Bokrecension: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe av C.S Lewis

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Introduction

I have chosen to write an assignment about a novel called “The lion, the witch and the wardrobe”.
The reason why I chose this one is because it is one of my favourite books, I have red it over and over again since the days when I started to read as a child. And I still find the story fascinating!
The author of this novel is a man named C.S Lewis, short for Clives Staples Lewis. He was born in Ireland in 1898.
In 1950 “The lion, the witch and the wardrobe” was published. It was the first of the seven Chronicles of Narnia that he wrote. He died in 1963, in the very same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. During his life he studied at the university of Oxford and Cambridge for a long time. J.R.R Tolkien also studied there and they became good friends.
C.S Lewis is buried in the yard of the Holy Trinity Church in Oxford.

Body

The main characters are the children Peter, Susan and their younger brother Edmund and sister Lucy. They live in London during the Second World War, and because of all the air-raids on the city they get sent out to the countryside to safety. They get to live in a big, old house of a professor. One day
when the children decides to explore the house, the youngest girl Lucy finds a big, old wardrobe full with fur coats in a spare room in the attic. But inside the wardrobe she discovers the most amazing thing! Instead of touching the back of the wardrobe with her hands, she feels wet and cold snow under her feet, and branches on her hands. A giant forest with a lamppost standing in the middle of it appears. She has entered the door to a fantasy world, a land called Narnia. There she meets all kinds of imaginary creatures, like a faun who she has tea with. The whole country of Narnia is put under the white witch’s spell, which means that it is always winter.. but never Christmas. To break the spell, two girls and two boys has to come to Narnia and meet up with the friendly lion Aslan. When Lucy comes back to the real world to tell her brothers and sister what she has been through, no one believes her. Especially Edmund, who makes fun of her and calls her crazy. Although Susan and Peter does not make fun of her, they still wonder if something is wrong with her, in the mental aspect.
“The two elder ones did this without meaning to do it, but Edmund could be spiteful, and on this occasion he was spiteful. He sneered and jeered at Lucy and kept on asking her if she had found any other new countries in other cupboards all over the house.”
One day, when all the children are playing hide and seek, Edmund discovers that Lucy’s wardrobe story was truthful.
He follows Lucy as she goes in to the wardrobe to hide, just to make fun of her of course.
“He now remembered that he had been looking for Lucy; and also how unpleasant he had been to her ‘imaginary country’ which now turned out not to have been imaginary at all. He thought that she must be somewhere quite close and he shouted, ‘Lucy! Lucy! I’m here too- Edmund.’
In the book Edmund is described as a bit selfish and cocky towards Lucy, which really shows in this next quotation.
He does not like to be the one who is wrong. When he and Lucy comes through to the other side of the wardrobe, back to the hide and seek play to tell the others where they have been, this is what happens;
“And Edmund gave a very superior look as if he were far older than Lucy (there was only a year’s difference) and then a little snigger and said, ‘Oh, yes, Lucy and I have been playing- pretending that all her story about a country in the wardrobe is true. Just for fun, of course. There’s nothing there really.’”
Throughout the book Edmund changes though. At first especially his brother Peter gets on his nerves. Here is what he thinks after has spent some time with the evil white witch;
“All the things he had said to make himself believe that she was the good and kind and that her side was really the right side sounded to him silly now. He would have given anything to meet the others at this moment- even Peter! The only way to comfort himself now was to try to believe that the whole thing was a dream and that he might wake up at any moment.”

Interpretation of theme or message

C.S Lewis was an author with a great sense of fantasy that is mainly why he wrote this book and the seven other books in the Narnia- series. The scenery of Narnia, with its heather covered hills, was largely inspired by his childhood surroundings in Ireland. And he had also hosted evacuated children during the war, just as the professor in “The lion, the witch and the wardrobe”. I think the message with this book is to keep your imagination open, and that you never can grow old from it. It is a science fiction novel, and its theme is to fight the evil forces of the white witch. As shown here, right after Peter’s battle with one of the witch’s companions, a nasty wolf.
“Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do. He rushed straight up to the monster and aimed a slash of his sword at his side.”
There are several dramatic battles in the book. It is full of imaginative creatures to let your fantasy run wild.

Conclusion

I think this is a very well written science fiction novel! I truly recommend someone who is not used to read a lot to read it, since it is hard to loose interest in it. The characters feel very much alive, they are reflected in a way so that the readers easily can identify themselves in them. Sometimes when I read a book, a magazine or anything else, I easily get bored when the text is too long.
When something is described much more than it is necessary, I soon loose ...