Magic, the Ordinary, and Innate Goodness Theme Analysis

In The Magician’s Nephew, there isn’t a clean division between the “magical” and “non-magical” worlds. When Queen Jadis is accidentally transported to London and briefly rampages through the city, both hilarity and chaos result. For example, when the friendly Cabby tries to coax Jadis to get off his horse, he implores in his cockney accent, “You’re a Lidy, and you don’t want all these roughs going for you, do you? You want to go ‘ome and ‘ave a nice cup of tea and a lay down quiet like; then you’ll feel ever so much better.” His understanding of the Queen—as a reasonable Englishwoman who’s gotten mixed up in some sorry business—reflects his kindly nature. This humorous interlude highlights Lewis’s point that people’s responses to magic say more about them than their own origins or familiarity with magic do. In more serious scenes, Lewis employs a contrast between the Cabby and his wife, on one hand, and Uncle Andrew, on the other hand, to argue that people’s innate goodness, not their understanding of magic, is what suits them for life in Narnia.

Some “normal” people from the “ordinary” world belong in Narnia, as naturally as if they had been created in the magical realm. Both the Cabby and Strawberry the horse, for example, belong more in Narnia than they did in the “non-magical” universe. Reflecting on his grueling London existence, the horse says, “‘It was a hard, cruel country’ […] ‘There was no grass. All hard stones.’ ‘Too true, mate, too true!’ said the Cabby. “[…] I didn’t like it no more than what you did. You were a country ’oss, and I was a country man.’” The cabby’s and horse’s remarks indicate, in a homely way, that they will flourish better in Narnia than in the place they had known as their home. When the Cabby tells Aslan that he would be happy to settle in Narnia, if only  his wife were with him, Aslan arranges precisely that: “Aslan threw up his shaggy head, opened his mouth, and uttered a long, single note; not very loud, but full of power […] [Polly]  felt sure that it was a call, and that anyone who heard that call would want to obey it […] [A]ll of a sudden a young woman, with a kind, honest face stepped out of nowhere and stood beside her. Polly knew at once that it was the Cabby’s wife, fetched out of our world not by any tiresome magic rings, but quickly, simply and sweetly as a bird flies to its nest.” The manner of Helen’s arrival suggests that what really makes a person belong in Narnia is not one’s origins, or even one’s access to magic, but Aslan’s call, and one’s responsiveness to that call—hence the natural, “nesting” feel of Helen’s sudden homecoming. She belongs here, not just because of her husband, but primarily because of Aslan.

By contrast, some people, though ostensibly more magically inclined, can never belong in Narnia because they are unresponsive to its goodness. Because of his wickedness, Uncle Andrew finds Narnia intolerable. “It had not made at all the same impression on him as on the Cabby and the children. For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are. Ever since the [talking] animals had first appeared, Uncle Andrew had been shrinking further and further back into the thicket.” Where the Cabby and the children experience wonder, Uncle Andrew is repelled. The children’s innocence and the Cabby’s simplicity incline them to delight in and embrace Narnia’s magic, but Andrew’s grasping cynicism makes its magic threatening and even unrecognizable to him. Not only is Andrew untouched by the magic, he’s basically oblivious to it: “And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring. Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. […] Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to.” No rationalist, Andrew has gleefully tinkered with magic before. His problem is not a refusal to believe in the supernatural, but an inability to accept the moral goodness of the magic he finds in Narnia. Aslan tells the children, “I cannot comfort [Andrew] either; he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings. Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good! But I will give him the only gift he is still able to receive,” and he puts the stubborn magician into a deep sleep. Aslan concludes, in other words, that people ultimately hear what they choose to hear. Although a magician himself, Andrew has so effectively walled himself off from Narnia’s goodness that he cannot be helped by it. Whereas the Cabby and his wife instinctively recognize and respond to Aslan’s beauty, Uncle Andrew is incapable of heeding it.

Other places in the book exemplify a kind of inbreaking of the magical into the ordinary. Besides Cabby Frank and his wife Helen becoming the inaugural King and Queen of Narnia, Digory’s mother miraculously recovers from her deathly illness when she eats a Narnian apple. Years later, the planted apple core eventually yields the tree that becomes the eponymous Wardrobe of a later volume. In each case, those who are responsive to Narnian magic tend not to be those who’ve gone searching for magical power for themselves, like Andrew. They tend to be ordinary people who seemingly stumble into magical contacts, yet whose basic kindness and modest ambitions make them open to hearing Aslan’s call.