The Magician's Nephew
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The Magician's Nephew is a fantasy novel for children by C. S. Lewis. Although not the first in The Chronicles of Narnia series, it is the first in the internal chronology.
It is an early example of a prequel. There are many links to the later The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, most notably Digory himself, who, as Professor Kirke, is the owner of the house containing the Wardrobe in the later story.
The book was originally published as book six of The Chronicles of Narnia, but in the recent republications, the books have been re-ordered with The Magician's Nephew as book one. See The Chronicles of Narnia entry for more information on the book order in the series.
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Synopsis
The story begins in late 19th century London with two children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, meeting as neighbours. Digory tells Polly that his mother is dying, and the two become friends over the course of the summer. One day, while exploring the attic which is common to all the adjoining houses in their block, they take the wrong door and surprise Digory's Uncle Andrew in his study. Uncle Andrew, a bumbling yet malevolent self-taught magician, tricks Polly into putting on a magic ring, which causes her to disappear. Andrew then blackmails Digory into using another ring, promising him that he will be able to bring Polly back with a pair of magic rings of another type. The rings transport the children into a wood with many pools of water. Initially, the pools appear to be just shallow puddles. However, the children discover that when the correct ring is worn, the pool of water transports the wearer to a different world. This Wood between Worlds is thus a kind of linking room for gateways between many worlds. Digory convinces Polly to come explore through some of the other pools with him before they return to Digory's uncle and have their rings confiscated.
When the children enter the first pool, they arrive in the midst of an enormous palace in the ruins of the ancient capital city of that world, called Charn. The palace seems devoid of all life until they discover a hall filled with images of all former rulers of Charn, in chronological order. The first faces are fair and wise, but as they progress they get meaner and crueller. There are still several empty rows, implying a premature end. There they find a bell, as well as a sign which at once dares one to ring the bell and also warns not to ring it. Digory falls to the taunt and it awakes one of the statues, that of the evil Queen Jadis. She tells them how the last war of that world had been waged between herself and her sister. After many bloody years her own defeat seemed certain, and in order to prevail she had spoken the incantation known as the Deplorable Word. This curse caused all life on Charn to be destroyed but her own, which would sit dormant in the Hall of Images for eternity unless someone woke her from her sleep—as has just happened. The children, upon learning of Jadis's great evil, try to escape back to the Wood. Unfortunately, thanks to the 'magnetic effect' the rings have on all wearers, Jadis is able to travel back with them by grabbing hold of Polly's hair. She then follows them to our world where she leads Uncle Andrew on a wild chase through London. Polly returns to her house and is sent to her room as a punishment for being "a very naughty girl", but gets out and joins Digory in his efforts to get the evil queen out of London and back to her own world. Ultimately, Digory and Polly draw back into the Wood not only the queen but, through the magnetic property of the magic rings, also Uncle Andrew, a cab driver named Frank, and his horse, named Strawberry.
Digory draws the whole group into the nearest pool, thinking it leads to Charn. However, when they arrive, they realize it is not Charn but another world that is completely dark and seems to be entirely empty. Jadis quickly recognizes it as a world that has yet to be made. Soon, however, they hear singing which seems to cause the stars to begin to shine and the sun to rise. The visitors can now see the singer for what he is, Aslan, the great Lion, and they continue to watch as he breathes life into the world so that animals, plants, and the world itself are created from nothing. Jadis attacks Aslan with an iron bar she had ripped off a lamp post in London, but cannot kill him and so flees. Aslan selects some animals to become intelligent talking beasts, giving them authority over the dumb beasts.
Aslan next sends Digory on a journey to get a special apple to atone for bringing the evil queen into the new world of Narnia. Polly, Digory, and the horse from our world (turned by Aslan into a winged horse and renamed Fledge) fly to a far-away mountain to get the apple from a walled garden. The queen arrives also and tempts Digory to either eat the apple and gain eternal youth, or else use it to cure his dying mother. The queen has eaten an apple herself, thus becoming immortal. Although tempted, Digory keeps his promise to Aslan and travels back to give him the apple.
Aslan tells Digory that he has done well and instructs him to plant the apple in the ground. He then holds a ceremony to crown the king and queen of Narnia (Frank the cab driver and his wife, Helen) while a new tree grows. Aslan explains that this tree will protect Narnia from the Witch: since she took the apple from the original tree in a selfish way, its fruit is now abhorrent to her, and Narnia will thus enjoy an innocent Eden-like period. Aslan tells Digory that a stolen apple would have cured his mother, but that the day would have come later when she would have looked back and said that it would have been better to have died in that illness. He then gives Digory an apple from the tree of protection to take to his mother to cure her of illness, and sends the children and Uncle Andrew back to the Wood between the Worlds, whence they return to London. Digory gives the apple to his mother, who is cured, and buries the apple core in his back yard. He also buries the magic rings, which Aslan has instructed him to safeguard to prevent future misuse.
The apple core grows into a tree, and years later it is blown down in a storm. Digory can't bear to have the tree cut up into firewood so he has it made into a wardrobe, linking the end of the narrative to the first story in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Commentary
Readers familiar with Genesis will recognise the parallels to it in Lewis's work. With respect to creation, it also has some core similarities with Ainulindalë, the Song of the Ainur, the story of creation in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, due, presumably, to both drawing on the Biblical accounts for some of their material and to the close professional relationship between Tolkien and Lewis, who may have discussed together some themes such as a song of creation seen in both Ainulindalë and The Magician's Nephew but not in the Bible.
The story includes the divine establishment of a royal and aristocratic social system in which an English couple (the cabby and his wife) and their descendants are set in authority over an empire consisting of Narnia and its adjoining countries. The reader is also left in no doubt about the precise social class of each of the English characters, but with no implication that this matters to God; the cabby is of common origin and his wife is a washerwoman. At the end of the book, Digory's father, who was working in India (then under British rule), inherits money and a large house, and this sudden wealth and country landlord status is stated to be a good thing. We may assume that these aspects owe something to Lewis' own attitude, which tended to be shared by most English people at the time of writing; the standard expectations are skewed a little, however, by having Mr Kirke suddenly come into his inheritance, not to mention by the fact that King Frank and Queen Helen were of so lowly stature in their own world. Lewis's references to the Deplorable Word and Aslan's implicit comparison of it to the atomic bomb is a thread that reflects popular fears at the time of this book's writing.
Another of Lewis's own attitudes is that God might have a sense of humour, evident by "The First Joke." Soon after Aslan makes the Talking Animals to speak, a Talking Jackdaw makes himself the butt of a joke by accident. When he sees that everyone else is laughing at "his joke," he says to Aslan, "Did I make the first joke?" Aslan responds, "No, you have only been the first joke," and they all laugh, even the Talking Jackdaw.
The characters are well drawn, engaging, and developed through a series of moral choices, particularly Digory. Polly is more than a mere sidekick but is assigned to a supporting role in the drama. Uncle Andrew, initially a very sinister and manipulative presence, collapses into a figure of fun, while Jadis (the White Witch) provides the real portrayal of evil.
The Magician's Nephew, more even than the other Narnia stories, is an homage to Edith Nesbit's children's books, both in setting and in the character dynamics; it is, however, considerably darker and more vivid. At least one scene—the visit of Jadis to London—borrows heavily from the visit of the Queen of Babylon to London in Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet. Lewis' version is more colorful, though less bloody.
The basic story of The Magician's Nephew was included in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Viewers who look carefully will see the story pictorally represented in the carvings on the face of the wardrobe.
The Rings
According to the book, Uncle Andrew was given a box by his godmother, who was dying, and told to destroy it without opening it. He disobeyed this request, and opened the box to find it contained dust from another world, handed down via ancient Atlantis. After some research, he figured out how to make rings from the powder; yellow rings which transport anybody who touches them to another world, and green ones that are used to return (this is what Uncle Andrew thinks the rings do). What really happens is that the yellow rings transports the user into The Wood Between the Worlds, a forest where there are puddles for each world. A green ring takes somebody who is standing in a puddle into the world it represents (in the book, Lewis points out how Uncle Andrew knows little about the rings, mostly because he's never used them on himself).
Christian Parallels
Just as in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis illustrated the mysteries of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, with themes of betrayal and redemption. The Magician's Nephew illustrates, at a similar level, the themes of creation, primal innocence, original sin, and temptation. A nine year old who has heard the Biblical account of creation should have little difficulty following the story; there are some parallels with events in Genesis that are obvious, such as the forbidden fruit represented by an Apple of Life.
Aslan acts in the role of the Creator. There is no reference to the distant "Emperor over Sea" who had been paralleled with God the Father previously in the series. Although some have presumed that this was a deliberate simplification by Lewis to keep the complexity at an appropriate level, it actually corresponds with the New Testament's teaching that Jesus (God the Son) was the agent of Creation; e.g. "All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made," (John 1:3 NIV, see also Hebrews 1:10 and Colossians 1:15–16).
Adaptions
Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media currently retain the option to make The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew in the future.
External links
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de:Das Wunder von Narnia es:El sobrino del mago fr:Le Neveu du magicien it:Il nipote del mago he:אחיינו של הקוסם ms:Anak Saudara Penyihir nl:Het neefje van de tovenaar no:Drømmen om Narnia pt:O Sobrinho do Mago sv:Min morbror trollkarlen