The Last Battle | Chapter 16: Farewell to Shadowlands

Chapter Summary:

Everyone continues to run, until they come to a great waterfall. Everyone is magically transported up the waterfall, and they continue to run once they reach the top--faster and faster. They pass the garden where Digory journeyed on the flying horse Fledge to gather the fruit for Aslan. And then they come to the top of a hill, where there is a gate to a garden. The gate opens, and Reepicheep greets them, and bids them to enter.

As they enter the garden, they see that it is bigger on the inside than on the outside--much like the stable had been. Then, everyone greets them. Fledge the flying horse comes to greet Digory and Polly. They are greeted by everyone--Kings Caspian and Rilian, Puddleglum, Trumpkin the dwarf, Trufflehunter the badger, King Cor and his father King Lune of Archenland, Bree and Hwin the horses, the two Beavers and Tumnus the fawn, and even King Frank and Queen Helen, from the beginning of the world. 

Lucy observes to Tumnus that the garden also looks just like Narnia--and then Lucy realizes that the garden is also Narnia--and that the Narnias will continue on forever, each more beautiful than the last.

Lucy and the others look around them see that something has happened to them--they can focus on (and with great clarity) absolutely anything, no matter the distance, as if looking through a telescope. Lucy sees so far that she sees England and her parents, and asks Tumnus how she can get there. Tumnus tells her that it's possible to get to any world now--the England she is seeing is just like the Narnia that she is currently in. It's the real England. 

Aslan reappears and greets Puzzle the donkey first. Aslan whispers two things to him, which no one hears. 

Aslan also greets Lucy, and tells her that she is not yet as happy as he means her to be. Lucy says that they are afraid of being sent away again. Aslan tells Lucy: "No fear of that... Have you not guessed?... There was a real railway accident ... Your father and mother and all of you are--as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands--dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning" (p. 520-ish*). Aslan then appears not as a lion anymore, but as someone else. 

The story ends with the guarantee that they all live happily ever after, and that their life in England and Narnia were only the first chapter of a very great story, which no one has ever read before, and one that goes on forever--in which each chapter is better than the last.

Reflection:

Again, this is a sensational chapter. I would argue that it is second-best in the TCON series to Night Falls on Narnia. What an interesting and excellent conclusion to our tale. As usual, there are a few things I want to look at. I will also summarize my experience in a final blog post (which should come a few hours after this one).

First thing's first--you read it right, all of our characters are dead. I made sure to include the quote in the summary because, in terms of the plot, it is the final twist and the final end to the Narnian plot as we came to know it. All of our characters died in a railway accident at the beginning of The Last Battle. Eustace and Jill were never going back to England anyway during their adventure, because from the moment they appeared before Tirian in the woods to rescue him, they were already dead. The same goes for everyone else who was on the train or waiting on the platform.

But as Aslan says, death is what the state of being is referred to as only within the Shadowlands. They are not really dead, but more alive than they have ever been. Aslan puts it so very well that it is worth repeating, even though it's in my summary above: "The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning" (p. 520-ish). 

BUT.

This brings up a huge huge huge huge huge important and fascinating topic--the one that has frustrated theologians and scholars and lovers of the TCON series. And it's this: If everyone is dead, and Susan is not a friend of Narnia, and therefore not in this Narnian heaven--while Emeth, who worshipped a different god his entire life is in this Narnian heaven, then what follows is this: According to this, C.S. Lewis is telling us that worshiping a different god will get you into heaven, but losing your faith in the god that you should have been worshiping all along will not get you into heaven. Yikes! It's the greatest thing that rubs people the wrong way about this series, and it's definitely a fascinating topic to explore. If only we had C.S. Lewis to tell us what he meant by all of it. But it seems that will have to wait until we too make it out of the shadow-lands. 

The other great thing about this chapter is that it brings to us the quintessential curtain call--often associated with hypothetical version of heaven (think about the last episode of Lost). Everyone who has passed on before them are present to greet them--all of the wonderful characters that we, as the readers, have come to know and love throughout our journey in Narnia. It's special to us in the same way that it's special to the Kings and Queens of Narnia, and the animals that have just entered the doorway into Aslan's Country--it's special because we are reunited with our friends who we have not seen in so long, and it brings us, and them, great joy.

Now, let's take a final look at the last paragraph of the novel:

"And has He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at least 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" (p. 525-ish). 

And what a wonderful conclusion to the story this is. What the narrator basically tells us is that everything we have just read was only the introduction. Not even the first chapter--just the introduction prior to the first chapter. The prologue, if you will. The end of The Last Battle is full of hope and joy and excitement for the future. And of course, there's that first sentence, in which we would suspect that Aslan has finally come to appear to be the shape of a man, whose name I suspect is Jesus.

I will conclude our conversation in my final blog entry in just a couple of hours.

* Apologies for the approximate page numbers. I've left my main copy at home, and wanted to conclude these journal entries today, so I've rented a different copy from the Baylor library, and the page number don't match. Oops!