Clive Stapes Lewis is chiefly famous for his Narnia series. Narnia is a magical land in a fantasy world; in large measure Lewis was allegorising Christianity for children. (As noticed by the heroine of "Bridge to Terabithia".) The series ran over seven books, ending with "The Last Battle". As its title implies, the conclusion ended the world as well as the series, in a cataclysmic war. The Christian scriptures end in like manner.
This essay is not a review of the book. It is a review of a very small part of the book. This small part of the book has been bothering me ever since I read it. I hope this page will be useful to anyone who has also read it, or who plans to recommend it to their children.
In the course of the book, the children Eustace and Jill are called into Narnia by the (ousted) King Tirian, and get caught up in a horrible war. They all take cover in a cowshed with some Dwarves (a fantasy race of dour, practical folk) and find themselves in a deutero-Narnia even more wondrous than the first. Colours are sharper, mountains are higher, food tastes better... everything is "more real". The dwarves however think they are in a cowshed. The children try to impress upon the dwarves their situation. Someone gives them food, but they nibble at it and call it an old turnip. At one point someone else (I think Tirian) grabs one by the feet and swings him around; to this, the dimunitive skeptic yelps and rubs his nose, thinking that he'd hit a wall. So the dwarves stay where they are when the children get up and leave... into the new world, not out the door to the old. For them the world grows ever "more real", until Aslan informs them - finally - that they have all died in their old worlds.
Lewis knows heaven exists, and has endorsed it here through his leonine and divine hero Aslan. In this parable, Lewis was pillorying those with the temerity to disagree, saying they wouldn't believe even if they were there. It is the unbeliever who is the true delusionary, says Lewis. Write him off. In this the parable is thematically very close to Luke 16:19-31, but more so, because Luke's parable did not illustrate the situation.
But also like Luke 16:19-31, the parable is absurd. If I visit a scenic part of, say, Yellowstone Park, I know it's real because I can sense it around me. Its beauty does not reduce me to hallucinatory denial. In addition, these hallucinations are every bit as real to the dwarves as the hyper-real world is to the children. I could understand sweet fruit tasting like turnip, but how would a man feel pain when he has hit a wall that is not there? Finally, there is no narrative sequel for the dwarves. What happens to them?
One who is about to lose an argument will often defend his position by attacking the other; if they are particularly insecure they will do it on the same grounds. Psychologists call this "projection". Children call it "I know you are but what am I". At any rate, Lewis's parable of the cowshed utterly fails to explain the phenomenon of unbelief in Heaven. It serves much better to explain Lewis.
Ultimately, the narrative leaves one central, damning question behind: who's better off?
The children have left the shed and their tenuous connection to the old world, which then disappears. Aslan and then the narrator assure us they live happily ever after... but it is a funny sort of "living", in that it occurs after they have died, and have left all family, friends, and country behind, forever.
The dwarves on the other hand think they're in a shed; according to their senses, they are. Narnia has passed away, according to the narrative ... but the narrative is obviously not seen through the dwarves' eyes. Normally one must trust the narrator to explain the situation, but that applies only when the narrator describes surroundings in which all characters can agree (including cases where there are no characters). This narrator cannot be trusted to explain the world of the dwarves. For all we know, the dwarves live on; they might open the door of the shed again and escape.
One wonders, had the children waited in the shed a while longer as did the dwarves, and rode out their little LSD-and-Ecstasy trip, if they could have left it by another route. But we'll never know.
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