"Keep your eyes open. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?"

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My group - which consisted of myself, Tenny, Amanda, Michelle and Jennifer - presented this week on the book The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, as well as the 2005 movie, directed by Andrew Adamson and released by Walt Disney Pictures. 

I read the seven books of the Narnia series maybe about five or six years ago. I actually never read any of the stories when I was a kid - I didn't even get Wardrobe as assigned reading in school, as so many people do! I did see the movie in theaters when it came out in 2005 and have always enjoyed the film adaptation, so it was nice to return to the story and movie for this presentation.

When we met to discuss our presentation, we decided that it was best to start out with some background information on Lewis, the series as a whole, the story and the characters, as well as some insight to the major themes and binaries. Unlike with the previous group's presentation on Alice in Wonderland, the class had not been introduced to the world of Narnia until this week, so we wanted to provide some context, both historical and story-wise. Thus, we each took a topic to focus on. 
 

I choose to make my PowerPoint slides and presentation on the binaries, major themes and archetypes that appear in the story. I wanted to do this because this - for me - is where the real story is, hidden within the narrative. The binaries of good versus evil, of ordinary children versus extraordinary heroes, as well as the themes of gluttony and salvation, are what really interested me in the story. Additionally, the edition of The Chronicles of Narnia that I have includes a short section in the back of "Excerpts from BEYOND THE WARDROBE: The Official Guide to Narnia". These short essay excerpts included lots of good quotes from Lewis himself. For example, in the short section about the White Witch, Lewis is quoted as saying " 'The Witch is of course Circe... She is... the same Archetype we find in so many fairy tales. No good asking where any individual author got that. We are born knowing the Witch, aren't we?' " To see that Lewis acknowledged the Witch in Wardrobe was an archetype following the great tradition of Greek mythology allowed me to connect this fantasy tale of four children to the greater narrative framework of literature. I also tried to provide some information about the rest of the series - because it is so much more than just the one book.

We agreed that our PowerPoint presentation should be short - after all, PowerPoint is often so boring. However, we really felt that it was necessary to provide some information about Lewis (as Michelle did) and the story (as Amanda, Tenny and Jennifer did) because Professor Hatfield provided similar information when the class started the Alice in Wonderland unit, and we feel that sort of information really helps in understanding the story. We each did our separate parts, and Michelle volunteered to compile them together to make it easier to present as a well.

We also picked two scenes - where the four children first enter Narnia and the resurrection scene (although that scene was plagued by human error, since I didn't check where we needed to start from). We choose these two scenes to focus our class discussion on because the children entering Narnia was such a pivotal moment in the story, as they first enter this fantasy world through the portal. Additionally, we felt the resurrection of Aslan was interesting - not only because of the religious implications and interpretations of it - but because it was shot in such a close adaptation from the novel. There weren't a lot of major changes with this scene, and we thought it would generate some thought about the adaptation process from book to movie.

I think our presentation went wonderfully! It seemed to me that the class was interested in discussing some of the aspects we brought up, as well as some things that Professor Hatfield pointed out. I felt that each member of my group researched and presented exactly what we agreed on. I'm glad I got to work with such a wonderful group! 

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Lewis, C.S. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, Inc, by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers. 2010. Print