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Copywork
About This Passage
Lewis introduces Aslan entirely through affect — the children's bodies and emotions respond before their minds can process what they are feeling. This technique of introducing the numinous through physical sensation rather than visual description is one of Lewis's most distinctive achievements.
Read Chapter 7 and choose three to five sentences from the passage where Mr. Beaver speaks Aslan's name and each child has a different involuntary response. Alternatively, choose Mr. Beaver's famous d...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use?
Discussion Questions
- Lewis introduces Aslan not through physical description but through the involuntary emotional and physical responses his name produces in each child. Peter feels brave and adventurous, Susan feels something delightful, Lucy feels the excitement of a holiday beginning, and Edmund feels a mysterious horror. Analyze what Lewis accomplishes by making Aslan's first appearance in the novel entirely affective — felt rather than seen. What does this technique reveal about how Lewis understands the encounter with something greater than oneself?
- Mr. Beaver's statement that Aslan is not safe but good presents safety and goodness as potentially opposing qualities. Analyze the logic of this claim: why might genuine goodness be incompatible with safety? Is Lewis arguing that goodness is inherently dangerous, or that our desire for safety distorts our understanding of what goodness requires?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Having a quality of mysterious sacred power that inspires awe, wonder, and a kind of fear simultaneously
Item 2
Relating to moods, feelings, and emotional responses rather than rational thought
Item 3
A feeling that something bad is about to happen, a dark sense of what is coming
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Critical Thinking
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