The Last Battle | Chapter 7: Mainly About Dwarfs

Chapter Summary:

Tirian approaches the group of dwarfs, who are being led by two Calormene soldiers. Tirian pretends to be a Calormene again and discovers that the dwarfs are being taken to Calormen to work in the mines (they believe, on Aslan's orders). Tirian reveals Puzzle to show that they have all been deceived. The two Calormene soliders ask Tirian for a password, and Tirian draws his sword and Eustace follows suit. Tirian and Eustace kill the two Calormene soldiers. 

Tirian expects a celebration from the dwarfs, but the dwarfs are unimpressed. The dwarfs collectively tell Tirian that they don't want anything to do with Aslan. The dwarfs do not want to be fooled again, and they think that Tirian has a scheme of his own in mind--some way to use the dwarfs to his own advantage. The dwarfs won't believe that Tirian is who he says he is, and they don't believe Eustace and Jill that they are from another world either. The dwarfs march away. 

Tirian, Eustace, Jill, Jewel, and Puzzle walk away sadly back toward the tower where Tirian, Eustace, and Jill had spent the previous night. Suddenly, a dwarf named Poggin catches up with them--Poggin says that he believes Tirian. This brings a small bit of hope to the group. 

The group of six returns to the tower, washes up, and sleeps. The next morning over breakfast, Poggin explains to everyone that the Cat, Ginger, has taken charge of the whole scheme, and is likely responsible for the response of the dwarfs. Poggin says that he overheard Ginger and the chief Calormene, Rishda, talking on Stable Hill the other night. Their plan was to overthrow the authority of Shift based on their mutual agreement that neither Aslan nor Tash exist.

The sky clouds over, and a very foul smell takes over. Jewel jumps up and tells everyone to look, and immediately everyone is dismayed.

Reflection:

Like I discussed in the last post, the problem is way worse than Tirian could have imagined. Groupthink is not only occurring, but Tirian is also seeing the impact of gossip, confusion, chaos, and the overall fragility of faith. In Tirian's own words:

"Tirian had never dreamed that one of the results of an Ape's setting up a false Aslan would be to stop people from believing in the real one" (p. 483). 

Unfortunately, that is exactly what has occurred. It would be easy to blame Aslan's apparent extended absence, but what it comes down to more than that is that the dwarfs do not have the faith in Aslan that Narnians used to. And if this one isn't a parallel for you, I don't know what is: The dwarfs are less faithful to Aslan simply because the people who claim to be so faithful to Aslan are not really the type of people that the dwarfs would want to spend time with. Is this familiar yet? It should be.

That's right. It's a parallel to the present day notion that many non-Christians speak of--that if Christians are the type of people who worship Christ, then the last thing that they would want to do is spend any time with those sorts of people. Therefore if Christians represent themselves in a negative light, guess who else they are representing in a negative light? Christ himself. Exactly. We see it every. Single. Day. The extreme, of course, are the folks such as the Westboro "church" that proclaim to be believers but are so abominably opposed to so many Biblical beliefs that one could hardly call them Christians. But that's just the extreme. Any time a Christian has given anyone an unwelcoming glance in their church--that's part of the problem. Every time a Christian has been intolerant of differences or of people who aren't exactly like them--that's part of the problem. 

If I don't watch myself, I'm going to start explaining why it's impossible to be a true Christian without being a social liberal, like Jesus clearly was in his own day, but I live in Waco, TX, and I don't want to be burned at the stake. 

Well, this has taken a dark turn. Not that many people are reading this, but I hesitate anyway. So, to bring things back to the TCON world, it is abundantly clear to me why the dwarfs are not immediately on board with Tirian. They have been taught to distrust the name of Aslan, and distrust they will.