Aslan's Awkward

“For when they tried to look at Aslan’s face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn’t look at him and went all trembly”-C.S. Lewis, The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe

“His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead”-Revelation 1:16b-17

It almost seems as though Lewis were on the verge of shouting “Aslan is Christ” and “Christ is Aslan” in The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe it is so obvious. The Narnia lion king at once present in the flesh and soon to come again cannot help but be compared with the Lion of Judah once in the flesh prophesied to come again. What is known of C.S. Lewis’ commitment to the Christian faith almost seals the allegory. There are a great lot contented with this.

Recently, with the release of major motion pictures chronicling the happenings of Narnia, American Christian media, specifically, appeared quick to make the connection with “something good out of Hollywood.” Though I have yet to entertain a showing of any of these pictures, I am somewhat familiar with the Aslan character due to pushes such as those I describe: sermon series, church outings—you name it and it was available.

However, the allegory does not seem to hold—or it just ventures into queer territories. The following are some points of instability with an allegorical reading of the text:

·         A Greek god shows up?: Early in the book, Mr. Tumnus speaks to Lucy about how Narnia is so  awesome Bacchus even shows up, that would be the Greek god of wine, merry marking and cult worship, which would make Narnia some sort of polytheistic playground or more similar to an Olympus with major and minor gods.

·         Edmund is not told about the sacrifice Aslan makes for him, in order to save him embarrassment?

·         Blind belief appears to be one of the story’s morals. When the children ask the professor to help them with the argument between Edmund and Lucy, he asks them to let a dogged belief of a person’s past be their guide, i.e. there is not redemption, if Edmund has been a liar in the past, he is likely lying now.

·         Only some people need redemption? Other than Edmund the skeptical, all the other children are true blue, they don’t lie or cheat.

·         The witch lacks humanity because she is mixed? This is one of the oddest prepositions in the whole novel, more so than the talking lion. We find out the general consensus of her background from the good beavers, who share that due to her heritage “there isn’t a real drop of human blood” in her.

·         Ancient magic is what brings Aslan back to life.