The Lefay Fragment
While The Magician’s Nephew was the sixth book published in the series,
it is actually the first chronologically; while it is considered a prequel to The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe,
it might not be the truest potential prequel. Immediately following this novel,
there was staunch literary criticism concerning the lamppost; how does the
possibility of a lamppost in the middle of Narnia make sense? Lewis immediately
began constructing a prequel, which he later scrapped in favor of writing a
sequel, Prince Caspian. The short
manuscript Lewis wrote differed greatly from The Magician’s Nephew, and is interesting to study; this piece is
now known as The Lefay Fragment
(while there are some scholars who reject that this text was actually written
by Lewis, this commentary assumes that it was).
The text stars the same protagonists, Digory and Polly.
Digory has the ability to talk to both trees and animals, and the story begins
one day when he is in the woods talking to his favorite oak tree. The trees
tell him another human, Polly, is approaching. Polly suggests making a raft,
and chopping off a tree limb to do it. Not wanting to tell Polly about his
gift, Digory agrees, and removes one of the tree’s arms. However, after this
act, none of the trees or animals will respond to him, isolating him from
conversation with the natural world. Then a Mrs. Lefay comes in, who begins to
allude that she knows of Digory’s gift.
Wow, is this not the craziest thing? For Digory to have “chopped
an arm” off of one of the trees, I can’t help but feel like this is too much
for children. However, I think it would have fit better with the nature of
Narnia. I’m quite curious where Lewis would have gone with this. Mrs. Lefay
obviously seems to be the antagonist in this text, and it would have been
interesting to see things play out. Why do you think Lewis immediately
attempted a prequel, failed, and then waited so long before trying to make a
prequel again?
These pages can be found in David Downing’s Into the Wardrobe, which I’d be happy to lend you if you’re
interested in reading it!
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