Once Upon a Wardrobe

The final section of the novel marks the end of Lewis’s stories, as the narrative focuses on the main plot involving the Devonshires. Mindful of Lewis’s advice to live her life, Megs begins a romance with Padraig and agrees to the adventurous trip to Ireland. Both involve letting go of her desire for order and control and opening up to spontaneity. The Power of Storytelling in Shaping Human Experience is illustrated in Megs’s sudden “questioning [of] the fundamental value of only logic” (231). Thanks to Lewis’s stories, she has come to appreciate the role of storytelling and imagination in helping “to withstand what lies ahead” (231). Mr. and Mrs. Devonshire undergo a similar transformation. Earlier in the novel, both are skeptical about how stories can help George and look to medical science to cure him. However, both recognize the joy that Lewis’s work brings to their son in his last days.

The motif of Dunluce Castle is central to these chapters as Callahan presents the trip as a form of pilgrimage motivated by faith and imagination. The “luminescent” glow of the castle as the sun sets behind it evokes divine connotations as well as symbolizing the sun going down on George’s life. While the pilgrimage does not have the power to cure George, it nevertheless has a transformative spiritual effect on him. George is overwhelmed by a sense of wonder at finally seeing “a place in the real world that can be transformed into something wondrous and unknown in another world” (237). For George, the castle embodies the mysterious alchemy involved in the creation of fiction. The experience provides the inspiration for his own artistic creation—a drawing of a lion roaring into the wind. The image represents his renewed strength and courage in the face of death, and it expresses George’s belief that the lion is “everywhere.” His increasing preoccupation with the symbol of the lion draws on Aslan’s God-like role in Narnia, hinting at the comfort George derives from faith. This point is also highlighted in George’s assurance to Megs that “[a]ll will be well” (245), replicating Lewis’s earlier recitation of St. Julian of Norwich’s words.

Padraig’s story about George’s life further emphasizes the link between faith and imagination. It states that George’s favorite stories bring him joy because they are “an echo or reminder of something more, of somewhere very important, of somewhere where it all began” (256). In this line, Padraig implies that the stories that touch readers the most deeply are those that transport them to a spiritual realm just out of reach—the place where we originate from and return to after death. Megs’s suggestion that Narnia always existed echoes Padraig’s notion, indicating that the creative act of storytelling involves becoming attuned to a power greater than ourselves.

George’s acceptance of his imminent death is conveyed in the symbolism of winter and Christmas in the final chapters. His observation that “we will have Christmas” refers to the absence of the festive season in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (247), despite Narnia’s state of everlasting winter. In Lewis’s book, the nonexistence of Christmas indicates the absence of God, as the White Witch enforces a spiritual death on Narnia. Therefore, the appearance of Father Christmas in the novel indicates the waning of the tyrannical ruler’s powers and the restoration of hope. The fact that George lives long enough to celebrate the day of Christ’s birth suggests the promise of life beyond death.

The final chapter of the novel involves a dramatic time shift, depicting Megs 30 years later as a grandmother. Callahan again presents the narrative as a story within a story, revealing that the book she is reading to her grandson is Once Upon a Wardrobe. The unmasking of Megs as the author causes the reader to reevaluate the narrative and also speaks to her continued development as a character. By embracing the imaginative world, she has become not only “a storyteller” but also a published author. Megs’s library, combining fantastical fiction and texts on mathematics and science, conveys her amalgamation of the qualities of logic and imagination, which is also symbolized in her marriage to Padraig.

While George’s death is revealed, Callahan implies that his spirit lives on in his illustrations of Once Upon a Wardrobe and in his namesake, Megs’s grandson. The final paragraphs conclude with a return to the imagery of the lion and the wardrobe. George’s focus on the wardrobe in his last moments underscores his belief that he is about to be transported to another world. Meanwhile, the accompanying lion’s roar suggests the presence of God. The novel ends on a hopeful note, implying that George moves on to an afterlife: “The stories that thrilled him were echoes of the world that waited for him” (271).