My real criticism of [The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe] relates to a different matter. It is that it ends just when it is getting interesting. The Pevensie kids become the kings and queens of Narnia: King Peter the Magnificent, Queen Susan the Gentle, King Edmund the Just and Queen Lucy the Valiant. They grow to adulthood in this world, until, many years later, they chance upon the lamppost again, and tumble back into our world, no longer adults, now children. Only a few hours have passed on Earth, for all the year (decades?) they spent in Narnia. Then Lewis stops; but this is where the story starts, surely – what would it be like to have an adult consciousness inside the body of a child? To have passed through puberty, and then suddenly to have the hormone tap switched off? You could hardly go back to you former existence; but neither could you expect to live as an adult. Would you go mad, or use your beyond-your-seeming-years wisdom to some purpose? How would you cope? Would you try to explain? Would you betray yourself, and reveal the Narnia portal to the world – would governments attempt to exploit it? The psychological interest in the story begins at the end; but that’s exactly the place where Lewis drops the bar down and ends things. Grrr!
Adam Roberts. As I told Adam on Twitter, the same thing happens at the end of the Tom Hanks movie “Big”: little boy gets to grow up, get a job, have sex — and then at the end somehow go back to being a kid. Talk about wish-fulfillment dreams. …