by Stanley Anderson » October 12th, 2006, 9:37 pm
I am posting this with a bit of trepidation, just because it might be more sectarian than appropriate. But here goes...this is probably more for the Catholic members of this forum, but of course anyone is welcome to comment.
Something occurred to me about the famous scene in The Last Battle where they have all been thrown through the stable door and found that the inside was bigger than the outside and Lucy says "Yes, in our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world". It suddenly struck me that it can be seen as a very wonderful image of the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God, as referred to by the Roman Catholic Church. She, as the bearer of Christ, is seen as the truth that was prefigured by the Ark of the Covenant in the OT, and Lewis' imagery here seems like a perfect illustration of that same idea.
Now I know that Lewis was not Catholic and had a different idea in mind (ie, to convey that Christ was bigger than the world and yet entered the world as a baby in a manger), but he was so close to the Catholic faith that I suspect, had he lived to see the expansion of existing problems and the development of many things he abhorred in his own (and, peripherally, my own soon-to-be-former:-) denomination, he might very well have gone to Rome (of course no one can say for sure). And as such, or even if not, he might not have objected to such a specifically Roman Catholic interpretation of his stable image in The Last Battle.
Or so it seems to me at least. Any thoughts, anyone? And I suppose this could lead to thoughs of what other parts of the Narnian stories might be seen from a particularly Catholic perspective? Or even what parts might be seen to be specifcially non-Catholic? Just fun speculation -- I'm curious to hear others' thoughts here.
--Stanley
…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.