What is behind the story?
My granddaughter had an early Christmas on Sunday. Among my gifts to her was the complete books of Narnia. She really expressed her excitement on that gift. (She is always so diplomatic...if I had put coal in her packages, she would have found something positive to say about it. 
Her mother, xtine, told me there was more to the story than what meets the eye. Evidently she had read it in her youth. I never have. I just thought it was a good gift since a children's movie was coming out about it.
Since I was ignorant of all meanings in the story, I went searching for some insights. This is what I found in one source. I hope Erin Gieschen won't mind if I post some of his thoughts about it.
I would welcome any other thoughts anyone might have.
Excerpts from The Other Side of the Wardrobe by Erin Gieschen
Why Lewis’ Narnia is always more than just a children’s store
I was three years old when I first met Aslan, The Great Lion. I was an early conversationalist, but otherwise a typical preschooler—I had yet to read a Dr. Seuss book on my own or sit still for more than five minutes. In fact, my memories of that time of life could probably be counted on one—and no more than two—hands.
Yet, Aslan and the story that first introduced him to me cut straight to my three-year-old heart. The story was simple but unforgettable: four children enter a land called Narnia through an old wardrobe and are swept up into a magical world of endless snow, talking animals, and drama of epic proportions. Their coming is no accident; it was prophesied long ago to signal the end of an evil witch's enchantment that makes it "always winter and never Christmas." And the word is that someone else is on the move in Narnia: Aslan himself, the "son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea." To me, The Great Lion (who ultimately defeats the witch in the strangest of ways) seemed to embody everything strong and beautiful and true. He was wise; he was wild; he was full of power but willing to give up his life for a traitor. I couldn't help but love him.
Suddenly, the story had me pondering things that three-year-olds aren't supposed to be thinking about-like the nature of evil, betrayal, redemption, and the mysteries that move the universe. I'm not exaggerating. The story went deep into my imagination and has stayed with me ever since.
I'm hardly alone. According to Andrew Adamson, director of the much-anticipatcd film adaptation of C.S. Lewis' classic The Lion, the Witcb, and the Wardrobe, this story has been cherished by hundreds of millions of children and adults around the world for the last four generations.
Lewis, an Oxford professor and one of the 20th century's most influential atheist- turned-apologists, may be best known in Christian circles for his brilliant, accessible treatises such as Mere Christianity or even The Screwtape Letters. But worldwide, he's most renowned for The Chronicles Of Narnia, his seven children's books first published between 1950 and 1956….
So just what is it about this story that not only captures the hearts of children but becomes more fiercely loved the longer they live with it? Why do The Cbronicles of Narnia resonate almost equally with adults-even those who didn't read them as children? Michael Flaherty has a good guess: "I think it's the possibility that the infinite, the eternal is right under our noses, and we just need to keep looking for it."
Mark Johnson, producer of the film, says: “It really got me thinking about it so much. And it seemed to grow and get richer the more I thought about it and the more my mind played with it." He feels Lewis' stories tap into a deep wellspring within us; we relate to the four child protagonists because they live between two vastly different worlds that are nevertheless back-to-back. Their story becomes our story.
There's definitely something about that magical wardrobe that goes deeper than being just a device in a fairy-tale. Could it be that our pragmatic, materialist Western society has forgotten the spiritual nature of our very core--and that our homesickness for something more than this life has been vastly misdiagnosed? Really, how foolish is the idea that another world lies just beyond the threshold of the commonplace? Or that we've been made for grander purposes than we might imagine?
Something about this thought resonates deep within us, and perhaps children recognize it more naturally than grown-ups. An eleven-year-old American girl named Hila (who later struck up a correspondence with Lewis) read The Lion, the Witcb, and the Wardrobe the year it was first published. She later recalled being caught up in the story and experiencing "an indefinable stirring and longing."
Lewis held fairy tales in the highest regard. As biographer Humphrey Carpenter points out, both Lewis and his close friend J.R-R. Tolkein believed that "story (especially of the mythical type) can in itself give nourishment without imparting abstract meaning."
"When I was ten," recalled Lewis, "I read fairy tales in secret and would have been shamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
Lewis believed that the form of so-called fairy tales could hold profound spiritual depth. In reflecting on his own childhood disconnect between the magic of such literature that captivated him and the sterile, rigid form of Christianity he'd been exposed to, he recognized "how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood."
For the same reason, the author was quick to fend off assumptions that The Chronicles of Narnia were strictly allegorical. "Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, and a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself through of its own accord. It was part of the bubbling."
Indeed, Jesus Himself said it best: "O of the overflow of his heart his speaks" (Luke 6:45 ). Perhaps no need to force "Christian messages" into art (nor try to wring them out)-be it music, stories, or movies. Evidently, the truth and beauty of God's character and the nature of creation are powerful enough to speak on their own through our most creative work….
"