Instead of lecturing Peter and Susan about Plato when they come to him with their worries about Lucy, Professor Kirk scolds (nonsensically), “You’re a family. You might just start acting like one.” By my count, the film uses the word “family” in this charged, almost fetishistic fashion over a half-dozen times. In the book, it appears just once, and then only in reference to the lineage of the giant Rumblebuffin, who, Mr. Tumnus informs Lucy, comes from “an old family. With traditions you know.”
I noticed this shift in emphasis most in the scene where Lucy leads her brothers and sisters to Tumnus’s cave, eager to introduce them to her new friend, only to find his house ransacked and a notice announcing that the faun has been arrested by the White Witch. In Lewis’s book, this discovery precipitates a discussion. Susan immediately suggests that they flee back through the wardrobe, and Lucy cries, “Don’t you see? We can’t just go home, not after this. It is all on my account that the poor Faun has gotten into this trouble. He hid me from the Witch and showed me the way back. . . . We simply must try to rescue him.” After a debate (with Edmund grumbling), the children agree, and even Susan, the most domesticated of the bunch, admits, “I don’t want to go a step further and I wish we’d never come. But I think we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever-his-name-is — I mean the Faun.” This conversation never happens in the film.
In Lewis’s book, what draws the Pevensie siblings further into Narnia is a sense of obligation having everything to do with honor and friendship (and perhaps even that most neglected of Christian virtues, charity), but little to do with “family values.” The difference between movie and book becomes even more marked later in the story, when the film tries to portray the children’s involvement in the revolt against the White Witch as largely motivated by their desire to rescue Edmund and get back “home.” In the book, it never seems to occur to the Pevensies not to do all they can to help Narnia and the Narnians, even if that means fighting in a war. They are in no particularly hurry to get back to England or their parents.
It’s not that Lewis didn’t cherish family; he would spend much of his adult life living with his brother, after all. However, the Chronicles show his recognition that children hear a powerful call from the outside world, where their destiny ultimately lies. Relationships with friends and the ethics of those relationships are one of childhood’s great preoccupations. It was in friendships with Arthur Greeves, Tolkien, and other men that Lewis finally found the kind of community that suited him best. He had a great talent for friendship. In the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, that talent would make him the gravitational center of the Inklings, a group of like-minded men, including Tolkien, who met regularly to talk about literature and to read their own writings aloud.
Although the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, one of the Inklings’ regular hangouts, has become a pilgrimage site for their fans, most of the group’s weekly readings (including the first readings of
The Lord of the Rings
) were held in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College. The rooms, supplied as part of his fellowship at Magdalen, were shabbily but comfortably furnished, and warmed by a coal fireplace. Bookshelves stood against the walls, and on a long, battered table, the Lewis brothers served tea, beer (when they could get it), and delicacies sent by Lewis’s readers via the transatlantic post. The snug picture of these friends gathered by the fire, sharing stories that would later captivate readers all over the world, is a key element in the ongoing popular fascination with the Inklings. Humphrey Carpenter, in his eponymous history of the group, devotes an entire chapter to imagining a typical Thursday evening in Lewis’s rooms, complete with the lighting of pipes and the
I noticed this shift in emphasis most in the scene where Lucy leads her brothers and sisters to Tumnus’s cave, eager to introduce them to her new friend, only to find his house ransacked and a notice announcing that the faun has been arrested by the White Witch. In Lewis’s book, this discovery precipitates a discussion. Susan immediately suggests that they flee back through the wardrobe, and Lucy cries, “Don’t you see? We can’t just go home, not after this. It is all on my account that the poor Faun has gotten into this trouble. He hid me from the Witch and showed me the way back. . . . We simply must try to rescue him.” After a debate (with Edmund grumbling), the children agree, and even Susan, the most domesticated of the bunch, admits, “I don’t want to go a step further and I wish we’d never come. But I think we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever-his-name-is — I mean the Faun.” This conversation never happens in the film.
In Lewis’s book, what draws the Pevensie siblings further into Narnia is a sense of obligation having everything to do with honor and friendship (and perhaps even that most neglected of Christian virtues, charity), but little to do with “family values.” The difference between movie and book becomes even more marked later in the story, when the film tries to portray the children’s involvement in the revolt against the White Witch as largely motivated by their desire to rescue Edmund and get back “home.” In the book, it never seems to occur to the Pevensies not to do all they can to help Narnia and the Narnians, even if that means fighting in a war. They are in no particularly hurry to get back to England or their parents.
It’s not that Lewis didn’t cherish family; he would spend much of his adult life living with his brother, after all. However, the Chronicles show his recognition that children hear a powerful call from the outside world, where their destiny ultimately lies. Relationships with friends and the ethics of those relationships are one of childhood’s great preoccupations. It was in friendships with Arthur Greeves, Tolkien, and other men that Lewis finally found the kind of community that suited him best. He had a great talent for friendship. In the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, that talent would make him the gravitational center of the Inklings, a group of like-minded men, including Tolkien, who met regularly to talk about literature and to read their own writings aloud.
Although the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, one of the Inklings’ regular hangouts, has become a pilgrimage site for their fans, most of the group’s weekly readings (including the first readings of
The Lord of the Rings
) were held in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College. The rooms, supplied as part of his fellowship at Magdalen, were shabbily but comfortably furnished, and warmed by a coal fireplace. Bookshelves stood against the walls, and on a long, battered table, the Lewis brothers served tea, beer (when they could get it), and delicacies sent by Lewis’s readers via the transatlantic post. The snug picture of these friends gathered by the fire, sharing stories that would later captivate readers all over the world, is a key element in the ongoing popular fascination with the Inklings. Humphrey Carpenter, in his eponymous history of the group, devotes an entire chapter to imagining a typical Thursday evening in Lewis’s rooms, complete with the lighting of pipes and the
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