Saturn’s Sands of Time
The Last Battle
Time and chance happen to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11
Everyone knows the character of Father Time. He is an old man with a beard, carrying a scythe and an hourglass, and you can see a picture of him on page 156.
Father Time carries a scythe because he cuts people down like wheat at harvest, bringing about their deaths. And he carries an hourglass to show that our lives last only for a limited period. When the sands of time run out, our days on earth will end.
But although we all know of Father Time, hardly anybody knows that Father Time is based on the last of the seven planets. C. S. Lewis wrote in one of his academic books that Father Time “was once Saturn.”[1] And in another place he wrote, “Our traditional picture of Father Time with the scythe is derived from earlier pictures of Saturn.”[2] Saturn was, among other things, the planet of old age, death, and disaster.
Father Time brings Narnia to an end in The Last Battle, helping to express the Saturnine spirit that the whole story is designed to convey.
When Jill and Eustace see this great giant, they remember having seen him asleep in the Underworld (in The Silver Chair) and recall “that his name was Father Time, and that he would wake on the day the world ended.”[3] If you’re in any doubt that Lewis intended Father Time to represent Saturn, let me tell you what I discovered when I consulted a draft of The Silver Chair in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.
According to this rough draft, the Earthman in the Underworld tells Jill and Eustace when they see the figure of the sleeping giant, “That is the god Saturn, who once was a King in Over-land. . . . They say he will wake at the end of the world.”[4]
Lewis had originally planned to call Father Time Saturn—his intentions were going to be explicit! But when he came to publish The Silver Chair, he evidently changed his mind and altered Saturn to Father Time in order to keep the planetary symbolism more carefully hidden. Naturally, he kept the change of name when he wrote The Last Battle, the story in which Father Time finally awakes.
Lewis didn’t want to make it too obvious that Saturn was the underlying symbol running through the final Chronicle of Narnia, but once we realize what he was up to, it is not hard to see that almost the whole tale has been structured to convey Saturn’s qualities. But what are they?
Some are good; others are bad. Let’s look first at the bad news.
“The Last Planet, Old and Ugly”
According to “The Planets,” Saturn is “the last planet old and ugly.”[5] Think of those three adjectives: last, old, ugly. They are important words in this the final Chronicle of Narnia.
Not only is the book called The Last Battle, but its opening sentence begins: “In the last days of Narnia . . .”[6] The second chapter opens with the words, “About three weeks later the last of the Kings of Narnia . . .”[7] Tirian is described again as “the last King” in chapters 4 and 12. In chapter 12, we hear of his “last friends” shortly after the keynote sentence of the whole story: “And then the last battle of the last King of Narnia began.”[8]
Shift the Ape is both old and ugly: “He was so old that no one could remember when he had first come to live in those parts, and he was the cleverest, ugliest, most wrinkled Ape you can imagine.”[9] Shift reappears in chapter 3, where he is described as “ten times uglier”[10] than before. He tells the bewildered Narnians: “I’m so very old: hundreds and hundreds of years old. And it’s because I’m so old that I’m so wise.”[11] Shift’s great age reflects the “mountain of centuries” associated with Saturn that Lewis had written about in his novel That Hideous Strength: “more and still more time.”[12]
In The Last Battle, Father Time extinguishes the Sun by squeezing it in his hand like an orange. This reminds us of what Lewis wrote in the Saturn section of “The Planets,” where he speaks of the Sun being “daunted with darkness.”[13] And it is not just the Sun that disappears in this story. All the other stars fall from the sky too. Saturn was responsible for “disastrous events,”[14] according to one of Lewis’s academic books. And, as so often, Lewis chooses his words very carefully.
A disaster is, literally, a “dis-aster,” a bad star. Aster means “star”—as in asteroid and astronomy. Father Time brings about a “dreary and disastrous dawn”[15] in The Last Battle because he is making Saturn’s influence felt. Saturn was known to pre-Copernican astronomers as “The Greater Misfortune.”
But we need to note that it is not just in the heavens that disaster strikes: the world of Narnia and all the characters in it have to cope with disastrous events from the very start of the story. Everyone who is alive at the beginning of this tale is dead by the end of it.
We get a hint of what’s coming in chapter 1, when Shift cunningly predicts he “shall probably die” if he tries to pull out the lion skin from Caldron Pool. Puzzle retrieves it instead and is “almost tired to death”[16] by the time he gets it out.
In chapter 2 the first actual death occurs when the dryad is cut down; then Tirian and Jewel in their anger kill two Calormenes. But to list all the deaths and references to death would be almost to retell the whole story, because the subject is everywhere.
Tirian remarks, “If we had died before today we should have been happy”;[17] he asks, “Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear?”[18] The Mice say, “It would have been better if we’d died before all this began.”[19] Dwarfs are taken “to die in the salt-pits of Pugrahan.”[20] One of the saddest pictures that Pauline Baynes ever drew as she illustrated the Narnia books shows Roonwit the Centaur lying dead with an arrow in his side and Cair Paravel “filled with dead Narnians.”[21]
Eventually, Tirian, Jewel, Jill, and Eustace are all forced through the Stable Door, which is “more like a mouth”[22] than a door. And at the same time, there is a railway crash in England, causing the deaths of Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Digory, and Polly. I remember being terrified by all these events when I read them as a child. Why did Lewis include them? What is the good side to Saturn’s influence?
Hearing the Silent Music of Saturn
In addition to all the terrible things that Saturn was supposed to bring about, there was one good thing. If you responded in the right way to Saturn’s influence, you would gain the gift of insight. You would be able to see into the heart of things and wouldn’t be deflected by superficial appearances to the contrary. In short, you would become wise.
One way in which Lewis illustrates wisdom is by showing how his good characters respond to sorrow. Sometimes they bear it without tears, and sometimes they know that crying is the right response. Jill makes sure she doesn’t wet her bowstring with her tears, and Tirian doesn’t show that he has given up hope even as the odds turn against him. Yet they also know when to weep freely at their losses. Lucy says that Aslan would not wish to stop them from lamenting Narnia’s death. Tirian says it is no virtue to keep from mourning; not to weep would be a “discourtesy.”[23] “Blessed are those who mourn,” as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:4).
Another way Lewis shows us wisdom is through his sketch of Narnian history in chapter 8. Jewel reminds Jill of the “hundreds and thousands of years” in Narnia’s past when peaceful king followed peaceful king “till you could hardly remember their names”;[24] he tells of Moonwood the Hare, and Swanwhite the Queen, and how King Gale obtained the Lone Islands for the Narnian kingdom:
And as he went on, the picture of all those happy years, all the thousands of them, piled up in Jill’s mind till it was rather like looking down from a high hill onto a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance.[25]
By these means Lewis suggests not only Saturn’s “mountain of centuries,” but also readiness for death. The image of a rich cornfield makes us think of harvest and the approach of the natural and desirable end of life. “There is a time to be born, and a time to die,” as the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes reminds us (Ecclesiastes 3:2).
Lewis once confided to a friend that the times he most desired death were not when life was harshest: “On the contrary, it is just when there seems to be most of Heaven already here that I come nearest to longing for the patria [the heavenly fatherland].” Happiness on Earth “is the bright frontispiece”[26] that encourages you to read the whole story, he said. (A frontispiece is the introductory picture at the start of a book.)
This idea of the introduction to a book appears in the final paragraph of The Last Battle, when we are told that the children’s life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia “had only been the cover and the title page.” Now “they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”[27]
Lewis finishes the whole Narnia series by talking about the start of a story. It is a paradox—the opposite of what you might expect. But this paradox is just right. It expresses the good fortune that “the Greater Misfortune” brings. We all have to die. But if we are wise, we will find a new beginning even in our end.
And this is indeed what we see happen with Tirian and the other faithful Narnians. When Tirian first sees the strange, false Aslan, we are told that “horrible thoughts went through his mind.” But these thoughts soon clear: Tirian “remembered the nonsense about Tash and Aslan being the same and knew that the whole thing must be a cheat.”[28]
His reaction illustrates that Saturn’s influence was not evil in itself; it was evil only if you failed to make good use of it. As his kingdom is brought to its appointed end, Tirian makes good use of Saturnine influence by looking beyond surface realities with a wise spiritual insight.
The biblical passage that appears most frequently in Lewis’s writings is Jesus Christ’s cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, quoting Psalm 22:1). In fact, Lewis refers to this Scripture more often than any other passage by a large margin.
The cry from the cross is echoed in The Last Battle when Tirian cries out from the tree, where he stands bound and bleeding:
And he called out, “Aslan! Aslan! Aslan! Come and help us now.”
But the darkness and the cold and the quietness went on just the same.
Though he receives no reply, Tirian continues with his prayer:
“Let me be killed,” cried the King. “I ask nothing for myself. But come and save all Narnia.”
And still there was no change in the night or the wood, but there began to be a kind of change inside Tirian. Without knowing why, he began to feel a faint hope. And he felt somehow stronger.[29]
Tirian’s circumstances don’t change, but his attitude does. Aslan does not “come and help” in the way Tirian wants, but the king is stronger for calling on him.
Jewel the Unicorn also remains faithful. He trusts that the stable “may be for us the door to Aslan’s country and we shall sup at his table tonight.”[30]
Lewis is trying to teach us about true faith—“the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Tirian sees Aslan with the eyes of his heart, even though Aslan does not appear in the story in person until after Tirian’s life in Narnia has come to its end.
Tirian says, “In the name of Aslan let us go forward”; “I serve the real Aslan.” He resolves to take “the adventure that Aslan would send,” for “we are all between the paws of the true Aslan”; “Aslan to our aid!” As a result, after death, Tirian finally gets to see Aslan and hear him say: “Well done, last of the Kings of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour.”[31]
Emeth, the Calormene soldier, is another example of someone with wise faith. Emeth is a Hebrew word meaning “fidelity, truth, permanence,” so the soldier’s very name suggests he is a true child of Saturn. We are also told that Emeth is a “seventh son.” (Tirian, too, is said to be “seventh in descent”[32] from King Rilian.) As Saturn, the seventh planet, exerts his influence, Emeth is welcomed into the heavenly Narnia. Aslan tells Emeth that he has been worshiping him all his life, even though he never realized it. Emeth’s heart has been with Aslan, despite all appearances to the contrary.
And what happens with Tirian and Emeth is also meant to happen to us as we read the story. We are expected to keep trusting in Aslan, even though he does not appear. And if we have eyes to see him, we can find Aslan in the story despite his absence.
The water from the white rock that refreshes everyone during the battle is a hint that Aslan is still in control. (It reminds us of the Christlike rock in the desert referred to in 1 Corinthians 10:4). The sweet and piercing innocence of the Lamb in chapter 3 reminds us that Christ Himself is “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29).
Perhaps most importantly of all, Roonwit the Centaur says near the start of the story that he has seen “disastrous conjunctions of the planets.” This is terrible news for Narnia, because it foretells the end of the world, but it is also reassuring news because “the stars never lie.”[33]
Aslan, as Jewel points out, “is not the slave of the stars but their Maker.”[34] Aslan has made the stars, and the stars tell the truth. Even though the truth they tell is a hard and painful one, Aslan is still their Maker. He is working his purposes out.
Tingling All Over
And what is Aslan’s final purpose? It is to bring the children to himself. The pain and the suffering of the story are not where the story ends. Saturn’s influence is not final. In Lewis’s poem “The Planets,” Saturn is not the stopping point. The poem goes beyond the sphere of Saturn and looks past the edge of the sky into “Heaven’s hermitage.”[35]
“Heaven’s hermitage”—the Heaven where Aslan lives—is the goal of the whole story. And once the children break through into this heavenly Narnia, we can see that Saturn’s influence has begun to fade. Jupiter, the joyful king, is taking over again.
The spirit of the sixth sphere, Jupiter, is also the spirit that governs the universe beyond the seventh in the resurrection home of Aslan. In Lewis’s works, Saturn always gives way to Jupiter, whose qualities Lewis thought better represented the heart of spiritual reality. In That Hideous Strength Saturn is “overmatched”[36] by Jupiter. In Lewis’s poem “The Turn of the Tide,”[37] wintry Saturn is defrosted by the Jovial birth of Christ at Bethlehem.
In the last quarter of The Last Battle, Lewis symbolizes the same thing. While the first two-thirds take us to Tirian’s death, in the closing section, Saturn withdraws (so to speak) and Jupiter comes to the fore.
Digory and Polly become “unstiffened” and no longer feel old. Edmund’s sore knee is healed. Erlian’s grey-haired head regains its youthful color. Caldron Pool, once “bitingly cold,” now turns to a “delicious foamy coolness.” We hear a mention of “the summer sea”; the air gently blowing on the heroes’ faces “was that of a day in early summer.”[38]
And there are certain, even more obvious indications that Saturn is no longer at the center of the stage. One of these occurs when Jove is mentioned directly:
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Lucy. “Have you noticed one can’t feel afraid, even if one wants to? Try it.”
“By Jove, neither one can,” said Eustace after he had tried.[39]
And so we see that Saturn has brought about the very best thing, the return to the Jovial spirit of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Saturn enables the children to see beyond sorrow. Saturn, like Luna, Mercury, Venus, Sol, and Mars, is a servant of Jupiter.
Jovial happiness is at the heart of the Narnian universe, and in the end, the characters who appear in The Last Battle have to decide which they prefer: Jovial happiness or Saturnine sorrow. (Susan doesn’t appear in the story, so we aren’t told what happens to her; however, in a letter to a reader, Lewis writes that perhaps Susan will get to Narnia in the end.)
The Dwarfs choose sorrow. They are what Lewis elsewhere calls “Saturnocentric,”[40] their minds fixed on Saturn, unable to get beyond the grimness and darkness he represents. But the children and the others who keep the faith are overwhelmed with joy: for them, everything sad becomes untrue.
“Further in and higher up!” cried Roonwit. . . . And though they did not understand him, the words somehow set them tingling all over.[41]
The effect of the centaur’s cry indicates that the end of their adventures has at last been reached. “Tingling,” as has been pointed out several times in this book, is Lewis’s private way of referring to the influence of the stars. The “tingling” is now complete, and it is time for every friend of Narnia to enter into joy.
Lewis said that, for Dante, “the gathering of the Church Triumphant in Heaven” was “the fruit of Time, or of the Spheres.”[42] In The Divine Comedy, the hero of the story stands on the brink of Paradise and looks back across all the seven heavens that he has traveled through during his journey to God’s home. In The Last Battle, Lewis does something similar.
He looks back across all the stories and summons onto the page characters from all seven of the planetary realms: Tumnus from his Jupiter story, Reepicheep from his Mars world, the hopping Monopods from Sol, Puddleglum from the Moon, Cor and Corin from Mercury, Frank and Helen from Venus, Tirian and Jewel from Saturn. This is the Narnian equivalent of “the fruit of Time or of the Spheres.” All the friends of Narnia gather in Aslan’s country to begin the story in which every chapter is better than the one before.
But why does it matter that Lewis used the symbolism of the planetary spheres for his Narnia Chronicles? What does it add to our appreciation of these books to know that he wrote them this way? These are the questions we will try to answer in the next chapter.