The Magician's Nephew

Summary

The Magician's Nephew is the story of how Narnia began and how a wardrobe came to lead into it. In London around 1900, Digory Kirke has been sent to live with his Uncle Andrew and Aunt Letty because his father is in India and his mother is gravely ill. He makes friends with Polly Plummer, who lives next door, and while exploring the attic tunnel along their row of houses they blunder into Uncle Andrew's secret study. Andrew, a vain and cowardly dabbler in magic who has made rings from dust left by his godmother Mrs. Lefay, tricks Polly into touching a yellow ring, and she vanishes. Digory must follow with a green ring to bring her back. The rings carry the children to the Wood between the Worlds, a drowsy forest full of pools, each leading to a different world. Testing a pool, they reach Charn, a dead city under a dying red sun. In a hall of seated figures Digory, against Polly's protests, strikes a little golden bell and wakes Queen Jadis, who boasts that she killed every living thing in Charn by speaking the Deplorable Word rather than lose a war to her sister. Jadis clings to the children as they escape and reaches London, where she enslaves Uncle Andrew, robs a jeweller, crashes a hansom cab, and fights the police at a lamp-post. Digory and Polly pull her out again, but they accidentally bring Uncle Andrew, the cabby Frank, and his horse Strawberry with them into an empty, dark world. There they hear a voice singing, and a Lion, Aslan, sings Narnia into being: stars, sun, grass, trees and animals. Aslan chooses talking beasts, gives them the land, and makes Frank and his wife Helen the first king and queen. Because Digory brought evil into the new world, Aslan sends him, with Polly, on Strawberry, now the winged horse Fledge, to a walled garden in the western mountains to fetch a silver apple. There Jadis, who has climbed the wall and eaten an apple herself, tempts Digory to steal one to heal his mother. He refuses, brings the apple back, and plants it; the tree that grows will guard Narnia for many years. Aslan then gives Digory an apple for his mother, who recovers. The children bury the rings, plant the apple core in the Kirkes' garden, and years later Professor Digory Kirke has a wardrobe made from the fallen tree. The Bodley Head published the book on 2 May 1955 with illustrations by Pauline Baynes; it was the sixth Narnia book to appear.

Top Lessons

• Curiosity and responsibility

  Digory strikes the bell in Charn because he cannot bear not knowing, and the result is that Jadis is set loose. Aslan does not punish him but asks him to help undo the harm, which teaches that owning a wrong is the first step to repairing it.

• Two kinds of magician

  Uncle Andrew thinks rules are for ordinary people and that wise men like him are above them. Jadis says the same thing in Charn. Lewis shows this pride leading to cruelty, cowardice, and finally to a world in ruins.

• The temptation in the garden

  Digory is told to take an apple for Narnia, not for himself. When Jadis urges him to steal one for his dying mother, the temptation is strong because it looks like love. He obeys Aslan, and later receives as a gift what he refused to steal.

• Wonder at creation

  Aslan's song makes stars, sun, grass and animals in order, and each character hears it differently: Frank and the children with joy, Jadis with hatred, Uncle Andrew only as roaring. The book invites readers to see the world as made and given.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The illness of Digory's mother is a steady undercurrent. She is bedridden and expected to die, cared for at home by Aunt Letty; the book never names her disease, in keeping with the sickroom reticence of its period. Digory's anticipatory grief drives the moral climax: his temptation in the garden is to save her by theft, and his request to Aslan for help meets the Lion's own tears. Her recovery after eating the apple is a miracle story rather than a medical one. Uncle Andrew supplies the book's satire on unethical experiment: he tested his rings on guinea pigs, some of which died, and then used two children because he was afraid to go himself. He also turns repeatedly to brandy to steady his nerves, and his drinking is played for comedy. Lewis, whose own mother died of cancer when he was nine, is often thought to have drawn on that loss here; that connection is widely made by biographers, but the book itself does not state it.

• Chapter 1: The Wrong Door

  Digory tells Polly that his father is in India and his mother is ill and going to die.

• Chapter 2: Digory and His Uncle

  Uncle Andrew explains that he tested the rings on guinea pigs and justifies sending a child into the unknown.

• Chapter 11 onward

  The frightened Uncle Andrew, planted and watered by the animals, keeps asking for brandy.

• Chapter 12: Strawberry's Adventure

  Digory asks Aslan for something to cure his mother and sees great tears in the Lion's eyes.

• Chapter 15

  Digory's mother eats the apple, sleeps naturally, and begins to recover.