The chapter ends with a key symbol: the Narrator walking on the river, against the flow of the current. The passage alludes to Christ’s famous miracle of walking on water, and could be considered a metaphor for the struggle for Christian redemption: the path to Heaven can be difficult, since it involves fighting one’s own sinful nature, but ultimately, it is possible to make slow, steady progress toward Heaven. (In the same vein, the “progress” in the passage could be an homage to John Bunyan’s novel
The Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory of a Christian’s progress toward salvation that inspired Lewis’s own writing.)