The Chronicles of Narnia contain many allusions to Christian ideas which are easily accessible to younger readers; however, the books are not weighty, and can be read for their adventure, colour, and mythological ideas alone. Because of this, The Chronicles of Narnia have become favourites with both children and adults, Christians and non-Christians.
Although he did not set out to do so, in the process of writing his fantasy works, Lewis (an adult convert to Christianity) found himself incorporating Christian theological concepts into his stories. As he wrote in Of Other Worlds:
"Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord."
Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, himself maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This is similar to what we would now call alternative history. As he wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December of 1958:
"If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all." (Martindale & Root 1990)
With the release of the 2005 Disney movie there has been renewed interest in the Christian parallels found in the books. Some find them distastful, while noting that they are easy to miss if you are not familiar with Christianity.
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