what would you have me do?

finishing off the childhood nostalgia quadrangle w some narnia babies

Anyone else see the parallels between the Horse and His Boy and the biblical story of Moses? Because I saw it on my last read of the series (which was months ago now), and I can’t stop thinking about how brilliant it is and why I had never seen it before…

Definitely. I made reference to it in my fic Flowers For Her Grave, and a while ago one of my friends had to write an essay about biblical themes in H&HB and we discussed it. It’s weird how it’s one of the parallels that isn’t talked about much, and I wonder if it’s really that unnoticed. The parallels seem so obvious to me now! Ugh, I just love C. S. Lewis. He writes this stuff so perfectly.

I never noticed/thought about that! Can you elaborate on some of the parallels?

@the-lily-blooms-late I haven’t read it in a while, but the ones that come to mind:

1. Arsheesh (I think that was his name) finds Cor/Shasta floating in the water and thus takes him in, Alsan having saved him from a ship wreck, just as Moses’ mother placed him in the river and was found by Pharaoh’s daughter.

2. Cor was set apart for the specific purpose of returning to save his people. He lived as a Calormen for awhile, but when he returned to his own people, it was to save them from Rabadash, just like how Moses lived as Egyptian for a while but when he finally returned to his own people, it was to bring them out from captivity.

3. Cor had no idea what he was doing when he ran away, and Alsan gave him a companion (Aravis), just as when Moses expressed his fears God told him to take Aaron with him.

4. Just as Moses was given a cloud by day and pillar of fire at night to guild him, Aslan never left Cor alone (the cat at the tombs, the lion that caused his and Aravis’ paths to cross, when he revealed himself in the pass, etc.).

@nothinggold13 might have more since she had a conversation about this is previously, lol.

Yeah, haha, honestly, as soon as I was asked to elaborate, I forgot half the stuff. It’s been a while since I read it, too.

But yes, I absolutely loved the main points of this boy also being drawn from the water, and that Shasta/Cor more or less leads “his” people to freedom. (Sure, he might not have been much of a leader in the beginning, but it was he who gave them directions after Tashbaan, and given that he was later to become king, I’d call him a “leader” still.)

I also feel that Aravis is a partial mirror of Zipporah, at least in that Shasta/Moses married a girl of a different people group; a people group they were forced to live with for a time before reaching freedom. (It’s also worth noting that, while not necessarily biblically accurate, The Prince of Egypt’s Moses/Tzipporah portrayal is lowkey Coravis already.)

Another little thing I loved is how Aslan’s answer of “Myself,” to Shasta’s “Who are you?” parallels God’s answer of, “I Am that I Am.”

Honestly, I’d need to reread both the story of Moses fully and the Horse and His Boy to list all the parallels, but even from what I remembered on the surface, I just love it. :)