Aslan (thing)

C.S. Lewis' allegory for Jesus Christ in his 7-part series The Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan is the Lord and Master of Narnia who called it into being and oversaw its end. He appears simultaneously fearsome and inspiring to good characters, and loathsome and terrifying to bad characters.

(In my Chronicles of Narnia nodes I resist referring to Aslan as the "God" of Narnia. Fantasy literature is replete with pantheons of fictional gods, but Lewis clearly meant Aslan to represent the Christian God. As such, it seems insufficient to call Aslan the God of Narnia; Lewis would say the character reflects the reader's God as well.)

Aslan first appeared in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where the Christ-parallel was most pronounced. His role is an active one throughout the story; He arrives in Narnia to thaw the White Witch's eternal winter. He ransoms Himself to the White Witch in return for her sparing the life of the traitor Edmund in accordance with the Deep Magic. He is bound, ridiculed, and killed; He is resurrected according to "deeper magic" that will restore an innocent life sacrificed.

In the other books Aslan is less a participant than a motivator for the other characters:

• Prince Caspian: 1,000 years after Lion, He encourages and instructs Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie as they return to a world that has forgotten Him.
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Eustace Scrubb's encounter with Him leads to repentance.
• The Silver Chair: Aslan gives a task to Eustace and Jill Pole, who stray from His instructions and only triumph when they remember them.
• The Horse and His Boy: As Shasta and Aravis escape Calormen, Aslan spurs them onward in encounters that test their conscience and resolve.
• The Magician's Nephew: Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer witness Aslan creating Narnia; Aslan sets it in the right direction by choosing its first leaders and sending Digory on a quest that will protect the new land.
• The Last Battle: After Narnia falls, Aslan leads His followers to Paradise.

At no point in the books is Aslan ever explicitly linked with Jesus Christ. The Chronicles of Narnia are first above all children's fiction and work best at that level. Lewis' own quote on the matter:

In 1954, Lewis was asked to explain the Aslan-Christ parallel to some fifth graders in Maryland. He replied: "I did not say to myself 'Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia'; I said 'Let us suppose that there were land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen". (Lewis, 1954, 1998)

-- from The Lion, the Witch and the Allegory:
An Analysis of Selected Narnia Chronicles
Matt Brennan
student at McGill University
archived at http://cslewis.drzeus.net/