The Magician's Nephew


The Magician's Nephew is a portal fantasy novel by British author C. S. Lewis, published in 1955 by The Bodley Head. It is the sixth published of seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia. In recent editions, which sequence the books according in chronological order, it is placed as the first volume of the series. Like the others, it was illustrated by Pauline Baynes whose work has been retained in many later editions. The Bodley Head was a new publisher for The Chronicles, a change from Geoffrey Bles who had published the previous five novels.
The Magician's Nephew is a prequel to the series. The middle third of the novel features the creation of the Narnia world by Aslan the lion, centred on a section of a lamp-post brought by accidental observers from London in 1900. The visitors then participate in the beginning of Narnia's history, 1000 years before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The frame story, set in England, features two children ensnared in experimental travel via "the wood between the worlds". Thus, the novel shows Narnia and our middle-aged world to be only two of many in a multiverse, which changes as some worlds begin and others end. It also explains the origin of foreign elements in Narnia, not only the lamp-post but also the White Witch and a human king and queen.
Lewis began The Magician's Nephew soon after completing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, spurred by a friend's question about the lamp-post in the middle of nowhere, but he needed more than five years to complete it. The story includes several autobiographical elements and explores a number of themes with general moral and Christian implications, including atonement, original sin, temptation, and the order of nature.

Plot summary

The story begins in London during the summer of 1900. Two children, Digory and Polly, meet while playing in the adjacent gardens of a row of terraced houses. They decide to explore the abandoned attic beyond Digory's house, but do not walk far enough, and find themselves in Uncle Andrew's study. Uncle Andrew tricks Polly into touching a yellow magic ring, causing her to vanish. Then he explains to Digory that he has been dabbling in magic, and that the rings allow travel between one world and another. He blackmails Digory into taking another yellow ring to follow wherever Polly has gone, and two green rings so that they both can return.
Digory finds himself transported to a sleepy woodland with an almost narcotic effect; he finds Polly nearby. The woodland is filled with pools. Digory and Polly surmise that the wood is not really a proper world at all but a "Wood between the Worlds", similar to the attic that links their houses back in England, and that each pool leads to a separate universe. They decide to explore a different world before returning to England, and jump into one of the nearby pools. They then find themselves in a desolate abandoned city of the ancient world of Charn. Inside the ruined palace, they discover statues of Charn's former kings and queens, which degenerate from the fair and wise to the unhappy and cruel. They find a bell with a hammer and an inscription inviting the finder to strike the bell.
Despite protests from Polly, Digory rings the bell. This awakens the last of the statues, a witch queen named Jadis, whoto avoid defeat in battlehad deliberately killed every living thing in Charn by speaking the "Deplorable Word". As the only survivor left in her world, she placed herself in an enchanted sleep that would only be broken by someone ringing the bell.
The children recognise Jadis as evil and attempt to flee, but she follows them back to England by clinging to them as they clutch their rings. In England, she discovers that her magical powers do not work, although she retains her superhuman strength. Dismissing Uncle Andrew as a poor magician, she enslaves him and orders him to fetch her a "chariot"a hansom cabso she can set about conquering Earth. They leave, and she attracts attention by robbing a jeweller's shop in London. The police chase after her cab, until she crashes at the foot of the Kirke house. Jadis breaks off and tears an iron rod from a nearby lamp-post, using it to fight off police and onlookers when they mock her.
When Jadis threatens the crowd, Polly and Digory grab her and put on their rings to take her out of their worldalong with Uncle Andrew, Frank the cab-driver, and Frank's horse, Strawberry, who were all touching each other when the children grabbed their rings. In the Wood between the Worlds, Strawberry, when attempting to drink from one of the ponds, accidentally brings everyone into another world: a dark, empty void. At first, Digory believes it to be Charn, but Jadis recognises it as a world not yet created. They then all witness the creation of a new world by the lion Aslan, who brings stars, plants, and animals into existence as he sings. Jadis, as terrified by his singing as the others are attracted to it, tries to kill Aslan with the iron rod; but it rebounds harmlessly off him, and in the creative soil of the new world it sprouts into a growing lamp-post. Jadis flees in terror.
Aslan gives some animals the power of speech, commanding them to use it for justice and merriment or else risk becoming ordinary animals once again. Frank the cabby and his wife Helen are then crowned King and Queen of Narnia. Aslan confronts Digory with his responsibility for bringing Jadis into his young world, and tells Digory he must atone by helping to protect the new land of Narnia from her evil. Aslan transforms Strawberry, Frank's horse, into a winged horse called Fledge, and Digory and Polly fly on him to a distant garden high in the mountains. Digory's task is to take an apple from a tree in this garden and plant it in Narnia. At the garden Digory finds a sign warning not to steal from the garden.
Digory picks one of the apples for his mission, but their overpowering smell tempts him. Jadis appears, having herself eaten an apple to become immortal, leaving her with pale white skin. She tempts Digory either to eat an apple himself and join her in immortality, or steal one to take back to Earth to heal his dying mother. Digory resists, knowing his mother would never condone theft, but hesitates. He sees through the Witch's ploy when she suggests he leave Polly behindnot knowing Polly can get away by her own ring. Foiled, the Witch departs for the North, and taunts Digory for his refusal to eat the apple and gain immortality. Digory returns to Narnia and plants the apple, which grows into a mature tree behind them while the coronation proceeds. Aslan tells Digory how the tree worksanyone who steals the apples gets their heart's desire, but in a form that renders it extremely disagreeable. In the Witch's case, she has achieved immortality, but it only means eternal misery because of her evil heart. Moreover, the magic apples are now a horror to her, so much so that the apple tree will repel her for centuries to come, but not forever. With Aslan's permission, Digory takes an apple from the new tree to heal his mother. Aslan returns Digory, Polly, and Uncle Andrew to England. Frank and his wife Helen stay to rule Narnia as its first King and Queen. The Narnian creatures live in peace and joy, and neither the Witch nor any other enemy will come to trouble Narnia for many hundreds of years.
Digory's apple restores his mother's health as his father returns for good after being away on business in India, and he and Polly remain lifelong friends. Uncle Andrew reforms and gives up magic, but still enjoys bragging about his adventures with the Witch. Digory plants the apple's core with Uncle Andrew's rings in the back yard of his aunt's home in London, and it grows into a large tree. Soon afterwards, Digory's family inherits a mansion in the country, and many years later the apple tree blows down in a storm. Digory, now a middle-aged professor, has its wood made into a wardrobe, setting up the events in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Principal characters

  • Digory Kirke: The boy who becomes the Professor in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • Polly Plummer: Digory's friend, who lives next door
  • Mabel Kirke: Digory's mother
  • Andrew Ketterley: Digory's uncle, a minor magician
  • Letitia Ketterley: Uncle Andrew's sister, referred to in the book as "Aunt Letty"
  • Jadis: Empress of Charn, who becomes the White Witch appearing in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • Aslan: The Lion who creates Narnia and kills Jadis in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
  • King Frank: A cabby who becomes the first king of Narnia and ancestor of the kings of Archenland
  • Queen Helen: The wife of King Frank, the first queen of Narnia, and the ancestress of the Archenlanders
  • Fledge: The winged horse, formerly the cab-horse Strawberry, who carries Polly and Digory to the mountain garden

    Writing

Lewis had originally intended only to write the one Narnia novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. However, when Roger Lancelyn Green asked him how a lamp-post came to be standing in the midst of Narnian woodland, Lewis was intrigued enough by the question to attempt to find an answer by writing The Magician's Nephew, which features a younger version of Professor Kirke from the first novel.
The Magician's Nephew seems to have been the most challenging Narnia novel for Lewis to write. While the other six Chronicles of Narnia books were written between 1948 and 1953, The Magician's Nephew was written over a five-year period between 1949 and 1954. He started in the summer of 1949 after finishing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but came to a halt after producing 26 pages of manuscript and did not resume work until two years later. This may be as a result of the autobiographical aspects of the novel, as it reflects a number of incidents and parallels very close to his own experiences.
He returned to The Magician's Nephew late in 1950, after completing The Silver Chair. He managed to finish close to three-quarters of the novel, and then stopped work once again after Roger Green, to whom Lewis showed all his writing at the time, suggested there was a structural problem in the story. Finally he returned to the novel in 1953, after finishing The Last Battle in the spring of that year and completed early in 1954.
Lewis originally titled the novel "Polly and Digory"; his publisher changed it to The Magician's Nephew. This book is dedicated to "the Kilmer family".