Beavers say the name of God
The Chronicles of Narnia: Chapters 6 - 7
Earlier this year I wrote about why I secretly hated the Chronicles of Narnia as a child. In it, I made a promise to read and review all seven books, so as to see if my childhood memories fit the actual quality of the stories. And so I dusted off my old, single-volume Brazilian edition from the shelf and began reading. This week, we continue to explore The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Chapters Six: “Into the Forest” and Seven: “A Day With the Beavers”.
Last we saw of the Pevensie siblings, they were hiding from their housekeeper, and were led by something — “whether it was that they lost their heads, or that Mrs Macready was trying to catch them, or that some magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia” — to hide inside the Wardrobe. The four soon find themselves, of course, into the Lantern’s Waste.
The book so far focused mostly on Lucy and Edmund, with Peter and Susan often relegated to a sphere of their own. This chapter gives us a chance to finally see how the dynamics of the four play out together.
As we discussed briefly in Part One, the Pevensie children are, as a rule, not deep, complex characters — which is a feature, not a bug. That said, their characterization is always consistent. Take a look at the passage when the siblings first arrive in Narnia:
And now there was no mistaking it and all four children stood blinking in the daylight of a winter day. Behind them were coats hanging on pegs, in front of them were snow-covered trees.
Peter turned at once to Lucy.
“I apologise for not believing you,” he said, “I’m sorry. Will you shake hands?”
“Of course,” said Lucy, and did.
“And now,” said Susan, “what do we do next?”
“Do?” said Peter, “why, go and explore the wood, of course.”
“Ugh!” said Susan, stamping her feet, “it’s pretty cold. What about putting on some of these coats?”
“They’re not ours,” said Peter doubtfully.
“I am sure nobody would mind,” said Susan; “it isn’t as if we wanted to take them out of the house; we shan’t take them even out of the wardrobe.”
“I never thought of that, Su,” said Peter. “Of course, now you put it that way, I see. No one could say you had bagged a coat as long as you leave it in the wardrobe where you found it. And I suppose this whole country is in the wardrobe.”
They immediately carried out Susan’s very sensible plan.
The first thing Peter does is apologizing to Lucy (the at once in the second paragraph is important) who, being the kind girl she is, accepts it immediately. Susan, noticeably, does not apologize, but I won't read too much into this, lest the reader think I have an agenda against her; it is plausible that Peter’s apology, as representative of “the older ones”, covers them both. Lucy certainly does not seem to mind. More characteristic of Susan is that her first instinct is to think of practical matters. They are alone and cold in a strange land, and whatever they do next, first they should find some coats. Contrast this to Peter’s boyish, adventure-seeking decision to explore the woods.
We get more of Peter as leader a few paragraphs later. Edmund not-so-subtly tries to lead them to the Witch’s house, accidentally revealing that he had, indeed, been to Narnia before. Peter is furious, but quickly lets it go — not the time, not the place. Soon after, Peter lets Lucy decide where they should go next, as a way of making up to her for how they have been treating her.
Lucy takes them to meet Mr. Tumnus. Getting there, however, they discover the house broken in, an official letter from Maugrim, captain of the Queen’s secret police, confirming that the faun had been arrested for harbouring spies and fraternizing with Humans.
Names of Evil
Let us make a pause here and talk about what’s in a name. We get two great character names in quick succession: Jadis, the White Queen, and Maugrim the wolf.
Wikipedia, that always trustworthy guide, tells me that Lewis changed Maugrim’s name to “Fenris Ulf” for the early american editions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but Harper Collins reversed it back to the original in subsequent editions. And thank God for that.
Fenris Ulf is a direct reference to Norse mythology, which is always neat; but it is too on the nose, and doesn’t make much sense. Does this Narnia wolf has the same name as a legendary Earth wolf by coincidence? Or was our Fenrir really a Narnian? Or is it a general, multiversal law that people find Fenrir a cool name for wolves, whichever universe they are from?
Then again, this is the same book in which Santa and Bacchus know each other, so who knows.
At any rate, there is an unnerving quality about the name Maugrim, the kind of name taylor-made to be a villains’s. It has the hard “m” of Moloch, Morgoth, Mordred, and it ends with “grim”. It is a name from the dark places of Europe, a name which alone elevates the fear-inducing factor of what is, at the end of the day, a secondary character.
The name Jadis, on the other hand, has an “exotic” flavour: it is likely to remind a westerner of a Thousand and One Nights.1 We soon learn that, indeed, Jadis is a descendant of the Jinn through Lilith. And thus, even though her first and most striking appearance calls back to Andersen’s Snow Queen, the Witch Jadis is, even imaginatively, a foreigner and a usurper.
Susan’s Bravery
Back to the Pevensie children. After finding out that Tumnus has been taken by the Witch’s secret police, the siblings’s whimsical adventure take a turn for the dangerous.
“I — I wonder if there’s any point in going on,” said Susan. “I mean, it doesn’t seem particularly safe here and it looks as if it won’t be much fun either. And it’s getting colder every minute, and we’ve brought nothing to eat. What about just going home?”
“Oh, but we can’t, we can’t,” said Lucy suddenly; “don’t you see? We can’t just go home, not after this. It is all on my account that the poor Faun has got into this trouble. He hid me from the Witch and showed me the way back. That’s what it means by comforting the Queen’s enemies and fraternizing with Humans. We simply must try to rescue him.”
[…]
“I’ve a horrid feeling that Lu is right,” said Susan. “I don’t want to go a step further and I wish we’d never come. But I think we must try to do something for Mr Whatever-his-name is — I mean the Faun.”
Susan is afraid, but at first she hides the fear behind a wall of prosaic-but-reasonable arguments. The danger, despite being the most pressing issue, is downplayed (“it doesn’t seem particularly safe here”), probably because she does not want to admit it to herself. In quick succession she mentions that it won’t be fun, that they’re cold, that they’re hungry. All valid reasons. But against all of this stands Lucy's simple morality: Tumnus saved her; now he needs their help.
Susan, in her heart, agrees. And so, despite her fear, she advises Peter that they should go rescue the Faun. This passage is illuminating of Susan’s character. I have often accused Susan of caring more about being proper than correct, more about being reasonable than about reason itself; and knowing where her story ends, I feel I will be making this accusation many times more. But this scene makes clear that, at this point, Susan is a good and brave person. When push comes to shove, she chooses to do the right thing: scared, reluctant, against her own judgment, she will do what must be done. And that is bravery of the best kind.
Names of Aslan
The children are guided by a robin — “They’re good birds in all the stories I’ve ever read. I’m sure a robin wouldn’t be on the wrong side” says Peter — through the woods, until they meet a beaver, named Mr. Beaver.
Mr. Beaver the beaver shows them the handkerchief Lucy had given Tumnus, and says the Faun trusted him to guide the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve. But where to? Here we have perhaps the best passage in the book, and a good candidate for best passage in the entire series:
“They say Aslan is on the move — perhaps has already landed.”
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning — either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again.
It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.
We finally hear the name around whom the entirety of the Narnia series revolves: Aslam.
The very name moves inside the Pevensies something they cannot name or describe — and neither can the children reading the book, if they ever feel the same. But henceforth, whenever the child feels that stir, she will know that others have felt it before. And that the stir, far from being nameless, is the name of a Person.
If we are pressed to describe what the Pevensie siblings are feeling, we might as well use two of Lewis's own explanations. First, Aslan’s name is numinous, a word which Lewis explains through an example.
Suppose I told you, and you believed me fully, that there is a man-eating tiger in the next room. You’d be afraid, of course. Now suppose I told you, and you believed me fully, that there is a ghost in the next room; you’d also be afraid, but this fear would be very different from the fear of the tiger. No one fears a ghost because of what it might do to you, but simply because it is a ghost. Now finally suppose I told you there is a might spirit in the next room. You’d feel something that could be called fear, but which is far removed from natural fear. You’d feel that awe, that sense of inadequacy, that impetus of prostration. This character — this alienness which inspires both terror and reverence — is the numinous.2
But more importantly, Aslan’s name inspires Joy — and is, as will be made clear, the very source of it.
Some sources around the internet claim that “Jadis” may be inspired by cadı, the Turkish word for witch. While this claim is not unlikely — Lewis himself said that “Aslan” comes from the Turkish word for lion — I do not have explicit confirmation of it.
C. S. Lewis, “The Problem of Pain”, Chapter One