Once Upon a Wardrobe

Megs’s eight-year-old brother, George, is a primary character whose incurable heart condition drives the novel’s plot. George’s imminent death looms over the narrative, affecting the other characters. Meanwhile, his desire to know where Narnia came from prompts Megs’s quest to find answers from C. S. Lewis. Despite his bleak prognosis, George is depicted as cheerful with a lively intellectual curiosity.

George’s rich interior life is conveyed through a close third-person narration. He embodies The Power of Storytelling in Shaping Human Experience as the physical confines of his world, enforced by ill health, sharply contrast with the freedom of his vivid imaginative life. The novel draws parallels between George’s character and that of Lewis in their love of fantasy and ability to immerse themselves in the imaginative realm.

Callahan suggests that George’s physical suffering has led him to possess wisdom beyond his years. Aware of the grief his family tries to conceal from him, he attempts to comfort them, confronting his mortality with fortitude. Lewis’s stories of hardships and of his religious faith bolster George’s courage in his final days. His repeated drawings of the Christ-like Aslan convey his belief that God and “a new world” await him (269).

Once Upon a Wardrobe conveys biographical facts about British author C. S. Lewis while depicting him within a fictional plot. In 1950, the year the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series was published, Lewis, at 52, was already a well-known literary figure. Thus, in Once Upon a Wardrobe, Megs is daunted by the thought of approaching him. Before the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis had written a space trilogy for adults—Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). He had also published a series of Christian apologetics, including The Screwtape Letters (1943), and gave public lectures on his Christian beliefs. The author appeared on the cover of TIME magazine in 1947.

As an Oxford don, Lewis had developed a reputation for brilliance and intellectual rigor. In Once Upon a Wardrobe, Padraig’s revelation that Lewis inspires fear or reverence in his pupils reflects the divided opinions of public reception. His students included the future poet laureate John Betjeman and the literary critic Kenneth Tynan. While Tynan developed a lifelong admiration for his tutor, Betjeman hated him.

Callahan’s portrayal of Lewis conveys his intimidating intellect and “bass and booming voice” while also humanizing him (17). Referring to him as Jack—the name Lewis went by with family and friends—emphasizes the man beneath the literary and academic persona. Despite sporting the tweed jacket and pipe synonymous with academics, he is described as looking “much like a jolly countryman instead of the learned man of letters and books he is” (182). Lewis is depicted as kind, compassionate, and far more approachable than Megs anticipates.

Once Upon a Wardrobe emphasizes how Lewis’s personal experiences informed his creation of the Narnia series, turning “all he was and all he is into a magical story about Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy” (191). His biographical stories convey how the traumas of losing his mother at a young age, being sent to boarding school, and facing the horrors of warfare contributed to his creative output. These accounts also add to Callahan’s portrait of Lewis as a profoundly principled individual. Even prior to his Christian conversion, Lewis’s voluntary enlistment in World War I and lifelong commitment to taking care of Paddy Moore’s family demonstrate the strong sense of morality that pervaded his life and fiction.

Callahan’s narrative also foreshadows events to come in Lewis’s life. When Megs comes across Lewis writing to Joy Davidman, the scene anticipates Lewis’s later marriage to the American poet. Lewis and Davidman were penfriends for two years before they met, and they embarked on a marriage of convenience in 1956, securing Davidman a visa to remain in the UK with her sons. However, Lewis realized that he loved Davidman when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. After her death in 1960, Lewis adopted Gresham’s two sons and wrote A Grief Observed (1961), describing his devastating sense of loss. Lewis died in 1963 at the age of 64.

Born in 1895, Warnie was the elder brother and best friend of C. S. Lewis. Their lifelong bond was reflected in their affectionate nicknames for one another—Jack and Warnie—and the fact that they lived together for most of their adult lives.

Warnie was an officer in the British army, serving abroad and in both World Wars. Due to his long military service, he was often referred to as “the Major.” After he retired from the army in 1932 and settled in the Kilns with his brother, Warnie wrote several books on French history and became his brother’s secretary. The Lewis brothers’ like-mindedness was demonstrated in both their membership of the Inklings and their conversion to Christianity, which occurred around the same time. Warnie outlived his younger brother. Before he died in 1973, he edited and published a collection of Lewis’s letters.

In Once Upon a Wardrobe, Callahan captures the close relationship between the Lewis brothers, which mirrors the bond between Megs and George. Their intellectual harmony is illustrated in the story of their co-creation of Boxen as children. Warnie is portrayed as a warm and kind individual, welcoming Megs when he finds her trespassing in the garden of the Kilns. While Lewis dominates the literary discussions, Warnie echoes his brother’s belief in the power of fiction, asserting that “[i]t expands our awareness of the world” (79).

The fictional characters Mr. and Mrs. Devonshire are portrayed as loving parents to George and Megs. However, the knowledge of George’s imminent death overshadows their otherwise happy family life. Callahan illustrates how the couple deals with their son’s illness in different ways. Mr. Devonshire runs the local market and works long hours, hoping to find a doctor who can cure his son. Meanwhile, Mrs. Devonshire, a rosy-cheeked farmer’s daughter and maintains a cheerful façade for George, but she cries when she thinks he cannot hear.

The characters of Mr. and Mrs. Devonshire undergo a change in the narrative, illustrating The Power of Storytelling in Shaping Human Experience. At the beginning of the novel, they are practical individuals, lacking in imagination. Consequently, they are unable to understand George’s obsession with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or how Lewis’s stories can help their son. Mrs. Devonshire wishes that George would return to Beatrix Potter’s comforting tales, fearing that stories about hardship and loss will cause George to dwell on his own misfortune. However, observing George’s exhilaration after the trip to Dunluce Castle, Mr. and Mrs. Devonshire recognize the positive impact of Lewis’s stories on their son.

Padraig serves as Megs’s love interest in the novel’s romantic subplot. The Irish student’s infectious energy and spontaneity are reflected in his “vibrant green eyes” and tendency to bound “like a deer” (144, 179). His characteristics contrast with Megs’s cautiousness and rigid logic. Megs’s initial insistence that math and science are the only reliable sources of truth echoes the opinion of Padraig’s father, a mathematics professor who perceives literature as a lesser field of study. As a student of medieval literature, Padraig understands that “[s]tories have their own truth” and plays a key role in convincing Megs of the power of storytelling (76). His insistence on taking Megs and her brother to Dunluce Castle demonstrates an understanding of the transcendental impact of the trip on George.

Megs’s relationship with Padraig reflects her development as a character. Although attracted to Padraig, she initially declines his social invitations, afraid to allow her heart to rule her head. Their eventual romance signals Megs’s recognition that a fulfilling life involves leaving oneself vulnerable to strong emotions.

Reverend Capron, or “Oldie,” as Lewis called him, was the real-life headmaster of the Wynyard School, which Lewis attended from 1908 to 1910. Once Upon a Wardrobe recounts the traumatic impact of Oldie’s regime on the author of the Narnia stories. The headmaster came to epitomize “evil” for Lewis due to the way he sadistically punished his pupils, leading to rumors that he once beat a student to death. As a boy, Lewis also observed the blatant inequality in the headmaster and his son’s enjoyment of a better standard of living than everyone else, including Mrs. Capron and her daughters. Callahan’s novel suggests that Oldie became a key inspiration for Lewis’s portrayal of the White Witch’s tyrannical reign over Narnia.

In Once Upon a Wardrobe, Lewis’s claim that Oldie ended up in a psychiatric hospital is based on fact. Wynyard closed after a boy’s parents took up a lawsuit against the headmaster for assaulting their son, and Oldie was hospitalized soon afterward.

Kirkpatrick is based on Lewis’s real-life private tutor. Lewis’s father employed Kirkpatrick to teach both his sons in their late teens, preparing Warnie for the military and Lewis for a scholarly career. Callahan depicts Kirkpatrick as an initially intimidating figure with his sharp features and imposing manner. However, the tutor’s egalitarian attitude toward education provides a welcome change to the injustice and inequalities of boarding school. When Kirkpatrick declares, “I hear you” (133), Lewis feels that an adult has validated his ideas for the first time.

Kirkpatrick is portrayed as a positive formative influence on Lewis’s life and later work. In addition to nurturing his love of mythology and Greek literature, the tutor improved Lewis’s debating skills and reasoning, imbuing him with the rigorous intellect that made him a renowned academic.