The Last Battle

“It would be wrong, Shift. I may not be very clever but I know that much.”

Initially, Puzzle objects to the wrongful act of impersonating Aslan, drawing on his own moral sense of right and wrong. In this passage, Lewis emphasizes that Puzzle’s intuitive wisdom is more trustworthy and valuable than Shift’s cleverness. Shift’s cleverness is worthless because he uses it to manipulate others to attain bad goals.

“I drink first to Aslan and truth, Sire, and secondly to your Majesty.”

Roonwit the centaur’s toast demonstrates his correct priority of loyalties: Aslan (the real God) and truth come before the human monarch. Roonwit’s values prove particularly important when he tells the painful truth to King Tirian that a lie is being spread in Narnia: Roonwit can see in the stars that Aslan has not returned to Narnia as Shift claims. Although Roonwit’s message does not convince the king, the centaur maintains his truthful interpretation.

“Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”

King Tirian utters these troubled sentences as he wonders if he mistook the real character of Aslan, the god in whom he has believed. The king would rather be dead if all he had hoped for is not true—an allusion to the Christian idea that true life is only possible through God. Lewis uses the analogy of “a black sun” to express Tirian’s sense of his source of hope giving way to despair. This illustrates one of the repercussions of deception: undermining believers’ faith in the real Aslan.

“Tash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who.”

Shift proclaims this lie in order to deceive and confuse the followers of Aslan. Since Aslan represents goodness and Tash represents evil, Shift is announcing that there is no difference between right and wrong (in fact, Lewis reveals that Shift does not believe in the existence of either Aslan or Tash, highlighting the extent of his amorality). King Tirian realizes that the terrible god Tash, who devours the blood of his people, cannot possibly be the same as the good god Aslan, whose own blood saves.

“They have always come in when things were at their worst.”

When King Tirian is a prisoner, left alone without hope of rescue, he reviews Narnian history. He recalls the stories of Aslan and the children coming from another world to help Narnia during its crises. Tirian’s recollection spurs him to ask for supernatural help in the present. With this episode, Lewis creates a parallel to biblical miracles that remind people to call upon God for aid in the present.

“Tirian never dreamed that one of the results of an Ape’s setting up a false Aslan would be to stop people from believing in the real one.”

Lewis illustrates one of the repercussions of deception when King Tirian realizes that Shift’s presentation of the false Aslan has stopped some people from believing in the real Aslan. Deception leads to a lack of trust; having already been fooled, the dwarfs do not want to be fooled again.

“People shouldn’t call for demons unless they really mean what they say.”

Poggin, the good dwarf, recognizes that although Shift believes in nothing supernatural, the ape truly has summoned Tash and will pay a terrible price for doing so. Tash will kill Shift, demonstrating that people should not lightly invoke evil since there can be dangerous repercussions.

“I was with him in his last hour and he gave me this message to your Majesty: to remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.”

The Calormenes kill Roonwit as a result of Shift’s deception, but Roonwit’s last words convey the important truths that all worlds end (except for Aslan’s eternal country) and that a noble death consists of adhering to one’s principles. Lewis uses the metaphor of a treasure that no one is too poor to buy to represent the idea that anyone with courage can have a noble death.

“I’d rather be killed fighting for Narnia than grow old and stupid at home and perhaps go about in a bath-chair and then die in the end just the same.”

In the language of an English schoolgirl, Jill Pole expresses a similar sentiment to Roonwit’s final message. Despite feeling scared, Jill decides that dying for a noble cause, such as fighting for Narnia, is preferable to leading a purposeless life in England and dying anyway.

“By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.”

Lewis again illustrates how deception works, using the omniscient narrator to comment on how adding some truth strengthens a lie. When Rishda and Ginger realize that Puzzle has escaped, they prompt Shift to proclaim that Puzzle is wandering around in a lion skin as the false Aslan (as Shift himself of course prompted Puzzle to do previously). Not only do the villains put Puzzle’s life in danger, but they thwart King Tirian’s plan to expose the fraud by preempting him.

“In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”

Queen Lucy uses an explicitly Christian reference: the story of Christ’s birth in a stable. In Lewis’s book, believers in Aslan discover that the Stable’s “inside is bigger than its outside” as they pass to Aslan’s eternal realm (128). Through this symbolism, Lewis suggests that the inward spiritual world is larger than the outside physical world.

“Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia, who stood firm at the darkest hour.”

Aslan kisses and praises Tirian when the young king flings himself at his feet. Tirian is thrilled to finally see in reality “his heart’s desire” (134). Despite Tirian’s rash killing of unarmed Calormenes (for which he repented), Aslan commends him for never relinquishing his principles, even during the last battle of Narnia. Aslan’s phrase echoes the biblical phrase in Matthew 25:21: “His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

“They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

Aslan explains why he cannot help the dwarfs: Their distrust does not allow them to receive his abundance. Lewis uses the imagery of a surrounding paradise that the dwarfs cannot see and a glorious feast that the dwarfs cannot taste to illustrate how humans’ lack of faith limits God’s ability to bless them; it is not so much that God condemns people as that people reject God’s mercy.

“He raised his head and roared ‘Now it is time!’ then louder ‘Time!’; then so loud that it could have shaken the stars, ‘TIME.’”

Lewis describes Aslan’s announcement of the end of the old world of Narnia. Aslan’s roar wakes Father Time, who blows his horn to start the stars falling from the sky and finally extinguishes the sun and moon. Many of Lewis’s descriptions allude to the biblical account of the last days in Mark 13:24-25: “[T]he sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall.”

“The speed of him was like an ostrich, and his size was an elephant’s; his hair was like pure gold and the brightness of his eyes like gold that is liquid in the furnace.”

Emeth’s descriptions of Aslan compare him to creatures in the natural world, but the combination of such superlative qualities in one figure is supernatural. The references to gold also highlight Aslan’s rarity and worth. The heightened language (“his eyes like gold that is liquid in the furnace”) is reminiscent of passages in the Book of Revelation—for example, “his eyes are like blazing fire” (Revelation 19:12).

“For all find what they truly seek.”

Aslan explains to Emeth that the young Calormene has actually been serving Aslan by doing good since the evil Tash can only accept evil service. In seeking the truth, Emeth was seeking Aslan and found him. Lewis’s wording echoes Luke 11:19: “Seek, and ye shall find.”

“When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world.”

Through Lord Digory’s explanation to Peter, Lewis introduces the concept of “Shadowlands.” The world humans know is temporary because it is only an imperfect copy of the real, eternal world (in Narnia’s terms: Aslan’s eternal country).

“All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door.”

Lewis illustrates the preservation of goodness with the revelation that everything that mattered, all the “dear creatures” who loved Aslan in old Narnia, remain in Aslan’s country. Lewis’s symbolic use of the Door relies on biblical references to Christ as the door and way to eternal life.

“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!”

Lord Digory, formerly Professor Digory Kirke, explains that the concept of the human world being a shadow of the real, eternal world can be found in the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. This is Lewis’s reference to the Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s The Republic. The allegory describes people as chained in a cave; unable to turn, they mistakenly assume that shadows projected on the cave’s wall are reality.

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”

Jewel gives voice to the Christian notion that God’s real, eternal country is humanity’s true home and what people seek throughout their lives. What people love about the imperfect, temporary world are the glimpses it provides of the ultimate reality that exists beyond it.

“The farther up and the farther in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”

Mr. Tumnus explains to Lucy that the eternal world is constructed somewhat like an onion in that there are worlds within worlds. Each time one goes farther up and farther in, the eternal world becomes more real and more beautiful because the spiritual world inside is larger than the outside.

“And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”

Again, Lewis emphasizes the theme of the preservation of goodness through Mr. Tumnus’s words to the Pevensie children. In Lewis’s exploration of the difficult topics of death and the world’s end, the concept that beloved people and creatures live on is comforting and corresponds to Lewis’s Christian theological understanding.

“The term is over: the holidays have begun.”

When Aslan announces that there was a railway accident in England, he tells the English visitors that they all died in the Shadowlands. Writing for children, Lewis uses the metaphor of a school term to represent life in the painful, temporary world. Now the Friends of Narnia have permanently entered the eternal world where they are truly free, so they have begun their holidays.