As a kid I read the entire Chronicles of Narnia [1] several times. Probably at least once a summer vacation from the time I received them as a gift until the time I started working at a real (not paper route) jobby-job. So, conservatively, I’d put it at a dozen total readings. Even during the first few readings I made the off-putting connections Lewis was telegraphing vis a vis Christian morality [2]. Without a larger collection or consistent access to a library my summer reading choices were necessarily limited, so I read them just to read something.

At any rate, most of the books are a certain kind of treacly bullshit that passes for a lot of Christian children’s writing. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place and audience for that. Also, Lewis is a masterful writer and a thoughtful theologian; c.f. The Screwtape Letters. But when you crave fantasy adventure as any Dungeons and Dragons obsessed youngster does, The Chronicles are pretty meager fare. All of this to say, there are obvious lessons that are being demonstrated and there are obvious takeaways to be had—and I had ample opportunity to experience this.

The thing that most tickled me about The Chronicles however was the reaction of the dwarfs in The Last Battle. Tired of being jerked around by both sides intent on maintaining orthodoxy and the framing that entails, they say “Fuck it, we’re done. Enough of your crap.” Well, they don’t say it quite like that but they did say, “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs!” They checked out of the whole stupid True vs. Fake/Narnian vs. Calormen/Good vs. Evil battle. Instead they became a force for neutrality; or at least a force for themselves.

Instead of fighting for either side, they fought both sides. “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs!” When one side was gaining an advantage they would loose a volley of arrows, bringing the sides back to even strength. “The dwarfs are for the dwarfs!” over and over again as the forces for competing orthodoxies battled it out. I absolutely loved that climactic moment. It made the slog that was reading the previous nine books in the series worth it. The payoff was, as William S. Burroughs once said, tasty. It was the one moment where it seemed a bit of pragmatism peeked through the fog of masturbatory goodness. And I cherished that.

But of course the story doesn’t end there. Lewis gets the dwarfs into the shack [corporeal death] and shows how their disbelief in the One, True Aslan [the Trinity] keeps them from enjoying the oddly corporeal delights of Aslan Land [heaven]. He leaves them in the dark shack to sort it out for themselves—leaving the door to Aslan Land open for when they knuckle under…errr…accept the One True Faith [purgatory]. The dwarfs, however, are bereft of fucks to give. It may not be the storybook outcome but it was an outcome of their own making and of their own choosing.

I loved those dwarfs. Pretty sure that wasn’t the lesson I was supposed to take from The Chronicles however.

[1] https://www.narnia.com/us
[2] http://atheism.about.com/od/cslewisnarnia/a/chroniclenarnia.htm