Fiction Through C.S. Lewis’s Eyes

The writings of C.S. Lewis left its 20th century mark on children’s fiction and Christian apologetics. After his conversion from atheist to Christian in midlife, his writings were profoundly thought provoking. I suggest it was his early childhood that molded his literary imagination and delight for a fictional escape from an outside world that was not to his liking.

Lewis was born at the turn of the century in Ireland twenty years before his home became 'Northern Ireland' partitioned off from the nation of Ireland. He grew up in an environment of disunity and political and social unrest. His Protestant family only associated with like-minded folks and he and his older brother, Warren, were fully aware of the tension that manifested itself between Catholic and Protestant, and between Irish and English societies.

Lewis’s father, Albert James, was a successful solicitor and his mother Florence Augusta, was the daughter of a Methodist clergy and both well educated. The Lewis family occupied a large home on the outskirts of Belfast called the 'Leeborough House'. It was here that C.S. Lewis and older brother created their own adventures in the house using their imaginations and created fantasy worlds replete with talking animals, knights and princesses, and settings appropriate to their storyline. 

Albert Lewis was a well read man, a literary scholar in his own right, and according to his son and others, books abound in the house, stacks on the tables and on bookshelves. C.S. often took refuge from the outside rains and mists common to the Emerald Isle and curled up with books in the recesses of the home. His fondest memories are growing up in that house and looking out at the  lush green hills surrounding him. Even when he was grown and a don at Oxford and Cambridge, he was drawn back to that area on summer vacations. He often recounted in his writings of the happy times spent in that house letting his boyish imagination flow.

It is not a stretch to see this house as the catalyst for his book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I further suggest that the weather, mysterious natural beauty of the world outside of his window, and the social upheavals of the times was instrumental in his formative years. 

The physical violence seen in his Narnia novels seemed to be a settling of old scores. Perhaps  because of the physical absence of enemies as a child, but there were very real threats surrounding him, he manufactured just and necessary conflict in his books.

Lewis’s feelings about people inhabiting his homeland could be summed up by a diary entry about the Ulstermen (Northern Ireland) - “is very beautiful and if only I could deport the Ulstermen and fill their land with the populace of my own choosing, I should ask no better place to live in.” 1

I see the influence of his childhood clearly painting his Worldview in his adult writings. The love of misty green hills, the fascination of old mysterious houses and structures, and the desire to escape the unresolved dark anger and hostility that surrounded him in the environment of a divided Ireland, drove him to write stories that he could control. It was, in fact, the catharsis of righteous conflict resolution in a kingdom of his own creative imagination. 

I am curious to see if others find this phenomenal writer expressing his Worldview values from childhood in his fiction.

1 All My Road before Me: The diary of C.S. Lewis, 1922-1927. Edited by Walter Hooper. San Diego: HarcourtBrace Jovanovich, 1991.