myths . . . of entering into Paradise” (Fables of Identity, p. 16). The
Last Battle moves, then, from the mode of irony, or “antiromance,” the
essence of human anxiety dreams, to romance, which pictures idealized human
experience and complete happiness. Out of a tone of fear, it creates and builds
a tone of longing, which, though strongest at the end of the book, is present
throughout and becomes the unifying quality of the story.
The sense of frustration that dominates the first half of
The Last Battle grows out of the
first striking image in [ß p. 115]
the book. When Puzzle the Donkey is induced by Shift the Ape to plunge into
Caldron Pool and retrieve the yellow thing that just came over the waterfall,
the description of Puzzle’s struggle becomes a symbol of the story that is to
follow:
A great mass of foam got him in the face and
filled his mouth with water and blinded him. Then he went under altogether for
a few seconds, and when he came up again he was in quite another part of the
Pool. Then the swirl caught him and carried him round and round and faster and
faster till it took him right under the waterfall itself, and the force of the
water plunged him down, deep down, so that he thought he would never be able to
hold his breath till he came up again. (pp. 4-5)
The land of Narnia, as Shift proceeds to betray it to
Calormen and to undercut its belief in Aslan and in itself, is similarly caught
in maelstrom. It struggles—behind the hasty and misguided efforts of King
Tirian and Jewel the Unicorn, then with the help of the children Jill and
Eustace, and finally through arguing against error and fighting it in battle—to
get free of the current that is pulling it down. Again and again a feeling of
optimism carries Narnia to the surface, but it is plunged down each time and
eventually, at the end of the battle, it, unlike Puzzle, is submerged for good.
The
setting in the early part of the story creates a foreboding, even despairing
tone, and, by contrast, a deep sense of longing for Narnia. Tirian is first
encountered, for example, at a little hunting lodge “where he often stayed for
ten days or so in the pleasant spring weather” (p. 12). It is there that he
hears the “wonderful news” that Aslan has come to Narnia again (p. 13). As Jill
and Eustace walk with Tirian, after being brought to Narnia in answer to his
cry for help and freeing him from the Calormenes, “the sun had risen, dewdrops
were twinkling on every branch, and birds were singing” (p. 47). Later, when
the King with his now larger group of followers sets out toward Cair Paravel [ß p. 116] to organize the army
and attack the invaders in a unified way, it was “the first really warm day of
that spring. The young leaves seemed to be much further out than yesterday: the
snowdrops were over, but they saw several primroses. The sunlight slanted
through the trees, birds sang, and always (though usually out of sight) there
was the noise of running water” (p. 87). Such details, on the one hand,
intensify the love of and desire for Narnia: “The children felt, ‘This is
really Narnia at last’” (p. 87) and Jill thinks, “Wouldn’t it be lovely if
Narnia just went on and on—like what you said it has been?” (p. 89). And, on
the other hand, they instill a false sense of optimism, even in Tirian, whose
“heart grew lighter as he walked ahead of them, humming an old Narnian marching
song” (p. 87).
But
constantly there are reminders that the optimism is false hope and that Narnia
will not go on and on. The opening words of the book are “in the last days of
Narnia” (p. 1) and the first reference to Tirian describes him as “the last of
the Kings of Narnia” (p. 12). The foreboding tone continues when Roonwit the
Centaur reports that he finds, as he studies the stars, “terrible things
written in the skies” (p. 15). Shortly thereafter, when Tirian and Jewel go
alone and in haste to stop the murder of the trees, Tirian feels “horrible
thoughts aris[ing] in my heart” and the narrator comments that “much evil came
of their rashness” (p. 20). And as the children and Tirian walk through the
woods on their way to Stable Hill, the silence all around them conveys the mood
of the whole country: “Gloom and fear reigned over Narnia” (p. 59). Nowhere is
the effect of the contrasting tones, of optimism and fear, of hope and doom,
more striking than at the end of the scene of beauty and lifted spirits
described above. Immediately after Tirian felt his heart grow lighter and Jill
expressed her hope that Narnia would go on and on, Jewel cautions that “all
worlds draw to an end; except Aslan’s own country” (p. 89) and Farsight the
eagle arrives to report that Cair Paravel has [ß p. 117]
been captured and Roonwit their messenger has been killed. There will be no
help and there is no more reason for hope: as the King says after a long
silence, “Narnia is no more” (p. 91). The springtime setting and the beauty of
the countryside have increased the children’s desires for Narnia, in order to
intensify by contrast their growing despair at its approaching defeat.
A
fourth-phase narrative, a story of defeat and dissolution, according to Frye,
employs the mode of irony, or antiromance. It is striking, therefore, that The Last Battle is the only one of the
Chronicles to use irony. From its opening scene, it requires that a reader
discern the discrepancy between reality and appearance. As Shift explains why
Puzzle, rather than Shift, should plunge into the pool for the lion skin, the
expressed reasons are definitely not the real ones: “‘Wanting me to go into the water,’ said the Ape.
‘As if you didn’t know perfectly well what weak chests Apes always have and how
easily they catch cold! Very well. I will
go in. I’m feeling cold enough already in this cruel wind. But I’ll go in. I
shall probably die. Then you’ll be sorry’” (p. 4). That tone appears again and
again early in the book, as for example when Shift asks Puzzle to try on the
coat he has fashioned out of the lion skin while Puzzle was trudging to
Chippingford for oranges and bananas: “‘You are
unkind, Puzzle,’ said Shift. ‘If you’re
tired, what do you think I am? All
day long, while you’ve been having a lovely refreshing walk down the valley,
I’ve been working hard to make you a coat. My paws are so tired I can hardly
hold these scissors. And now you won’t say thank-you—and you won’t even look at
the coat—and you don’t care—and—and—’” (pp. 8-9). Establishment of such
discrepancies, between what words or actions seem to be and what they really
are, is verbal irony. It is not very sophisticated irony—a child has no trouble
seeing through the deception. But that is just the point, for the [ß p. 118] irony becomes a key
indicator that the Ape and his side are not to be trusted.
Such
verbal ironies reappear in the fourth chapter as the Ape informs the Narnians
about conditions under the new regime, and they grow into a vein of satire on
political and religious tendencies in Lewis’s day. The Ape, in the passage
toughing on politics, tells the other animals to get ideas of freedom out of
their heads. “Everybody who can work is going to be made to work in the future.
Aslan has it all settled with the King of Calormen. . . . All you horses and
bulls and donkeys are to be sent down into Calormen to work for your
living—pulling and carrying the way horses and such do in other countries. And
all you digging animals like moles and rabbits and Dwarfs are going down to
work in the Tisroc’s mines” (p. 29). But this, he assures them, will not be
slavery: “You’ll be paid—very good wages too. That is to say, your pay will be
paid into Aslan’s treasury and he will use it all for everybody’s good. . . .
It’s all arranged. And all for your own good. We’ll be able, with the money you
earn, to make Narnia a country worth living in. There’ll be oranges and bananas
pouring in—and roads and big cities and schools and offices and whips and
muzzles and saddles and cages and kennels and prisons—Oh, everything” (p. 30).
The lines almost surely reflect Lewis’s concern over the increasing tendency,
in our day, toward collectivism and oligarchy. He wrote in 1958, “The modern
State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us
good—anyway, to do something to us or make us something. Hence the new name
‘leaders’ for those who were once ‘rulers.’ We are less their subjects than
their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can
say to them, ‘Mind your own business.’ Our whole lives are their business.”1 This tendency has come at the same
time as a loss of personal freedom: “Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of
liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The [ß p. 119] increasing
complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to
take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance.”2
To point towards the dangers in that trend Lewis has the Ape say, in reply to
the Bear’s assertion that “we want to be free,” “What do you know about
freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you’re wrong. That
isn’t true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you” (pp. 30-31).
The
religious equivalent to this political tyranny is the Ape’s insidious attack on
belief in Aslan. It begins with the argument that everyone actually believes in
the same thing: “Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us
being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The
Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan
are only two different names for you know Who” (p. 31). In forming that
argument, the Ape twists Puzzle’s reverent, awe-filled reference to “you know
Who” (p. 6) into an irreverent, meaningless generality. This sort of thing
becomes the Narnian version of the liberal accommodation and whittling down of
the truth of the Gospel that Lewis complained about in our world: “I have some
definite views about the de-Christianizing of the church,” he commented in an
interview in 1963. “I believe that there are many accommodating preachers, and
too many practitioners in the church who are not believers. Jesus Christ did
not say ‘Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right.’ The
Gospel is something completely different. In fact, it is directly opposed to
the world.”3 From accommodation of liberal ideas it is an easy step,
or slip, to rejection of the fundamental ideas of the faith: Lewis often heard,
from churchmen in his day, doctrine which was “so ‘broad’ or ‘liberal’ or
‘modern’ that it in fact excludes any real Supernaturalism and thus ceases to
be Christian at all.”4 The Narnian world experienced a somewhat
similar situation, as a conversation between Ginger the Cat and [ß p. 120] Rishda Tarkhaan, the
Calormene commander, illustrates: “‘I just wanted to know exactly what we both
meant today about Aslan meaning no more
that Tash.’ ‘Doubtless, most sagacious of cats,’ says the other, ‘you have
perceived my meaning.’ ‘You mean,’ says Ginger, ‘that there’s no such person as
either.’ ‘All who are enlightened know that,’ said the Tarkaan” (p. 79).
The
attack on Narnia by her enemies is so effective, so devastating, because it
undermines the principles and values on which Narnia was founded. Aslan
intended Narnia to be free and he reminded King Frank that the animals he would
rule over “are not slaves like the dumb beasts of the world you were born in
but Talking Beasts and free subjects” (The
Magician’s Nephew, p. 139). And at the creation of Narnia Aslan said to the
animals, “I give you myself” (The
Magician’s Nephew, p. 118). He is not a tame lion, but when Digory asked
Aslan to cure his mother, “great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes . . .
[and Digory] felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than
he was himself” (The Magician’s Nephew,
p. 142). Narnia was intended, then, to be a “kindly land” (The Magician’s Nephew, p. 175), a land of obedience, love, and
freedom. To see these values undermined is almost as hard as to see the nation
itself fall. And the use of the ironic mode to depict the undermining is
effective because irony and satire remind the reader of normal, positive values
as they poke fun at and criticize departures from those values.
Despite
the coming of the children in response to Tirian’s prayer-like call, “Aslan!
Aslan! Aslan! Come and help us Now” (p. 41), the situation in Narnia continues
to decline. Narnia continues to be endangered by those from without who “care
neither for Tash nor Aslan but have only an eye to their own profit” (p. 79)
and by those from within who begin accepting the same premise: “We’re on our
own now. . . . The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs” (p. 73). [ß p. 121] The extent of the
Ape’s commitment to those values becomes clear only after the faithful few
learn of the attack on Cair Paravel: “We see that the Ape’s plans were laid
deeper than we dreamed,” Jewel comments. “Doubtless he has been long in secret
traffic with the Tisroc, and as soon as he has found the lionskin, he sent him
word to make ready his navy for the taking of Cair Paravel and all Narnia.
Nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the
truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.” Brave as Jewel’s words are,
the situation as a whole appears hopeless: “If, by a great marvel, we defeat
those thirty Calormenes who are with the Ape, [we must] turn again and die in
battle with the far greater host of them that will soon march from Cair
Paravel” (pp. 92-93).
The
despairing tone in The Last Battle is
supported by imagery of darkness, death, and dissolution, all characteristic of
the ironic mode. Shift figures, for example, that someone who saw Puzzle in his
lion skin “just might mistake him for a lion, if he didn’t come too close, and
if the light was not too good” (p. 9). The false Aslan, partly for that reason,
is shown only at night, at “dreadful midnight meetings” (p. 78), and
consultations between the enemy generally are held at times and places that are
“black as pitch” (p. 78). In keeping with the long tradition of romances the
evil characters are dark, “our dark-faced friends, the Calormenes,” as the Ape
calls them (p. 29). When the evil god Tash passes through Narnia, it is as if a
previously sunny day was “clouding over” (p. 79). The last battle is fought at
night, with firelight outlining objects, and the inside of the stable,
especially to the dwarfs, is “pitch-black” (p. 144). All of the darkness and
blackness creates and atmosphere of doubt and dread and reinforces the despair
which was already growing out of early events.
Death
is first mentioned in The Last Battle
as the seven loyal Narnians are on their way toward Stable Hill and [ß p. 122] Eustace wonders,
“What’ll happen if we get killed here?” Will they still be alive in England, or
will they vanish and never be heard of any more? Jill begins to reply, stops,
then begins again:
“I was going to
say I wished we’d never come. But I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. Even if we are killed. I’d rather be killed
fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home and perhaps go about in a
bathchair and then die in the end just the same.”
“Or be smashed up by British Railways!”
“Why’d you say that?”
“Well when that awful jerk came—the one that seemed to
throw us into Narnia—I thought it was
the beginning of a railway accident. So I was jolly glad to find ourselves here
instead.” (pp. 96-97)
Later the children discover that there was indeed a
railway accident, in which the other friends of Narnia and the Pevensie
children’s parents were killed. Lewis resolves the dilemma about the effect of
death in one world on the other world by setting up a death situation in both:
Jill and Eustace are drawn into Narnia in the split second before their deaths in
our world and that, because of the different time sequences, makes it possible
for them to die simultaneously in both worlds.
There
have been deaths, of course, in earlier Chronicles: they are inevitable in the
romance tradition, with its adventures and battles, and can be viewed as
something children should be introduced to as a natural part of life. At the
conclusion of The Silver Chair Lewis
made a special effort to take the fearfulness out of death by depicting it as a
transition to a new and more glorious existence. But death in the earlier books
has involved characters with whom the readers are not closely identified, at
least not at the time of their deaths. In The
Last Battle, however, the characters facing imminent death are Jill and
Eustace, with whom readers have identified in earlier books as well [ß p. 123] as this one, and
Tirian, the character from whose viewpoint most of this story is being related.
To bring death so close without imposing an impossible emotional burden on
young readers required most careful handling. Lewis solved the problem by use
of the stable door.
The
stable door becomes, throughout the battle, a symbol of death. Lewis can
achieve the authenticity of having his characters die in a losing battle,
without the naturalistic detail unnecessary in a fairy tale, by having his
characters pass through the stable door into eternity. The Calormene leader,
Rishda Tarkaan, orders that the Narnians be offered as a sacrifice to Tash:
“Take all of them alive if you can and hurl them into the Stable: or drive them
into it. When they are all in we will put fire to it and make them an offering
to the great god Tash” (p. 117). Though the offerings are to be live offerings,
the symbolism of death is clear. As Poggin the Dwarf looks at the stable, he
remarks, “I feel in my bones . . . that we shall all, one by one, pass through
that dark door before morning” and Tirian replies, “It is indeed a grim door”
(p. 128). When the children have passed through it they meet the others who
died in the train crash: Professor Kirke, Aunt Polly, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy.
Death and the door are, in effect and meaning, the same. The important thing is
that neither represents an end but a beginning, not an exit but an entrance.
After
death comes the final stage of a fourth-phase narrative, dissolution. After the
battle, Aslan appears and summons Father Time, who, as it was foretold in an
earlier story, “would wake on the day the world ended” and henceforth have a
new name, Eternity (p. 150). Aslan then summons the creatures of the Narnian
world—those who have been dead, like Roonwit the Centaur, Jewel the Unicorn,
the boar, the bear, and the horses (p. 154), and those who have not died: some
were living in distant parts of Narnia or in foreign countries, while others
were at Stable Hill [ß p. 124]
but “just crept quietly away during the fighting” (p. 120). The door now
symbolizes the entrance to paradise, the way of acceptance. Aslan stands at the
doorway, on its left side, as the creatures approach him:
As they came right up to
Aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them. They all looked
straight in his face; I don’t think they had any choice about that. And when
some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly—it was fear and
hatred: except that, on the faces of Talking Beasts, the fear and hatred lasted
only for a fraction of a second. You could see that they suddenly ceased to be Talking Beasts. They were just ordinary
animals. And all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their
right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow, which . . .
streamed away to the left of the doorway. The children never saw them again. I
don’t know what became of them. But the others looked in the face of Aslan and
loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time. And all
these came in at the Door, in on Aslan’s right. (pp. 153-54)5
Aslan had already called the stars home, leaving
“spreading blackness, . . . emptiness” behind (p. 151). The image of darkness
is reinforced by images of water and then ice. After dragons and lizards reduce
Narnia to a desert, “a foaming wall of water” comes across it: “The sea was
rising. . . . All now was level water from where they stood to where the water
met the sky” (pp. 155-56). The dying sun then licked up the moon and was
squeezed to death by Father Time, “and instantly there was total darkness” (p.
157). Finally comes the cold: “Everyone except Aslan jumped back from the
ice-cold air which now blew through the Doorway. Its edges were already covered
with icicles” (p. 157). The Last Battle,
then, goes beyond an account of the decline of a nation or world (a story of
autumn) to its dissolution, to a story of winter, the central image of Frye’s
fourth phase.6 Lewis’s choice of ending was probably influenced by
the Icelandic myths he loved greatly throughout [ß p. 125]
his life. But the question of a specific source is not important: it was the
“right” conclusion archetypally, the one needed to convey with fullest impact
the end of things, the completion of the cycle of nature and of the history of
Narnia.7
The
larger part of The Last Battle is a
winter’s tale, an account of the final days of Narnian history presented
through images of darkness, death, and dissolution. But the end of Narnian
history is not the end of the story. As Tirian is thrown through the stable
door, the imagery shifts abruptly: “It was not dark inside the Stable, as he
had expected. He was in strong light” (p. 131). Indeed, he and Jill and Eustace
and Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Aunt Polly, and the Professor, in whose company he
finds himself, are not in the stable at all: “They stood on grass, the deep
blue sky was overhead, and the air which blew gently on their faces was that of
a day in early summer” (p. 136). The story of winter, of dissolution, has given
way to a story of summer, of triumph, of entry into paradise, and of the ideal,
wish-fulfillment dream of romance.
The
sense of longing which was created intermittently in the earlier part of the
story now intensifies greatly. The place Tirian has entered is a country of
youth: as Jill puts it, the Professor and Aunt Polly aren’t “much older than we
are here” (p. 139). It is a place of health—Edmund’s knee ceases to be sore and
the Professor suddenly feels unstiffened; and abundance—they have crowns on
their heads and are in glittering clothes; and freedom—“I’ve a feeling we’ve
got to the country where everything is allowed” (p. 137). And it is a place of
beauty and of bounty: “Not far away from them rose a grove of trees, thickly
leaved, but under every leaf there peeped out the gold or faint yellow or
purple or glowing red of fruits such as no one has seen in our world,” fruits
compared with which “the freshest grapefruit you’ve ever eaten was dull, and
the juiciest orange was dry, and the most melting pear was [ß p. 126] hard and woody, and
the sweetest wild strawberry was sour.” After doing his best to say what it was
like, the narrator confesses his inadequacy: “But I can’t describe it. You
can’t find out what it is like unless you can get to that country and taste for
yourself” (pp. 136-37).
Most
of all, it is a place where those who love and long for Aslan find fulfillment.
Soon after entering Narnia, Tirian sees a brightness and turns around: “There
stood his heart’s desire, huge and real, the golden Lion, Aslan himself” (p.
146). Here is the real object of all the unsatisfied and unsatisfiable longings
experienced on earth: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this
world can satisfy, the most probable explanations is that I was made for
another world. . . . I must [therefore] keep alive in myself the desire for my
true country, which I shall not find till after death” (Mere Christianity, p. 120). Jewel’s words echo those sentiments
closely: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here.
This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it
till now” (p. 171). It is also the land that Emeth, the Calormene officer, has
been looking for all his life, though he didn’t know it untill now. Because of
his great desire for God and goodness, for wisdom and understanding, which he
thought were embodied in Tash, harsh and cruel though he might seem to others,
he is admitted to the new Narnia. In desiring and doing good, he was actually
serving Aslan, not Tash, and the God of truth and love accepts his service as
unto himself.8 Emeth believes, and he can see: “As soon as I had
gone through the door, the first wonder was that I found myself in this great
sunlight” (p. 163). The Dwarfs, on the other hand, do not believe and cannot
see. They find only a small dark stable on the other side of the door. “How in
the name of all Humbug can I see what ain’t there? And how can I see you any
more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?” (p. 144). Even Aslan can do
little for them: the rich feast [ß p. 127]
he provides tastes to them like stable litter. “They will not let us help them.
They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own
minds, yet they are in that prison” (p. 148). And presumably they are in it
still. Dante, in The Divine Comedy,
left those who were unwilling to commit themselves to goodness or evil outside
heaven and hell—neither place would accept them. Perhaps it is similar in the
Narnian situation. The Dwarfs, after all, are for the Dwarfs: they fire arrows
at talking horses and at Calormenes. Thus they neither disappear into Aslan’s
shadow nor enter the new Narnia. Because Aslan was not their heart’s desire,
because they did not long for his country, they apparently remain forever in
that “pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable” (p. 144).
The
others, who have longed for Narnia as well as for Aslan, discover that they
have both. Farsight the Eagle sums it up for the others: “We have all been
blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it
all—Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on
the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia” (p. 169). As
he has tried to convey ideas about Christianity through the images of Narnia,
so Lewis now tries to put Plato’s theory of ideas into images. First the
Professor explains that the Narnia to which the Pevensie children could not
return was not the real Narnia: “That had a beginning and an end. It was only a
shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will
be here. . . . And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is
from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream” (pp. 169-70). Such idealistic
philosophy is, of course, difficult to get across successfully, and Lewis tries
to clarify it by an analogy:
Perhaps you will get some idea of it, if you think like this. [ß p. 128] You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a garden valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in a sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different—deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. (p. 170)
Lewis’s comparison captures, by the distancing effect
of a mirror’s reflection, a sense of wonder and inaccessibility and it
reinforces his point that the “reality” of the physical world out the window is
not the ultimate reality. Heaven is, as Lucy says, something new and different
and yet familiar: “This is still Narnia, and, more real and more beautiful than
the Narnia down below” (p. 180). Once more Lewis holds the prospect out before
the reader enticingly: “I can’t describe it any better than that: if you ever
get there, you will know what I mean” (p. 171).
The
theme of longing is particularly strong at the end of the book. It grows out of
the image of summer, for one thing, with its emphasis on youth (“This was his
father young and merry as he could just remember him from very early days”—p.
177), and brightness (“The light ahead was growing stronger”—p. 182), and
beauty (“There were forests and green slopes and sweet orchards and flashing
waterfalls, one above the other, going up for ever”—p. 182). And it grows out
of Lewis’s usual images for longing, mountains and sensory appeals, not this
time music but sweet smells: “So all of them passed in through the golden
gates, into the delicious smell that blew towards them out of that garden and
into the cool mixture of sunlight and shadow under the tress, walking on
springy turf that was all dotted with white flowers” (p. 178). For the
characters in the book, it is no longer an unsatisfied longing: they [ß p. 129] have reached their
true country and will not be sent away to our world again. They are united with
him they have longed for, seen now in human form: “And as He spoke He no longer
looked to them like a lion” (p. 183).9 And then things began to
happen “that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them” (pp.
183-84). Digory felt sure at the end of The
Magician’s Nephew that “they were all going to live happily ever after.”
But his expectation was premature: that was only the beginning of the story and
much unhappiness was still to come. Now the real end of their story has arrived
“and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after” (p. 184).
For
the reader, however, the sense of longing is not satisfied but increased, by
the descriptions of the new Narnia, by the review of characters from the
previous books, and by the knowledge that “for us this is the end of all the
stories” (p. 184). Perhaps the chief glory of the Chronicles is that the
stories themselves create in many readers longings which cannot be satisfied in
this world and then point readers toward the greater story in which such
longings will be satisfied at last: “Now . . . they were beginning Chapter One
of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in
which every chapter is better than the one before” (p. 184). [ß p. 130]