The Magician's Nephew

The Magician's Nephew is a fantasy novel for children written by C. S. Lewis. It was the sixth book published in his The Chronicles of Narnia series, but is the first in the internal chronology. Thus it is an early example of a prequel and includes many references to the previously published books, especially The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In more recent republications, the books have been re-ordered with The Magician's Nephew as book one. See The Chronicles of Narnia entry for more information on the ordering of the books in the series.

This book is dedicated to "the Kilmer family".

Plot summary

The story begins in London around 1900 with two children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, meeting as neighbours. Digory tells Polly that his mother is dying, and the two become friends over the course of the summer. One day, while exploring the attic which is common to all the adjoining houses in their terrace, they take the wrong door and surprise Digory's Uncle Andrew in his study. Uncle Andrew, a bumbling yet malevolent self-taught magician, tricks Polly into touching magic ring, which causes her to disappear. Andrew then blackmails Digory into using another ring, promising him that he will be able to bring Polly back with a pair of magic rings of another type. The rings transport the children into a wood with many pools of water. Initially, the pools appear to be just shallow puddles. However, the children discover that when the correct ring is worn, the pool of water transports the wearer to a different world. This Wood between the Worlds is thus a kind of linking room for gateways between many worlds. Digory convinces Polly to come explore through some of the other pools with him expecting Digory's uncle to confiscate the rings upon their return.

After having marked the pool which led to their own world, Earth, the children enter another pool, and find that they have arrived in the midst of an enormous palace in the ruins of the ancient capital city of that world, called Charn. The palace seems devoid of all life until they discover a hall filled with images of all former rulers of Charn, in chronological order. The first faces are fair and wise, but as they progress they get meaner and crueller. There are still several empty rows, implying a premature end. There they find a bell, as well as a sign which at once dares one to ring the bell and also warns not to ring it. Digory falls for the taunt and rings the bell. It awakes one of the statues, that of the evil Queen Jadis.

She tells them how the last war of that world had been waged between herself and her sister. After many bloody years her own defeat seemed certain, and in order to prevail she had spoken the incantation known as the Deplorable Word. This curse caused all life on Charn to be destroyed but her own, which would sit dormant in the Hall of Images for eternity unless someone woke her from her sleep—as has just happened. The children, upon learning of Jadis's evil, try to escape back to the Wood. Unfortunately, thanks to the 'magnetic effect' the rings have on all wearers, Jadis is able to travel back with them by grabbing hold of Polly's hair. She then follows them to our world where she leads Uncle Andrew on a wild chase through London. Digory and Polly try get the evil queen out of London and back to her own world. Ultimately, Digory and Polly draw back into the Wood not only the queen, but, through the magnetic property of the magic rings, also Uncle Andrew, a cab driver named Frank, and his horse, named Strawberry.

Digory draws the whole group into the nearest pool, thinking it leads to Charn. However, when they arrive, they realize it is not Charn but another world that is completely dark and seems to be entirely empty. Jadis quickly recognizes it as a world that has yet to be made. Soon, however, they hear singing which seems to cause the stars to begin to shine and the sun to rise. The visitors can now see the singer for what he is, Aslan, the great Lion, and they continue to watch as he breathes life into the world so that animals, plants, and the world itself are created from nothing. Jadis attacks Aslan with an iron bar she had ripped off a lamp post in London, but as this fails to even attract his attention, she flees, while the iron bar grows into a lamp post in the young Narnian soil. Aslan selects some animals to become intelligent talking beasts, giving them authority over the dumb beasts.

Aslan next sends Digory on a journey to get a special apple to atone for bringing the evil witch Jadis into the new world of Narnia. Polly, Digory, and the horse from our world (turned by Aslan into a winged horse and renamed Fledge) fly to a far-away mountain to get the apple from a walled garden. Right as Digory takes an apple and prepares to leave, he sees Jadis, who arrived before him. She tempts Digory to either eat the apple and gain eternal youth, or else secretly transport himself back to London and use it to cure his dying mother. Jadis herself has eaten an apple, thus becoming immortal and proving the power of the fruit. Although tempted to save his mother, Digory keeps his promise to Aslan and travels back to Narnia to give him the apple.

Aslan tells Digory that he has done well and instructs him to plant the apple in the ground. He then holds a ceremony to crown the king and queen of Narnia (Frank the cab driver and his wife, Helen, whom Aslan magically transported to Narnia). Meanwhile, a new tree grows from the apple Digory planted. Aslan explains that this tree will protect Narnia from the Witch: since she stole an apple from the original tree in a selfish way, its fruit is now abhorrent to her, and Narnia will thus enjoy an innocent Eden-like period. Aslan tells Digory that a stolen apple would have cured his mother, but that the day would have come later when she would have rather died in her illness. Aslan then gives Digory an apple from the tree of protection to take to his mother to save her, and sends the children and Uncle Andrew back to the Wood between the Worlds, whence they return to London. Digory gives the apple to his mother, who is healed, and buries the apple core in his back yard. He also buries the magic rings, which Aslan has instructed him to safeguard to prevent future misuse.

The apple core grows into a tree, and years later it is blown down in a storm. Digory can't bear to have the tree cut up into firewood so he has it made into a wardrobe, linking the end of the narrative to the next story chronologically in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The "old professor" in that story is Digory, where he lives in an old country house which he had inherited from his father, who in turn had inherited it from his great-uncle, just after the retirement from his services in India, as described at the end of The Magician's Nephew.

Commentary

Readers familiar with Genesis will recognise the parallels to it in Lewis's work. With respect to Creation, it also has some core similarities with Ainulindalë, the Song of the Ainur, the story of creation in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, due, presumably, both to drawing on the Biblical accounts for some of their material and to the close professional relationship between Tolkien and Lewis, who may have discussed together some themes such as a song of creation seen in both Ainulindalë and The Magician's Nephew but not in the Bible.

The story includes the divine establishment of a royal and aristocratic social system in which an English couple (the cabby and his wife) and their descendants are set in authority over an empire consisting of Narnia and its adjoining countries. The reader is also left in no doubt about the precise social class of each of the English characters, but with no implication that this matters to God; the cabby identifies himself and his wife as "both country folks, really." At the end of the book, Digory's father, who was working in India (then under British rule), inherits money and a large house, and this sudden wealth and country landlord status is stated to be a good thing. We may assume that these aspects owe something to Lewis' own attitude, which tended to be shared by most English people at the time of writing; the standard expectations are skewed a little, however, by having Mr. Kirke suddenly come into his inheritance, not to mention by the fact that King Frank and Queen Helen were of so lowly stature in their own world. Lewis's references to the Deplorable Word and Aslan's implicit comparison of it to the atomic bomb is a thread that reflects popular fears at the time of this book's writing.

Another of Lewis's own attitudes is that God might have a sense of humour, evident by "The First Joke." Soon after Aslan makes the Talking Animals to speak (in pairs of their species, biblically reminiscent of Noah's creatures on his Ark), a talking jackdaw makes himself the butt of a joke by accident. When he sees that all the other talking animals are laughing at "his joke", he says to Aslan, "Did I make the first joke?". Aslan responds, "No, you have only been the first joke", and they laugh all the harder, even the Jackdaw.

The characters are well drawn, engaging, and developed through a series of moral choices, particularly Digory. Polly is more than a mere sidekick but is assigned to a supporting role in the drama. As a girl, she has more practical common sense than Digory and is not deceived by Jadis. Uncle Andrew, initially a very sinister and manipulative presence, collapses into a figure of fun, while Jadis, the White Witch, provides the real portrayal of evil and temptation not at all far from Christian belief in how Satan works.

The Magician's Nephew, more even than the other Narnia stories, is a homage to Edith Nesbit's children's books, both in setting and in character dynamics; it is, however, considerably darker and more vivid. At least one scene—the visit of Jadis to London—borrows heavily from the visit of the Queen of Babylon to London in Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet. Lewis' version is more colorful though less violent.

The book explains in accordance to the second novel in the chronological series how the White Witch had come to power, how Narnia was founded, why there was a magical wardrobe in the Professor's (that is, Digory's) mansion—as well as how he came to own a mansion— and why there is a lamppost in the middle of the forest on Narnia's outskirts.

The basic story of The Magician's Nephew was included in the 2005 film version of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Viewers who observe carefully will see the story pictorially represented in the carvings on the face of the wardrobe.

Christian parallels

Just as in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis illustrated the mysteries of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, with themes of betrayal and redemption. The Magician's Nephew illustrates, at a similar level, the themes of creation, primal innocence, original sin, and temptation. A nine-year-old who has heard the Biblical account of Creation should have little difficulty following the story; there are a few obvious parallels with events in Genesis, such as the forbidden fruit represented by an Apple of Life.

Aslan acts in the role of the Creator. There is no reference to the distant "Emperor-over-the-Sea" who had been parallelled with God the Father previously in the series. Although some have presumed that this was a deliberate simplification by Lewis to keep the complexity at an appropriate level, it actually corresponds with the New Testament's teaching that Jesus (God the Son) was the agent of Creation; e.g. "All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made," (John 1:3 NIV, see also Hebrews 1:10 and Colossians 1:15–16). Aslan's personal selection of many of the wild beasts in Narnia to be made into Talking Animals is also reminiscent of the Genesis story, since both Aslan and Noah chose two of each species for their purposes. The flash from the stars when they are given the ability to talk represents the "breath of life" of Genesis chapter 1, and the scholastic identification of this with the divine Active Intellect which inspires men with rationality.

The beautiful, but wicked and powerful Queen Jadis being pulled out of her comfortable homeworld, being dropped into Narnia, changing color and shape and becoming immortal after eating the apple, also parallel to Christianity. It is similar to Satan's story, being the most beautiful of immortal angels, who is sent from Heaven into hell, which is a much less comfortable place, and who is changed into a less beautiful form.

Parallels may also be found in Lewis' other writings. Jadis' continual references to "reasons of State", and her claim to own the people of Charn and be superior to all common moral rules, represent the eclipse of the medieval Christian belief in natural law by the political concept of sovereignty, as embodied first in royal absolutism and then in modern dictatorships: see chapter 1 of Lewis' History of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. Uncle Andrew represents the Faustian element in the origins of modern science: see The Abolition of Man.

Trivia

• Of the seven Narnia books, The Magician's Nephew is one of the only two that does not feature the Pevensie children (the other is The Silver Chair). However, Lucy is mentioned twice in this book (though she is unnamed) in connection with her discoveries of the wardrobe and of the lamppost in the forests of Lantern Waste. The Silver Chair does not mention any of the children.

• The Magician's Nephew is the only book in the series where a significant amount of the storyline is in our world.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media currently retain the option to make The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew in the future.

A fan based animation can be found of The Magician's Nephew and is reported to be a series of episodes. http://www.narniafans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4692 Dancing Lawn

External links

• The Magician's Nephew at Narnia Fans
• The Magician's Nephew at Narnia Confidential
• fan made animation at Narniafans.com
• Template:isfdb title

Episode 1: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4223832216830440637 Episode 2: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=3283373942271336479

See also

• Narnia
• C. S. Lewis

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