the lion the witch and the wardrobe by cs lewis

While the blanket of snow helps to delineate Narnia's magic at the beginning of the book, with the onset of the thaw heralding Aslan's arrival, an even better literary spell is cast as Narnia is revealed in all its vernal glory ('you will hardly be able to imagine what a relief those green patches were after the endless white'). There's a poignant moment when Mrs Beaver is loth to leave her precious sewing machine behind to be smashed up or impounded: 'I can't abide the thought of that Witch fiddling with it, and breaking it or stealing it, as likely as not.' Informer Edmund has his own snowy trek, to the Witch's icy palace, during which he gets thoroughly wet and miserable the wintry landscape is sublime, but also properly hard-going. from which everyone took as much as he wanted to go with his potatoes').Īnd of course Narnia is a country at war, with a lupine secret police force, and a resistance movement making moonlit flits across the snowy landscape.

and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake'), the fresh-caught trout the children eat with the Beavers (accompanied by 'a great big lump of deep yellow butter. The book is full of snug boltholes, from Mr Tumnus's cave to the Beavers' hut, and laden with glorious midwinter feasts: the 'wonderful tea' Lucy enjoys with her faun ('a nice brown egg, lightly boiled. Though it is only mentioned once, the novel is set during the second world war, the children evacuated from London air raids to the rambling country house in which they find the wardrobe that acts as a portal to Narnia and it's not hard to see in the longing for comfort and warmth in unending depths of winter a reference to the privations of war and rationing. When CS Lewis was writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in 1949, the times were hardly self-indulgent. When, later in the book, her powers on the wane, she comes across a group of satyrs and small animals enjoying their Christmas dinner, she rounds on them: 'What is the meaning of all this gluttony, this waste, this self-indulgence?' 'Always winter and never Christmas think of that!' The White Witch who has plunged Narnia into an everlasting freeze is the antithesis to Father Christmas like him, she travels by sleigh and reindeer, dispensing delightful sweetmeats, but the jingling of her bells is a herald of mortal danger rather than celebration.

The lion the witch and the wardrobe by cs lewis