Return to Cair Paravel
THE second Narnia story, Prince Caspian, tells of the kids’s return to Narnia. It opens with them sitting at a railway station awaiting the trains that may take them back to their boarding schools for the beginning of term, when suddenly they’re transported as a substitute back to Narnia.
As they take stock of their surroundings and check out to make sense of what has happened, they stumble across some apple trees and the traditional ruins of what was once a castle. It takes them a while to recognise the ruins because the stays of their very own Cair Paravel, since only a yr has passed since they left Narnia, and the ruinous state of the castle implies a for much longer time. As the realisation begins to dawn on the kids, they feel a way of nostalgia for his or her past life as kings and queens of Narnia, recalling the glad times they spent with the fauns, giants and mer-people.
THIS description of the destruction of Cair Paravel and its reduction to rubble provides an efficient contrast with the constancy of the stalwart badgers that the kids meet later. As the badger Trufflehunter retorts to Nikabrik: “You Dwarfs are as forgetful and changeable because the Humans themselves. I’m a beast, I’m, and a Badger what’s more. We don’t change. We hold on.”
But more vital than their endurance are the badgers’ memories and their faith within the promise that there’s a true king of Narnia who will return to revive it to its former glory. Trumpkin scornfully dismisses such fabulous old tales about King Peter reigning at Cair Paravel, but Trufflehunter doubles down in his certainty that such stories are true: “I feel within the High King Peter and the remainder that reigned at Cair Paravel, as firmly as I feel in Aslan himself.”
This cuts no ice with Trumpkin, who simply mocks the concept anyone nowadays should imagine in such a figure. But Prince Caspian himself involves Trufflehunter’s defence, asserting his own belief in Aslan and stating that many humans don’t imagine in Dwarfs and talking animals, “Yet there you might be.”
HERE, Lewis is asserting the importance of stories for communicating truths, and the danger of dismissing them as feigned nonsense. The 1300 years which have passed because the reign of the Pevensie children signifies that they’ve once more taken on a mythical status among the many inhabitants of Old Narnia. The beasts haven’t any evidence of their existence, nor that of Aslan, but nevertheless they’ve faithfully passed on the stories through the generations and held fast to the truths they impart.
Trufflehunter’s assertion of his faith is a sort of creed, which summarises the important thing tenets of his faith: “I feel within the High King Peter and the remainder that reigned at Cair Paravel, as firmly as I feel in Aslan himself.” We might compare this statement of belief with the Apostles’ Creed and its opening statement: “I feel in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” The tendency for such stories to be dismissed as merely myths or fairy stories, recounting fabulous adventures of fantastical beasts like human beings, is a vital reminder of the worth of the stories of the Bible for continuing to transmit the Christian faith to latest generations in a society where such tales are regularly dismissed.
IT’S not only the stories which can be vital in passing on the Christian faith: it’s also the people. The passage we’ve got considered provides an efficient contrast between the transitoriness of humans, and the edifices that they construct, and the steadfastness of the badgers.
Where human rulers come and go, badgers remain. Where humans construct impressive castles product of stone, these tumble down and turn out to be ruins. And yet the networks of underground tunnels built by the badgers proceed to be occupied centuries later. As Trufflehunter says, badgers will not be like humans: “‘We don’t change. We hold on.”
Reflection Are we guilty of being changeable in our faith, failing to carry on to the truths that led us to faith in the primary place? Can we learn from the steadfast badgers, clinging on to those truths even when the world around us rejects them?
Read John 20.29 (NIV): “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you’ve seen me, you’ve believed; blessed are those that haven’t seen and yet have believed’.”
Professor Simon Horobin is Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College, holding the position that C. S. Lewis held at the faculty, and has lectured and published widely on Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. His latest book is C. S. Lewis’s Oxford (Bodleian Publishing).
This is an extract from Wardrobes and Rings: Through Lenten lands with the Inklings, published by Canterbury Press at £12.99 (Church Times Bookshop £10.39); 978-1-78622-690-7.
