The Glory and the Dream: Lucy Pevensie and I

I am a magnet for all kinds of deep wonderment

I am a Wunderkind

I am a pioneer naive enough to believe this

I am a princess on the way to my throne

Rewatching two of my favourite movies, the first two in the relatively recent Narnia adaptations, I realised that contrary to what I had thought as a child, the character with whom I most  identify from of the Narnia chronicles is not Susan, but Lucy Pevensie. In fact - the more I understand myself, I come to believe that out of all my fantasy heroes - she embodies most the kind of person I am, my outlook on the world; my insecurities and my delights.

Lucy is the one who discovers Narnia first - the girl who enters the snow-clad forest, not with fear (as most people would enter an strange, cold place at the back of their wardrobe), nor with the assumption that she is hallucinating or dreaming. Instead she laughs with wonder; not astonished but delighted. Clearly, she had always believed such things were possible - perhaps had imagined them, and longed for them, unuttered. The snowy, bitterly cold Lantern Waste is to her a marvelous place - a miracle - her kingdom. From her first visit, she is the most at home of all the Pevensie children in Narnia, the one who feels the most joy in its air and beauty in its every aspect. She is the one who makes friends with the faun and the beavers - and who feels closest to Aslan. 

I think I am very like Lucy. But when I first read The Chronicles of Narnia that very similitude was what made me ignore her. After all - she was just a little girl, the same age as I was when I picked up the books for the first time. And I knew I was no hero. Susan however - the responsible and superior elder sister - had all the qualities I felt I lacked but passionately desired. She was older - taken more seriously than a little girl. She had beauty (something both Lucy and I felt we lacked, though I've later come to learn that we were both wrong), and she had deadly (and admirable) skill with a bow. But with all her qualities, she is the one who feels the least connection to Narnia, who is the most content to live in the "real world"... Now I understand this, I question - is this what I really want?

There's a telling exchange between Lucy and Susan in Prince Caspian, where Susan wonders why she didn't see Aslan when her younger sister did. Lucy answers: "Perhaps you didn't really want to." Susan says wistfully to her, "You knew we were always coming back, didn't you?" Lucy replies, as if it was obvious - "I hoped so".  It is clear here that Susan had given up hope on ever returning to Narnia, and almost didn't want to come back because it would disrupt her carefully constructed contentment in her "real world" life. Even her pleasure at returning is tempered by the bleak thought - "while it lasts..." Lucy however is shocked that anyone could come to Narnia and not feel boundless joy. She had never given up hope or forgotten her time as "Queen Lucy the Valiant".

 As I grow older, I  see many Susans. I see that I could become like her, and that such would not be a bad thing to be... After all, she is queenly, strong, beautiful and kind. But she lost her magic. Lucy however, never stopped believing, and neither will I.

Two scenes in particular epitomise those elements of Lucy's character that are most like mine. The first is from The Lion,  the Witch and the Wardrobe. After having her belief in Narnia mocked by her brother Edmund and disbelieved by Susan and Peter - after having felt the wood at the back of the wardrobe depressingly solid beneath her fingers - after the humiliation of being unable to "prove" Narnia's existence to her siblings - Lucy returns to the wardrobe in the dead of night. 

Listen to the following music from the scene to perfectly understand her trepidation as she pads through the darkened house, slipper-clad, wondering if she had indeed dreamed her adventure, but hoping desperately that it had been real... and her transcendent joy when she opens the door of the wardrobe and the chill Narnian wind blows out her candle.   

This scene perfectly expresses Lucy's questing spirit, and her belief in something beyond the mundane.

The second scene is from Prince Caspian. Previously she had been disappointed to discover that the trees were still and silent on her return, but before, when she had been queen they "used to dance". But never one to be content with the explanation "that's the way things are", upon waking beside a campfire on her first morning back at Narnia, Lucy walks into the forest alone, to find the woods suffused with light and magic - just as she had always believed. The trees sway and dance before her, and dryads float on scented breezes. And between the trees - a flash of gold - the ultimate validation. Aslan waits for her in the forest of wonder. 

Lucy: I've missed you so much! Why haven't you shown yourself, like last time?
Aslan:  Things never happen the same way twice, dear one.

In the midst of her joyful reunion with Aslan, a twig snaps - and Lucy awakes in truth - to a grey dawn and a forest of still and silent trees. Though she immediately retraces her dream-steps, and the real forest is still beautiful - Aslan cannot be found and the dryads are gone - perhaps had never been.

Touching a silver birch-bole, Lucy whispers "Wake up..." But the trees do not respond.

I feel such aching sympathy for her at this point. Lucy is eventually proven right when she finally meets Aslan again and he wakes the trees for her, but in that moment I know just how she feels. I too have felt that the trees were my friends - that could I but call them at the right time - they would wake for me. I have called to them - have whispered to the wilderness, desperately hoping for reply... But there was never a response. Or - not in words at least. I did notice that whenever I felt most "magic" in nature - whenever I tried to move within the world I half-sensed to be - those were the times I saw and understood the deep beauty within the sun, the wind and all growing things, and knew myself to be a part of that beauty. But I believe the sensing and the wishing and believing are part of that understanding. 

I used to think Lucy was the least of the Pevensies - but now I have learned wisdom. She is not gifted with the weapons of war, like her siblings, but with the gift of healing and compassion. She does not win glory on the battlefield, but knows the deeper truth that "battles are ugly affairs". She feels afraid, but nevertheless accompanies Aslan on his journey to Death, rides him like a tempest and faces down the Telmarine army by his side. I love her like a sister; like myself. I have come to understand that her qualities are admirable, and her magic gifts - an eye perpetually attuned to beauty, a seeking mind and heart for marvel, and a belief in "the glory and the dream" are gifts that are innately mine. Lucy always had them, the child-me possessed them, but did not see their worth. Now, as I see more and more people around me lose their wonder and vision, and turn their gazes to the trivial, I realise that this "magic" is what makes life so wonderful for me, and that the qualities of the little girl Lucy are wondrous and rare. I feel supreme joy in my being, and in the beauty of the world, and vow never to lose it.

The Mythic Significance of Trees

The Garden of the Hesperides by Edward Burne-Jones

World-spanning, life-giving or destructive, bearing golden apples of life or the knowledge of good and evil - trees have immense presence in mythology, religion and story. 

All across the world, from the earliest epochs of recorded history, they have stood as religious emblems, or been worshiped as gods themselves. And it's not difficult to discern why. 

Who cannot help but feel small beside such a giant?

Anyone who has stood beneath a tall and verdant tree, looked up into the green vastness of its branches, listened to the whispering of thousands of leaves cannot but feel a sense of awe - standing so small beside something so huge and long-lived. Beside the transience of human lives, these living statues which endure for hundreds if not thousands of years are monolithic. 

The bright autumn foliage of maple flames bravely against the chill of approaching winter. 

But trees are not dead and grey as statues of stone. They are alive and vital - they leaf and bear fruit - they grow inexorably; thrash frantically against storms. With brilliant colours they blaze in the dying of the year. They sing - wind soughing through branches as through an Aeolian harp.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter: in all seasons, a tree is awe-inspiring.

From seed-time trees possess immense power - defying gravity with thin, translucent stems, pushing through soil toward the sun. Within the tiny seed - the energy to fuel the plant until it can put forth its first set of delicate leaves to catch sunlight. And each leaf - so slight and wafer-thin - is filled with a transformative power to transmute the life-giving warmth of the sun into starch to feed the plant. As a sapling, a young tree is a fierce competitor for resources, space and light. Full-grown, it is magnificent, whether a towering sequoia or a squat baobab.

Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse mythology was thought to connect the earthy and unearthly realms . 

Trees have creative force, supporting and sustaining life. Roosting birds make their home in the branches - fungi and lichen establish colonies on the trunk, squirrels nest in the hollows and innumerable insects swarm over and around it. With their proud crowns reaching the sky and roots firm-gripping the earth - they connect the physical and immaterial worlds. Thus it is not difficult to see how early peoples all over the globe chose a tree to represent the universe - the World Tree which connects life and death, reality and spirituality. Trees appear in almost all religions - symbolising fertility, immortality, interconnectedness, wholeness or even appearing as gods themselves.

Ankor Wat's magnificent stone temples are slowly destroyed by the roots of the strangler fig 

Trees can also be destructive - as the decaying city of Ankor Wat displays, their roots have the strength to split stone and consume human edifice. A falling tree branch can kill or severely maim. Thus our awe and reverence for trees is touched by fear. And thus the roots of Yggdrasil reach the underworld.

Grove of Crypotomera japonica, a hallowed tree to the believers of Shinto in Japan. 

Collectively, trees have the ability to transform space - exuding oxygen and water as a result of photosynthesis and transpiration - thus affecting the climate. But though the early humans did not know the scientific significance of trees to the global environment - they understood the power of the forest. Woods and groves are uncertain places - realms of living pillars, many ancient with the years of human generations. Light and shadow intermingle, creating a shifting, flickering border between the real and unreal - the earthly and divine. In recognition of the haunted, hallowed spaces that are created by forests, sacred groves were maintained and used by various religions. To the Ancient Greeks and Romans the groves were the sites of godly shrines. The Norse pagans of Scandinavia used the groves as sites of sacrifice.  Druids met in the groves of Albion, and in Japan they were the sites of Shinto reverence and ritual. 

The image of "golden apples of the sun" is a recurring one in myth and fairy-tale. 

In human consciousness trees are the sentinels at the gates of mystery. Although tree-worship has all but vanished, and deforestation continues to ravage some of the most beautiful and vital forests of the earth, trees continue to have a mythic power - which manifests itself in the modern myth-mediums of story, art and film. A few examples can be seen below:

The Trees of Valinor were sung into being to provide light to the universe, after the great cosmic Lamps were shattered . 

In crafting his fantasy world of Middle Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien created a whole mythological fabric upon which to embroider, like some glorious tapestry, his tales of wonder and heroism. In his creation myth, recounted in The Silmarillion the sun and moon are the flower and fruit of the twin trees of Valinor, silver Telperion and golden Laurelin. These glorious trees were sung into being by Yavanna, Queen of the Earth, who was also responsible for the creation of the Ents, sentient and wise tree-folk of The Lord of the Rings. The Trees of Valinor represent night and day, male and female, fertility and above all, life-giving light. Though they are killed by Melkor, their last light is caught in the peerless jewels called the Silmarils, which in turn drive much of the later mythology of Middle Earth.

Tolkien clearly felt trees to be of deep spiritual and symbolic significance, as they are a recurring motif in his stories - in the Lord of the Rings alone there is the Party Tree (centre of community life in Hobbiton), the aforementioned tree-folk the Ents, the arboreal elven city in the forest of Lothlorien and the White Tree of Gondor (a descendant of Telperion). 

Digory plucks an apple of immortality for Narnia, then ponders the merits of stealing a second... 

Tolkien's friend and colleague C.S. Lewis, creator of the Chronicles of Narnia also made trees a significant element in his Narnian creation-myth The Magician's Nephew. In order to protect Narnia from future harm, an apple must be plucked from a mysterious "Place", an orchard on a green hill and planted in the vital soil of young Narnia. These apple trees have similarities to the Tree of Life (as their fruit bestows eternal life on the taster), as well as the biblical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (as transgression of the law "Take of my fruit for others" results in immortal misery). The Tree of Protection is another light-giving apple tree (clearly a powerful mythic image at work), but one with "silver apples like stars". Wood from its earthly descendants is fashioned into the eponymous Wardrobe of Lewis' most famous book.

In an interesting (though less cosmic) parallel to Tolkien's Trees of the Valinor, Lewis' world also contains a pair of trees, one pure gold, the other silver (grown from fallen coins from a miser's pocket). These are fashioned into the crowns of the first King and Queen of Narnia.      

The Tree of Souls is the spiritual centre of Pandora.

In James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar the indigenous people of the forest-moon Pandora, the Na'vi follow an anamistic religion, feeling a deep spiritual connection with "Eywa", the mother-goddess of the moon, and through her, with all life on their world. The "Tree of Souls" represents a tangible link between Eywa and the Na'vi - it is the beautiful, shining heart of the forest and the Na'vi culture.

Our ancestors called it Yggdrasil, and we call it the Universe, but Thor comes from a place where they're one and the same.. 

In the 2011 movie Thor the World Tree of Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is revealed as the structure of the universe - a "tree" of swirling nebulae and stars that links the "Nine Realms".

In conclusion, there is something undeniable and enduring about the power of trees - as sources and symbols of life, as totemic watchers, as ladders between here and the beyond - undoubtedly, they have a deep-rooted and mythic significance in our collective consciousness.