At the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, young Lucy asks Aslan when she will be able to return to Narnia. Aslan tells her she will never come back to Narnia, and that she must return to her own world.
What Lucy says next is perhaps the best few lines in all the Narnia books.
“It isn’t Narnia you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”
When C. S. Lewis began to write The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of the Narnia stories, things did not go very well. In fact, when he pitched the idea to his close friend and colleague J.R.R. Tolkien, it was not well received, to say the least! But when Aslan entered the story, everything seemed to fall into place.
I must confess that what I look forward to when reading The Chronicles, is Aslan bursting on the scene. I wrote a blog post about him sometime back. There is no doubt that what thrills (and frightens!) the children in Narnia the most, is Aslan himself. And I am firmly convinced that what thrills (and frightens!) us the most, is also Aslan. Though He is known by a different Name in our world.
GB
