Let me preface this by saying, none of you actually want to read anything I'm about to write. This is literally just going to be a lot of tangential word vomit as I try to wrap my mind around a concrete, central question to base my paper on. This is what my thesis adviser refers to as epistemology: discovering through writing. I pray that this is what is about to happen, but here goes!
So, I just finished reading C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew. Gosh I love Narnia so much. I want to go re-read the rest of the series now, and watch the first movie again. (But only the first one--the other two aren't nearly as magical!) Anyway, as I read I found so many references to doorways, thresholds, arches and portals that it blew my mind. Now to make some meaning out of it all!
Here are a few thoughts I jotted down. At the beginning of the novel, the doorways that Diggory and Polly go through, the thresholds that they cross, and the portals that they fall into seem to lead them to wickedness. The first time they go through the "wrong door" they end up in Uncle Andrew's office. He is a very unpleasant-not-very-nice-man who subsequently tricks Polly into putting on a ring that transports her to a different world. Diggory follows her so that he may rescue her, and once they are in the Wood between the Worlds they go through another portal (in the form of a pool) to the world of Charn, where the Witch Jadis is woken up. Every doorway that Diggory and Polly go through in Charn leads them closer to Jadis--and therefore to evil--and it is a bell in an arch that wakes Jadis up. But here is something I noticed. Jadis never crosses through any doorways on her own. She has to blast down a door in order for herself, Polly, and Diggory to cross through a threshold while still in Charn, and then for the rest of the novel she is dependent upon others to get through doorways. Hmmm...
For starters, when Polly and Diggory try to escape Jadis and Charn, Jadis holds onto Polly's hair and ends up in the Wood between the Worlds with the children. They try to escape her again by going back to their own world, and Jadis holds onto Diggory's ear to get through this doorway as well. Why can't Jadis--the epitome of evil and wickedness--cross thresholds on her own?
Maybe because evil was never meant to enter the world. It entered the world because of man (Adam and Eve disobeying God in the Garden of Eden) but it is unnatural and does not belong anywhere. Evil is a consequence of disobedience. Maybe, in Lewis' novel, when man tries to use his own reason to open doors (Uncle Andrew, magic/science and the Rings), it leads to wickedness. But through the ultimate door of Christ (Aslan), one is led to joy, happiness and goodness. Because the novel reaches its turning point once Diggory, Polly, Jadis, Uncle Andrew, and the Cabbie and his horse end up in the Wood between the Worlds again. From here onwards, the doorways and portals that the characters cross through will lead to good, not evil. In fact, it is the pool that the horse steps into that takes all of the characters to the empty land of nothingness that becomes none other than the beloved land of Narnia.
In Narnia they meet Aslan, who directs Diggory to the golden gates that take him to the "Tree of Life," and of course Jadis cannot cross through these gates. She climbs over the walls! And then in the end, Aslan says "You need no Rings when I am with you," and up to this point the rings have been the primary portals for Diggory and Polly. Now Aslan (Christ) is their doorway.
And then my favorite part...the novel ends with a middle-aged Diggory constructing a wardrobe out of the tree that grew from the magical fruit in Narnia. This wardrobe becomes the doorway to Narnia years later for the four Pevensie children.
Throughout the course of the novel, the doors seem to transform from evil to good. And they only become good once Aslan is present. Sigh, what does it all mean? I'm no closer to knowing now then when I first began writing this. But at least I've vomited this all out, and now I can come back and read it.
Well it's been fun talking to myself. Thanks, everyone! Ttfn :)