The Last Battle

Summary

The Last Battle tells of the end of Narnia, some two hundred years after the reign of Caspian X. Beside Caldron Pool, under the great waterfall in the far west, lives Shift, a clever, ugly old Ape, with his simple friend Puzzle the Donkey, whom he bullies. When a lion's skin washes down the falls, Shift sews it into a coat for Puzzle and, showing him by firelight in a stable on a hill, announces to the Narnians that Aslan has returned. Speaking for this false Aslan, Shift orders the Talking Beasts to labor for the Calormenes, sells Narnia's trees and creatures to the southern empire, and, with the Calormene captain Rishda Tarkaan and the clever cat Ginger, teaches that Aslan and the Calormene god Tash are the same, Tashlan. King Tirian, the last king of Narnia, hears from the Dryad of a felled beech that the Talking Trees of Lantern Waste are being cut down. With his friend Jewel the Unicorn he rushes off, finds Calormenes whipping a Talking Horse, kills two of them in a rage, and then gives himself up as a murderer. Shift has him tied to a tree. In the night Tirian calls on Aslan and sees, as in a dream, seven people from our world at supper, the Friends of Narnia. Soon Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole appear and free him. Disguised as Calormenes, they rescue Puzzle from the stable and set free a band of Dwarfs, but the Dwarfs, sick of being fooled, will believe in no Aslan at all, and only Poggin joins the king. The Eagle Farsight brings news that Cair Paravel has fallen and Roonwit the Centaur is dead. At a night meeting on Stable Hill, Ginger enters the stable expecting nothing and runs out terrified and unable to speak. The young Calormene officer Emeth insists on going in to meet Tash and does not come out. In the final battle the Dwarfs shoot both sides, Shift is thrown into the stable and devoured by Tash, and Tirian drags Rishda through the door. Inside he finds not a stable but a sunlit country, where the High King Peter dismisses Tash, and Aslan's feast seems only stable food to the Dwarfs, who will not be taken in. Aslan calls Father Time; the stars fall, every creature passes either into Aslan's shadow or through the door, the sun is put out, and Peter shuts the door on Narnia. Emeth tells how Aslan received him, and the company runs further up and further in, into a real Narnia of which the old was only a copy. Susan is absent, having stopped believing. Aslan tells the others that the railway accident in England has killed them and that their true story is just beginning. The Bodley Head published the book in London on 4 September 1956, illustrated by Pauline Baynes, and it won the Carnegie Medal.

Plot or Argument

• Chapters 1-3: By Caldron Pool; The Rashness of the King; The Ape in Its Glory

  Shift dresses Puzzle in a lion skin; King Tirian and Jewel hear of the felled trees, kill two Calormenes in anger, surrender, and listen to Shift proclaim that Tash and Aslan are one.

• Chapters 4-5: What Happened That Night; How Help Came to the King

  Bound to a tree, Tirian calls on Aslan, glimpses the seven Friends of Narnia at supper in our world, and is freed by Eustace and Jill.

• Chapters 6-7: A Good Night's Work; Mainly About Dwarfs

  The three disguise themselves as Calormenes, Jill brings Puzzle out of the stable, and the Dwarfs they rescue reject both the false Aslan and the true one; only Poggin stays with Tirian, and Tash passes them in the night.

• Chapter 8: What News the Eagle Brought

  Farsight tells of the fall of Cair Paravel and the death of Roonwit the Centaur, whose last message is that all worlds come to an end and a noble death is a treasure.

• Chapters 9-11: The Great Meeting on Stable Hill; Who Will Go into the Stable?; The Pace Is Quickened

  Ginger enters the stable and loses his speech, Emeth goes in to see Tash, and the small loyal band fights Calormenes and Dwarfs at the stable door; Shift is thrown in and taken by Tash.

• Chapters 12-13: Through the Stable Door; How the Dwarfs Refused to Be Taken In

  Tirian passes through the door into a bright country, where Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Digory, Polly, Eustace and Jill stand, Tash is banished, and the Dwarfs sit in a darkness of their own making even when Aslan feeds them.

• Chapter 14: Night Falls on Narnia

  At Aslan's call Father Time wakes, the stars fall, the creatures of Narnia pass to the right or left of Aslan, dragons and lizards strip the land, the sea rises, the sun dies, and Peter locks the door.

• Chapters 15-16: Further Up and Further In; Farewell to Shadowlands

  Emeth tells of his welcome by Aslan, the company discovers the real Narnia within the old, old friends return, and Aslan reveals the railway accident and the beginning of the Great Story.

Characters

• King Tirian, protagonist

  Last King of Narnia, brave and rash, who fights the false Aslan to the end.

• Jewel, the Unicorn

  Tirian's dearest friend and companion in arms.

• Shift, villain

  Old, greedy Ape who invents the false Aslan and sells Narnia to Calormen.

• Puzzle, the Donkey

  Kindly, slow-witted donkey made to wear the lion skin, who repents and is forgiven.

• Eustace Scrubb, Friend of Narnia

  Schoolboy who returns with Jill to help Tirian and fights beside him.

• Jill Pole, Friend of Narnia

  Schoolgirl skilled with the bow and at woodcraft who rescues Puzzle from the stable.

• Poggin, loyal Dwarf

  The one Dwarf who joins Tirian when the rest declare for themselves alone.

• Rishda Tarkaan, Calormene captain

  Commander who uses Shift's lie to conquer Narnia and is carried off by Tash.

• Ginger, the Cat

  Cunning, unbelieving cat who plots with Rishda and loses the power of speech.

• Emeth, Calormene officer

  Honest young worshipper of Tash who is welcomed by Aslan.

• Roonwit, the Centaur

  Star-reader who warns Tirian of disaster and dies fighting.

• Aslan, the Lion

  Son of the Emperor-over-the-Sea who ends Narnia and welcomes his own into his country.

Lessons

• A lie dressed in a lion's skin

  Shift does not deny Aslan; he uses Aslan's name to command what Aslan would never command. Because the Narnians have been told that Aslan is not a tame lion, they find it hard to say that these orders are wrong. The book teaches that a true thing can be bent into a lie, and that real faith must know the character of the one it trusts.

  • Why do the Narnians obey the false Aslan even when his orders seem cruel?
  • How does Tirian test whether the Ape's words could truly be Aslan's?
  • Why is a lie that uses true words harder to see through than a plain lie?

• The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs

  After being fooled once, the Dwarfs decide to trust no one, and at the end they sit in a bright country believing they are shut in a dark stable. Lewis shows that refusing to be taken in can become its own prison, and that even Aslan's feast cannot reach those who will not receive it.

  • Why do the Dwarfs refuse to follow Tirian once they learn the Ape lied?
  • What do the Dwarfs taste when Aslan gives them a feast in Chapter 13, and why?
  • Is it wiser to trust no one than to risk being fooled?

• Rash anger and honest surrender

  Tirian kills two Calormenes in a fury before he has thought, and then, ashamed, gives himself up to be judged. His hasty act begins the story's troubles, but his honesty and his willingness to fight on with only a few friends make him a true king.

  • What does Jewel say after he and Tirian kill the Calormenes, and why does Tirian surrender?
  • How does Tirian stay faithful when almost everyone has turned against him?

• The end that is a beginning

  Narnia does not simply fade; Aslan ends it, and those who love him pass through the door into a country more real than the one they lost. Lewis offers children a picture of death and the end of the world in which the deepest longing of the heart is answered and the story goes on.

  • Why does Jewel say he has come home when he sees the new Narnia?
  • How is the new Narnia like the old one, and how is it different?
  • Why do the children not feel afraid when Aslan tells them about the railway accident?

Context

Lewis wrote the last Chronicle in the early 1950s, after the Second World War and in the first years of the Cold War, but its sources are older: the book of Revelation, Norse myths of the end of the world, and Plato's teaching that the visible world is a copy of a truer one, which the old Professor Digory names outright in Chapter 15. The false Aslan, the merging of Aslan and Tash into Tashlan, and the selling of Narnia's creatures for profit draw on Christian warnings about the Antichrist and false prophets. Calormen, the southern empire described at length in The Horse and His Boy, here invades Narnia from within.

Composition

Lewis had completed The Last Battle by March 1953, three years before it appeared and before The Magician's Nephew, the creation story, was finished. It was published by The Bodley Head in London on 4 September 1956, which had also issued The Magician's Nephew after Geoffrey Bles published the first five Chronicles, with illustrations by Pauline Baynes; Macmillan published the American edition the same year.

Reception

The book won the 1956 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, the only major award given to any of the Chronicles. Its picture of the new Narnia and its final chapter are among the most loved passages in the series, and Christian readers often cite them as an image of heaven. Two passages have been much discussed: Aslan's welcome of the Calormene Emeth, who served Tash in good faith, and the absence of Susan, who has stopped believing in Narnia.

Comparisons

• the-magicians-nephew

  Digory and Polly saw Narnia sung into being by Aslan; in this book they watch him end it, and the stars that sang at the creation fall from the sky at his call.

• the-silver-chair

  Jill and Eustace return together; the Queen of Underland argued that Aslan was a dream, while Shift keeps Aslan's name and fills it with a lie, and the Dwarfs end up as blind to the light as the enchanted travellers nearly were.

• the-bible

  Revelation supplies the false prophet, the beast that deceives the nations, the falling stars, the sun darkened, the sea and the new creation; John 10 supplies the door, and Matthew 25 the separation of creatures to Aslan's right and left.

• the-republic

  Digory says it is all in Plato: the old Narnia was a shadow or copy of the real one, as the visible world in the Republic is an image of the true forms, and the stable that is bigger inside than outside opens on the real country.

• the-pilgrims-progress

  Bunyan's pilgrims cross the river of death and are welcomed into the Celestial City with trumpets; Lewis's friends pass through the stable door and run further up and further in.

• the-screwtape-letters

  Screwtape teaches that the devil works best by twisting good things; Shift does exactly that with Aslan's name, and Ginger and Rishda, who believe in nothing, discover too late that Tash is real.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The lion skin Shift sews for Puzzle in Chapter 1, and how the false Aslan is only ever shown by firelight in a dark stable.
• Shift's speeches on Stable Hill, especially the claim in Chapter 3 that Tash and Aslan are one, called Tashlan.
• Every time someone goes through the stable door, and what each one finds on the other side.
• What each creature does when it looks Aslan in the face at the door in Chapter 14, and which side it passes to.
• How the new Narnia in Chapters 15 and 16 is like the old one, and the word Digory uses for the old one.

Key terms and names

Tashlan

The name Shift and Rishda invent to teach that Aslan and Tash are the same god. Emeth and Ginger both learn on Stable Hill that they are not.

Tash

The vulture-headed god of Calormen. The Calormene leaders call on him without believing in him, and he comes.

Calormen

The proud empire south of Narnia, whose soldiers and merchants take over Narnia with the Ape's help.

The stable

The thatched stable on Stable Hill where the false Aslan is kept. Its door becomes the door between the old world and Aslan's country, and once through it the friends find that it is bigger inside than outside.

Friends of Narnia

The seven from our world who have visited Narnia: Digory, Polly, Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace and Jill. Tirian sees them at supper in his vision in Chapter 4.

Lantern Waste

The western forest of Narnia, near the old lamp-post, whose Talking Trees are being cut down and sold to Calormen.

Father Time

The giant who lay asleep under the earth in The Silver Chair. Aslan wakes him, and he blows the horn that ends Narnia.

Shadowlands

Aslan's name in Chapter 16 for the old Narnia and for our world, as copies of the real country.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does Shift persuade Puzzle to put on the lion skin, and what does he tell the Narnians that Aslan wants?
2. Comprehension Why does King Tirian give himself up to the Calormenes after he and Jewel attack them?
3. Comprehension What happens to Ginger the Cat when he goes into the stable, and what happens to Emeth?
4. Interpretation The Narnians had always been told that Aslan is not a tame lion. How does Shift use that saying to make them obey him?
5. Interpretation The Dwarfs say the Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs. Why, after being lied to, do they refuse to follow the true king and the true Aslan?
6. Interpretation Emeth served Tash all his life, yet Aslan welcomes him. What does Aslan tell him about the difference between Emeth's service and Rishda's?
7. Interpretation Why is Susan not with the others at the end, and what do Peter, Jill and Polly say about her?
8. Big Question Lewis ends the whole series with the death of nearly every hero. Why might he think this is a happy ending?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 24:23-24 (Scripture)

  Jesus warns that false Christs will arise and say, Here is the Christ, deceiving many. Shift's false Aslan, shown only by firelight, is a children's picture of exactly that warning.

• Revelation 6:12-14; 21:1-5 (Scripture)

  John sees the stars fall to earth, the sun go black and the sky roll up, and then a new heaven and a new earth where God makes all things new. Chapter 14 and the new Narnia of Chapters 15 and 16 follow this pattern closely.

• John 10:7-9 (Scripture)

  Jesus says, I am the door; whoever enters by me will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The stable door through which the faithful pass into Aslan's country echoes this saying.

• C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 10 (Hope) (Great Conversation)

  Lewis argues that if we find in ourselves a desire no experience in this world can satisfy, the likeliest explanation is that we were made for another world. Jewel's cry that he has come home to the country he was looking for all his life is that argument told as a story.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Shift keeps Aslan's name but puts his own greed inside it, and the Narnians, who know Aslan is not tame, cannot easily tell the counterfeit from the real. The test is character: the true Aslan would never sell his talking creatures into slavery. Those who hold to the real Aslan, like Tirian, Jewel and Poggin, lose everything in this world but pass through the door into a more real one, while those who believe in nothing, like Ginger and the Dwarfs, are left with nothing. Therefore the end of Narnia is a judgment that reveals what each creature has loved, and for those who loved Aslan it is a homecoming.

Rhetorical device: metaphor of copy and original. In Chapters 15 and 16 Lewis describes the old Narnia as a shadow or copy of the real one, and Aslan calls the world the children came from the Shadowlands, so that the death of Narnia becomes a waking from a dream into morning.

Debate: Resolved: King Tirian was right to give himself up after killing the two Calormenes.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Compare the three journeys through the stable door: Ginger's, Emeth's and Tirian's. Explain how each creature's heart before it went in shaped what it found inside.

Comparison with The Magician's Nephew: In The Magician's Nephew Digory watches Aslan sing Narnia into being; in The Last Battle, as an old man, he watches Aslan end it. Compare the creation and the ending of Narnia and explain what the two books together say about who Aslan is.

Medical Lens

The book is unusual among children's novels in making death, and the death of the main characters, its subject. Aslan tells the Friends of Narnia that they have been killed in a railway accident, and the narrative treats this not as tragedy but as homecoming; for readers who work with grief or with children facing death, this is the book's chief medical interest, though its view of death is theological rather than clinical. Two smaller episodes touch the mind. Ginger, who goes into the stable as a scoffer, runs out in terror and has lost the power of speech, becoming a mere animal again, a sudden loss of language that the book treats as a judgment rather than an illness. And the Dwarfs in Chapter 13 perceive a sunlit meadow as a dark, smelly stable and taste Aslan's feast as hay and old turnips, an image of perception governed by refusal that readers sometimes compare to delusion; Lewis means it as a spiritual condition.

• Chapter 9: The Great Meeting on Stable Hill

  Ginger swaggers into the stable and bolts out terrified, unable to speak; the Talking Beasts watch him become a dumb animal.

  Altered States
• Chapter 13: How the Dwarfs Refused to Be Taken In

  The Dwarfs sit in the open country convinced they are in a dark stable, and Aslan's feast tastes to them like stable fodder.

  Altered States
• Chapter 14: Night Falls on Narnia

  Tirian and the children watch the death of the Narnian world and grieve for it before Peter shuts the door.

  Grief Death Dying
• Chapter 16: Farewell to Shadowlands

  Aslan reveals that the children and their parents were killed in a railway accident and that they will stay in his country.

  Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Draw two columns headed What Shift says Aslan wants and What we know of Aslan from the earlier Chronicles, and fill them in from Chapters 3 and 7.

• Fiction

  Write Puzzle's own account of the night he first put on the lion skin, and of the moment he meets the true Aslan in the new Narnia.

• Essay

  Explain why the Dwarfs cannot see the light or taste the feast in Chapter 13, and what Aslan means when he says he cannot help them.

• Poetry

  Write a poem for Jewel to sing as he gallops further up and further in, describing what he sees of the real Narnia.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation Tirian and Jewel might have had on the night after they killed the two Calormenes, before they gave themselves up.

Further Reading

• The Magician's Nephew, C. S. Lewis

• The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis

  Lewis's dream-vision of heaven's borderland, in which the solid real country and the self-imprisoned souls recall the Dwarfs of Chapter 13.

• Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis

• Planet Narnia, Michael Ward

  Reads each Chronicle in light of a medieval planet; The Last Battle is linked with Saturn.

• The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis, Alan Jacobs