Read Before You Watch

Can I enourage you to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe before you watch the movie? I have no doubt that the movie will be great, but Wardrobe is classic literature. No matter how good the movie is, you will be better served to have Lewis’ images in your head prior to seeing the movie.

If you want help knowing how to read C.S. Lewis’ books for children as an adult, Leland Ryken’s article entitled “Reading the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with C.S. Lewis” on the Reformation 21 site is really helpful. Ryken provides three lessons from Lewis’ approach to reading childen’s lit as an adult:

The first lesson concerned how to read a children’s book as an adult reader, and the lesson is this: adult readers should not be condescending toward children’s literature… Paradoxically, adult readers of the book need to continue to read the book as children. The childhood responses and delights should not be suppressed.

A second principle that Lewis would wish us to apply to our reading of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is to value the story as a form of enlightened entertainment, and, as part of that, to value the artistry and technique of the book as a self-rewarding aesthetic experience. This lesson does not come easily to Christian readers, with their conviction, correct in itself, that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a Christian classic.

A third lesson that we can infer from Lewis’ literary criticism is that he would wish us to read his classic story about Aslan with an understanding and relish of its theological vision… The theological themes of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are primarily three in number. (1) The most important theological fact about The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is its Christological focus. The figure of Aslan dominates our experience of the book, and Aslan, as every reader of the book knows, is representative of Christ… (2) A second overarching theological reality of the book is the fact of a great spiritual conflict between good and evil. This Bible forms a subtext for this thread in the story, too, because the story of cosmic conflict organizes the Bible from start to finish… (3) Thirdly, the book provides glimpses of the eschaton—the final end with its accompanying destruction of evil and the triumph of the good.

If you haven’t started reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it’s not too late to start!

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