Naked in Narnia

This will be, no doubt, a fairly obvious observation to serious C. S. Lewis scholars, but last night I stumbled upon an idea while reading the Eros chapter of The Four Loves and thought I’d try put that thought together for you, my few but faithful readers.

And who knows?  Maybe the search engines will catch this as well, because today, I’m talking about getting naked.  Oh, yes.

But not the way you think.

We begin with Lewis’ discussion of eros in The Four Loves.  Eros, for those not well versed in the Greek loves, is romantic love.  Surprisingly to me, Lewis treats the subject as something neither sappy nor salacious.  And as he proceeds to ponder the nature of the sexual act (which he refers to as “Venus”), he delves into a discussion of nakedness that I think will prove useful in a moment.

He writes:

Some will think it strange I should find an element of ritual or masquerade in that action which is often regarded as the most real, the most unmasked and sheerly genuine, we ever do.  Are we not our true selves when naked?  In a sense, no.  The word naked was originally a past participle; the naked man was the man who had undergone a process of naking, that is, of stripping or peeling (you use the verb of nuts and fruit).  Time out of mind the naked man has seemed to our ancestors not the natural but the abnormal man; not the man who has abstained from dressing but the man who has been for some reason undressed.  And it is a simple fact—anyone can observe it at a men’s bathing place—that nudity emphasizes common humanity and soft-pedals what is individual.  In that way we are “more ourselves” when clothed.  (TFL 104)

Interesting, right?  But not perspective-altering—until I started thinking about this prosaic passage in light of the scene from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in which Aslan transforms Eustace from a dragon into a boy.  Oh, yes.

[And, by the way, if you’ve not yet read Voyage of the Dawn Treader, please consider this my obligatory spoiler alert.  Run—don’t walk—to your nearest bookstore or library and let yourself feast upon the countless delights of Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.  Now, back to our story. . . .]

So, as we recall, Eustace Clarence Scrubb is a bit of a whiny brat who stumbles upon Narnia against his will, makes his shipmates largely miserable, and through his greed, ends up being transformed into a dragon on the isle where Lord Octesian died.  As those who are familiar with the story will note, he goes about as a dragon for quite some time while the rest of the voyagers try to figure out what to do. 

And then it happens.  One night, he sees a huge lion coming toward him, and the lion beckons him to follow until they get to a garden with a bubbling well that almost seems like a Roman bath.  You know what’s coming, right?

There is a lot that can be said (and, no doubt, has been said) about the imagery in this scene, how it evokes ideas of salvation and redemption and baptism.  (And, oh, does anyone else feel that the recent film utterly ruined this scene?)  Yes, I see those things, too, but now something different has caught my eye, and it has much to do with the concept of nakedness that we just saw in The Four Loves.

Eustace, as a dragon, is naked—and profoundly aware of it, I think.  We see this in the narrator’s description, that he hated his dragon-like form, that he “was almost afraid to be alone with himself and yet he was ashamed to be with the others” (VDT 84). 

When I read this, I immediately think of Genesis 3:10, where Adam and Eve hide from God, and when God asks why they are hiding, Adam replies, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself” (NASB). 

When Aslan finds Eustace, he bids that he undress.  Eustace wisely observes, “I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on” (VDT 89). 

He realizes, however, that “dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins.  Oh, of course . . . that’s what the lion means” (VDT 89).  So Eustace begins to tear at his dragon skin until an entire layer has been peeled off.  How very satisfying that must feel—to be free from his dragon scales—until he finds himself about to stick an all-too-dragony foot into the water.  He tries again, and then, a third time.  Still, though each time he sheds another layer of skin, he is unable to free himself from the scales that enshroud him.

You know the rest.  Aslan says that he must undress Eustace, and Eustace agrees.  The lion’s claws tear deep into the dragon, “so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart,” Eustace tells Edmund afterwards (VDT 90).  And so Aslan “peeled the beastly stuff right off” (VDT 90).

It is only as Eustace experiences relief in the water that he realizes he has been turned back into a boy.

I would like to suggest that in this scene, Lewis is lending story to an idea that he will later flesh out (no pun intended) in The Four Loves.  Remember, we are not our true selves when we are naked.  Neither is Eustace his true self when he is a dragon.  He is made “naked” through his greed, transformed into an abnormal state of being.  Yet Aslan comes to him and, by removing his dragon-like exterior, changes him so that he may once more have his natural, boyish form. 

But even that is not the end of this story:

“After a bit,” Eustace tells Edmund, “ the lion took me out and dressed me—“ 

“Dressed you.  With his paws?”

“Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit.  But he did somehow or other: in new clothes—the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact.  And then suddenly I was back here” (VDT 91).

Aslan transforms Eustace back into his natural form and gives him clothes once more—indicating, I think, that not only has Eustace been redeemed, but he is now more himself than he ever was before.

He is no longer naked.  He has been made whole.