Things you'd never noticed

Peepiceek

Well-known member
So, I've just started once again my pilgrimage through the Chronicles. I don't know how many times I've read them all now - it must be into double figures - but I still find new things every time that I hadn't noticed before - in fact, that were completely opposite in my mental picture. This thread is for people to post such details that they have noticed as they read.

These are from the first few chapters of LWW (yes, I'm a read-in-publication-order man).

1) The wardrobe has a looking glass in the door (I've never seen this shown in any of the film versions, as I remember).

2) The lamp-post is 10 minutes' walk from the wardrobe's entry point into Narnia.

3) Lucy first arrives in Narnia at night (for some reason, I always had in mind that it was around lunchtime - perhaps because it was morning in England).

4) In their first conversation, Tumnus checks himself as he speaks - an early clue that all is not well with his intentions, but I had never noticed it before.

5) The Witch's reindeer are white (I always had them in my mind as brown!)

Peeps
 
Ahhh, yes, this brings back pleasant memories of the first chronicle I ever picked up. Those first couple chapters are heartwarming. I never caught the looking glass myself. I'm about to listen to the radio drama of The Voyage of the Dawn Treador. If I hear anything "new" to me or that I've otherwise forgotten, I'll verify its presence in the book itself before posting.
 
I missed the mention of good Queen Swanneck (I think that was the name) in LB, until I heard the FotF radio play. I believe she's one of only 2 rulers of Narnia named, but not actually part of the series narrative.
 
It doesn't make sense that Lucy arrived at night time because Tumnus invites her to tea which would be the late afternoon. And that would make sense in that he had just finished his afternoon shopping.:D
 
Queen Swanwhite, I think, SofA.

Timmy, I thought that too. I assume what it means is that it was completely dark. If, as I think, Lewis is modelling Narnia on somewhere in the UK that he knew (perhaps the Northern Ireland of his childhood), a midwinter evening would get dark around 4pm. Therefore, it could have been late afternoon and still 'night'.

Here are a few more things I 'd never seen before.

6) The Witch's dwarf is dressed in polar bear fur (presumably not a whole polar bear's fur, as this might be a bit big for him!!)

7) The Witch's wand and crown are golden (I had always thought of them as silver / diamondy in appearance - perhaps from the BBC version).

8) The Witch's magic bottle (from which she makes the drink and the turkish delight) appears to be made of copper.

9) A possible continuity error: If the Queen is surprised by the fact that there is a "door from the world of men", how does she know exactly where to point Edmund to in order to get back to it (especially since, as noted in (2) earlier, it was about 10 minutes' walk away)?

Peeps
 
Here's another couple of things from my latest reading.

10) The Witch's House seems to be quite close to the Beavers'. Mrs Beaver estimates that if Edmund has been gone for half an hour then the Witch may arrive in 20 minutes. However, that timing seems to conflict with the description of Edmund's journey in the following chapter.

11) I wonder if Lewis envisions Aslan and his leopard attendants as standing on two legs. With regard to the leopards, one is carrying Aslan's crown and the other his standard, which would be possible to do with one paw, but much easier with two. With regard to Aslan, firstly there is mention of him clapping his paws together. Then he lays his paw on Peter's shoulder - which, if Peter was standing (and the text doesn't say anything about him kneeling at that point) would make Aslan an enormous lion if he were on four legs, but there is no comment to that effect at this point. Third, there is Peter being knighted. At this point he is kneeling, but it would still be much easier for Aslan to do this if he were on two legs than four. Finally, one of the illustrations at the end of ch 13 shows Aslan on two legs, with his 'hands' behind his back, as he talks to the Witch.

Any thoughts?
Peeps
 
Well, mice normally go on all fours, yet the Talking Mice had no problem standing erect for long periods in order to wield swords. And we are accustomed to thinking of the Beavers as walking erect, even though beavers also normally go on all fours. So yes, feline beings might also stand upright.
 
Yeah, but mice and beavers can kind of sit up on their haunches with their forelegs up - I know they don't walk like that, but cats don't really even do that much. It just strikes me as odd.

Peeps
 
Here's today's selection of new observations:

12) Aslan was sitting while talking to the Witch (there is reference to him "half-rising from his throne"). Given my observations in point (11) yesterday, I am wondering whether he was seated in the way a human would be.

13) It was the time of full moon. I'm wondering if Lewis intended a parallel in that with the fat that Jesus died at Passover, which is at full moon. I'm not sure, since the reference to full moon was the night before, when Edmund was walking to the Witch's house, but it's possible.

14) The Stone Table cracked at exactly the moment the edge of the sun appeared above the eastern horizon.

Peeps
 
Last new observation from LWW:

15) This isn't a new one for me, as I have posted about it before on this forum, but it was new when I found it then, and I was just reminded of it as I read. The statues that the Witch turned to stone were made of white marble, not grey stone as I had always thought before and is depicted in the TV and film versions.

16) It takes two days to get from Beruna to Cair Paravel. I remember Peter saying this in PC, but I hadn't registered that it was also recorded in LWW.

Soon I will start reading PC, so look out for more new observations!

Peeps
 
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Regarding the wardrobe, I first imagined it having a glass paneled door instead of a mirror hanging on the inside.

Lucy went in during evening or the dark. She was led where to go by the light of the lantern.

As for Aslan on his hind legs, there is a drawing in LWW showing him walking with Jadis like that.

MrBob
 
I think the mirror is on the outside, ie. on the door panel as you look at it when the wardrobe is shut.

Regarding the distance of the lamp-post from the wardrobe, the more surprising thing is that Lucy had no difficulty finding her way back again from the lamp-post to the wardrobe.

Regarding Aslan in his hind legs, I made reference to that illustration in my post. But it is hard to envision Aslan as sometimes walking on two legs and sometimes on four. The structure of a body that walks on two legs is quite different, and so two-legged creatures cannot look natural when walking on four legs, and four-legged creatures cannot look natural when walking on two legs. So I just wonder how Lewis pictured Aslan in his mind as he wrote LWW. Are there any references in other books to Aslan walking on two legs, or does this only occur in LWW?

Peeps
 
Here are a few things I've noticed in PC.

1) The railway station is a country station. Don't know why that strikes me, but it makes me wonder where they were coming from and where they were going to. Of course, back in the 50s when this was being written, there were far more stations in England than there are now...

2) Caspian continued to be taught by Doctor Cornelius for "some years" after the conjunction of Tarva and Alambil, before he had to flee. However, Glenstorm refers to this conjunction as enabling him to understand why Caspian has come. Were there other, more recent, astronomical events that led him to know this, or is there a long time-lag between the skies and events on earth, I wonder?

3) Glenstorm's flanks are chestnut-coloured.

4) I'm interested to know whether the black dwarfs are intended to represent a particular group, or a particular type of person, in human or Christian society. Characteristically, while some are good, and they are considered within the realm of acceptable company, they a prone to turning bad (eg. Nikabrik) and they are willing to associate with those who are not acceptable company (eg. hags and ogres). Is there a human/Christian equivalent?

5) Trumpkin is a smoker, but Nikabrik not. It made me recall that Eustaces's parents are also described as non-smokers, which makes me think that Lewis is not enamoured with the non-smoking lobby. I wonder why? He seems to think that smokers are laid back, gentle, amiable people, while non-smokers are uptight and about all the wrong things.

6) I just noticed the names of the fauns: Mentius, Obentinus, Dumnus, Voluns, Voltinus, Girbus, Nimienus, Nausus, Oscuns. There are also others names in other books - Tumnus, of course, and another whose name I forget, perhaps Urnus or something like that. They sound very Roman names. I wonder why Lewis chose to do that. Moreover, why did he decide to name a whole load of characters who never figure in the story. He doesn't name the satyrs or the dwarfs or the other characters who appear in groups, so why the fauns?

Peeps
 
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Well, fauns are Roman beasties, so that's probably why they have Roman-sounding names. And maybe Lewis just liked fauns? He said that the first scene of Narnia that came to him was Tumnus in the wood. Perhaps he had sort of a liking for them.
 
Thank you for starting this thread, Peeps!
I had missed the detail of the mirror on the wardrobe too. I always imagined it as being wooden only, like the Lewis wardrobe on display at the Wade Center for Inkling studies in Wheaton College (see photo) -- except of course Lewis' actual wardrobe did not have full-sized doors.

Lewis definitely had a pro-smoking bias, and I understand that he believed that ashes were good for carpets, so tended to simply flick his ashes on the rug.
 

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Here are a few more things from PC:

7) The moonlight on the night when Lucy meets Aslan is so strong that the landscape was almost as clear as day. I wonder if there is a significance about Aslan and the moon - I already noted in LWW that Aslan's appearance co-incided with the full moon, and in VDT Eustace sees Aslan in moonlight, even though there isn't light anywhere else.

8) After Aslan says to Lucy, "Now you are a lioness," he adds, "Now all Narnia will be renewed." I wonder what is the significance of those things - is it a biblical allusion?

9) The crowd of people that gathered round Aslan along with Susan and Lucy were actually trees. I hadn't registered that before. (Though they seem to be joined by some others too.) I'm interested to know how Lewis thinks of trees, though. Here and in TMN he seems to see the trees themselves as assuming human form and walking about, whereas in TLB the spirit of the tree seems to be a human form that can be separated from the tree itself.

Peeps
 
Something else night-related. The first (written) and last visits to Narnia were done in the nighttime. Lucy enters at night in LWW while Eustace and Jill enter at night in TLB. These are also the only nighttime entrances into Narnia.

MrBob
 
Unless you count the entry in TMN - which wasn't quite 'night' in the conventional sense, but it was certainly dark.

One more from PC, which is confusing me. Unless I am misreading, I think this must constitute a mistake by Lewis.

10) Aslan's journey with Susan and Lucy starts near Aslan's How, and then progresses to Beruna, which is on the river. At Beruna they cross the river, and from there they move along the left bank on the north side, which presumably means they were moving east. They travelled to Beaversdam, which the map certainly places upstream (ie. west and possibly north) of Beruna, though I'm not sure if the text says this. I also can't remember if the text explicitly says that Beaversdam is the same place as the Beavers' house in LWW. But whether or not it does, they cross the river again at Beaversdam and continue eastwards to arrive at Beruna (where the Telmarine soldiers were by then surrendering). Even disregarding the map, it must be a mistake to have them travelling east all day, yet somehow arrive back at the place where they started.

Peeps
 
Vdt

I'm now onto VDT. Here's my first thing...

1) Reepicheep's fur is black (or very dark, almost black). I always thought of it as grey (as, clearly, did the makers of the BBC and film versions).

Peeps
 
One more from PC, which is confusing me. Unless I am misreading, I think this must constitute a mistake by Lewis.

10) Aslan's journey with Susan and Lucy starts near Aslan's How, and then progresses to Beruna, which is on the river. At Beruna they cross the river, and from there they move along the left bank on the north side, which presumably means they were moving east. They travelled to Beaversdam, which the map certainly places upstream (ie. west and possibly north) of Beruna, though I'm not sure if the text says this. I also can't remember if the text explicitly says that Beaversdam is the same place as the Beavers' house in LWW. But whether or not it does, they cross the river again at Beaversdam and continue eastwards to arrive at Beruna (where the Telmarine soldiers were by then surrendering). Even disregarding the map, it must be a mistake to have them travelling east all day, yet somehow arrive back at the place where they started.

Thank you, Peeps! As many times as I've read Prince Caspian, I knew there was something geographically ambiguous about this scene, but couldn't put my finger on it. I've been enjoying reading all your other notations on LWW and PC as well.
 
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