The Lion, theWitch and the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis’ Use

of Mooreeffoc toGain a Hearing for the Gospel

Robert C. Newman

Biblical TheologicalSeminary

Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media have recently releaseda film version of C. S. Lewis’ beloved book for children, The Lion, theWitch and the Wardrobe, the first of hisseven-book series The Narnia Chronicles. As in converting anybook to film, the producers have made significant changes to translate from theone medium to the other. But here(it seems to me) the general atmosphere and the major features of the book havebeen well-preserved, and they have made an excellent film to boot.

Though Lewis’ first idea for his series arose from anincongruous picture that had been in his mind for years – a faun ofclassical mythology walking through a snowy wood carrying an umbrella and packages^[1]– a significant reason for his developing this picture into a story washis own experience as a youngster growing up in the Church of Ireland:

I thought I saw how stories of thiskind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my ownreligion in childhood. Why did onefind it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or aboutthe sufferings of Christ? Ithought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to.  An obligation to feel can freezefeelings. And reverence itself didharm. The whole subject wasassociated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical.  But supposing that by casting all thesethings into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass andSunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear intheir real potency? Could one notthus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.^[2]

Lewis chose to transfer his story about what God is like andthe sufferings of Christ into an imaginary world called Narnia, where thereader (especially a child) might feel the force of all this without at firstrecognizing that this is the Gospel story. I think he succeeded very well!

In doing this, Lewis was using a technique some call Mooreeffoc. AsLewis’ friend J. R. R. Tolkien explains it:

And there is (especially for thehumble) Mooreeffoc, or ChestertonianFantasy. Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word, but it could be seen written upin every town in this land. It isCoffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen byDickens on a dark London day; and it was used by Chesterton to denote thequeerness of things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from anew angle.^[3]

By transferring the Gospel story to another world, wherehumans are not the only rational beings, where animals can talk and the variousfigures of classical and northern mythology have real existence, Lewis allowsus to see things from a different angle. Here God is the unseen emperor over the sea, and the lion Aslan is hisson and the Christ-figure of Narnia. This transfer to another world also allowsLewis to use some of the figures and symbols of the Bible as hints for hisreaders, just as Jesus does in his parables. So Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, becomes the Lion ofNarnia.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens with the Pevensie children (Peter, Susan,Edmund and Lucy) leaving World War 2 London to escape the German bombardment andcoming to live in the mansion of an elderly Professor out in the country.  Soon after their arrival, Lucy travelsto Narnia accidentally by hiding in an old wardrobe. There she meets the faun Tumnus and has tea with him, andshe learns of the White Witch who holds Narnia in bondage, making it alwayswinter, but never Christmas.

At Tumnus’ home, Lucy encounters a minor mooreeffoc amongthe titles on his bookshelf. She spots a book, Men, Monks and Gamekeepers: AStudy in Popular Legend, or Is Man a Myth?^[4]The reader can hardly help wondering: If man, whom we know exists, isconsidered mythological by some fauns, may it not be that some of the beings weconsider mythological also exist? This could easily serve to open the minds of children (and adults)schooled in modern materialism to a more sympathetic reading of those biblicalnarratives containing angels and demons.

When Lucy returns to our world, her brothers and sisterdon’t believe her. She claims to havebeen in Narnia for several hours, though no time has elapsed here.  Her siblings are unable to reproduceher experience.^[5]  Again from a different perspective, wesee the common resistance of moderns to the supernatural.

Later Edmund, following Lucy, makes the same trip, meetingand allying himself with the White Witch. But on his return, he lets Lucy down when Peter and Susan ask whether hehas really been to Narnia, claiming that he was just pretending.  The older children become alarmed thatLucy is cracking up, but are stopped from doing anything drastic when theProfessor (who, we learn from a later volume of The Narnia Chronicles, has already been to Narnia) challenges theirassumption that Narnia is imaginary just because they haven’t experienced it,particularly when Lucy appears sane otherwise and is regularly more truthfulthan Edmund.^[6]  This provides us with anotherperspective on how we might judge stories of the miraculous, whether ancient ormodern. Do the story-tellers valueand practice truth?

Finally, all four Pevensie kids wind up in Narnia.  Here they make contact with the Beavers,who will take them to meet Aslan. Edmund slips away just before they set off, and goes to find the WhiteWitch. He soon learns that she isnot so nice now as she was before. There is, indeed, a real difference between good and evil!^[7]

The other Pevensies and the two Beavers travel on to meetAslan at the Stone Table. On theway, they encounter Father Christmas, who gives them gifts (Lucy’s ointment, Peter’ssword and shield, Susan’s bow, arrows and horn).^[8]  The reader may wonder, Is FatherChristmas a friend of Aslan? Whatis Christmas really about, anyway? Lewis’ answer to the first question is yes. His answer to the second is found in his delightful littlepiece of mooreeffoc, “Xmas and Christmas.”^[9]

The three Pevensies (minus Edmund) finally meet Aslan at theStone Table. Peter rescues thegirls from the wolf sent by the White Witch, and a detachment of Aslan’s troopsrescue Edmund. We get a picture ofwhat forgiveness looks like in Edmund’s talk with Aslan.^[10]

The White Witch comes to parley, demanding that Edmund beput to death on the Stone Table as a traitor. Aslan makes an agreement with her to spare Edmund, whichturns out to be on the condition that Aslan die in Edmund’s place.^[11]  Here we get a picture of what Edmund’sforgiveness will cost Aslan, a powerful and individualized picture of Jesus’atoning work.

That night, Aslan goes to the Stone Table, Susan and Lucyaccompanying him part way. Aslanis bound and mocked by the White Witch’s people, and then she kills him withthe stone knife.^[12]  Do we get some interpretive hints here?  The Stone Table, which is broken byAslan’s death and subsequent resurrection, recalls the stone tables which Mosesbrought down from Sinai. The stoneknife the Witch uses to kill Aslan reminds us of the Biblical rite ofcircumcision, perhaps viewed as the cutting off of the Seed to come.  The risen Aslan explains to the girlsthat death will reverse itself when an innocent victim is killed for theguilty.^[13]  Each of these features gives us aglimpse of the death of Jesus from a new perspective.

While Peter, Edmund and Aslan’s army are defendingthemselves against the White Witch and her army, Aslan takes Lucy and Susan tofree the White Witch’s victims who have been turned to stone around hercastle. Aslan breathes on them,and they are restored.^[14]  Is this a picture of regeneration?

Meanwhile, the battle is going poorly for Peter, Edmund andcompany. Many are turned to stoneby the White Witch until Edmund succeeds in breaking her wand, but he himselfis mortally wounded in the process.^[15]  Aslan arrives with the fresh troops,and he kills the White Witch. Wesee that without Aslan, we cannot win. The wounded are restored by Lucy’s ointment (from Father Christmas) andthe petrified by Aslan’s breath.

Finally, the Pevensie kids are enthroned as kings and queensof Narnia, in fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. In Narnia, as on earth, we find that the original intentionis that humans should benevolently rule the animals.^[16]

Besides these smaller, individual examples of mooreeffoc,there are several larger, overarching ones as well, seen here and throughoutthe Narnia series.

First of all, in the Narnia series, and especially in TheMagician’s Nephew, our world is seen to beonly one of a number of other worlds – not just other planets in ouruniverse, but (so to speak) other universes. This is one of the major ways in which the worldview of theBible differs from the worldview of modern secularism: our world is surrounded by an invisibleworld or worlds, between which some beings can travel.  It is important that children growingup today (not to mention grownups) should be aware of this possibility whenthinking what life is all about. Lewis has provided his readers with this opportunity, even if they mayinitially view it as fantasy.

Second, in the course of the seven Narnia Chronicles, children travel by various means from our world toNarnia. This, too, becomes a sortof moorreeffoc: the childrenfunction in these stories rather as angels do in our world, coming fromsomewhere else to carry out redemptive tasks.^[17]  Since the reader tends to identify withthe children, we in effect become angels in these stories.  What other stories have you ever readin which you identify in this way with the angels?

Third, magic in Narnia more or less corresponds to thesupernatural in our world. This isan important perspective to give to children who are typically being educatedto a worldview in which the natural is all that there is.  Even in (non-charismatic) evangelicalcircles, there has been a tendency in the past few centuries to downplay themiraculous, in reaction perhaps to Roman Catholicism and the occult.  How much more in our secular educationand media. Yet here in Narnia weare reminded that both good and evil beings can do magic, a theme which issignificant in the biblical picture of both the angelic and demonic.

So, we see that Lewis has produced a work of considerablepopularity that slips past the watchful dragons of antagonism to Christianity andof secularism which pervade our society. By his effective use of mooreeffoc, he helps his readers experience asupernatural world analogous to the one we really live in, and to feel thepower of the Gospel message to which they may have become hardened in one wayor another.^[18]  Since the Lion, the Witch and theWardrobe has done so well at thebox-office, we may expect in the coming years to see the entire series madeinto films, Lord willing. May Hegrant that the others in the series will be done so nicely!

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^[1]C. S. Lewis, “It All Began with a Picture,” in OfOther Worlds, ed. Walter Hooper (NewYork: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966), p. 42.

^[2]C.S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What=s to Be Said,” in Of Other Worlds, p. 37.

^[3]J.R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” in The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), p. 58.

^[4]C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Thefirst page citation will be from the original hardback edition (New York:Macmillan, 1950), the second (following the semicolon) from the later paperbackedition (New York: Collier, 1970); p. 11; p. 12.

^[5]LWW,18-20; 20-22.

^[6]LWW, 38;44.

^[7]LWW, 80;94.

^[8]LWW,87-88; 104-05.

^[9]C.S. Lewis, “Xmas and Christmas,” in God in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970),pp. 301-303.

^[10]LWW,111-12; 135-36.

^[11]LWW, 115;141.

^[12]LWW,125-26; 152.

^[13]LWW,132-33; 159-60.

^[14]LWW,136-37; 164-65.

^[15]LWW,145-46; 175-76.

^[16]LWW, 148;178-79.

^[17]C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian (New York: Macmillan, 1951), pp. 83-84; or paperback(New York: Collier, 1971), p 96.

^[18]Forfurther discussion of mooreeffoc, see Robert C. Newman, “Mooreeffoc in Narnia …and the Bible,” Concordia Journal 26:3(July 2000): 232-237.