In the preface to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis writes a letter to the little girl for whom the story was written. By the time the book was published, she had grown up, and Lewis feared that she was probably too old for fairy tales. This is a natural assumption. Boys stop building Legos, girls stop playing with dolls, and children grow out of reading fairy tales. Children’s literature has its name for a reason. And yet, Lewis says something very surprising next: “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” True maturity will not lead people away from fairy tales, but rather back to them. Why do the best among us, young children and the wisest of adults, visit fairy tales? Why do we visit Narnia at all? Like many of the greatest truths, the answers lie within a children’s story. The answers can be found in a parable of sorts. They can be found past the land of Spare Oom, just beyond the bright city of War Drobe. They can be found in Narnia.
It is important to know the stories. Simply reading non-fiction is not enough. Lewis underscores this point when introducing us to the character of Eustace. Eustace is not described favorably at the beginning of the story. As part of that description, Lewis says, “he liked books, if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.” When the Pevensie children are staring at a picture of a boat that reminds them of Narnia, Eustace begins to make fun, because he thinks that Narnia is a made-up game of theirs. And to Eustace, imagination is for babies. Imagination is stupid. Practicality and knowledge are all that we need, and all that books are for. Just as he begins to tease, though, Lewis adds the following: “[Eustace] was far too stupid to make up anything himself.” Apparently, it is the stupid who have no imagination, not the other way around. There is one last interesting exchange in this scene. As they look at the ship, Edmund asks Lucy “whether it doesn’t make things worse, looking at a Narnian ship when you can’t get there.” To this Lucy replies, “Even looking is better than nothing.” Gazing upon and longing for something that we cannot have (at least, cannot have yet), is not a bad thing. It is not wrong to dream of a perfect king, though no perfect king can be had in this sinful world. In fact, it is necessary that we do so.
Eustace does none of this dreaming, and in large part this is because he does not read the right books. At one point in the story, he wanders off by himself and sees something crawling out of a cave that “Edmund or Lucy or you would have recognized at once, but Eustace had read none of the right books”. Later on, when he roams into the darkness of the dragon’s lair, Eustace steps on prickly, hard objects that we would all know to be treasure, yet he has trouble figuring out what it all is. Again, Lewis observes that he “had read only the wrong books. They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.” It is, of course, not within the pages of textbooks that we get our information about dragons. We learn of them from fairy tales. Because Eustace was altogether unfamiliar with the genre, he got himself into a load of trouble that could have otherwise been avoided.
Compare this with the first time all four Pevensie children are in Narnia together, back in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. When they arrive, there is no one there to greet them or guide them. They are alone until Lucy notices a Robin. It does not talk to them, but it hops amongst the trees in such a way that makes the children think they should follow. They do, but Edmund points out to Peter that they do not know anything about their new guide, and it very well may be leading them into a trap. This is a wise and reasonable concern, but Peter responds, “That’s a nasty idea. Still—a robin, you know. They’re good birds in all the stories I’ve ever read. I’m sure a robin wouldn’t be on the wrong side.” Peter, unlike Eustace, knew the stories. He knew to trust the Robin, who led them to the Beavers, who take them to the King himself, Aslan the Lion. Peter knew the stories, and they led him to his salvation.
Fiction is not useful, though. Wouldn’t it be far better to spend our time reading books about how to do our taxes, how to save the environment, or what the best form of government is? Or at least we should be reading scholarly works of theology, philosophy, and sociology. Lewis was one of the brightest minds of the 20th century, and perhaps in all of history. He was very well-read, and almost certainly did not find all of these books unimportant. He just, I suspect, found them less important than fairy tales. A purely pragmatic and logical mindset will lead a person to madness, as G.K. Chesterton so brilliantly points out in Orthodoxy. We need the imaginative like a fish needs the water. We are not mere animals, whose lives are spent on only the useful: eating, sleeping, reproducing, and the like. We are more than the physical. We are spiritual beings who were created with spiritual longings, not merely practical ones. We are meant to dream. The pragmatic and useful have destroyed our education systems, infected our churches, and weakened our souls. It is not the practical with which we should be most concerned, but the noble, good, true, honorable, and beautiful. Whether or not they are “realistic” and “useful” is entirely beside the point. When the Dawn Treader’s crew faces the decision of whether or not to sail into the Dark Island, one man asks, “What manner of use would it be plowing through that blackness?” At this, the mouse Reepicheep is appalled. “Use?” he cries. “Use, Captain? If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know, we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honor and adventure. And here is as great an adventure as ever I heard of, and here, if we turn back, no little impeachment of all our honors.” In his apparent foolishness, Reepicheep proves his wisdom. His willingness to dream of honor and adventure does not make him a lunatic, but rather a healthy soul. As Chesterton says, “The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle.”
Dwelling upon the irrational world of fairy tales is one of the healthiest things we can do. We need to read of good defeating evil and let it inspire us. We need to breath in the air of Narnia and be healed by it. Throughout the whole series, this analogy is made over and over again. In The Horse and His Boy, as Bree longs to reach Narnia, he specifically cries “Oh the sweet air in Narnia!” He knows that its very air is good for him. In Prince Caspian, on his second visit to Narnia, Edmund challenges Trumpkin to a duel. Having lived as a child in London for a year, he was a bit out of practice as far as sword fighting is concerned. Lewis says that Edmund would have surely lost, but “the air of Narnia had been working upon him ever since they arrived on the island, and all his old battles came back to him, and his arms and fingers remembered their old skill. He was King Edmund once more.” Later on in that book, the children attempt a rigorous journey with Trumpkin, and Lewis says, “Of course, if the children had attempted a journey like this a few days ago in England, they would have been knocked up. I think I have explained before how Narnia was altering them.” In The Last Battle, Eustace and Jill surprise Tirian with their sudden strength. To him, “they both seemed to be already much stronger and bigger than they had been when he first met them a few hours ago. It is one of the effects which Narnian air often has on visitors from our world.”
Stories matter. They are the path to our hearts and souls. This is why the Calormen educate their students in proper storytelling. Even Plato knew that those who tell the stories rule society. Stories are far more powerful than we give them credit for. This is why we not only need stories but need stories that present a world that is far better and far more noble than ours. Perhaps, by reading about good triumphing over evil, we are not crumbling into the pitfall of escapism. Instead, we are drawing our souls just a little closer to that which is good. We, the readers, are profoundly affected by the air of Narnia, too. We cannot help but grow bigger and stronger when the air of a good story begins to flow through us. Ironically enough, dwelling for a while in the “too-good-to-be-true” world of a fairy tale will help make some of that Good a reality. In Mere Christianity, Lewis makes a similar point about letting our minds dwell on heavenly things. He writes, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next… It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
Why do we visit Narnia? Aslan tells us the answer clearly at the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We visit for the same reason that each child in the series visits. After explaining that Lucy and Edmund will be unable to return to Narnia, Aslan says, “This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better [in your world].” We are brought into the imaginative world of story so that we might see the ideal and come back to our world looking for it. When the real world has blinded us in darkness, when it has left us without hope, when we feel that all is lost, the fairy tale reminds us that it is not. It trains our senses to find the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. It clears our vision so that we might see the good of creation even through the fog of evil. It leaves us longing for something foolish. The reader of the fairytale will always believe that the good guys win in the end. Those who visit Narnia know that Aslan is real, and they will come back to the real world looking for Him—longing for Him. They will not be satisfied until they find Him. To some, that message is foolishness, but to others it is the power of God.