The Last Battle

The last novel in The Chronicles of Narnia is The Last Battle and was published in 1956. It is also, arguably, the most overtly religious out of all seven novels. The story begins in the last days of Narnia with a talking ape and a talking donkey. The ape and the donkey find a lion skin in the woods and decide to dress the donkey up like a lion and pretend to be Aslan. The ape (named Shift) tricks the donkey into thinking this is a good idea and gets quite a following by telling everyone that he has Aslan in the stable. After the ape has gathered a following and started a commotion by telling people he was privy to the needs and wants of Aslan he decides to expand his following by telling everyone that Tash, the primary God in the Carlomen religion, and Aslan are one of the same.

Eventually, chaos ensues and the current King of Narnia, Tirian, calls for Aslan's help and Eustace and Jill are brought to Narnia to help him. They discover the false Aslan and try to convince the others to make peace. However, this does not work and a battle ensues. After much violence, all the other human children from the previous books return to Narnia (except Susan who has stopped believing in Narnia). Soon after the children appear, so does the true Aslan. Aslan then freezes Narnia but not before judging both the Narnians and Carlomen people. Aslan judges the Narnians and the Carlomenes by who has been true to him, what is interesting about this is that not all the Narnians are saved and not all the Carlomenes are damned. Instead, it is revealed that those who were immoral but worshipped Aslan were actually worshipping Tash (who is the equivalent to Satan) and those who worshipped Tash but were virtuous were actually worshipping Aslan.

All of the other Narnian books have ended with the children being sent back to England to resume their normal lives. This one, however does not end that way. Instead, it is revealed by Aslan that the children (who were all on the train when they were taken to Narnia) were in a train crash and had all died (except Susan) and were now in the after life. After telling them this, which he explained by saying "The term is over, the holidays have begun. The dream is over, this is morning." (pg 183) At this point, the novel says Aslan no longer looks like a lion which implies, knowing Lewis, that he is in his human, Christ, form. It is also clear that the children and Aslan are now in Heaven or some sort of equivalent setting, although it is not explicitly stated.

The religion in this novel is more overt than in the other novels, to the degree that I don't feel the need to analyze what different religious themes mean. However, the religious themes do portray religious messages that stand for the hold series. For instance, the ending confirms that Aslan is Christ or another Messiah figure in lion form. This story also reinforces the two religious structures that were presented in the series but adds another message. This message is that it is not as important which religious structure you conform to as long as you remain virtuous. This is a message that is also echoed, although in a different way, in the His Dark Materials trilogy, but I will expand on that later. With this said, the Narnian religion is obviously parallel to Christianity-which is the religion that Lewis is promoting through the series.