The Last Battle

In The Last Battle, the preservation of goodness is a key distinction between ordinary life in the imperfect world, which Lewis calls “Shadowlands,” and the “real” world of life after death. Lucy, Edmund, and Peter are surprised to recognize Kirk’s country home, which they thought had been destroyed, in the “real” England. However, Mr. Tumnus informs them that they are “now looking at the England within England, the real England […] And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed” (163-64). At the final separation of creatures at the Door, evil disappears forever into Aslan’s shadow while the good is preserved in Aslan’s eternal country. Consequently, Lucy and Tirian do not have to cry over the destruction of the Narnia they had known because “all of the old Narnia that mattered, all of the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door” (154).

It is not simply that good continues in Aslan’s world; rather, it is perfected. Lewis refers to the Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s The Republic to illustrate his concept of life after death and the ending of a world. In a dialogue in Plato’s Republic, Socrates describes a group of people who have lived all of their lives chained in a cave. Things pass in front of a fire behind them, casting shadows on the cave wall in front of them, and the people assume those shadows are reality when they have not in fact gone outside of the cave and seen the real world. Paralleling this distinction, Lord Digory informs the now-deceased Peter that what he saw destroyed was “not the real Narnia” because “that had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or copy of the real Narnia which had always been here and always will be here” (153-54). “Shadowlands,” the old Narnia or the old England, are imperfect echoes of the eternal reality, which retains all goodness. When Jewel sees the “real” Narnia, he therefore feels he has at last come home and realizes that “the reason why [he] loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this” (155). Lewis uses the analogy of a reflection in a mirror to compare the “Shadowlands” Narnia to the “real” Narnia, which is deeper, higher, more colorful, and lacking in evil: “The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more” (154-55). In this “real” world, the children can run faster without tiring, float up waterfalls, and meet all of the beloved friends and heroes of Narnian history. Mr. Tumnus compares it to an onion, in the sense that “the farther up and the farther in you go, the bigger everything gets” (162).