The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis (1950)
“Four evacuee children walk through a wardrobe into a frozen world where a lion dies to save a traitor — and rises again.”
Character Analysis
The great Lion, son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Lewis's most audacious literary creation: a Christ figure who is not a metaphor for Christ but, within Narnia's reality, IS what Christ is in ours. Aslan is not safe but he is good — Lewis's most quoted formulation. He dies voluntarily for a traitor, rises from the dead through a deeper law than justice, and then goes away, promising to return. He cannot be summoned, controlled, or predicted. Lewis insisted Aslan was not allegory ('I did not say "Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia." I said, "Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God... became a Lion there."').
Spare, authoritative, warm — short sentences but without the Witch's coldness. 'Welcome, Peter, Son of Adam.'