54 pages • 1 hour read
Patti Callahan HenryOnce Upon a Wardrobe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Power of Storytelling in Shaping Human Experience
Once Upon a Wardrobe is a novel about storytelling. In her “Note from the Author,” Callahan states that she is “fascinated by the ways in which Narnia transforms us” (277). Her book focuses on the capacity of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to change its readers, regardless of age. By embedding nested narratives into her novel’s structure, the author also explores the wider impact of storytelling on readers and listeners.
The most notable impact of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the story’s ability to ignite the imagination. Callahan illustrates how reading about the magical land of Narnia serves as a gateway to another world for George. The book allows him to escape the restrictions of his failing health and immerse himself in a fantastical universe filled with talking animals, mythical creatures, and epic battles between good and evil. This imaginative experience also serves as a temporary reprieve from his prognosis and his family’s grief. The novel highlights that for George, this escapism is not merely a passive activity; it energizes and revitalizes him.
The introduction of Lewis’s biographical accounts demonstrates that nonfictional tales can also have a transformative impact on others. Lewis’s life stories enhance George’s appreciation of the author’s fiction, creating a dialogue between the two. Callahan illustrates how George’s imaginative engagement stimulates his own creativity as he is inspired to draw scenes intermingling Lewis’s life and the world of Narnia. The process of listening to Lewis’s stories and recounting them to her brother is also shown to have a transformative effect on Megs. The protagonist begins the novel as a character whose mind is closed to the imaginative realm—illustrated in her dismissal of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a book for children. However, the experience of reading Lewis’s novel and listening to his life accounts introduces Megs to the joy of storytelling. Like George, she discovers her own creative talents, as her increasingly imaginative retellings prompt George to declare that she is “a storyteller.”
Once Upon a Wardrobe also highlights how stories can offer strategies for navigating life’s challenges, as Callahan emphasizes how experiencing the hardships of others gives readers a new perspective of their own. George, in particular, is shown to be inspired by stories that depict endurance, resilience, and courage. Peter Pevensie’s development of bravery in the course of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe becomes a model for George’s own life. His assertion that “Peter didn’t feel brave when he stabbed the wolf chasing Lucy; he felt sick with fear, but he did it anyway” illustrates his own feelings about his forthcoming death (235). Although he is scared, he faces his future unflinchingly. George is similarly fortified by stories of Lewis’s suffering at boarding school and while fighting in World War I. Meanwhile, Lewis’s accounts of the loss of his mother and witnessing the death of friends in battle assist Megs in coming to terms with George’s inevitable passing.
Callahan creates a domino effect in the text to illustrate the power of storytelling. While Lewis was transformed by his reading matter in his formative years, he goes on to shape the hearts and minds of George and Megs through his stories.
The Origins of Creative Expression
George’s desire to know where Narnia came from underlines the exploration of creativity’s origins in Once Upon a Wardrobe. Lewis’s inability to answer this question in a straightforward manner demonstrates the complexity of this subject. While his stories indicate many disparate sources of inspiration, they ultimately cannot fully explain how Narnia came into being.
The biographical stories that Lewis tells Megs demonstrate the influence of personal history on creative expression. It emerges that certain incidents in the author’s life profoundly informed his worldview and, therefore, his literary work. The traumatic experiences of losing his mother, being sent to boarding school, and fighting in World War I illustrate how art is often inspired by pain. George articulates this transformative process, stating, “You can take what hurts and aches and perform magic with it so it becomes something else” (241). Lewis’s accounts also highlight how his interactions with other people influenced his creative process. His mother, Flora, who was also a writer, served as an inspiration. Meanwhile, discussions with his tutor, Kirkpatrick, and friend, J. R. R. Tolkien, played a crucial role in influencing how he expressed himself through literature. Furthermore, Lewis’s personality is shown to influence both his fictional subject matter and themes. His aversion to unfairness and cruelty, demonstrated in his hatred of Oldie and school bullies, is articulated through the defeat of the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Similarly, Lewis’s belief in the importance of loyalty is conveyed throughout the Chronicles of Narnia and in his lifelong commitment to caring for Paddy Moore’s family.
Once Upon a Wardrobe also underlines the ongoing influence of other artistic creations in inspiring new work. Lewis’s accounts highlight the role that the works of Beatrix Potter, George MacDonald, and mythology played in his creation of a land where talking animals, fauns, and witches co-exist. Callahan’s novel demonstrates how Lewis’s creative imagination absorbed these influences and turned them into something similar yet also unique. Lewis’s description of his characters as archetypes highlights how all stories have origins in other stories, making it impossible to trace their original source. For example, he points out to Megs that the inspiration for the White Witch could have come from MacDonald’s Maid of Alder, Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen, or Circe from Greek myth. The argument emphasizes how creative expression continually builds on what has gone before. Lewis’s feeling that many of the myths and fairy tales he read were already a part of him draws on Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious—a wellspring of creative imagination that all humans share. This idea is underlined when Megs asserts that “Mr. Lewis’s tale already existed in the bright light where every story, legend and myth is born” (259).
Ultimately, the narrative suggests that the nature of artistic imagination defies analysis. While Lewis’s influences can be traced and listed, it is impossible to effectively analyze how these elements combined to create the spellbinding world of Narnia. Thus, Megs attempts to create diagrams of the novel’s origins prove futile. As Padraig states to Megs, “[S]tars are made of dust and nitrogen; they are balls of gas and hydrogen. But that isn’t what a star is; it’s only what it is made of” (216). The scientific analogy captures the mysterious chemistry of the creative impulse.
The Role of Faith and Imagination
Once Upon a Wardrobe explores the interplay between faith and imagination. Examining the role of both in Lewis’s fiction, the novel suggests that stories—particularly myths, fairy tales, and the fantasy genre—appeal to the human desire for spiritual truths. This concept is reflected in Lewis’s assertion that “[r]eason is how we get to the truth, but imagination is how we find meaning” (52).
The role of faith in Lewis’s imaginative world is underlined in his account of the conversation with Tolkien that led to his Christian conversion. Tolkien’s argument that the story of Christ is both mythic and true illustrates the symbiotic nature of faith and the imagination. Lewis used his imaginative capabilities to create fantastical worlds infused with spiritual themes and moral philosophy. The narrative arc of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe depicts the triumph of good over evil. Edmund Pevensie’s initial succumbing to the White Witch’s temptations and his subsequent salvation by the Christ-like lion Aslan highlight the themes of forgiveness and grace. Moreover, Lucy’s unwavering belief in Aslan, despite her siblings’ initial skepticism, underscores the value of steadfast faith. The overall Christian philosophy of the novel underlines Lewis’s belief that “a poet ought to be a moral teacher” (17).
The creation of Narnia itself can be seen as a reflection of Lewis’s views on creativity and divinity. Like Tolkien, he believed that creating an imaginative world was an act of understanding God’s creation of our world. The joy Lewis experienced as a boy when Warnie presented him with a miniature fairy world in a biscuit tin prefigured his later invention of Narnia. Lewis’s detailed mapping of the fictional land’s geography, history, and mythology was both an academic exercise and a spiritual one, expressing his larger theological worldview.
George’s love of Narnia in Once Upon a Wardrobe is shown to be both an imaginative and a spiritual response to Lewis’s creation. He is drawn to the fantastical qualities of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and also its philosophical message. Importantly, Lewis’s book makes the existence of other realms beyond our own seem not only possible but also tangible, offering George hope. Toward the end of the novel, Callahan uses the joy that the world of Narnia inspires in George to foreshadow his forthcoming experience of the afterlife. George’s preoccupation with drawing the Christ-like figure Aslan as his health deteriorates expresses his growing sense of the presence of God. In the description of George’s last moments, the author conveys a melding of faith and imagination as his bedroom is suffused with an atmosphere “far better than the stories he loved, and yet the same” (271). The spiritual dimension to the novel’s conclusion echoes the tone of Lewis’s fiction.
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