Narnia and the seven deadly sins
My brother Mitch East recently floated a theory: that each of the Narnia books is concerned with one of the seven deadly sins. So far he has written up three books:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe —> gluttony
The Horse and His Boy —> pride
The Magician’s Nephew —> lust (=curiosity)
That leaves four books, and here is where he and I have landed for now:
Prince Caspian —> envy
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader —> greed
The Silver Chair —> sloth
The Last Battle —> wrath
Keep reading Mitch’s Substack for further exploration of these four. We’re both open to evidence for and against. It’s mostly just a fun exercise. And it’s his pet theory, I’m just along for the ride.
As an extra bonus, see how the books and sins line up with the seven planets of Michael Ward’s theory (I’ve not read the book, but here’s a helpful post with a great chart I’ve cribbed from):
LWW —> gluttony —> Jupiter/Zeus —> geometry, joy, joviality, royalty
PC —> envy —> Mars/Ares —> music, war, courage, cruelty, the sword
VDT —> greed —> Sol/Apollo —> arithmetic, generosity, liberty, liberality, clarity, light
SC —> sloth —> Luna/Selene —> grammar, lunacy, confusion, inconstancy, doubt
HHB —> pride —> Mercury/Hermes/Odin —> dialectics, quicksilver, haste, language, union, marriage
MN —> lust —> Venus/Aphrodite/Ishtar —> rhetoric, sex, love, beauty, creativity, springtime
LB —> wrath —> Saturn/Chronos —> astronomy, time, death, disaster, silence, old age
Some of these, it seems to me, clearly fit: LWW, VDT, SC, and MN. I’m torn on envy and wrath for PC and LB or vice versa. I leave that question to Mitch and to others. Perhaps readers have toyed with this theory before us! Let us know.
