Extreme Makeover: Moral Education and the Encounter with Aslan
The children who enter Narnia are not saintly or heroic characters. All of them are morally immature, and some, like Eustace, are worthless blighters. Over the course of their adventures they grow. Most become genuinely brave, kind, and truthful; all become less selfish. The moral development of the children in the stories depends largely on the structure of Narnia itself. In Narnia they discover a rich, and enriching, moral order. They are forced to undertake difficult tasks and bear heavy burdens. It is natural to think that the victories in which they take part would give them affection for their comrades that would blunt their self-centeredness. But Lewis intends to recommend more than camaraderie and hard work. The moral wealth of Narnia goes beyond giving the children difficult missions to accomplish. Narnia is the remedy for their moral shortcomings. And Lewis, drawing on a classical moral framework rooted in both ancient Greek philosophy and Christian principles, wants us to see that our own moral development needs what they found in Narnia.
The Moral Poverty of Our World
With a few notable exceptions, it’s hard to find good moral characters outside of Narnia in Lewis’s Chronicles. Eustace Scrubb is a “record stinker” (VDT, Chapter 1, p. 426). He is consumed by his own problems, thinks himself too good for others, and is insufferably arrogant. Jill Pole, Eustace’s schoolmate at Experiment House, is painfully timid and indulges in pointless self-pity. The unnamed Head of Experiment House sides with the bullies in the Gang and thinks them interesting psychological cases. Edmund is treacherous, dishonest, and power-hungry. Uncle Andrew has all these faults, and worse, in spades.
The moral immaturity of the children in Lewis’s Chronicles isn’t hard to explain. All of them are products of a modern educational system that Lewis strongly condemns. Modern education, Lewis believed, tends to choke off sympathy and moral vision by emphasizing facts over imagination, sports over logic, and secular science over wisdom and virtue.1 Moreover, by allowing bullies to oppress and mistreat younger and weaker students, many schools in Lewis’s day created an atmosphere in which cruelty was seen as cool, and power was regarded as the ultimate good.2 Greedy and cruel Uncle Andrew is the perfect embodiment of this system.
The morally atrophied world of Experiment House wasn’t a wild fantasy Lewis made up to give his characters something to overcome. It was his attempt to depict the results of years of misguided efforts not only to take science “seriously,” but also to accept it uncritically as the ultimate account of reality. By the early 1900s, western civilization had enjoyed the fruits of scientific progress for more than two centuries. Science had revealed many of the secrets of nature and had raised standards of living throughout the industrialized world. To many, it seemed likely that everything would eventually be explained by science. The supernatural could be dismissed as the stuff of childish fantasies. Talk about fuzzy, unobservable things like “values” could be seen as nothing more than talk about our feelings.3 Like the dwarfs in the Stable in The Last Battle who “refused to be taken in” (LB, Chapter 13, p. 742), serious-minded people in Lewis’s day refused to believe in anything good or beautiful that couldn’t be fit into their own fixed categories.
Before science was exalted to a position of ultimate authority, one of the main goals of education was moral development: helping students to become morally good. Moral goodness was not simply about how things seemed; it was about how things are (or are not, in the case of wickedness). Becoming good meant acquiring virtues such as courage, truthfulness, and charity. Whatever other benefits it might provide, an education that didn’t form virtuous characters was seen as a bad education.
Lewis believed that an uncritical acceptance of the authority of science had changed the way people thought about education. “Objective” subjects such as math and physics had become more important, while “subjective” matters such as art, literature, and ethics were shortchanged. Professor Kirke in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe asks whether they are teaching logic any more (LWW, Chapter 5, p. 131). More than once Eustace is said not to have read “the right books” (VDT, Chapter 6, pp. 463–64) and is condemned for his narrow practical-mindedness. What Lewis is lamenting in these passages is the rise of modern “scientific” education. Teachers still aimed to improve students, but not by encouraging moral goodness. Instead of working to make students courageous, reverent, and wise, schools sought to make them reasonable, informed, and sensible.
The most common way to encourage reasonableness of this scientific kind was to combine instruction about social rules with seriousness about life. The thinking went something like this: “It is an objective fact that we have to get along with each other. Playing by the rules (such as ‘Don’t lie’ or ‘Don’t steal’) is best for everyone. People serious about life will learn the rules and live by them. Good schools teach children the rules and make them into serious people. Thus, schools that worry about virtue or beauty are encouraging frivolousness and childishness.” Lewis believed that this way of thinking was badly mistaken. Not only was it wrong about the reality of goodness and beauty, it produced people who were either genuinely vicious (like Uncle Andrew) or morally stunted (like Eustace when he first entered Narnia). What children like Eustace needed, Lewis believed, was not more talk about rules or a more serious outlook. What they needed was a world where objective goodness and beauty are obvious. They needed moral examples worth imitating. In short, they needed a trip to Narnia.
Narnia is clearly enchanted. It is charged with an energy that is both comforting and thrilling. But while it is a world of Deep and Deeper Magic, Narnia enchants us because it is fundamentally a good place. It is a world of characters whose goodness is worth imitating and where goodness is rewarded. Lewis takes children to a place very different from Experiment House and Uncles Andrew’s London. The children are able to see what it means to be good and not simply “correct,” “reasonable,” or “socially well-adjusted.” And they come to see that self-sacrifice, courage, and honor lead to the defeat of evil, even though these virtues can result in pain and sacrifice along the way. Narnia is both comforting and thrilling to us because it is what we hope for from our own world. Lewis takes his human children (and his readers) to Narnia because he believes that at a deep level what is true of Narnia is also true of our world. Like the children, we need a trip to Narnia so that we can see the moral enchantment of our own world.
Just as Lewis’s Experiment House captures a depressingly real place, Narnia revives an understanding of the world that was common before the success of science convinced many people that science describes everything there is. Let’s call this earlier, morally rich understanding of the world the “classical picture of the world.” Lewis believed in this classical picture. So did most of the great philosophers of the ancient and medieval worlds, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas.4 Narnia is comforting and inspiring because it is a “classical” world in this sense. People (and in Narnia, Talking Animals) have virtues and vices. Virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. The entire world is ruled by a Lion who is supremely good, and who is opposed by witches and other creatures that are thoroughly wicked. Good and evil are obvious, making Narnia a world of vivid moral colors and clear choices. And, most important for understanding the stories, people who are not yet virtuous can develop morally in just the way the classical picture claims.
According to Aristotle, Aquinas, and other defenders of the classical picture, moral growth requires three things. First, we need to be taught how the moral world works; we need instruction. Second, we need virtuous role models to show us how to be morally good; we need exemplars worthy of imitation.5 Finally, we need to do what is right repeatedly even when it is difficult; we need habituation. In Narnia the children are provided with all three of these ingredients. Sometimes Aslan himself instructs the children, as when he explains the Deeper Magic the White Witch didn’t know. But more often the children are instructed by Narnians like Reepicheep (a mouse), Trumpkin (a dwarf), Ramandu (a star), or Puddleglum (a Marsh-wiggle).
Just as the classical picture would lead us to expect, however, the times of instruction are not nearly as memorable as the moral examples that the children meet in Narnia. The classical world recognized four “cardinal” virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. It would take pages to define these virtues, but they can be grasped even more clearly by saying that Doctor Cornelius is wise (and thus has the virtue of wisdom). Reepicheep is courageous. Puddleglum is temperate (as well as brave). And Aslan is just (as well as wise, courageous, and temperate). In the classical picture, justice is the fulfillment of all the virtues.6
A few days with Reepicheep teaches the children more about courage than years of reading or classroom lectures ever could. The most effective way to grow morally is to imitate someone who is already virtuous. For example, Jill Pole is selfish and timid when she arrives in Narnia. Time in the company of the selfless and brave Puddleglum leads her to be less self-centered and fearful. The presence of virtuous examples is essential, but it takes time to acquire the virtues. In keeping with the classical picture, the children grow morally through habitually doing what their virtuous mentors are doing. Like becoming a good tennis player, the children acquire virtues by practice or habituation. In Narnia they find themselves with tasks that require them to be fair, brave, and truthful in one situation after another. And because Narnia is a classical world, practice in doing good helps them to become good.
While the four cardinal virtues were praised by nearly everyone before the rise of modern science, Lewis also emphasizes two virtues that came to be fully appreciated only in the Middle Ages: chivalry and selflessness. These virtues are at the heart of the Narnian moral order. While wicked characters are deceitful and treacherous, good characters are truthful and loyal even when it means discomfort and danger. Similarly, even though vicious characters are proud and selfish, good characters are humble and sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. Puddleglum burns his webbed feet to save Eustace, Jill, and Rilian. Caspian refuses to leave Dragon Island without Eustace. Shasta jumps off his horse to save Aravis from a lion. And, most spectacularly, Aslan submits to the White Witch’s cruel execution to save Edmund’s life.
A heart for others may go unnoticed in our world, and selfishness is too often found in the “successful.” But in Narnia wickedness of all kinds results in eventual ruin. The cruel White Witch and the Queen of Underland are destroyed. Grasping and deceitful Miraz is slain. The wicked Ape, Shift, is carried off by the demonic Tash. The proud and ruthless son of the Tisroc is made ridiculous, and the wickedly foolish Uncle Andrew is planted in the ground like a tree.
The influence of Narnia’s classical moral order on the children is a central theme in the Chronicles. Before they enter Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children are far from moral paragons. Peter is an indecisive boy who is slow to defend his sister Lucy. Edmund betrays his siblings repeatedly, first by lying about his own adventure in Narnia, and then by slipping away and betraying his brother and sisters to the White Witch. As further proof of his moral weakness, Edmund is carried off by his lust for Turkish Delight. Lucy whines and is envious of Susan’s beauty. She responds to the disbelief of Peter and Susan with tears and sulking. Narnia proves to be the cure for all these moral failings.
For the Pevensie children, one trip to Narnia isn’t enough. Their first trip introduces them to the attractiveness of real goodness and moral order. It gives them a taste for chivalry and self-sacrifice and a desire for more. In Prince Caspian Peter’s lack of resolve and indecisiveness is set aside when he must risk single combat in order to save his friends. His life in England was safe and predictable, but what he needed was a cause worth dying for, a goal both noble and good. Narnia provides a moral setting in which everyone takes for granted the necessity of fighting for what is right. Peter grows into a resolute and wise person through these dangers. Even in wartime conditions, this would not have happened in comparatively safe and colorless England.
Edmund and Lucy have very different experiences on their first trip to Narnia. Edmund’s moral growth starts with his cruel reception by the White Witch. He comes to see that gluttony and a lust for power lead to nothing but frustration and pain. In England these vices might not have had such obvious consequences, but in Narnia vice is invariably punished. Not only is Edmund made miserable, but his treason also tears the very fabric of the Narnian world: someone must die. Edmund’s life is spared only because Aslan is willing to bear Edmund’s punishment for him. The depth of the moral order that governs Narnia proves to be fathomless when Aslan returns to life and puts an end to the Witch’s oppressive reign.
Lucy is the first to see the risen Aslan. She frolics with him in the first moments of his return and serves his army as a healer in the battle that ends in the White Witch’s defeat. Delight in Aslan’s triumph and service to a noble cause start to make Lucy selfless and brave in a way that life in England would not have. For Lucy, as well as Edmund, further adventures would be needed. It isn’t until The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” that Edmund becomes a truly loyal friend or Lucy overcomes her envy of Susan’s beauty. But even this is what the classical picture would expect. True goodness is not the result of a single trial; and backsliding, as Eustace discovered (VDT, Chapter 7, p. 476), is always possible. Virtues are good habits, acquired by repeatedly doing what is right.
Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are average English children whose moral education had been neglected. Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole, on the other hand, enter Narnia as children whose characters had been corrupted by the vicious environment of Experiment House. Eustace is a self-centered, cowardly snob, the sort of boy that Lewis himself says he became in boarding school.7 By the end of The Silver Chair Eustace is a very different boy. He takes risks in order to help his friends, he serves others rather than indulging himself, and he is no longer contemptuous of people who don’t know what he knows.
The Silver Chair opens with a description of Jill’s unhappy life at Experiment House, where bullies and cliques make life miserable for weaker or more decent students like Jill and Eustace. While Eustace had become a stuck-up know-it-all, Jill had become timid, fearful, and nearly invisible. Even though those who ran Experiment House had not intended to crush her spirit and take away her personality, the school was to blame for these results. In Narnia her moral character blossoms. It doesn’t happen all at once, but over time she becomes more confident and courageous. By the end of the story she is the one who faces danger alone by climbing out of Underworld without knowing if it is safe. Courageous Prince Rilian and the unselfish Puddleglum showed her what it meant to be good, and the challenges she encountered gave her the practice she needed to grow into a brave girl.
Close Encounters of the Leonine Kind
One of the more curious things about Narnia is that an adventure there doesn’t always work in a lasting way. Susan makes two trips there, but when she returns to our world Narnia’s influence wears off, and she eventually becomes “no longer a friend of Narnia” (LB, Chapter 12, p. 741). Also puzzling is Lucy’s continuing jealousy of Susan’s beauty. It isn’t until Lucy’s third trip to Narnia that she is forced to deal with that vice directly. It might seem that the moral influence of Narnia is limited to Narnia itself, and that moral development is somehow suspended when visitors return to our world.
But this doesn’t happen to Digory or Polly. And most of the children don’t start over from the beginning of their moral education when they return for later adventures. These visitors to Narnia are changed so deeply that they can resist the corrupting influences of our world. They aren’t just virtuous when they are in the morally rich air of Narnia; they have become virtuous at their core. What all these characters share is a life-transforming encounter with Aslan. For most readers these encounters are the most moving and memorable events in all the adventures. Three in particular are worth close attention: Eustace’s being ripped out of his dragonish skin, Jill’s getting a drink on Aslan’s mountain, and Digory’s asking for the magic fruit that will heal his mother.
Eustace deserved to be turned into a dragon and left that way. His selfish and arrogant behavior on board the Dawn Treader had made him worse than useless, and he stumbled into the dragon’s lair because he was defiantly trying to avoid work. He discovered that it is unpleasant being a dragon. The bracelet on his arm was uncomfortable, but not as painful as being unable to talk with the other people on the island. When Aslan came to him, Eustace was afraid. But, more than that, Eustace was wretched. He was sad and lonely, but he was also genuinely sorry for being beastly to everyone.
Aslan’s “cure” comes in two stages. First, Aslan commands Eustace to undress himself. Eustace tries repeatedly to shed his loathsome skin, but no matter how hard he scratches or claws at himself he can’t get deep enough. When he realizes that he can’t do it himself, Aslan undertakes the second stage:
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . . Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off . . . and there I was as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me . . . and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious . . . (VDT, Chapter 7, pp. 474–75)
What Eustace needed was more than the natural remedy of Narnia’s moral wealth. He needed to be changed from within. In order for Eustace to continue to grow outside of Narnia he needed what only Aslan could give: an extreme makeover.
Jill’s transforming encounter with Aslan comes at the very outset of her first adventure in Narnia. Moments after arriving on Aslan’s mountain, she finds an enormous Lion standing between her and a stream from which she desperately wants to drink:
“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.
“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.
“Then drink,” said the Lion.
“May I—could I—would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.
The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl . . . .
“Will you promise not to—do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.
“I make no promise,” said the Lion. . . .
“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.
“Oh dear?” said Jill, . . . “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”
“There is no other stream,” said the Lion. (SC, Chapter 2, pp. 557–58)
Jill drinks and is refreshed, but the Lion asks her difficult questions about where her companion, Eustace, is. She confesses that he fell off the cliff because she was showing off. Aslan commends her answer and gives her the instructions she needs to fulfill the mission she was called into Narnia to perform. It takes the example of Puddleglum and plenty of practice to complete Jill’s development from being cowardly to being courageous, but the probing encounter with Aslan changes her deeply. The virtues she develops in Narnia will last even when she returns to our world.
In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory gets up his nerve and asks Aslan for a magic apple that will save his mother’s life. Even though Digory had been a sneaky and untrustworthy boy before entering Narnia, he is unable to lie when confronted with Aslan himself. Digory admits that he is responsible for awakening Queen Jadis in Charn and thereby bringing evil into Narnia. The old Digory would have tried to deflect this responsibility, but Aslan’s majesty and the beauty of newly-created Narnia makes him sorry for what he has done. Digory tells the truth because he is repentant. He sees that his willfulness has spoiled Aslan’s world, and that Aslan above all deserves to hear the truth from Digory.
In each of these three encounters with Aslan, the children feel genuine sorrow for things they have done wrong. The same is true of Edmund’s transforming conversation with Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, although Lewis doesn’t give us the details of what was said (LWW, Chapter 13, p. 174). It is also essential to Lucy’s meeting with Aslan when she is reading Coriakin’s Book of Spells (VDT, Chapter 10, p. 498). The Lion’s majestic presence makes the children mindful of their own self-centeredness. More than that, Aslan works the miracle of healing. Past wrongs are not just forgotten; they are washed away and replaced with a mission that depends upon moving beyond past failures. Deliverance from our old selves and transformation at our core is an extreme makeover. This kind of change is a supernatural gift. In Narnia, that gift is given only by Aslan himself.
Why We Still Need Narnia
Moral development by natural means is back in favor with educational theorists, even if the extreme makeover that Lewis recommends is not. In recent years many schools, both public and private, have come to include “character education” and even “moral virtues” among their educational goals. Much of this has been fueled by concerns about declining moral values, as evidenced, for example, by rising crime rates, corporate scandals, the breakdown of the family, irresponsible sexual behavior, and an increasingly violent, explicit, and coarsened media. But however it happened that virtue made a comeback, it is now common for schools to plan for the moral development of their students.8 Despite this, Lewis would probably think that students today need a trip to Narnia just as badly as the children in the Chronicles did, because today’s character education programs base moral growth on love for self rather than on love for the good.
Character education today aims to encourage students to act ethically: to be respectful, responsible, tolerant, truthful, caring, fair, and so forth. Lots of different lists of good traits (sometimes even called “virtues”) have been developed, and almost all have respect (especially self-respect) and responsibility near the top. Significantly, respect and responsibility are not presented as ends in themselves. Instead, most character education programs pursue these and other traits primarily for the sake of good citizenship. Virtue is important because a society in which people are disrespectful, irresponsible, and deceitful is uncivilized, and hence undesirable. The purpose of good character is thus pragmatic. The pursuit of virtue doesn’t rest on a love for goodness; it rests primarily on a love for oneself that easily becomes self-centered and fails to care for others. Programs that make self-esteem central to character education only make explicit what is implicit in the other programs.
Lewis would not accept today’s character education as an adequate imitation of Narnian moral education, but he would concede that it is superior to Experiment House’s attempt to do without virtue at all. Today’s character education programs recognize that everything we do is motivated by love. We love ourselves; we love our families and friends; many people love God. No one loves Reason or Reality in itself apart from people or God, and this is why serious-mindedness led to moral poverty. Since character education today appeals to love for self or for others, it can avoid producing morally stunted people like the children in the Narnia stories. But it isn’t clear whether it can avoid producing viciously selfish people like Uncle Andrew or (worse still) the White Witch and her motley crew of Ghouls, Ogres, Cruels, Hags, Wraiths, Horrors, and people of the Toadstools (LWW, Chapter 13, p. 173; Chapter 14, p. 180).
Boxed in by political taboos, today’s character education attempts to teach goodness without any mention of moral reality, that is, without any mention of religion. As Plato notes, it is natural to ask why it is wrong to lie if you’ll never be caught, or why it is wrong to be lazy when you have talents you can use. In Narnia, the answer to these questions is obvious: these actions offend Aslan and rip the fabric of that world. Lewis believes that something like this is true of our world as well. But given currently fashionable dogmas about church-state separation, school officials today can’t build programs around such answers because they are religious. Even when school officials agree with Lewis and acknowledge an objective—even a transcendent—moral order, public school programs cannot appeal to religious truths. The place of religion in public discourse is a complicated matter, but for good or ill leaving religion out of the discussion forces educators today to act as if the world is morally neutral. As a result, they must assume that moral claims are either expressions of personal taste or, at best, expressions of community consensus.
This is not very different from the serious-mindedness that Lewis condemns. In his book, The Abolition of Man, Lewis attacks the poverty of thinking that all value judgments are expressions of taste or sentiment. Moral education, he argues, depends upon acknowledgement of an objective moral order, a recognition that goodness and beauty are not subject to our wishes or whims. Character education that rests on private taste will result ultimately in selfishness dressed up as virtue. Students who learn their lessons perfectly will be trustworthy, respectful, or responsible only as long as there is a threat of getting caught if they do otherwise. Programs that base the pursuit of morality on love for community will produce whole nations that find it impossible to sacrifice the nation’s interests for the sake of something higher. For both sorts of character education programs, there is nothing higher, no overarching moral order. Just as Uncle Andrew couldn’t imagine a reason not to gratify his desires, students without a Narnia-like moral education will be incapable of genuine self-sacrifice for the sake of some higher good.
It won’t be easy to fix today’s character education programs. Even if the programs were changed, making devotion to an Aslan-like figure the motivation for pursuing virtue, Lewis would still find them insufficient. This is because we won’t truly love Aslan (or his counterpart in our world) unless he first changes us. A morally ordered world like Narnia is sufficient to show us what it means to be virtuous. It even rewards virtue in a way that makes it attractive to be virtuous. But until we have an encounter with the good one that remakes us, we will only pursue virtue out of love for ourselves. We all need Narnia (or to realize that Narnia is no mere story); but we need Aslan most of all.9
1 C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1955). See, in particular, p. 41n.
2 C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), pp. 83ff.
3 Lewis, Abolition of Man, pp. 13–35.
4 Plato, Republic, especially books 5–7; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books 1, 2, and 6; Augustine, Confessions, Books 1 and 3; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, the whole of the Second Part.
5 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, especially Book 2. Aquinas endorses a similar view of moral education.
6 Plato, Republic, Book 4; Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, Book 5.
7 Lewis, Surprised by Joy, pp. 104ff.
8 Many programs of moral improvement have been developed for schools, most under the title of “character education.” See, for example, Thomas Lickona, Educating for Character: How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and Responsibility (New York: Bantam, 1992); and Kevin Ryan and Karen Bochlin, Building Character in Schools: Practical Ways to Bring Moral Instruction to Life (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1998). I am indebted to my colleagues Rebecca Pennington and James Drexler for help with the character education literature.
9 I am indebted to my children Amy, Rachel, and Mark for their enthusiastic help with this chapter, and to Joseph Moon for his research assistance.