The Crime of Returning to the Ways of the Dumb Beasts

Over the past few posts, we have been trying to determine what causes the punishment of, “lest you cease to be Talking Beasts.” A priori, the cause should be returning to the Wild Ways of the Dumb Beasts. Yet Ginger the Cat and the beasts who earlier joined the Telmarines went dumb though they do not appear to have returned to Dumb Beast ways. So, what is the crime and for what does one receive such a punishment?

What Ginger and the beasts who joined the Telmarines have in common is that they turned against Narnia and their fellow Narnians. Ginger collaborated with the Calormens to sell his own people as slaves to the Calormen’s and even cut down the woods. The other beasts joined the Telmarines as they invaded or controlled Narnia. All suffer from a lack of loyalty, purpose, and an understanding that some things are more important than your own comfort and even your own life.

Aslan’s command was not to return to the ways of the Dumb Beasts and, yet, we did not find any concrete example of what ways should be prohibited - not Bree’s rolling, and barely even the explicit (though unmentioned) actions of the Lapsed Bear of Stormness. The reason why is that any action of that sort is superficial. Rolling is what Dumb Beasts do, but it does not define their innate character.

What defines the Dumb Beasts is that they act on instinct not on morals. Instinct says to constantly seek pleasure and enjoyment. Instinct is to save one’s life at all costs. Morals push back against instinct, putting God front and center and requiring that HIs will be placed before yours.

We do not fully know the motivations of Ginger the rest. No doubt, at least in Ginger’s case, it was for power. Perhaps they were also motivated by wealth and comfort. But by following those instincts they left Aslan behind. They turned against their homeland and their fellows. They loosened their morals and thus acted instinctively, like the Dumb Beasts which they eventually became.

With this we perhaps have solved our riddle. The prohibition against returning to the ways of the Dumb Beasts is not an action, it may not even be a direction, but rather it’s placing instinct before morals. We find examples of beasts that violated this prohibition and were indeed punished. And, while not formulating concrete rules, we do have a guideline as to when the prohibition is violated.

There are two points still to be made. First, why are Aslan’s words not mentioned, recorded, or very much considered in the Chronicles of Narnia? One would think this command would be in the forefront of the minds of the Talking Beasts, rather than being referred to in a few “throw away” statements. To address this we’ll reconsider the dynamic of Aslan’s words had they been said in a Jewish context.

Second, recall that Susan hesitated before shooting at a bear attacking her, her siblings, and Trumpkin in the woods because she was concerned that it was perhaps a talking bear. Lucy replies to Susan’s hesitation with what she calls a “horrible idea.” I won’t quote it now but take a look as it deserves quite some thought.