By Tenethia South
Authors of fanfiction are constantly looking for loose ends and unwritten scenes in novels to expound upon for their newest piece, and as an author of fanfiction myself, I am no different. Considering that this month marks the 60-year anniversary of the publishing of The Magician’s Nephew, I have gone through the book and come up with a series of questions Lewis left unanswered. If you have potential answers to any of them, feel free to share them in the comments!
1. Digory meets Polly because he scrambles up the wall separating their gardens. Why was Digory sticking his face over the garden wall, anyway? It’s not something that is quite normal.
2. Polly had been writing a story that she wouldn’t let Digory see. What was the story about, and why wouldn’t she let him see it?
3. What unwise things did Mrs. Lefay do to be thrown in prison?
4. How did Uncle Andrew get the dust into rings?
5. After Polly and Digory decided to leave the guinea pig in the Wood between the Worlds, what happened to it?
6. When Digory saw Jupiter close enough to see its moon, did the little red men on Jupiter freak out when they saw a UFO?
7. What exactly happened in the battle between Jadis and her sister? Was Jadis’ sister really at fault as Jadis led the children to believe?
8. If Digory hadn’t rung the bell, what would have happened?
9. Chapter six tells us that there is a “long dull story of the grown-up kind” behind Aunt Letty not wishing to lend Andrew any money. How did he waste her money? What is the story behind that?
10. Jadis lists several worlds that she has destroyed when threatening to destroy ours. What are their stories? What did she do to them?
11. Uncle Andrew’s cousin, Edward, was the only man in their family to frequent a pawnshop. What is his story?
12. We don’t know what happened when Helen was drawn into Narnia. What did she think, and feel?
13. Considering that Frank and Helen never returned to England, how did that work out? Was their disappearance questioned? Was an investigation held?
Hmm, these are interesting! I really like Digory looking over the wall, Polly’s secret story, and an investigation of Helen and Frank’s disappearance.
They SHOULD be written into stories!!!
Lovely collection of loose strings you have here, Tenny!
Not to mention, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street 😛 I bet HE would take on the case of Frank and Helen’s disappearance! 😉
Why thank you! I believe one of the loose strings is stolen from one called Narniac101. 😉
thanks for the idea, you crazy awesome person 🙂
4. I always assumed he’d have come up with a metal alloy and put the dust into the melted alloy, then shaped them into rings and let them cool.
8. There would have probably been no Narnia-England travel. 🙁
“4. I always assumed he’d have come up with a metal alloy and put the dust into the melted alloy, then shaped them into rings and let them cool.”
Unless the dust was a metal?
“8. There would have probably been no Narnia-England travel.”
Moot question.
Telmarines leave our earth earlier well before Digory and Polly did, but come into a Narnia later, after it had been created with Frank and Helen as first majesties. I think you might be right …
Not sure that’s true about the arrival of the Telmarines. While kids reading the books may assume that pirates came from an older time period, is there any evidence of that? There were pirates in the South Seas after the creation of Narnia…I think there still are (Though in fairness, Lewis may not have thought his timeline through sufficiently at this point to have more than a vague idea of “pirates”, period of origin not considered.)