The Lamp Post Question
By the end of this video you will know exactly why it is there.
Greta Gerwig’s Narnia film is not the story most people expect. It is not the wardrobe and the snowy wood. It is an origin story, told in a book that came out after the famous one. As of October twenty twenty six, the reported dates are February twelfth, twenty twenty seven in theaters and I M A X, then April second, twenty twenty seven on Netflix.
Here is the short answer. The Magician’s Nephew, by C S Lewis, follows two children from London who touch magic rings, wake a terrible queen, and watch a lion sing a whole world into being. It runs fifteen chapters and about forty two thousand words, by my count. Light spoilers ahead. I leave out how it ends for one boy’s mother.
Two Kids and a Tray of Rings
The narrator opens by saying this happened long ago, when your grandfather was a child, back when Sherlock Holmes still lived on Baker Street. A girl called Polly Plummer meets a grubby boy over the garden wall. He is Digory Kirke, new to London, miserable, and worried sick because his mother is dying.
Digory’s uncle Andrew lives next door to Polly, behind a forbidden study door. The two children crawl along the attic rafters hoping to find an empty house. Instead they climb through a small door into the wrong house, and land in his study.
Uncle Andrew is a self important magician who tells the children that rules are for little boys and servants. On his table sits a red tray of rings, yellow ones and green ones, in pairs. He tempts Polly to touch a yellow ring, and she vanishes. Then he tricks Digory into going after her, with two green rings in his pocket.
Digory lands in a hushed green forest full of still pools. Nothing ever happens there, and it makes you forget why you came. He finds Polly and works out that the forest is an in between place, like the attic tunnel. He guesses that each pool leads to a different world. They mark their home pool with a strip of turf,.
Charn and the Bell
The first pool they try leads to Charn, a dead city under a huge, red, dying sun. They wander through a ruined palace to a hall of silent figures in rich robes. Their faces start kind and get steadily crueller, until the last one is a tall, fierce, beautiful queen.
In the middle stands a golden bell and a small hammer, with a rhyme that dares you to strike or wonder forever. Digory fights Polly, grabs her wrist, and strikes it. In his own words later he was only pretending to be enchanted. The sound grows until part of the roof falls in, and the queen stands up.
She is Jadis, last queen of Charn, and she tells the children without any shame what she did. She fought her sister for the throne. When her armies were gone, she spoke the Deplorable Word, a word that destroys every living thing except the one who says it. Her whole city died in a moment.
When Digory objects, Jadis answers that ordinary people are simply there to do what a queen wants. She also says her destiny is high and lonely. Digory remembers that his uncle used almost the same words. The book clearly wants you to notice, and my opinion is that it is the sharpest idea in the first third. Then Jadis demands to be taken to the children’s world.
A Witch Loose in London
The rings work like magnets, so anyone touching a traveler comes along. Jadis is pulled back through the forest and into London. There she grabs Uncle Andrew by the hair, calls him a peddling magician, and makes him her servant.
What follows is the funniest stretch of the book. She robs a jeweler, throws Aunt Letty across a room, and rides a runaway hansom cab, standing on its roof. She tears an iron bar off a lamp post, and swings it at the police. Digory chases her through the crowd, trying to catch her heel.
He does catch it, and Polly shouts for the rings. The magnet rule pulls more people along. Jadis, Uncle Andrew, the cab driver and his horse, Strawberry, all tumble through the forest with them. They drop into a new world that is cold, dark and completely empty. Jadis calls it Nothing.
The cab driver is the best surprise here. He is a decent, ordinary man, and in the dark he leads everyone in a hymn. The children sing along. Jadis and Uncle Andrew stay silent, and the book is already sorting people by what they do in the dark.
A Song in the Dark
Then the dark begins to sing. A deep voice starts, stars blaze overhead, and the sun rises over a bare valley. The singer is a huge, shaggy lion, and the cab driver says he would have been a better man if he had known such things existed. Jadis, hearing it, hates the music because it holds a magic stronger than hers.
She throws the iron bar at the lion’s head, and it bounces off. The bar falls into the ground, and as the song goes on, it grows into a young lamp post, still lit. That is the lamp post I drew on the board. Uncle Andrew sees a business plan.
The lion sings grass, trees and animals out of the earth. He says the words, Narnia, awake, and picks pairs of beasts who can talk. Here is a number I counted. Aslan is not named in the book until chapter ten, about sixty two percent of the way in. The story keeps the lion unnamed through the whole creation scene.
Uncle Andrew cannot hear any words, only roaring, because he has talked himself out of hearing them. That is the book’s idea of being stuck. The animals plant him like a tree and call him Brandy. Aslan makes the cab driver and his wife the first king and queen of Narnia, and warns that evil has already entered the new world.
The Garden on the Hill
Digory begs the lion for something to cure his mother. Aslan answers, with tears in his eyes, that grief is great, then sends him on an errand. Digory must fly west and bring back an apple from a garden. His helper is Strawberry, who is given wings and a new name, Fledge, and is made father of all flying horses.
At the garden gate a rhyme warns that you may take fruit for others, or leave it. Digory picks one silver apple, and he does not eat it. Then he finds Jadis there, already stained from eating one. She tells him the fruit would cure his mother, and that no one need ever know.
This is the book’s real crisis, and it is not a battle. Jadis makes the strongest case she can, and Digory almost breaks. What saves him is her small, mean suggestion that he leave Polly behind. Suddenly he sees through the whole speech. My opinion is that it is the best scene in the book.
Back in Narnia, Digory throws the apple into the soft ground, and a tree grows that Jadis will not dare to approach. Aslan explains why her stolen apple only brought her misery. I will not tell you what he gives Digory in the end, because that is the heart of the book and the film will surely build toward it.
What Pays Off Later
Now the lamp post pays off. The book’s last chapter says the lamp post kept burning, and the spot was named Lantern Waste. It adds that many years later, another child from our world arrives there on a snowy night and finds the light still lit. If you know the famous book, that line is the connection.
The second payoff is the wardrobe. A tree grows in Digory’s back garden, and many years later, when a storm blows it down, he has part of the timber made into a wardrobe. The book says that was the beginning of the comings and goings between Narnia and our world. Digory himself grows up to be a Professor, and the narrator says Professor Kirke appears in other books.
There are smaller threads. Jadis is sent north, and Aslan says she will keep growing stronger in dark magic. Archenland is named, and a son of the new king will rule it. The rings go into the ground. Even one of Polly’s toffees gets planted. I have only read this book, so I am telling you only what this one says, and not what the later books do with any of it.
Narnia Reading Order
This is why people argue about the reading order. The seven Chronicles of Narnia were not published in the order they happen. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came out first, in nineteen fifty. The Magician’s Nephew came out sixth, in nineteen fifty five, and The Last Battle came last, in nineteen fifty six. By story time, this book comes first.
Publication order runs The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle. Chronological order starts with The Magician’s Nephew, then the wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair and The Last Battle. I have not read the other six, so I am not ranking them.
My opinion, and it is a draft for you to weigh, is that you can start here. This book stands on its own, it is short, and it is the book the film is reported to adapt. If you want the surprise of the lamp post and the wardrobe to land harder, read the famous book first, then come back.
Before You Watch
So here is your checklist before the film. Know that Polly and Digory are the heroes, and Jadis is the villain. Know the rings and the bell. Know that the lion creates Narnia, and that Digory’s choice in the garden is the heart. And remember the lamp post, because the film is almost certain to point at it.
Content wise, this is a children’s classic with real darkness. A city is wiped out, there is cruelty to guinea pigs, and a parent is dying. It is gentler than it sounds, with a talking cab horse. The reported film dates are February twelfth, then April second on Netflix, as of October twenty twenty six.
If this helped, subscribe, and tap like. The full guide is at book explained dot com. Now tell me in the comments, would you have struck the bell?
