Lewis, while uncertain of “how he actually got his ideas…is certain that all seven of his books began by seeing pictures in my head” (20). Take a look at the following excerpt wherein Lewis describes the origins of the LWW,

The initial impulse, he records, for the creation of Narnia arose from “nightmares about lions…all I can tell you is that pictures come into my head and I write stories about them. I don’t know how or why the pictures come” (Glover 35-36). Glover postulates that the reason for Lewis’s retreat into the wardrobe in his middle ages was because Lewis sought to recreate the, “snug and homely” experiences of his “childhood and happy days.” He contends that Lewis’s attraction to the fairy tale is revealed by Lewis himself, “in his later essays on the subject of fairy tales” wherein Lewis offers the rationalization that, “they were appropriate to what he had in mind to express” (35).

There are fascinating ideas about the textual meaning and influences of both C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll and the construction of both Aslan’s Shadowlands and Alice’s Wonderland. C.S. Lewis’ only foray into this realm was when he wrote the Narnia series, as Glover intimates, “though Lewis admired fairy stories, he was late in coming to write them himself. It was Lewis’s belief that the fairy tale genre offered in particular an invaluable way to introduce the reader to, “the emphasis in Lewis’s published comments in defense of tales of fantasy… rests on his conviction that such forms of creative expression lead the reader into greater understanding and deeper perceptions of life” (53). The common threads that bind Wonderland and Shadowlands enable each story to resonate with readers by allowing them a glimpse into alternate realities that exist beyond the pages and in the mind. Glover states that, “he explained to one reader that his method in fiction and using symbols was that of catching the reader off guard or unaware” (36).

Gray believed that “as these images sorted themselves into events, they demanded a form… which Lewis says he fell in love, that of the fairy tale” (61). The fact that Lewis ‘sees pictures’ in his head isn’t all that fascinating, but how he took those images and built a whole other realm with its own conventions and rules is. Collin Manlove in The Chronicles of Narnia suggests that, “Lewis…began a tradition of alternative world fiction, the creation of an “other” universe or land with its own history and geography” (9). While Gray elucidates about those pictures “(Lewis says) “I see pictures… some of these pictures have a common flavor, almost a common smell, which groups them together. Keep quiet and watch and they will begin joining themselves up” (61).

Gray also suggests that for, “(Lewis) there were always for him gaps which needed to be filled up by some deliberate inventing but he insists the images always came first” (61). Gray proffers that the mental images were, “in the case of LWW, images or mental pictures which bubbled up were a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, and a magnificent lion” (61). Glover believes, “fairy tales awaken a longing which the reader can neither identify nor satisfy. They enrich the reader by their disturbing enchantment which produces lifelong dividends in spiritual and artistic enrichment” (51). Hart explains, “one aspect of Lewis’s diversity is the range in his use of the term myth. In common parlance, myth is often used as an antonym of fact, truth, or history” (12). Hart thinks that Lewis believed and, “affirmed, in all his writing in all genres… myth is an expression of universal truth in terms that the human imagination can apprehend” (13).