Evil and Redemption in the Snow Queen and Narnia

Chapter 5 of Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination by Vigen Guroian.

Few people are as monstrously evil as Hitler or as saintly as Mother Teresa. Most of us are a complex combination of both. The more impure our hearts, the more we tend to rationalize our selfish decisions. We all sometimes yield to our lower desires, become trapped as a result, and need to be rescued. Both of these stories portray a kind of 'everyman' who could be any one of us, this 'everyman's' fall, and his redemption.

"In The Snow Queen, Andersen shows us wherein evil lies and how it robs life of joy, but he also celebrates how goodness and love restore wholeness and happiness to life."

The story starts with some background information. The devil created a mirror that made anything good look evil. The mirror shattered and every sliver had the same power to make good look evil. If a sliver got into a person's eye, he could only see evil. If a sliver got into someone's heart, it would turn his heart to ice. Andersen's prologue of the broken mirror is a picture of our broken existence. Pride and selfishness "shatter the harmony and communion of innocent life."

In The Snow Queen, a mirror shard pierces a boy's eye and heart and makes him detest his best friend Gerda. Their friendship had been as pure and innocent as Adam and Eve. The boy becomes possessed and cruel. Then the Snow Queen, who turns flowers to ice, drags the boy away in her sledge, away from everyone who loves him. Her kiss freezes his heart so that all he has left is his reason - when he thinks the Lord's Prayer might help him, all he can remember is the multiplication tables. The Snow Queen promises that if he can form the word 'eternity' out of the slivers of icy mirror on the ground, she'll give him the whole world - and a new pair of skates! But, as much as he tries, the task eludes him. Andersen has portrayed a person creating his own hell. This boy could be any one of us trapped and blinded by evil.

Like Jesus, Gerda goes on a mission to seek and rescue the boy because she loves him. Unlike the boy, she remembers the Lord's Prayer and her breath as she prays becomes powerful, armed angels who protect her as she enters the Snow Queen's castle to find the boy. When she finds him, her tears thaw the boy's heart. He remembers their friendship and he cries - and the sliver of ice washes out of his eye. Warm childhood memories can lead us to salvation and keep us from evil.

This tale also illustrates the relationship between genders. In our day, this has been degraded to revolve around carnality, but in The Snow Queen, Gerda has power to "make man and beast serve her...her power comes from her heart." Woman has the power to soften man and make him truly alive by restoring the communion between them. Guroian says that this doesn't have to portray the woman as the one who helps, "the roles are interchangeable - and I think Andersen would agree with me. The wholeness of man and woman depends upon a relationship of complete mutuality." This is interesting to me because I've been reading how, no matter what it's called, marriages that work tend to be 'mutually submissive,' with both people loving, serving and honoring each other (rather then fulfilling divided roles where only one does the loving and one does the honoring/submitting).

The boy thinks he'll be free when he completes a task and gains the world (and the skates!) But "the heart of evil is the cold heart of a self in isolation vainly imagining that by being autonomous it is free and whole." But men and women need each other, we weren't meant to be happy in isolation. "The good that the Snow Queen abhors is not an abstract principle but the communion of love that heals the primal rift forced by Adam and Eve when they succumbed to the promise of an impossible twisted autonomy and immortality..."

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe "embraces the great themes of sin, repentance, and forgiveness in the Christian story of salvation." Yet the focus of the story is Edmund, a prodigal and very important illustration of redemption. We must not "risk overlooking the vital struggle between good and evil that is waged in Edmund's heart..." He's not evil, just a typical boy whose selfishness and pride is used to lure him into a bad deal with the forces of evil. He could be any one of us. "Evil takes a foothold in Edmund's will and imagination, much like the rot that attacks the soft spot of a fruit and spreads through the entire flesh." C.S. Lewis "wants us to think of sin as a kind of addiction...Edmund's temptation [for Turkish Delight] becomes an uncontrolled obsession and he is no longer able to enjoy good and legitimate pleasures" just like the boy in the Snow Queen.

Guroian mentions an interesting parallel between The Snow Queen and the White Witch, who lure their young child victim with promises (one for a kingdom to rule and Turkish Delight, one for the whole world and a pair of skates - I'm not sure why I find the addition of a new pair of skates thrown in as ridiculously funny).

The Narnia stories are favorites of mine - the first time I read the series, I got a real taste and longing for Heaven and Christ in a way that had been distant and vague before. I even wanted to name my first daughter Lucy. But then I married a man who already had a Lucy in his extended family, so it would have been awkward. The parallels to Christianity seem so clear that it feels like stating the obvious to say even what I've already posted. So I'm keeping the Narnia part short, not because Gurioan had little to say about it, but because it isn't news to me.

All of the entries in this series:
1. Awakening the Moral Imagination
2. On Becoming a Real Human Child: Pinocchio
3. Love and Immortality in The Velveteen Rabbit and The Little Mermaid
4. Friends and Mentors in The Wind in the Willows, Charlotte's Web, Bambi
5. Evil and Redemption in the Snow Queen and Narnia
6. Heroines of Faith and Courage (and Conclusion)