I wanted to do an art piece of the Pevensie children coming into Narnia. I wasn't sure how I was going to draw it on paper (because drawing something like this and silhouettes like those are hard), so I decided to try digital art. I'm still kind of a newbie to digital art, so I know it's not perfect but it was fun playing around with it more than I have before 😀

The first picture is the art piece and the second is the scene from the movie. Enjoy! 🙂

-Rennie

That turned out really well. I love it! Well done Ren.

I'll probably just do written reflections unless something specific comes to me. Today I focus on how the children are portrayed:

Chapters 1-2
I read the first chapters out aloud to myself, because I live alone and can. I’m always completely wowed by just how beautiful Lewis’ writing style is. It puts you in the time and place and makes you feel like you’re there and I love the quaint little phrases and sayings that belong to the time and place of the world in which he was writing. The older I get, the more I appreciate this. I feel like he is conjuring up good memories of his own playing at a beach.

When Peter lists his reasons why he thinks they’re in Narnia, I could also feel the excitement and suspense of them realising where they were and working it all out. Even though I knew exactly what is going on.

Since we did LWW in 2020, I like to think about how Lewis develops and portrays the children’s characters through their words and reactions. Like we can tell that Edmund thinks a lot about food and doesn’t like waiting to satisfy his hunger or curiosity.

“Now,” said Edmund, “What about those sandwiches?”… “But what about those sandwiches?”

Which made him realise that school suppers weren’t that bad at all.

Lucy is filled with wonder and more easily accepts things as they happen even if she doesn’t fully understand. Also she loves Narnia so much

“Oh, Peter,” exclaimed Lucy, “Do you think we can have possibly have got back to Narnia?”

“Go on, go on,” said Lucy. “I’ve felt for hours that there was some wonderful mystery hanging over this place.”

Peter likes to reason things out but will also accept partial evidence of something even if it isn’t entirely proven.

“Now,” said Peter in a quite different voice, “it’s about time we four started using out brains… Have none of you guessed where we are?”

I left Susan till last because her characterisation especially interests me given what we know about her from The Last Battle. In Chapter 1, Susan is the most practical and forward thinking of the children. She is the one who suggests they make plans and think about food and cautions them against not eating it too soon. And she makes them keep their shoes so they don’t lose them since they will want them when it gets cold. In Chapter 2, she wants to delay the opening of the treasure chamber till the next morning because she thinks through the consequences of having an open door behind them in the dark.

“Oh, hadn’t we better save them,” said Susan. “We may need them far worse later on.”

“We can try it in the morning. If we’ve got to spend the night here I don’t want an open door at my back and a great big black hole that anything might come out of, besides the draught and the damp. And it’ll soon be dark.”

What I find interesting about her portrayal is that her practical side is not bad (without her, they would often be cold and hungry on their adventures), but because she is cautious and thinks through consequences, it makes her a bit of a sceptic.

And you can start to see how that side of things could lead to her rejection of Narnia at the time of LB (not forever, I don’t believe, but at that time of her life). We also get a hint that she had already started to forget their adventures though only a year had passed, which could be taken as a kind of foreshadowing. (I don’t think Lewis’ had his plans for LB then but character-wise, you can see why she was the one that later decided Narnia was just a game)

“In our castle of Cair Paravel,” continued Susan in a dreamy and rather sing-song voice, “at the mouth of the great river of Narnia. How could I forget?”

We do see later, though that she did enjoy her years in Narnia because when she finds the chess piece she feels sad because she misses the good times she remembers. She also had a very good memory of carrying her horn on the day they left Narnia.

“It brought back – oh, such lovely times. And I remembered playing chess with the fauns and good giants and the mer-people singing in the sea, and my beautiful horse – and – and – ”

At this point Susan’s future belief in Narnia could go either way. It will depend on whether she choses to let wariness and caution guide her to doubt her own memories or whether she embraces her happy memories for what they had been.

My thoughts on the first two chapter:

It was Lucy's first year of going to boarding school. I think it can be exciting and scary all at once, especially if it is your first time. It's like a kindergarten kid going to school for the first time (here in the US, that is).

Another that stood out is finding the ancient ruins at Cair Paravel. I am a lover of history, so I usually look forward to see historic sites and ruins. My goal is to see historic sites of ancient ruins, like Italy, Spain, France, and even Israel. You can almost imagine what is like for Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy to see the ruins as they were stepping back in time. It all seemed familiar.

Soon, they found their gifts in the treasure chambers. Susan remembered that she left her horn on the last day in The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, but she still had her bow. Lucy had her cordial, but no one seems to know what happened to her dagger. Edmund didn't have a gift, though he was able to use his electric torch. Then Peter had his sword and shield. He remembered how he used the sword to kill the wolf, and he felt he was the High King Peter once again.

I wrote some tunes to go along with moments in the story, and I'm putting them on my TLC website.

One that I wrote yesterday while looking forward to starting the story.

One for chapter 1.

One for chapter 2.

Chapter 1

Ed's comment "this is magic–I can tell by the feeling"... how much experience did he have with being effected by enchantments? Was it just the one time, or were there other encounters during the Golden Age?

"only splashing and looking for shrimps and crabs" - the level of playfulness and… casualness here, as if it were any old beach not one in a so-far unknown world and this really was just a matter of getting an extended break from school, is slightly unnerving to me.

….

Chapter 2

…huh. Only Lucy's bottle survived, of her gifts? What of her dagger?

Also I find it… enormously sad that they seemed to have forgotten so much of Narnia until they got well back in it, and reverted to careless child-mode in mind as well as body. Although I guess in the Doylist it was easier to write that way, and in the Watsonian maybe Aslan was protecting their minds from the grief of loss to some extent?

Prince Caspian ch 1-2

Trains are magic too.
Transporting transport,
a rush of wind and steel stealing you away.
Four children on a platform patiently waiting
are taken instead on the track between worlds.

@Lily: I noticed that comment by Ed about magic but didn't find it surprising. I assumed that having lived so long in Narnia there were lots of exposures to various small enchantments of unharmful types so he knew the feel. Or maybe that it was a feel associated with Narnia itself. Although, now that I think about it, he got full-on exposure to enchanted food and drink his first day in Narnia so he knows a lot more about how the effect of magic feels than any of the others.

Interesting thoughts about them forgetting Narnia. It's a bit hard to tell if it's a bad thing, like they are letting go; or a kind of protection against the shock of going back. Also makes think a bit about our unreliable human memories - I think of it as a bad thing, especially when we forget lessons God has taught us or examples of his faithfulness but there is something of a blessing of forgetfulness when it comes to things in our past that would be hard to carry all the time. Hmmm (to deep a question for this late at night).

@Swan: Love it. I was thinking of my memories English trains and stations reading this. I assume you've got experience of that too now 😀

DAY 2: Chapters 3-4

I was struck in Ch 3 by how, although the children were called to Narnia by Caspian blowing the horn (spoilers, I know), Aslan was still guiding events to make sure that the children would be on just the right part of the shore to witness Trumpkin's near execution and rescue him. If they had taken Susan's suggestion of waiting to search the treasure chamber till the next day, they might not have been there at the right time or Su might not have had her bow and arrows.

Random question (maybe this came up last time we did PC) but why was their fishing tackle in the executioner's boat? Don't think they were planning to go fishing. Did they borrow a river fisherman's boat to take Trumpkin away by?

I love how Chapter 4 gives us ideas of what everyday Narnia was like during and after the Golden Age and Telmarine invasion. Like a very quick summary of everything that has happened since the Pevensies left. (Important if reading in published order)

Not suggesting Lewis was deliberately promoting a political message, but I also really love the interaction between Dr Cornelius and Caspian about Old Narnia, and how they were the original inhabitants and their history should be remembered and survivors recognised. It's a beautiful view of respecting pre-invasion peoples be it the Celts and later Anglo-Saxons in Britain before the Norman invasion, or historical African or American or Australian people groups. Lewis may not have thought this far but I love that his heart caused him to write a story giving this kind of respect to the past. I especially liked this part (and Cornelius' lines after that):
"When you become King you may help us, for I know that you also, Telmarine though you are, love the old things."

Sorry for being a bit late! This drawing took too long, but here it is! I decided to draw Trumpkin thanking the Pevensies for saving him. I know in the movie he was more... unappreciative. So for this, I wasn't very confident about drawing Trumpkin (maybe I'll give him a try some other time for a future chapter) so I thought that maybe I can show him in front of them and show how appreciated they were once he thanked them.
It was fun drawing these characters a little older than I did two years ago for the LWW summer challenge and I'm quite pleased with how they turned out (not too happy with the proportions and such but I'll keep trying 😉 ).
Amazing job everyone! I liked the thoughts, poems, music pieces, etc!

My tune for chapter 3.

My tune for chapter 4.

Nice reflections, everyone. 🙂

Did poems for today.

Chapter 3

"You don't feel like ghosts!"
But in a sense, they were.
Ghosts of half-forgotten history
Sprung up out of legends,
Before a practical, unprepared Dwarf.
Old Narnia is not in the grave,
But only slumbering.
Children summoned are the stirrings
Of the lost Golden Age,
Just as Narnia stirs again within them.

…

Chapter 4

Child so full of wonder,
Do you understand?
Your fathers built your world
On murdered bones.
Seek justice, mercy,
With your frightening power.
The world's ruins whisper
Of a brighter day.

I was too busy last night to get to chapters one and two, so I'm doubling up today.

Chapter 1:
Two things stood out to me on this reading. The first is the silence. There are no birds except the occasional gull (and you'd expect to at least see gulls around the shore, but there weren't many, and the kids didn't remember seeing any nests about), and not even insect life in the woods (where there absolutely should be (but at least they don't have to deal with any mosquitoes!)). The kids don't even say very much while they're playing in the water or walking down the beach -- not for any particular reason, like being too tired or feeling too thirsty for it. It's a sleepy, dead silence that blankets everything. (Add to that the quiet, sleepy country station....)
The second is that there's actually some foreshadowing with Lucy here: she's the one who sees new developments first -- the stream, the apple trees, the castle wall. She has her eyes peeled, or at any rate, is alert and observant. She will continue to demonstrate this as the book goes on.

Chapter 2:
Ruins and history and pretty things to look at. Sign me up! I could spend a week down there.
That brooch has a story, surely. 😀
And I love Peter's, "I suppose there isn't a door." It's a bit sarcastic, a bit of a challenge, and also a bit playful or joking.

Chapter 3:
You really gotta give Susan props here. She's frightened, but she took the initiative to string her bow and take the shot. And, given her reasoning for saying she was not shooting to kill... I think she actually was. I'm not sure that's ever really clicked with me before.
Curious that Trumpkin, a Narnian among Narnians, has grown up with the tales of "ghosts" in the eastern woods. There's a lot to unpack there, potentially. But not now. That requires more rumination on my part.

Chapter 4:
Another instance of something explicit that seems to have not quite connected is how young Caspian is when he first meets Doctor Cornelius. He's described as a "very little boy" when he accidentally spills the beans to Miraz, and it's only about a week later that Doctor Cornelius arrives. Now, I'm not sure what Lewis considers "a very little boy", but he's thirteen by the time he runs away, so he's got a few years' education from Doctor Cornelius for sure.
(And I seem to have goofed on a couple of other details in a fanfic I wrote about young Caspian a couple of years ago. Oops.)
On this reading, Doctor Cornelius reminds me vaguely of a couple of professors I had in college. Namely, the one that taught World History so engagingly, the one that had a dry and deadpan sense of humour (different from the grave voice and merry eyes, but he did trip up people and make them wonder if he was serious or joking), and the one who taught astronomy. 🙂

Ran out of time to post tonight but I got the reading done. The terror of Caspian's midnight escape was kinda heightened as a result of a sudden change of circumstances by the fact I just finished watching the last (S7) of the animated Clone Wars and was already emotionally wound up from that.

Ugh! I don't know why my drawings have to take forever now. But it's better late than never, right? 😀
For these chapters, I really needed to draw Caspian running away. This was really hard because I've never drawn anyone on a horse before, so this was quite the challenge. There was a point where I thought that I should draw Trufflehunter giving Caspian a cup of tea or something because I think that would be easier (but because I'm crazy, I decided to go with something challenging 😛 )
Enjoy 🙂

Chapter 5

I would dearly love to get more detail on Dr. Cornelius' quest for the Horn.

All the same, I'm not sure I'm not a little on the side of the Dwarves about it being odd for Caspian to have the right to kingship - I think it's a wise political move to make allies with the nearest Human heir of the dominant culture who might be sympathetic, but as far as they know at this point he's an invader and an alien.

…

Chapter 6

Wait a second. The People Who Lived In Hiding's territory was *in* Archenland, at least partly? And yet Caspian never even bothers to check out an alliance with the Archen King as suggested by Dr. Cornelius? Maybe that was impossible to do with Old Narnians in tow, maybe not, but it certainly seems like a missed opportunity.

Also… I feel kinda weird that whole species can be ruled out as Automatically Evil when looking for allies, although I guess it might be more of an ancestral loyalties thing than an Attaint of Blood thing.

…I wanna paint a Glenstorm. Although I don't think I can do it off the cuff.