The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe | Chapter 1: Lucy Looks into a Wardrobe

Chapter Summary:

Four children have moved to a large country home of an old professor in England to escape the London air-raids of WWII: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. Upon arriving, the four children realize that their new home will afford them many freedoms, including exploration of the large house and surrounding area.

It's raining the next day, so the four children spend the day exploring the house. In one room, they find nothing but a wardrobe. Lucy is the only one remains to look into the wardrobe. When she does, she walks through coats and furs, expecting to find the back, but instead finds herself in a forest with snow on the ground, and a gleaming light in the distance. She turns around and can still see the professor's house from the woods. Lucy follows the light and finds that it's a lamppost in the woods. Then, a Faun (goat on bottom, human on top, basically) steps out of the trees into the lamplight.

Reflection:

The first chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe contains several of the most recognizable images from the entire TCON series: Lucy peering into the wardrobe, Lucy emerging from the wardrobe, and probably the most famous, Lucy at the lamppost in the snowy woods. This last image always brings to mind a certain Robert Frost poem--Stopping by woods on a snowy evening. For those of you who haven't seen the image, here is generally what it looks like (or similar enough):

This has gotten me thinking--why is the image of Lucy at the lamppost the most iconic image from the entire series? I mean, there are some pretty intense, interesting, and significant images that Lucy has to compete with in TCON. (I would name them, but they are pretty much all major spoilers. If you've read the books before, you know what images come to mind.)

Here's my main theory: It is probably one of the happiest images from the entire series. This isn't to say that the entire series is gloom and doom, but for better or for worse, a lot of the memorable moments in the series are rather dark. (Of course, once we find out why it's snowy and cold rather than sunny and warm, we realize that this image is also rather dark, but as of Chapter 1 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, we technically don't know any better.) 

I think another reason this image is so famous is all that it embodies--and some of these things I have spoken about in previous entries. Lucy's discovery of the lamppost brings to mind childhood adventure and exploration (you know you explored every room of Great Aunt Mary's giant house). It brings to mind our own childhood discoveries and adventures, of when we learned things for the first time. For those of us who grew up in warmer climates, the snow itself is magical, and brings to mind memorable childhood moments. If you were in Houston on December 24, 2004, you know what I'm talking about, and if you weren't, it's worth reading about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Christmas_Eve_snowstorm). It is also an image of profound innocence (and along with that, ignorance), an innocence that is present only for a very brief moment in time, because as soon as the events of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe progress, that innocence disappears rather quickly. So we remember it not only because it is happy and emits happy memories in ourselves, but because it is a very fleeting sort of happy, because those of us who have read the series before know exactly what comes next.