The Horse and His Boy | Chapter 6: Shasta Among the Tombs

Chapter Summary:

This chapter begins with Shasta leaving Tashbaan to the North. Shasta exits the city, and finds himself at the Tombs at the edge of a great desert--the rendezvous point for Shasta, Bree, Aravis, and Hwin. Unfortunately, there is no sign of Bree, Aravis, and Hwin.

The sun sets, and Shasta begins to fear the tombs. Something touches him in the dark, but it turns out to only be a cat. Shasta cuddles next to the cat to sleep for the night. He wakes up in the middle of the night to loud cries coming from the desert (they are jackels, but he doesn't know this). But a large creature darts between him and the desert and roars like a lion. Shasta is terrified, but when he opens his eyes, he finds only the cat from earlier.

The next morning, the cat is gone. Shasta goes to the river to bathe, and raids from food from the back yards of nearby houses in Tashbaan. The sun begins to set again as Shasta sits by the Tombs, and he realizes that he does not know how long he might have to wait for Bree, Aravis, and Hwin. Shasta decides that he will set off for Mount Pire (at the other edge of the desert) alone.

Just then, Shasta sees a strange man leading Bree and Hwin. Shasta is certain that this is a trap, and he cannot decide whether to confront the horses or not.\

Reflection:

C.S. Lewis is definitely a fan of reading. (DUH.) This is apparent in a number of ways, but this chapter presents the most amusing demonstration of the importance of books and reading. Check out this passage, in which Shasta is nervously awaiting the arrival of his companions as the sun sets on his second night at the Tombs:

"A dozen different plans went through his head, all wretched ones, and at last he fixed on the worst plan of all. He decided to wait till it was dark and then go back to the river and ... set out for Mount Pire alone, trusting for his direction to the line he had drawn that morning in the sand. It was a crazy idea and if he had read as many books as you have about journeys over deserts he would never have dreamed of it. But Shasta had read no books at all" (p. 168). 

The message that C.S. Lewis is sending in this passage is a rather important one--he is saying that reading has real-life applications (shocking!), and that if Shasta had had the opportunity to read, he would not be making the decision that he is making. Beyond this, I think C.S. Lewis is also telling us that those of us who have access to reading materials should be reading. Shasta did not fail to read because he chose not to read--he failed to read because he was never given the opportunity, most likely. (He lived as a servant in a rural farming community with a relatively abusive father--I doubt he had any access to books.)

Of course the benefits of reading go well beyond real-world application. I very distinctly remember my professor of Cognitive Psychology tell our class that the number one predictor of college success (literally, graduation from college with a high GPA) was how many hours an individual had spent reading prior to beginning college. Once college began, it really didn't matter much--but prior to age 18, the hours a child had read correlated very strongly with both chance of graduation and college GPA. If you aren't surprised, you should be. There are a ton of other variables out there that don't correlate as well with college graduation and GPA that should correlate pretty darn well--including SAT/ACT scores, high school GPA, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, sex/gender, and so forth. So there. Read to your kids (or read to yourself)--you have support from Dr. Charles Weaver of Baylor University and from C.S. Lewis--what more convincing do you need? Go read!