Edmund's walks

PrinceOfTheWest

Knight of the Stone Table
Royal Guard
Emeritus
It's been a while since I started one of these discussion threads, so I figured I was overdue. I'm currently going through the Chronicles again for the I-don't-know-how-manyth time, and this time I'm reading my original hardbound set that I literally grew up with. They're battered and stained, but much beloved. As always, the stories touch the deepest parts of me. Every time I read them I get something new from them.
 
Here's something I pondered this time through Lion: Lewis' descriptions of three critical walks that Edmund takes. Mostly they're in narrative voice, so you know what's going on inside Edmund's head. The three walks provide an interesting micro-example in how we "walk" with temptation and sin, and also repentance.

The first walk I'm thinking of is the one Edmund takes when he slips out of the Beaver's house and stumbles his way through the snow to the Witch's palace. Of course, by that time he has entertained temptation, and been entertained by it. He has eaten its seductive fruit and given his heart to walking in its ways. Even when he learns the truth about who he's been consorting with, he closes his ears to it ("she can't be all that bad - that's just her enemies talking"). Even when he's taking the frigid walk, stumbling in the dark and being snowed upon, he chooses illusion over reality. He magnifies his complaints against his siblings, particularly Peter, nursing his grudges as an excuse for doing what he does. He comforts himself with illusions about how good things will be when sin delivers on her promises and grants him the power he's been promised. He wraps himself in illusion, ignoring even the bitter reality of the snow and harsh conditions. He forces his way through, cherishing the false hope that it will all prove worthwhile.

Isn't this a little picture of how we behave when we're choosing sin? We close our ears and avert our eyes from the clear consequences. We hearken to the blandishments of sin's seductive whisper, choosing to believe that this time we won't be lied to, and sin will come through as promised. We magnify the wrongs committed against us, while minimizing or ignoring our offences against others, and use that to justify our sinning.

The next walk is the one where he's a captive of the Witch. It begins in the sledge, but as spring arrives, they have to abandon that, and Edmund is driven like an animal to slaughter (which, as it happens, is just how the Witch sees him.) Here Edmund is reaping the fruit of his dalliance with sin - he is captive to it, and must do as he is commanded. He has no comfort - no food, no drink, no sleep, no warmth. He sees clearly the bitter truth that his captor doesn't care a whit for him, and will dispatch him as soon as she is finished with him. The illusions are gone, but so is an hope of self-liberation. He is totally in thrall to the sin he toyed with.

So it is when we realize that we have given ourselves to sin. As Jesus says, "Whoever sins is a slave to sin" (John 8:34), and sin is the cruelest slavedriver there is. Sin will allure us as long as it needs to, but once we are in its power, we are driven like slaves and slaughtered like cattle. How many of us have walked this walk of Edmund with no freedom - our arms bound and the whip at our back - once we have given ourselves to sin?

The last walk is Edmund's walk with Aslan after he has been rescued from the Witch's clutches. Edmund was powerless to free himself, but Aslan has many troops at his disposal, and they were able to rescue him. Edmund is given an chance to walk with Aslan - you now he wasn't forced to do so - and confess his sin and folly. Aslan offers him freedom - even to return to the Witch, if he chooses (you know that, too), and he chooses to side with Aslan. This will mean trial and danger, of course, but now he knows: struggle and suffering with Aslan is better than Turkish Delight in the Witch's sledge.

How many of us have walked that walk with Aslan and accepted His offer of freedom? How often do we remember the price He paid to free us, and our dire condition before He did so?
 
Edmund as a Golden Age adult prince had cause to want to be merciful to the defeated Rabadash in HHB. Rabadash had also gone the route of self-serving self-deception, and Edmund could say to himself, "There but for the grace of God goes Edmund Pevensie."
 
The first walk was when Edmund was first walking into the wardrobe. Look at the differences between Lucy's first entrance and Edmund's. First, Lucy didn't shut the door. She was very curious and explorative and knew where she was going and where she came from.

Edmund closed the door. That led him to grope around in the dark trying to find his way. As soon as he got into Narnia, during sunrise, he was embarrassed about how he had treated Lucy and thought about walking back the way he came when he heard the bells of Jadis' sledge.

So Edmund went into Narnia blind while Lucy went with her eyes wide open.

MrBob
 
That's a very good point, MrBob. I'd never recognized that angle on the incident. Lucy never left herself without light, so she wouldn't be lost. Edmund cuts himself off from light and stumbles into trouble.

Another aspect: Lewis points out that Lucy "knows" how foolish it is to shut oneself into a wardrobe. Aside from the didactic point Lewis was undoubtedly making to his young readers, he was also acknowledging that Lucy benefited from wisdom - learned truth passed on to her by others. Or, as my father would put it, learn from the mistakes of others - you haven't got time to make them all yourself.
 
When Eustace is describing how the Lion cut him out of his dragon's skin, and that it "hurt worse than anything I've ever felt...oh but it is such fun to see it coming away," Edmund responds simply "I know exactly what you mean." I think describing that third walk, the walk Edmund had with Aslan, the walk that Edmund knew firsthand, more painful than the second walk, yet the most joyful of all. It is interesting that Lewis is careful to have Edmund keep very silent throughout the Chronicles on this third walk. As far as I can tell, this one comment "I know exactly what you mean" may be his only reference to it. Eustace may be the character allowed to describe it in more detail. This is the walk on which the narrator comments "the cure had begun."

A very interesting thread, PoTW.
 
Jadis enticed Edmund not only with the Turkish Delight, but with a promise of inflated importance for himself. The Fall of Adam and Eve was motivated similarly: Satan offered to make them greater, wiser...EQUAL TO GOD. And humanity has been trying to climb onto God's throne ever since.

Isaiah 43:10 makes the truth plain and clear, with no wiggle-room to re-interpret, as God says flatly, "I am He; before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me." This covers ALL bases, leaving NO loopholes in this or any other universe. The Triune God of Scripture IS IT, peer-ee-od. No backups, no alternates, no replacements, no lost prototypes, no clones, no copies, no division of territory. As Psalm 139 says, there's no place anyone can go where THE God isn't in charge. But people still try to find ways around this. Jadis is the embodiment of created beings absurdly trying to get around it; and she briefly lured Edmund into the same game.
 
Gee, CF, I wish you wouldn't mealy-mouth around the topic - come out and say it straight! :D

Seriously: well put. That is exactly who Jadis thought she was, and what she allured Edmund with - then laughed at him when he was sucker enough to fall for it. What I find interesting is that Edmund's experience on his "first walk" from the Beaver's to Jadis' house has many parallels with what the spiritually wise have described as our own experiences in falling into sin: we know it's wrong, we can even see circumstances lining up to warn us of our folly, yet we persist in the illusion. We wrap ourselves in the lie and blind ourselves with fantasy, pretending that the outcome will be different this time.

That's why so much spiritual wisdom has advised not even flirting with temptation. Don't even go out the door! And if you find yourself stumbling through the snow, wake up and go back! Don't wait until you've put so much into the pursuit of sin that you sigh and say, "I might as well go on, after all this." Flee from the occasion to sin!
 
This is quite interesting; I had never thought about Ed's journey in that light. I know exactly what Ed thought as he stumbled along toward his downfall, imagining how it was going to be glorious (even though all evidence pointed to the contrary) and how humbled and amazed he felt to be rescued ... because I've done that same crap and I've been as lovingly redeemed. But when you look at CSL's life, it seems extraordinary to me that he would have grasped it so well. He doesn't seem to me to have been a big sinner, you know? It seemed he lived a good life, when he was an atheist and as a believer. Not that a pretty good person couldn't grasp the turmoil of temptation and the pain of life-controlling addiction ...

But I do sometimes feel that people who haven't done some egregious sinning, and crawled back to God broken and useless, don't grasp quite as well the joy of being forgiven, and the love that overflows you at your point of need. Susan, for instance, had to be forgiven a little bit for her doubting Aslan in PC ... but she never had to be forgiven for throwing her lot in with the incarnation of evil! And so her attachment to Aslan, her knowledge of his love for her, seemed ephemeral and easily lost.
 
I think the reason why Lewis could appreciate a feeling like Edmund's, was because Lewis had been guilty of the _internal_ sin of being bitter against God.
 
I think the reason why Lewis could appreciate a feeling like Edmund's, was because Lewis had been guilty of the _internal_ sin of being bitter against God.
You're probably right there. I hadn't thought about it that way. And in a way, wasn't bitterness Edmund's problem, too -- and directed at Aslan. Remember as soon as he heard Aslan's name for the first time (in the Beavers' house) he didn't like it; he was nursing bitterness against his siblings, and then when he heard about Aslan, he was bitter toward him, too, because he seemed allied with the others against Ed.
 
As an avid fan of the books, I hope this doesn't sound like an ignorant question: Did Edmund ever learn that Aslan died for him? Did Aslan's death and resurrection become common knowledge, without its specific intent known to characters other than Susan and Lucy. I just remember them telling each other how it would affect Edmund if he knew. The relation to the topic is simply how much Edmund changed through LWW, and my personal curiousity as to how he actually would have reacted (or did later on, if I'm missing a clear referrence to his knowledge of the purpose of Aslan's death found later in the Chronicles).
 
In the BBC version of LWW, they say that NO ONE ever tells Edmund what really happened. But I think that's absurd, smacking of a very post-Lewisian therapeutic style of thinking. In the real world, does Jesus want any of us NOT to know what He did for us?
 
It's interesting, because Lewis explicitly includes the side dialogue between Lucy and Susan on that very topic. It's worth reproducing because it's quite revealing:
"Does he know," whispered Lucy to Susan, "what Aslan did for him? Does he know what the arrangement with the Witch really was?"
"Hush! No. Of course not," said Susan.
"Oughtn't he to be told?" said Lucy.
"Oh, surely not," said Susan. "It would be too awful for him. Think how you'd feel if you were he."
"All the same, I think he ought to know," said Lucy.
I think this is insightful on Lewis' part, because it is an illustration of how differently Lucy and Susan think - and, I believe, an early indication of why ultimately Lucy chose Narnia while Susan chose the world. Susan's concerned about not emotionally distressing Edmund, while Lucy is concerned that the truth be known, even if it is distressing, because it's the truth. The girls focus on different things.

Despite going to the trouble to include that dialogue, Lewis never answers the question in the story. Personally, I think that Edmund did eventually learn. After all, how could you hide something as big as that? Though Susan and Lucy were the only ones of Aslan's party who saw Aslan killed, pretty much the Witch's entire horde did, and some of them were sure to have spread the word (those who survived the Battle of Beruna). Plus there was the evidence of the cracked Stone Table. Probably that's why Edmund devoted himself to the study of wisdom and justice - because he knew what such things cost. (see sig picture ;)).

There was probably one more walk, which isn't explicitly mentioned: Edmund's walk up to Aslan to be knighted on the field of battle. I think Edmund's courage in destroying the Witch's wand, and nearly getting killed in the process, is a beautiful illustration of "working out our salvation in fear and trembling." Edmund was redeemed by pure grace, at terrible cost to Aslan - but then he didn't just sit back and say, "I'm set!" He proved himself worthy of his calling by putting his life on the line to save others. As Aslan had done, so Edmund did - in miniature, so to speak.
 
In "The Magician's Nephew," Aslan foretells that He will see to it that the worst consequences of Narnia's corruption will fall on Himself. No consideration of Digory's feelings made it necessary to hide this.
 
Expaning on what I wrote in comparing the first Lucy and Edmund entrances into Narnia:

Lucy's arrival was in the evening/nighttime. The first Narnian light she saw was from the lamppost. Edmund's was in the morning. The first light he saw was from the rising sun.

Lucy first sees Tumnus and he takes her to his house, luring her to kidnap her. Edmuns first sees no one and is angry at Lucy as well as himself for not believing her. He is about to leave when he hears the bells of the sledge. Jadis soon lure Edmund with kindness. food, and power. Tumnus, on the other hand, breaks down and refuses to do as Jadis commanded.

MrBob
 
Influences move in exactly opposite directions: Lucy influences the Narnian resident she meets, whereas Edmund IS influenced BY the Narnian resident HE meets. Magical though Narnia is, at this moment IT NEEDS good human influence. The influence Edmund yields to, almost causes his destruction; but when Lucy influences Tumnus by her innocence, she is his SALVATION.
 
Influences move in exactly opposite directions: Lucy influences the Narnian resident she meets, whereas Edmund IS influenced BY the Narnian resident HE meets. Magical though Narnia is, at this moment IT NEEDS good human influence. The influence Edmund yields to, almost causes his destruction; but when Lucy influences Tumnus by her innocence, she is his SALVATION.
That's a very good point I had never considered before. Lucy's coming gives Tumnus an opportunity to do evil, but her spirit and attitude influence him to the point of risking his life to do good to her. Edmund's coming gives him an opportunity to do good ... but instead he's influenced by Jadis to do evil.They each brought their own character and values into Narnia with them -- either to influence for good or to fall to evil.
 
It is an excellent point. It's also important to note that Lucy influences Tumnus to return to his true self, who is charitable and generous. The self that agreed to cooperate with the Witch was fear-driven and (probably) self-interested, even if that interest was only self-preservation.

The Witch, however, influences Edmund toward his false self - even encouraging him with lies about being made king of Narnia, which inflate is already swollen self-image. The culmination of that false self is his betrayal of his siblings. His walk with Aslan, and his subsequent heroism on the battlefield of Beruna, restore the True Edmund.
 
It is an excellent point. It's also important to note that Lucy influences Tumnus to return to his true self, who is charitable and generous. The self that agreed to cooperate with the Witch was fear-driven and (probably) self-interested, even if that interest was only self-preservation.

The Witch, however, influences Edmund toward his false self - even encouraging him with lies about being made king of Narnia, which inflate is already swollen self-image. The culmination of that false self is his betrayal of his siblings. His walk with Aslan, and his subsequent heroism on the battlefield of Beruna, restore the True Edmund.

I like that... reminds me of the miracle in Mark 5, the casting out of the Legion of spirits from the possessed man who is later found sitting at Christ's feet in his "right mind."
 
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