The Horse And His Boy Analysis

In the third book of the Chronicles of Narnia, “The Horse and His Boy”, from C.S. Lewis, Shasta, the main protagonist of this tale, is depicted as a young man living and working hard with his father, a poor fisherman, Arkeesh, who beats him sometime. He soon understands he had actually been kidnapped at birth to be sold into slavery. He feels relieved Arkeesh has never been his father. He decides to leave and explore the North after he met Bree, a very special talking horse and a slave himself coming from the mythic land of Narnia. On their journey, they are forced by a running lion to meet up with Aravis, a young Calormene artistocrat escaping a forced marriage, and her horse, Hwin, another talking horse from Narnia. They decide to pursue

She looks very proud and arrogant at first when meeting Shasta who comes from a lower rank. She also has all the impatience of her privileged class. But she is also capable of changing her behavior when for instance Shasta faced the lion to save her. She then feels very humble, regrets her past attitude apologizing for weeks. During their journey, Aravis becomes a very trustworthy and righteous companion to Shasta. She thinks fast and is often the one who comes up with a plan in crisis situations. She never complains about the discomfort or fatigue of traveling. Many modern female readers can easily identify with Aravis character: she comes from the ruling nobility of Calormen, however she prefers leaving the comfort of her life to not marry an old, rich and powerful man to live her own life. She is a free-spirit.

Aslan, the great talking lion and King of Narnia, is not one of the main characters of this book, but he does play a crucial role in this story. This unique character represents the emblem of the fantasy world of the Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan is portrayed as a God that everybody adores and fears at the same time. He generally represents all that is good. He possesses a certain omnipresence appearing and talking to people whenever he feels appropriate to guide them in their destiny. He seems to have control over each

The very first sentence of the book “This is the story of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Narnia and his brother and his two sisters were King and Queen under him” (3) reminds the reader of a children tale. The reader is being invited into an exceptional, magical, and also a very happy era in which brothers and sisters reign together peacefully. The journey of Shasta and his friends take them to the city of Tashbaan, the capital of Calormene. Like many places coming from the imagination of the author, Tashbaan, “one of the wonders of the world” (51) is described as an extraordinary dazzling city, which feeds the reader’s imagination. Its architecture seems to defy the law of gravity “the island rose in a hill and every bit of that ill,…, was completely covered with building—terrace above terrace, street above street, zigzag roads…, roof-gardens, balconies, deep archways, pillared colonnades, spires, battlements, minarets, pinnacles.”(51) Everything that Shasta looks is always a wonder to his eyes, which continue to transport the reader into the story: “There were about half a dozen men and Shasta had never seen anyone like them before” (57), “There was a carpet on the floor more wonderfully