Faerie Research Paper

Faerie stories were told in past centuries to adults to explain the world. As science developed, faerie stories were tossed away by adults and left to only be read to children as imaginative stories of fantasy and things that could never exist. Adults felt began to feel as if the stories were for amusement and became slaves of disenchantment because of their logic, reason, and understanding of newly found science. Nowadays the definition and idea of a faerie story is misconstrued. When one is asked to name a faerie story what usually pops into their mind is something including fairies, such as Tinkerbell. While Peter Pan, the novel where Tinkerbell became popular, may just as well be a faerie story, a true faerie story, by the definition of

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, is so much more than that. In his essay “On Faerie-Stories”, he explains that a faerie story is a story in which a man descends into the “Perilous Realm (Faerie) or its shadowy marches”. He goes on to explain that a faerie story will customarily fulfill the functions of escape, recovery, and consolation in regards to the reader.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, or J. R. R. Tolkien, may be one of the most successful writers of faerie stories. The reader finds it easy to indulge in his writings. He and his close friend, Clive Staples Lewis, or C. S. Lewis, were filled with an abundance of passion towards faerie stories during their lives and they were determined to change society’s view of such stories. J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis wanted to turn faerie stories back into what they were before science ruined the enchantment of them, which is a story intended for and read by all ages. They influenced each other in many great ways. One major turning point in C. S. Lewis’s life that was due to the influence of Tolkien was Lewis’s conversion to Christianity. J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, drove Lewis to making this conversion through his work known as Mythopoeia. After Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, a vast majority of his works began to hold a deeper meaning in relation to his Christian beliefs. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published later on in his career, which is widely known to be highly allegorical. This novel is one that is also considered to be a modern day faerie story.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis can be categorized as a faerie story. This is because the story includes four human children (Susan, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy) wonder off into the land of Narnia, the Secondary World, through the back of a giant wardrobe hidden in their uncle’s house. There they encounter many extraordinary beings, including a wicked queen known as the White Witch, and a plentiful amount of animals that they can communicate with such as a lion and a few beavers. It all began with Edmund, the younger of the two brothers, hiding in the wardrobe during a game of hide-and-seek. He began rummaging through to the back and realized that he felt branches and very cold air. He continued back and realized he was in another world, Narnia, where he was greeted by a wicked witch, the White Witch, which then offered him some tea and snacks. Later in the novel, Lucy, the youngest of the four children, ventured off into Narnia. She then met a faun named Mr. Tumnus and spotted Edmund there as well. When she returned to the Primary World, she told her brothers and sisters but Edmund denied it all. She insisted so they all decided to find out the truth. They entered the wardrobe and, much to the two oldest children’s surprise, they entered Narnia. As the story goes on, they meet many talking animals and adventure on to win the battle of good versus evil against the wicked White Witch.
Not only does this novel hold true to the definition of a faerie story, but it also fulfills the necessary functions of one: escape, recovery, and consolation. With his creative and fluent writing, C. S. Lewis constructed a seamless immersion into the Secondary World, Narnia. The audience is able to escape from the dullness and monotonous routines of their daily life into Narnia through the enchantment of the reader. Tolkien does not see escaping as something negative because of this reason; he sees it as a positive change in a person’s routine and as a way to think in a different way that one might usually not think. It is when one becomes disenchanted that the purpose of escape is not fulfilled. While one reads The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, one does not dare to question the validity or possibility of the Secondary World C. S. Lewis creates, the land of Narnia, nor the adventures that take place in them and, because of this reason, one can confirm that C. S. Lewis successfully fulfills the function of escape in this novel in an extremely sound manner.
As aforementioned, the reader can recognize many allegories in this novel. Most of these allegories are to the Bible. One example of this is Edmund being a traitor to Aslan by giving in to the White Witch for thirty pieces of Turkish Delight just as Judas Iscariot was a traitor to Jesus Christ for thirty pieces of silver. When many read The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, they may not realize the hidden meanings behind the story until they reach nearly to the end. The point of recovery in this novel, where the reader sees things as they are meant to be seen, is when Aslan conquers death. This is the point in the novel where the majority of readers will realize the way that C. S. Lewis used Aslan to represent Jesus Christ and where many of the other allegories are recognized. Aslan represents Christ and all things good by being a powerful yet forgiving ruler while the White Witch represents evil that is desperate for authority. Moreover, Edmund represents Judas while his brother and sisters represent the Apostles.
Consolation is another function of a faerie story and it is an exceptionally important function.

Consolation is the one function that Tolkien stresses must be present for any written work or storyline to be considered a faerie story. Consolation is what the reader commonly knows as the happy ending. Tolkien also called this the eucatastrophe or good catastrophe, of a story. In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the White Witch and her followers put Aslan, a lion that represents all that is good in Narnia, to a torturous death. All the children and all of Aslan’s followers are mourning over his loss and begin to feel hopeless. The next day, Susan, the oldest of the four children, wakes up to find that Aslan is no longer on the stone table where he was put to death the night before and that moreover the stone table is now cracked. As she begins to worry, Aslan rises up with the sun shining behind him and the reader realizes, just as Susan does, that Aslan conquered death induced by evil. The conquest of death is known as the great eucatastrophe, the greatest of all other eucatastrophes. Aslan then goes on to unfreeze the prisoners of the White Witch and leads them to the battle against her and her followers. Peter, the oldest of the brothers, makes the final move to end her life and stabs the White Witch with his sword. Tolkien states that a eucatastrophe can only be made achievable if a dyscatastrophe, a catastrophe of sorrow or failure, is possible in the story. In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the dyscatastrophe was the possibility of Aslan not coming back from the dead, as many readers suspect that he would not, and the White Witch winning the battle of good versus

evil.
Since The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe stays true to the definition of a faerie story and C. S. Lewis successfully fulfills the three functions that a faerie story should, one can conclude that this novel is a modern day faerie story.